Chapter I: The Quest of the Sleeping Beauty

Mr Herbert Nestle, knocking confidently and entering softly, laid the morning’s _Daily Post_ before his Chief, who had just entered and was pulling off his gloves.

“Anything especial?” asked Gilead.

“I have thumb-marked one,” said the secretary, “which seemed to me perhaps worth your personal attention.”

The Bureau--known as _Lamb’s Agency_--was already in working order, and daily settling into its pace. Its operations so far had seemed wholly to justify its existence, and its founder was satisfied. During this first month of its being some score of deserving cases had been helped, and almost as many shams exposed. The world was happier and cleaner by that measure; and, for the future, professional cadgers promised to grow shy of risking the inquisition of a body so merciless in its penetration, behind which stood a force so mysterious in its origin, and having, apparently, such inexhaustible funds at its disposal.

Gilead kept his little private office on the floor above the Agency, and from that shrouded adytum issued the motive power to the mechanism below. There he sat, or thence departed, unheard, unapproachable, an enigmatic, formidable figure to his employés, holding vast destinies in the hollow of his hand. No one of them, saving the privileged secretary, was permitted to apply to him on general grounds; and to his rare appearances in the offices was accorded, particularly by the two lady typewriters, a hushed deference almost religious in its character. Much of this was due, no doubt, to the halo of countless gold which surrounded him; but indeed Gilead’s charm of person, serene, passionless, clear-eyed as an angel’s, and as coldly beautiful, had at least its influence on the flutterings of susceptible hearts.

His establishment comprised, in addition to the secretary and the two ladies, half a dozen correspondents or book-keepers, and as many active agents, sound men and sagacious, whose business it was to visit and report upon the cases. To them was entrusted the investigation of the ‘Oh, please do help!’ petitions--the five, or fifteen, or fifty, or five-hundred pound loan-requests, for the saving of a home, or the buying of a business, or the stocking of a fashionable millinery, or the settling of debts incurred through Bridge or speculation, or the enabling a sporting curate to purchase a motor-bicycle, or the shipping of a promising family to Canada, or the feeding of a clergyman’s sick aunt on jellies and port wine. The plaints (many from titled lips) soon became susceptible to classification, and were found generally weakest on the side which betrayed the most agonized “derangement of epitaphs” and the most fervent ejaculations. The result in all ways was instructive, as much in its revelation of the systematic fraud which battened on timid uninvestigating charity, as of the pitiful flimsiness of the bulwark which stood between the light of social respectability, with a name and a number on its door, on the one side, and the outer darkness, with its obliteration of all personality, on the other. Gilead’s heart often grew sick, as this dissected stuff of craft and misery, of shamefulness and shamelessness, was submitted to his judgment. But his comfort lay in the sanitary acumen of his Bureau, and so long as that continued to work unimpaired, he had no intention of taking his hand from the lever.

The month, so far as his individual quest was concerned, had proved a dull one, void of romantic incitement. He received, therefore, his secretary’s statement with some quickening of interest. Quiet and unemotional in his decisions, he had satisfied himself that Mr Plover’s eulogium on this man had been justified. He found him acute, resourceful, penetrative, energetic, humane--such a coadjutor as he could most have desired. Nestle virtually managed the agency on its practical side, and possessed his chief’s full confidence. His features and unjarring personality were pleasant things moreover to his master, who was habitually fastidious in the matters of conduct and appearance. The secretary was a very good-looking young man, in a fair boyish way, and so gentle in voice and manner that one might never have guessed the spirit of determination which underlay that soft exterior. In suggestion he was subordinate angel to the other, though somewhat older, and far more full of worldly wisdom. But the only visible mundane feature about him was his spectacles.

Gilead sat down in his padded office-chair, and crossing his legs easily, consulted the paper lying on the desk before him.

“Indeed, Nestle?” he said. “Which is it?”

The secretary, bending respectfully over, ran a fresh white-nailed finger down the Agony Column, and stopped it at a three-line advertisement:--

“_Lady_ (_young_) _a victim to persecution, seeks honourable employment to extricate her from pressing difficulties. Good typewriter and linguist. Address Viatrix, Rufus Cottage, Knight’s Hill, West Norwood._”

Gilead read and considered, his hand thoughtfully caressing his chin. Then he looked up.

“You think it promising?” he said.

The secretary, withdrawn a little, deferred to his employer.

“If I am right, sir, in interpreting your mood.”

Gilead reflected.

“There has been a monotony, I admit, hitherto,” he said. “You differentiate this, somehow, from the others?”

“It is, if I may use the expression, sir, manly--no cringing. There are tokens of culture; and the hint of persecution, the mystery, puts it in another category. Certainly it is a lady--and young.”

“You have misread me, Nestle,” said his master, “if you can hint that as an objection. I should be a useless agent in this business were I constitutionally susceptible. The sex has never more than an abstract attraction for me, and any desire I may have to possess it is limited to its idealised presentments in art.”

He returned to the advertisement, frowning a little, while the secretary murmured an apology. Presently he looked up, with decision.

“I will undertake,” he said, “this case in person. You will of course allow no hint of the fact to escape you.”

“Of course, Mr Balm.”

They spent the subsequent hour or two in discussing the business of the Bureau, and at two o’clock Gilead, having lunched lightly at Victoria Station, took a train thence for West Norwood.

Alighted there, and enquiring his way, he found himself in a decent suburban road, which ascended at a steepish angle between a broken double line of houses, detached or in ranks. There were terraces, some shops, many raw modern villas, a few large mansions, of an older date, standing in their own grounds, and here and there, contemporaneous with these, a detached cottage or maisonette, almost hidden behind the shrubs and foliage of its front garden. Reading _Rufus Cottage_ upon the gate-post of one of these last, situated high on the hill, Gilead turned into a tiny drive, and rang the door bell of a little sober brown-brick house built after the sturdy architecture of the fifties. As he waited, he had time to observe that the scrap of lawn behind the shrubs was weed-grown and neglected, and the general atmosphere of the place fuscous and wet-smelling like an over-ripe walnut. And the next instant the door was opened by a weeping servant maid.

“I am sorry,” said Gilead, chivalrous to all. “Is anything the matter?”

She was small and moist, of the “tweenie” breed; and her emotion had inflamed her little nose and shaken her cap awry. She gazed at him open-mouthed, seeing an angel alighted on her step; but she answered nothing.

“I called about the advertisement,” he began tentatively; “but, of course--”

She caught at a sob to interrupt him.

“I was to show anyone in as did. O! dear, dear, I doesn’t know what to do!”

The mystery, it seemed, was already crying on the threshold. That was quite as he would have had it.

“Come,” he said; “I am here to help. Tell me what is wrong, child.”

“A telegram come for her,” said the girl, gasping and wiping her eyes on her apron; “and she’d no sooner read it but what she gave a ’eave and fell down flat on the sofy; and there’s she’s laid ever since.”

“You are speaking of?” said Gilead.

“My mistress,” answered the girl.

“How long ago was that?”

“More’n half an hour. O, dear! and I’m all alone with her; and I can’t get her to speak or move; and I doesn’t know what to do.”

“Hadn’t you better run for the doctor?”

The girl hesitated.

“Who’s to look after her while I’m gone?”

“I will,” said Gilead.

She gaped at him aghast, blinking her swollen lids.

“You?” she whispered; then added, “please, what’s your name?”

He told her. Something in the answer, vaguely associating it with a Sunday-school memory of peace and righteousness, appeared to reassure her. She backed against the wall to let him enter. He found himself in a cool dark little hall, having a door ajar and a flight of stairs to the left, and a closed door in front. This last the girl approached, snuffling and on tiptoe, and opening it softly, revealed a pleasant green-toned room which gave, through French windows, upon a square of embowered garden. She peeped fearfully round the door-edge, hesitated, then re-emerged and beckoned the visitor.

“There she is,” she whispered hysterically, “jest as she went down.”

Gilead stepped gently into the room. It was quite warm and cosy and still--like a bower almost to the little green pleasance beyond. And, in keeping with its vernal privacy, it had its sleeping nymph. She lay upon a green sofa, like a waxen figure upon a “property” bank. Gilead’s first thought was of the lovely St. Amaranthe in the Tussaud exhibition, which had once haunted his childish dreams. Only the artificial figure had seemed to breathe more naturally than this. There were here, however, the same beautiful immobile face, the same rose-petal complexion--cream just rounding into pink under the closed eyes--the same ripe perfection of form, the same suggestion of eternal restfulness. That other figure, he remembered, had always stood to his innocent mind for the embodiment of the Sleeping Beauty; and here she was, incarnated out of wax. Her dress--of velvet, or velveteen, a deeper shade of green than the sofa--fell in a slumberous bloom of folds; one milk-white arm, half buried under a coil of brown hair, cushioned her head; the other, limp and motionless, trailed its relaxed fingers upon the carpet, whereon lay a telegraph form.

Gilead stood some moments regarding the beautiful picture with the enthusiasm of a virtuoso. “It would be a black shame,” was something of his thought, “to let this fine work fall into the clutches of a Vandal!” The terms of the advertisement were in his mind.

“It looks like a cataleptic seizure,” he said to the girl. “Is she subject to them, do you know?”

The tweenie shook her poor little watery noddle.

“I’ve never known her do the like,” she said, “since I come here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A week, sir,” said the girl. “I’ve been with her ever since she took the ’ouse a week ago.”

“Well,” he said, “you’d better go for the doctor at once.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the girl gasped:

“I see her lids twitch! She’s a’comin’ to!”

It appeared that she was right. Some perceptible emotion stirred under the wax-like surface; the flush of pink deepened in the rounded cheeks. The suddenness of the change confirmed Gilead in his suspicion. “These instant recoveries,” he thought, “are characteristic of the complaint.”

He backed towards the door.

“She mustn’t find me here,” he whispered. “The shock might cause a relapse. I’ll wait outside. Let me know by and by if she wishes, or does not wish, to see me.”

Even as he spoke, a deep sigh issued from the sleeper’s lips, and he went hastily from the room, closing the door behind him.

He had, not, however, lingered, the most scrupulous of intruders, ten minutes in the little cold hall, when the girl came out to him radiant.

“She’d like to see you now, sir, if you please,” she said.