Chapter VII: Book II: The Chase (2)

"That was yesterday, Roddy. This morning, as ever is, Farrell
and I started, according to programme, for Versailles. I could
see that his mind had been running on Caffyn's words; that he
was dying to get back to Wimbledon; yes, and almost dying to be
quit of me.

"I had been waiting for this. I had known that the moment would
come, and wondered a score of times that it took so long in
coming. As unmarried men, Roddy, you and I are out of our depth
here. But surely--I hark back to it--it _must_ happen to one or
other of every married couple to look across the table and
realise the words _Till death us do part_. When it happens to
both simultaneously I suppose murder follows; or, at least,
divorce.

"Talking about murder, I've to confess that at Versailles I felt
the impulse again. You know that infernal Galerie des Glaces?
Well, of a sudden the multiplication of Farrell's face and the
bald spot at the back of his head came near to overpowering me.
We had escaped, too, from the wandering sightseers, and stood
isolated at the end of the vast hall. . . . High sniffing
dilettanti may say what they like, but Versailles is what Jimmy
would call a 'knock-out.' The very first view of the Grand
Avenue had knocked Farrell out, at all events, and he had stared
at the great fountains, and followed me through courts and
galleries in mere bedazement, speechless, with eyes like a
fish's, round and bulging and glassy. . . . He looked so funny,
standing there . . . so small . . . and yet actually, I suppose,
taller than the late King Louis Quatorze by three inches.
. . . Somewhere outside on a terrace a band was playing things
from the _Mariage de Figaro_--Figaro, at Versailles of all
places! . . . In short the world had gone pretty mad for a
moment, and for that moment I felt that, in this _bizarrerie_ of
contrast it might dignify our quarrel if Farrell died amid such
magnificent surroundings. . . . But I conquered the impulse all
right: and this, the third time, was the easiest."

"I got him away to the Little Trianon: and there in its gardens--
as you would lay in the shade a patient suffering from
sunstroke--I conducted him to a seat under the spring boughs
beside the little lake that reflects the Hameau. He stared on
the green turf at our feet, and across at the grouped rustic
buildings, all as pretty as paint, and came out of his stupor
with a long sigh.

"'A-ah!' he murmured. 'That's better! That does me good.'

"Then I knew that it was coming: that I must break his fate to
him. I even gave him the prompt-word.

"'Homelike,' I suggested.

"'You've hit it,' he said, and paused. 'No place like Home!
I'm glad enough to have seen all that show yonder.' He waved a
hand. 'But I wouldn't be one of these kings, not if you paid
me. . . . Look here, we'll cross to-morrow, eh? Of course, if
you prefer to stay behind--'

"'I'm not going to stay behind,' said I, throwing away my
cigarette.

"'Capital! We'll wind up with a dinner at the Savoy--'

"'Cold roast beef and mixed pickles,' I put in.

"He chuckled. 'Clever fellow, that Caffyn--made my mouth water,
he did. We'll wind up at the Savoy, and talk over another trip
that we'll take together, one of these days. For I shall miss
your company, Doctor.'

"'No, you won't,' said I, lighting a fresh cigarette.

"He stared at me for a moment as if slightly hurt in his
feelings. Then: 'Don't contradict,' he said sharply, and
laughed as I stared in my turn. 'Expression of yours,' he said.
'Sounds rude; but all depends _how_ you say it. I reckon I've
caught up the accent--eh?--by the quick way you looked up. . . .
I hadn't much school and never went to College: but I've studied
you, Doctor, and I'll improve.'

"'Well, then,' said I, nettled and less inclined to spare him,'
I'm sorry to contradict you, Mr. Farrell, but you are never
going to miss my company--_never, until your life's end_.'

"'What d'ye mean?' he blurted: and I suppose there was something
in my look that made him edge off an inch or two on the rustic
seat.

"'Simply this,' I answered. 'Ten or a dozen weeks ago you made
yourself the instrument to destroy something twenty times more
valuable than yourself. I am not speaking of what you killed in
me, nor of the years of application, the records, measurements,
analyses which you hoofed into nothing with no more thought than
a splay coon's for an ant-heap. Nor will I trouble you with any
tale of the personal hopes I had built on them, for you to
murder. The gods suffer men of your calibre to exist, and they
must know why. But I tell you this, though you may find it even
harder to understand. Science has her altars, and her priests.
I was one, serving an altar which you defiled. And by God,
Peter Farrell, upholsterer, the priest will pursue!'

"He drew back to the end of the seat and fairly wilted.
His terror had no more dignity than a sheep's. He cast an eye
about for help. There was none. 'You're mad!' he quavered.
'If we were in England now--What is it you're threatening?'

"'Nothing that you could take hold of, to swear information
against me,' I answered, 'even if you were in England now--now
that April's here. Or is it May? I shall probably end by
killing you; but I have tested my forbearance, and now know that
it will happen at my own time, place, and convenient
opportunity. That's a threat, eh? Well, there's no hurry about
it, and you couldn't do anything with it, even at home in merry
England. You couldn't put up a case that you go in bodily fear
of me--as you're beginning to do--when I can call Caffyn
('Clever fellow, Caffyn!') to witness that only last night you
desired no end to our acquaintance. Besides, my acquaintance is
all I propose to inflict on you, just yet.'

"He jumped up, and faced me. He was thoroughly scared, and no
less thoroughly puzzled. To do him justice, he had pluck
enough, too, to be pretty angry.

"'I don't know what you mean!' he broke out. 'I don't know what
you're driving at, mad or not. . . . The moment we crossed one
another I hated you--Yes, damn you, first impressions are truest
after all! Later, I was weak enough, thinking I'd injured you,
to--to--' He broke down feebly. 'What sort of devil are you?'
he demanded, mopping his forehead. 'You can't hurt me, I say.
What is it you threaten?'

"'Only this,' said I. 'You have been a married man for a number
of years, and therefore can probably appreciate better than I
what it means. But you know my feeling for you, as I know yours
towards me. . . . Well, I propose to be your companion in this
world and until death do us part. . . . You may dodge, but I
shall be faithful; you may slip, run, elude, but I shall quest.
But your shadow I am going to be, Mr. Farrell; and ever, when
you have hit a place in the sun, it shall be to start and find
me--a faithful hound at your side. I have put the fear on you,
I see. Waking or sleeping you shall never put that fear off.
. . . And now,' said I, rising and tapping another cigarette on
my case, 'let me steer you back to the railway-station.
You will prefer to dine alone to-night and think out your plans.
I shall be thinking out mine at the _Ambassadeurs_.'"

"So that's how it happened, Roddy. You might post me 100 pounds
to the Grand Hotel, Biarritz: for I'm running short. The hunt
is up, and he's breaking for South."
"J. F."

NIGHT THE ELEVENTH.

SCIENCE OF THE CHASE.

I'm an imperfect Christian: but I read Jack's long letter three times over, and at each reading I liked it the less. Before posting an answer I handed the thing to Jimmy; who spent a morning over it, helping himself--a sure sign of a troubled spirit--to tobacco indifferently from his own jar and mine. When nothing troubled him-- that is to say, as a rule--he invariably used mine. I left him ruminating; went out, did some business, and met him again at our usual luncheon-table at the Bath Club.

"I believe," said Jimmy reflectively at luncheon, "that my way with Farrell was the better, after all. . . . You'll admit that it did the trick, and without causing any offence to anybody. Well, if you ask me how to deal with the Professor, I'll be equally practical. Starve him off."

"No good," said I. "If I cut off supply, he'll only come back, demand his money and be off on the trail again. Indeed, he may turn up in these rooms to-morrow: for it's ten to one, on my reckoning, that Farrell will pretty soon break back for home."

"All the easier, then," said Jimmy. "Save you the trouble of writing a letter. When he comes for his money, tell him you're freezing on to it."

"But, man alive! it's Jack's money. You wouldn't have me thieve, would you? . . . As for the letter, I've written it; in fact you may say that I've written two, or, rather, assisted at their composition. Here is one of them, in copy. It explains the other, which is a half-sheet of instructions now in my lawyer's possession. I shall have to write a third presently, explaining to Jack--"

"I don't like letter-writing," interrupted Jimmy, "and I shun solicitors. Which is anticipatory vengeance: as soon as I'm called, and in practice, they'll be active enough in shunning me. Otty, you need a nurse. What the devil do you want with consulting solicitors, when you can have my advice, legal or illegal, gratis?"

"Listen to this," said I:--

"Thistleton Chambers,"
"29a Essex Street, Strand, W.C.,"
"May 12th, 1907."

"Dear Sir,--Our client, Sir Roderick Otway, Bart., has to-day
transferred to our account the sum of six thousand, five hundred
pounds sterling, representing a sum received by him from you, to
be administered on conditions which, after reconsidering them,
he finds himself unable to accept.

"Sir Roderick instructs us that you will draw on us at your
convenience for any sum or sums under this cover. This, of
course, pending notification of your wish that we should
transfer the account elsewhere.

"Acting on our client's further instructions, we hereby
enclose in registered envelope circular notes value 100 pounds
sterling. Kindly acknowledge receipt and oblige."

"Yours faithfully,"
"B. Norgate,"
"for Wiseman and Norgate,"
"Solicitors."
"To"
"J. Foe, Esq., DSc.,"
"Grand Hotel,"
"Biarritz."

Jimmy looked me straight, and asked, "Is that letter posted?"

"It is," I answered. "I told Norgate that, as a matter of honour, Jack's letter ought to be answered promptly. That's why I lost no time this morning. Not being quite certain of the earliest post to France, he made sure by sending off the office-boy straight to St. Martin's-le-Grand."

"Then no taxi will avail us," groaned Jimmy, "and I must call for a liqueur brandy instead. . . . Oh, Otty--you must forgive the old feud: but why _did_ your parents send you to Cambridge? Mine sent me to a place where I had at least to sweat up forty pages or so of a fellow called Plato. Not being able to translate him, I got him more or less by heart. Here's the argument, then. . . . Supposing a friend makes a deposit with you, that's a debt, eh? Of course it is. But suppose it's a deposit of arms, or of money to buy arms, and he comes to you and asks for it when he's not in his right senses, and you know he's not, and he'll--like as not--play the devil with that deposit, if you restore it. What then?"

"If I thought that Farrell was in danger," I mused; "that's to say, in any immediate danger--"

"Rats!" said Jimmy contemptuously. "Farrell's a third party. Why drag in a third party? The Professor's _your_ friend; and he's made a deposit with you: and you don't need to think of anyone but him. For he's _mad_. . . . Now, come along to the smoking-room, where I've ordered them to take the coffee, and where I'll give you ten minutes to pull up your socks and do a bit of thinking."

"Maybe you're right, Jimmy," said I as we lit our cigarettes. "And if so, it's pretty ghastly. . . . He's had enough to put him off his hinge. But somehow I can't bring myself--No, hang it! I've always looked on Jack as the sanest man I've ever known. If he has a failing it's for working everything out by cold reason."

"Just what he's doing at this moment," answered Jimmy dryly. "If you don't like the word 'mad' I'll take it back and substitute 'balmy,' or anything you like. Madness is a relative term; and I should have thought that what you call working-everything-out-by-cold-reason was a form of it. I know jolly well that if I felt myself taken that way I should go to a doctor about it. And if _you're_ going to practise it on the subject just now before the committee, I shall leave the chair and this meeting breaks up in disorder."

"The point is," said I, "that the letter has gone."

"What address?" he asked pouring out the coffee.

"Biarritz, Grand Hotel--Why surely you read it?"--I stared at him, but he was looking down on the cups. Then of a sudden I understood. "Jimmy," I said humbly, "I've been an ass."

"Ah," said he, "I'm glad you see it in that light. . . . The afternoon mail has gone: but there's the night boat. You can't telegraph, unfortunately. In his state of mind you mustn't warn him. You must catch him sitting."

"Look here," I proposed. "It will be a nuisance for you, Jimmy--it will probably bore you stiff. But if you'll only come along with me . . ."

"The implied compliment is noted and accepted," said Jimmy gravely. "The invitation must be declined, with thanks, though. Your mind is working better already. A few hours holiday off the L.C.C., and you'll find yourself the man you were. But the gear wants oiling. . . . Do you remember your betting me ten to one this morning, in a lucid interval, that Farrell would break for home? Well, I didn't take you up. I don't mind owning that, after you'd left, and after some thought, I told Jephson to pack _both_ suit-cases. But that lawyer, with his infernal notion of dispatch in business, will have put money in the Professor's pocket some hours before you reach Biarritz. Money's his means of pursuit: and it's well on the cards that you'll find both your birds flown. You are going to Biarritz, Otty, for your sins--like Napoleon III. and other eminent persons before you: and you'll have, unlike the historical character just named, to go alone for your sins. For on your ten-to-one odds that Farrell breaks for home it's obvious that I remain and keep goal. Now what you have to do is to make for the bank and get out some money, while I take a swim in the tank here. After that," added Jimmy, relapsing into frivolity, "I'll look up the Trades Directory for a respectable firm dealing in strait-waistcoats."

Well, there is no need to tell of my chase to Biarritz; for I arrived there only to be baulked. The porter who entered my name in elegant script, with many flourishes, in the Hotel Visitors' Book, informed me that the English Doctor had departed--it was four hours ago--to catch the night express for Paris. Here was the entry-- "Dr. J. Foe, Chelsea, London." He had left no other address. "Had he a companion?" No, none. He had passed his time in solitary rambles: but on this, the last day, he had spent some time in writing furiously, up to the moment of departure.

The porter moved away to clear the letter-box, which stood pretty near the end of the table. I examined the register. Farrell's name was not among the entries.

They had assigned me my room, and I was about to take the lift and inspect, when I heard the porter say to himself, "_Tiens, c'est drole, maintenant_." He had the bundle of cleared letters in his hand and held out one. It was addressed to me in Jack's handwriting.

I pounced for it. "_C'est a moi--Ceci s'expliquera, sans doute_." The porter hesitated. "_Une lettre timbree--c'est contre les regies, sinon contre la loi . . . mais puisque c'est pour monsieur, apparement_--"

A ten-franc piece did the rest. I took the letter up to my chamber where I opened it and read--

[FOE to OTWAY]

"Grand Hotel, Biarritz.

"Dear Roddy,--I am obliged to you by receipt of your silly
lawyer's letter enclosing 100 pounds; though what kind of
salve it can spread on your conscience to commission a fellow
called Norgate to do what you won't do at first hand I fail to
perceive. However, have it your own way. I have an enemy who,
with a little training, won't give me time to worry about my
friends.

"Farrell is improving. It was difficult at first to get a move
on a man of his stupidity, and I could only work on his one
sensitive nerve, which is cowardice. He has imagination enough
to be terrified of that which hides and doesn't declare itself
whether for good or evil.

"My own early experiments have, I admit, been amateurish. But I
shall acquire skill, and the appetite shall learn refinements,
to keep it in health. I don't think it was bad sport, on the
whole, to open with low comedy. It tickled me, anyhow, to watch
Farrell emerge from a sort of bathing-machine upon the _plage_,
moderately nude and quite unsuspicious--having given me that
artful slip in Paris--and, approaching the machine from the
rear, to insert his shirt-collar, with my card, into his
left-hand shoe.

"That was the first card I left on him. He was putting up at the
_Albion_--I had no need to search; for the local paper, of
course, prints a Visitors' List which it collects from the
hotels, and there my gentleman was, under his own name.
(Oh, we're in the simple stages of the process, thus far, and he
hasn't yet had recourse to so much as an _alias_.) But I
didn't call on him at the _Albion_.

"I have since learnt from him that the discovery of my card in
the bathing-machine shook him up--well, pretty much as the
footprint on the sand shook up Robinson Crusoe. But there's a
difference, as he'll learn, between being shaken and being
scared into fits. At all events, he didn't bolt: for I kept out
of sight and molested him no more that day. Next morning he
took courage and started off for the golf-links, which lie out
to the north, beyond the lighthouse. He was enjoying his
liberty, you understand: for I had made him carry his clubs
about and up and down the Riviera, but never allowed him to
play. That was a part of our understanding. Also he may have
had some hazy notion that, golf being to me as holy water to the
Devil, he'd be safe out there, within a charmed circle.

"There's something in it, too, Roddy. And I've half a mind, if
he doesn't wake up and improve, to offer him a handicap.
He shall be safe, all the world over, when he can find a
golf-course for sanctuary, and shall play his little game while
I wait for him and:"

Sit on a stile
And continue to smile.

"I wonder what sort of a hell it would be, going round and
round on endless rounds of golf--with a real Colonel Bogey
sitting on the stile and watching. . . . But I make no promises,
no offers, just now.

"He tells me that at the Club House he found a Golf Major of
sorts--or, as he puts it, 'a compatriot, a military gentleman,
retired, with a remarkable knowledge of India'--and seduced him
into playing a round. I should gather that Farrell plays an
indifferent game. At all events, the Golf Major was averse from
a second round, and retiring to a table in the Club veranda
allowed Farrell to call for--catch hold of your French, Roddy--
'_Deux bieres, complet_.' The waiter understood it to mean
liquid refreshment and not a double funeral. . . . Over the
drink the Golf Major, who had known Biarritz for twenty years,
explained the difference between its old and its new
golf-course, and informed Farrell that in the old one there had
used to be the most sporting hole anywhere--for a beginner.
You drove slap across a chasm of the sea: if you didn't land
your ball neatly you were in the devil of a hole, and if you
foozled you saw your ball dropping down, down, to the beach and
the Atlantic. 'Too expensive for duffers altogether, especially
when the price of balls rose. Only the caddies thrived on it,
at the risk of their necks. . . . After this tiffin we'll stroll
over and have a look at it.'

"So thither they strolled, and by and by started to amuse
themselves with pot-shot drives from the old tee. The Major
whacked his ball across to a neat lie time after time.
Farrell muffed and foozled, wasting his substance in riotous
slogging. The height of the cliff, maybe, dizzied his head.

"In this way I suppose he expended all his ammunition. At any
rate there came a pause, and a small Basque boy in a blue
_beret_ began to descend the slope very cautiously, searching
for lost balls in the scree. At the foot of the gully, where it
funnelled to a sheer drop, I stepped from under my shelter and
met the youngster, holding out a golf-ball. 'Here is one more,'
said I--'Where are the two gentlemen gone?' He told me that
they had gone back to the Club House. 'Then here is a franc for
you,' said I, 'and here is a card which you will take with the
ball and my compliments to the gentleman who cannot play golf so
well as the other gentleman.'

"The lad grinned. We climbed the cliff together, and I saw him
speed off to the Club House."

"I had thus left two cards on Farrell, and it was now his turn to
call: which he duly did, and next day; not, however, at the
Grand Hotel, but at a far more romantic place of entertainment.

"If you don't know this place--and I do not commend it to you for
entertainment towards the close of the English season--let me
tell you that, walking south from the town by paths that lead
around the curves of the foreshore, you quickly lose Biarritz
and find yourself in a deserted and melancholy country,--a sort
of blasted heath that belongs to a fairy-tale. The great
military road for Spain runs hidden, pretty wide on your left,
among the lower foothills of the Pyrenees: and from it these
foothills undulate down and drop over little cliffs to form a
moorland with patches of salt marish. In spring, they tell me,
the ground is all gay with scarlet anemones in sheets; but, when
I took the path, their glory was over and but a few late flowers
lingered. I happen, however, to like flowers for their scent
more than for their colour: and the whole of this moor was a
spilth of scent from bushes of the purple Daphne--its full
flowering time over, but its scent lingering ghostlily on the
salt wind from the sea. And the sea was forlorn as it always is
in this inner bight of the Bay of Biscay, where no ships have
any business and your whole traffic is a fishing-boat or two, or
a thread of smoke out on the horizon. You are alone between sea
and mountains; and all along the strip that separates them,
while the sky is spring, the land and the sense of it are
autumn.

"Now I don't know the history of it, but can only guess that once
on a time some enterprising speculator, fired by the sudden
Third-Empire blaze of Biarritz, conceived the project of
starting a rival watering place, here to the South, and that
they were to make its beginning with a colossal Hotel. At any
rate, here, rounding a desolate point of the foreshore, I came
upon a long desolate beach, and a long desolate building,
magnificent of facade, new and yet ruinated, fronting the Bay
with a hundred empty eye-sockets.

"It broke on the view with a shock. It made me glance over my
shoulder to make sure of the real Biarritz not far behind.
But three or four spits of land shut off that human, if vulgar,
resort. Between me and the Pyrenees this immense ghastly
sarcophagus of misdirected enterprise possessed the landscape,
and I approached it. Yes, Roddy:"

Dauntless the slughorn to my lips I set,
And blew. _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came_.

"The horrible place turned out to be a mask--as I hope the Dark
Tower did, after all, for Childe Roland. But it was a horrible
mask. It had been started on foundations of good stone, with
true French lordliness: but it parodied--or, rather, it
satirised--the ambitious French tendency to impose architecture
upon nature. Behind the facade, through which the wind
whistled, all was an unroofed mass of rusted girders and joists;
a skeleton framework about which I climbed--the first and last
guest--conning and guessing where suites of rooms had been
planned, to be adorned with Louis Seize furniture, for a host of
fellow-guests that had never come and now would never arrive to
make merry. I clambered along a girder, off which my heels
scaled the rust in long flakes, and thrust my head through one
of the great empty windows to take in the view.

"--Which was indeed magnificent. But my eye switched from it to
a mean little human figure, moving along the foreshore with a
gait which, even at a goodish distance, I recognised for
Farrell's. It looked like a beetle creeping, nearing, across
the flats and hummocks. But it was Farrell.

"He halted at some distance, as I had halted; arrested, as I had
been arrested, at sight of the incongruous great structure,
planted here. He drew close, cast a sort of questioning glance
seaward, very deliberately drew a pair of field-glasses from a
case slung over his shoulder, and focused them on the building,
lifting them slowly.

"I had drawn back behind my window-jamb, yet so as to watch him.
As he tilted the glasses upward, I leaned out.

"He stood for a moment, or two motionless. Then his hands sank,
with the glasses clutched in them. He walked slowly away.
When he judged himself hidden by a spit of the shore--but my
window overlooked it--he broke into a run.

"I note that he is already beginning to reduce his figure.

"I returned the call that same evening. I dropped in on
him as he took his seat to dine _solus_ at the _Albion_.
The dining-room, I should tell you, was fairly full. Usual
ruck of people: sort of too-English; English you see at
_tables-d'hote_ and nowhere else in the world, with an
end-of-season preponderance of females who stay to look after
the British chaplain a little longer than he needs, or to
gratify some obscure puritan pride in seeing everybody out, or
because there's a bargain to be squeezed with the management to
the last ounce, or peradventure because they've planned a series
of cheap visits at home for our beautiful summer and one or two
of the Idle Rich have remembered to be less idle than they were
last year, and more restive.

"To do him credit--and it makes me hopeful for him--Farrell has a
certain instinct of self-preservation. Let us never forget that
he is a widower. Amid these Amazons he had fenced a bachelor
table. I walked up to it straight and said, with a glance
around, 'Farrell, you're lonely.'

"He passed a hand over his forehead and murmured, 'Oh, for God's
sake--don't drive me like this! . . .'

"'Nonsense,' said I. 'Forget it, man. Look around you and say
if there's one of these spinsters you'd rather have for
companion. Don't raise your voice. You started in admirable
key. . . . Let's keep to it and understand one another.
I'm dining with you. If you like, we'll toss up later for who
pays: but I'm dining with you. I promise not to hurt you
to-night, if that helps conviviality.'

"'It does,' said he in a queer way. 'Let's talk.'

"'Well then,' said I confidentially. 'You're a solid man.
You've made your way in the world, and I suppose the sort of
success you've won implies some grit. . . . What makes you
afraid of me, Farrell?'

"He drank some wine and stared down on the table-cloth, knitting
his brows. 'Well,' he answered, 'I might tell you it's because
you're mad.'

"'That's nonsense,' I assured him.

"'Oh, is it?' said he. 'I'd like to be sure it is.'

"'My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time," I quoted.
'Feel it, Farrell.'

"I stretched out my wrist. He started back as though it had been
a snake.

"'On the whole you're right,' said I, drawing back my hand
slowly, watching his eyes. 'If they saw you feeling my pulse
the ladies around us would at once solve the doubt they have
discussed in the drawing-room. All _table-d'hote_ ladies
speculate concerning their fellow-guests in the hotel. . . . .
Thirty pairs of eyes were on the point of detecting you for a
fashionable physician, and by this time to-morrow thirty ladies
travelling in search of health would have found means to make
your acquaintance and pump you for medical advice on the
cheap. . . . Yes, Farrell, you have a lively instinct of
self-preservation. I will note it. . . . Now tell me.--When I
walked in just now, that same instinct prompted you to get up
and run; to run as you did along the foreshore this afternoon.
What restrained you?'

"'Why, hang it all,' he blurted with a look around; 'a fellow
couldn't very well show up like that before all these ladies!'

"He meant it too, Roddy. It came out with a flush, plump and
honest.

"It makes the chase more interesting. But I am annoyed with
myself over the miscalculation. . . . I could have sworn he was
a coward in grain. I marked all the _stigmata_. . . .
And behold he can show fight!--at any rate in presence of the
other sex. . . . Can something have happened to him, think you,
since our talk at Versailles? Is it possible that I am
_educating_ the man?

"On top of this complicating discovery I made a simplifying one.

"You know that I have a knack with animals, in the way of
handling their passions. I've never tried it on humans: for
I've never laid down any basis of knowledge, and I've always
detested empiricism. That study, as you remember, was to come.

"Well, I'll write further about it some day. . . . But I believe
I have _something like_ this power over Farrell. . . . I put out
a feeler or two--to change metaphors, I waved a hand gently over
the lyre, scarcely touching the strings; and it certainly
struck me that they responded. You will understand that a
_table-d'hote_ was no place for pushing the experiment.
And there were one or two men in the smoking-room when we sought
it.

"Farrell found himself; talked, after a while, quite well and
easily. In the smoking-room he told me a good deal about his
early life: all _bourgeois_ stuff, of course, but recounted in
the manner that belongs to it, and quite worth listening to.

"He never wilted once, until I got up to go and drank what
remained of my whisky-and-seltzer 'to our next merry meeting.'
He followed me out to the hotel doorway to say Good night.
We did not shake hands.

"There are indications that he will travel back north to-night.
He has left for Pau, to play golf. At Dax this evening--mark my
words--a solitary traveller may be observed furtively stealing
on board the night express for Paris. He will be observed: but
he won't be a solitary traveller.

"Your lawyer's letter--as I started by remarking--has arrived
opportunely. If Farrell, as I suspect, intends to go through to
London, I may reach you almost as soon as this letter, and shall
add a piece of my mind for a postscript.--Yours,"

"J. F."

I slept the night at Biarritz and started back early next morning for London.

I found Jimmy recumbent in what he called his Young Oxford Student's Reading Chair, alone with the racing news in the evening papers.

"Hallo!" he greeted me. "I rather expected you just now. Let's go and dine somewhere."

"Has Jack turned up here?" I asked.

"'Course he has: Farrell too--Farrell first by a short head. Rather a good idea, my stopping at home to keep goal. Hard lines on you, though; all that journey for nothing. . . . If it's any consolation, the Professor was much affected when I told him of all the trouble you were taking, out of pure friendship, to fit him with a strait-waistcoat. 'Good old Roddy!' he said."

"No, he didn't," I interrupted. "And if he did, we'll cut that out. Tell me what happened."

"He said he had posted a letter to you from Biarritz: that it ought to have arrived by this time. I told him it hadn't, and it hasn't. If it had, I warn you I should have opened it."

"That's all right," I said. "I extracted it from the post-box at Biarritz, and have it here. You shall read it by and by. Go on."

"Well, in my opinion, the Professor's pulling your leg--or he and Farrell between 'em. If either's mad, it's Farrell; or else--which I'm inclined to suspect--Farrell's a born actor."

"Now see here," I threatened, "I've travelled some thousands of miles: I've spent two nights in the train and one in a French bedstead haunted by mosquitoes: I've had the beast of a crossing, and I'm in the worst possible temper. Will you, please tell me exactly what has happened?"

"You shall have the details over dinner," he promised affably. "For you've omitted the one observation that's relevant--your stomach is crying aloud for a meal. The Cafe Royal is prescribed."

"Not until I've had a tub and dressed myself. The dust of coal-brick--"

"That's all right, again. . . . I admonished Jephson. You'll find the bath spread and your clothes laid out in your bedder, and in five minutes or so Jephson will bring hot water in a lordly can. I, too, will dress. . . . But meantime, here are the outlines:

"Farrell knocked in early this morning. He was agitated and he perspired. He wished to see you at once. I pointed out that it was impossible and, as they say in examinations, gave reasons for my answer. Hearing it, he showed a disposition to shake at the knees and cling to the furniture. When he went on to discover that I might do in your place, and the furniture's place, and started clinging to me--well, I struck. I pointed out that he was apparently sound in wind and limb, inquired if he owed money, and having his assurance to the contrary, suggested that he should pull himself together and copy the Village Blacksmith.

"While we were arguing it, the Professor butted in. I'll do him the justice to say he wasn't perspiring. But he, too, was in the devil of a hurry to interview you. So I had to play band as before.

"The position was really rather funny. There, by the door, was the Professor, asking questions hard, and seemingly unaware that Farrell was anywhere in the room. Here was I, playing faithful Gelert life-size, but pretty warily, covering Farrell--who, for aught I knew, had gone to earth under the sofa. I couldn't hear him breathing--and he's pretty stertorous, as a rule.

"I kept a pretty straight eye on the Professor, somehow, and told him the facts--that you had sent the money ('Yes, I know,' said he: 'I got it before leaving Biarritz'): that you had actually gone to that health-resort in search of him. ('Good God!' said he. 'That's like old Roddy'--or some words to that effect. You wouldn't let me repeat 'em, just now.) Then he started telling me about this letter he'd posted at Biarritz, and that it should have arrived, by rights. 'Well, it hasn't,' said I, feeling pretty inhospitable for not asking him to sit down and have a drink. . . . But, you see, I wasn't certain he wouldn't sit down somewhere on top of Farrell. . . . 'Think he'll be home tonight?' asked the Professor. 'That's what I'm allowing, in the circumstances,' said I. '--But you owe him some apology, you know, because you've led him the devil of a dance.' 'Don't I realise _that!_' says he, like a man worried and much affected. 'We'll call around to-night, on the chance of his turning up to forgive us. Come along, Farrell!' says he.

"I whipped about; and there was Farrell, seated in that chair of yours, bolt upright, smirking as foolish as a wet-nurse at a christening! I couldn't have believed my eyes. . . . But there it was--and after what I'd been listening to, five minutes before!

"As I'm describing it, it staggered me--and the more when the Professor, looking past me, said, 'If you're ready, Farrell?' and Farrell stood up, smiling and ready, and moved to join him. But I kept what face I could.

"'You're going to look in again, you two?' I asked. The Professor said 'Yes, on the chance that Roddy may turn up'; and he looked at Farrell; and Farrell blinked and said, 'Yes, we owe him an explanation, of course.'

"'Well,' said I,' you'll be lucky if he don't throw you both downstairs for a pair of knockabout artists astray. I've a sense of humour that can stretch some distance, and with the permission of our kind friends in front this matinee performance will be repeated to-night, when Otty's sense of humour will gape for it, no doubt, after being stretched to the Pyrenees and back.'

"The Professor motioned Farrell out to the staircase. Then he came forward to me and said, pretty low and serious, 'You're a good boy, Jimmy. You're so good a boy that I want you to keep out of this. If Roddy turns up to-night, tell him that my man's for Wimbledon, safe and sound. On second thoughts, we won't bother a tired man, to-night, with any excuses or apologies. By to-morrow he will probably have had my letter, and will understand. He may or may not decide to show it to you. I hope he won't. I hope you'll let us see him alone to-morrow. Good-bye.'

"--Now what do you make of that?" demanded Jimmy helplessly.

"I make it out to be no jest, but pretty serious," said I. "But luckily Farrell's located at Wimbledon. Where's Jack?" I asked.

"Don't know," answered Jimmy.

"I'm tired enough for this night, anyhow," said I. "And here's Jephson.--'Evening, Jephson."

Jephson came in with a can in one hand and in the other a tray with a telegram upon it.

"Good evening, Sir Roderick! Glad to see you safe home, sir," said Jephson. "Telegram just delivered at the Lodge for Mr. Collingwood."

"For me?" said Jimmy. "I've backed nothing to-day. Been too busy."

He tore upon the envelope, read the message, and after a pause handed it to me, whistling softly. It had been handed in at the Docks Station, Liverpool, and it ran--

"Tell O. that F. and I sail to-night New York S.S. _Emania_.

"Foe."

NIGHT THE TWELFTH.

THE "EMANIA".

I am going to spin the next stretch of this yarn--and maybe the next after it--in my own way. You will wonder how I happened by certain scraps of information: but you will understand before we come to the end.

It comes mainly from later report, but partly from documents which I have been too busy, of late, to sift. Here they are, all mixed: and I choose one only out of the heap--and that a passage which doesn't help the actual story much, though it may help the understanding of it. It occurs in a letter of Foe's written at sea and posted from New York--

"She had been reading a magazine, borrowed from the ship's
library, and when she left me, she left it lying beside her
deck-chair. The wind ruffled its pages and threatened to tear
them: so I picked the thing up, and was about to close it, and
to stow it behind her cushion, when a story-title caught my eye
and agreeably whetted my curiosity. It was 'The Head Hunter.'

"I don't care greatly for short stories. Fiction as a rule bores
me in inverse proportion to its length--which seems a paradox
and liable to be reduced to the absurd by any moderately expert
logician. Yet you will find it experimentally true of five
readers out of six. . . . Moreover the yarn had little or
nothing to do with real head-hunting--except in its preamble.
I soon glanced at the end, and had no further use for the story.

"But I turned my attention back to the preamble and reread it
twice. The fellow, an American, has a queer cocky irregular
style: but he can write when he chooses: and in one shot he so
fairly hit me between wind and water that I had to steal the
book, carry it down to my cabin and copy out the passage for
your benefit. . . . Yes, for yours: because it conveys something
I've been wanting you to understand about this chase of mine,
something I couldn't have put into words though I'd tried for a
month. I enclose it herewith. . . .

"When I had finished my copying, I took the thing back, meaning
to slip it under Miss Denistoun's cushion. But she had returned
to her chair, and so I was caught red-handed. 'So it was you?'
said she. 'What have you been doing with my magazine?'
'Skimming it,' said I--which was true enough, literally, but I
didn't manage it very well. 'Did you find anything to interest
you specially?' she asked. 'Well, yes,' I admitted;' I picked
it up and lit on something that promised well: but the story
came to nothing.' She gave me a glance and I felt sure she had
spotted my awkwardness and was going to pursue the catechism.
But she didn't. To my relief she harked back to our previous
talk. At tea-time, however, she remembered to take the
magazine away with her. . . . It has not yet been returned to
store. . . ."

(ENCLOSURE)

"'_Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been fascinated
and attracted by that delightfully original tribe of heathen
known as the head-hunters. Those grim, flinty, relentless
little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the
subtle terror of their concealed presence, paralleling the trail
of their prey through unmapped forests, across perilous
mountain-tops, adown bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable
jungles, always near, with the inevitable hand of death
uplifted, betraying their pursuits only by such signs as a beast
or a bird or a gliding serpent might make--a twig crackling in
the awful sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from the
screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even from the
rushes of a water-level--a hint of death for every mile and
every hour--they amused me greatly, those little fellows of one
idea._'"

You observe that a lady has come into the story at last, as she was bound to do. (You will hear of another and a very different one by and by.) It is not my fault that she enters it so late--I tell of things as they occurred--though a clever writer would have dragged her in long before this. I wish to God I hadn't to bring her into it at all. I slipped out her surname just now. . . .

It was through being a friend of mine that she comes into it. Constantia Denistoun and I had ridden ponies, tickled for trout, bird-nested, tumbled off trees, out of duck-punts, through forbidden ice, and into every form of juvenile disgrace, together as boy and girl. Her father and mine had been college friends, and (I believe) had both fallen in love with my mother, at a College ball, and my father won--but all on an understanding of honourable combat. Denistoun set out to travel, quite in the traditional way of the Rejected One. He was a Yorkshire squire with plenty of money, and could afford the prescribed cure. He travelled as far as to Virginia, U.S.A., where he halted, and wooed and won the heiress of a wide estate of cotton and tobacco and a great Palladian house, all devastated and ruined by the War, in which her father had fallen, one of Lee's pet leaders of cavalry. . . . Yes, I know it sounds like a tale out of Ouida: but such things happen, and this thing happened. . . . Denistoun scaled the twenty steps of the Ionic portico, cleft his way through the cobwebs and briers that were living and dying for Dixie, kicked over the grand piano that Dinah's duster still reverentially spared, and carried off the enchanted Princess across the seas to Yorkshire: where in due course she bore him a daughter, Constantia, and, some years later, a son who eventually came into the property but doesn't come into the story.

In the meantime it had happened that _I_ saw the light. . . . My mother died, a year later: and after seven years of widowhood my father married again. My sister Sally--the recipient of those long letters you see me inditing o' nights--is my step-sister, and an adored one at that.

There you have the family history, or enough of it. The old friendship between my father and Squire Denistoun had never been broken; and now that death had taken away the last excuse for a rivalry which had been felt but to be renounced, Constantia and I-- unconscious brats--shared holidays, as it chanced at my home or hers, in nefarious poaching beside Avon or in gallops between her northern moors and the sea.

That is all, or almost all. I have to add that, having fallen into most scrapes with her, I ended by proposing one in which she gently but decisively declined to share the risk. . . . I am inclined to think that, having been so frank with her, and so frequent, in confidences about others to whom my heart was lost, she may have missed the bloom on the recital. . . . But there it was; and that's that, as they say.

I accused her at the time of a priggish, unnatural craving for things of the intellect. All my excuse was that at a certain time of her life she took a sudden turn for reading and setting queer new values on things. But she was always a sportswoman, a woman of the open air, and--here's the point--always knowledgeable with animals and always beloved by them, but always (as it seemed to me) inclined to be severe and disciplinary. To a lean pack she was Diana; they fawned behind her for no pay but hope of her word to let slip. But she would beat them off the piled platter, and from a fed lap-dog she could scarcely restrain her hands. If you think this hasn't to do with the story, I can only assure you that it has.

One thing more--She had met Foe; for the first time at a luncheon-party in my rooms at Cambridge, in May Week; a second time, it may be, at a May Week ball--but that wouldn't count, for she danced divinely and Foe couldn't compete for nuts. She may have met him once or twice afterwards, in London. It's not likely.

Anyhow (as she has told me since) she recognised him at once when he turned up on the _Emania_.

She and her mother were bound out to visit some friends at Washington, thence to fare South and stay a while with a cousin who held the old homestead in which her mother retained some sort of dower share.

Thus she recognised Foe as soon as he appeared on deck.

But he did not appear on deck until the _Emania_ was well out from Queenstown; having made sure that Farrell didn't bolt there. The two--need I tell it?--had not taken passage in collusion. Farrell was escaping, Foe on his trail. But Foe had no idea of any dramatic surprise on board. Having made sure of his man, he just took a remnant first-class berth at the last moment, turned in, and went to sleep.

In all their commerce (you will have begun to remark) Foe and Farrell were apt to yield, at intervals, to an abandonment of weariness, but so that they alternated, the exhaustion of one seeming ever to double the other's fever. Foe sought his bunk and lay there like a log. Farrell, after the first shock of reading his pursuer's name in the Passengers' Book--where it sprang to his eyes fair and square--fell to haunting the passage-way, low down in the vessel, on which one dreadful door refused to open. His terror of it so preoccupied him that he forgot to feel sea-sick. But the steward of those nether regions marked him, by the electric lamps, as a lurking passenger to be watched; and wondered who, at that depth in the ship, could be carrying valuables to tempt a middle-aged gentleman who (if looks were any guide) ought to be up and losing money to the regular card-sharpers.

It was not until the second day out, and pretty late in the afternoon, that Foe emerged from his cabin, neatly dressed and hale. (Unlike some Professors I have known, Jack kept his clothes brushed and his hair cut.) As he opened his door his ear caught a slight shuffling sound; whereupon he smiled and stepped quickly down the passage to the turn of the companion way.

"No hurry, Farrell!" he called; and Farrell, arrested, turned slowly about on the stair. "Man, you're like the swain in Thackeray:"

Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Oft-times I hover--

"Solicitous, were you?--thought I might be sea-sick?"

"I was wondering," Farrell stammered. "Seeing that you didn't turn up at meals--"

(Here I must read you a queer remark from the letter in which Jack reported this encounter. Here's the extract:--)

"_Do you know, Roddy, that silly simple answer gave me half a
fright for a moment, or a fright for half a moment--I forget
which. . . . What I had to remember then was my discovery that I
had my second keyboard in reserve and could pull certain stops
out of him at will. . . . But seriously, I wouldn't, without
that power, back myself in this experiment against a man who
obstinately persisted in forgiving. It came on me with a
flash--and I offer this tribute to the Christian religion_."

Foe's answer was, "Very kind of you. As a fact, I have been subsisting on hard biscuit and weak whisky-and-water: though I'm an excellent sailor, as they say. . . . It's a diet that suits me when I'm working hard."

"Working?" exclaimed Farrell. "What? Head-work, d'you mean? . . . Doctor, this is the best news you could have told me. If only I could know that you were picking up your interests--getting back to yourself--"

Foe took him by the arm. "It's no good, unfortunately," he answered. "Come up on deck, and I'll tell you."