Chapter D: Appleton and Company (7)

Even if she did not know in the least what was meant by “the altogether,” it did not seem to be quite wise to confess such ignorance. “Ye-es, I suppose I am.” And in a weak attempt to rise to his own agreeable plane of intimacy she laughed rather foolishly.

“Capital!” said Adolph Keller. “You are a well built girl.” He sipped a little whisky. “Excellent shoulders. Figure’s full of fine lines. Bust well developed. Plenty of heart room. Everything just right.”

She coloured at the literal way in which he catalogued her points; even if it was done in the manner of an artist and a gentleman, one was a little reminded of a dog or a horse.

“I’ll fix you up a screen. And then you can get ready.” He sipped a little more whisky, and rose briskly and cheerfully. “Near the fire; it’s real chillsome to-night. And when you pose you can sit on top of it if you like.” He opened the lid of the coal box, and replenished the fire. “We must take care you don’t catch cold. If you feel a draught, you can have a rug round your knees. I only want to make a rough sketch of the lines of the figure, to begin with; the shoulders chiefly. It won’t take long. Quite sure you won’t have a finger?” He pointed to the whisky. “Buck you up a bit. You look rather down.”

June was quite sure that she would not have a finger. Mr. Keller passed beyond the screen into the studio itself to procure a second screen. June felt this activity to be alarming. It brought her up against the fact that she was there in the capacity of an artist’s model. Suddenly it dawned upon her that she was expected to take off her clothes.

XXXVIII

MR. KELLER cleared a space near the fire, and elaborately arranged a second screen, which June did not fail to notice was decorated with nude figures.

“There you are,” he said. “That’ll keep you snug. And if you sit on a stool by the fire with a rug over your knees, you’ll be as warm as a kitten.”

June paled, but she did not speak.

“Begin as soon as you like, the sooner the better. Are you quite sure you won’t have just a spot?” Again he pointed to the bottle on the table. “You look as if you want a drop of something.”

Once more June declined the offer in a voice which in her own ear seemed absurdly small and faint.

“Pity,” said Mr. Keller cheerfully, as he looked at her. “It’d put some life in you.” And then, as she was still inert, he went on in a tone which pleasantly mingled gentlemanliness and business, “I always pay a sovereign an hour, you know--for the altogether.”

A light of fear came into June’s large eyes. “Does it mean,” she asked, shyly and awkwardly, as she looked away from him, “that I shall have to take off my clothes?”

“Why, of course,” he said, matter-of-factly. Her obvious embarrassment was not lost upon him, but the knowledge did not appear in his manner.

June shivered slightly. In that shiver a deep instinct spoke for her. “I couldn’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” He lit a cigarette. “Aren’t you well?”

June was very far from well. She felt within an ace of being overcome by all that had happened to her. Besides her bruised shoulders were still aching horribly. Even without the deep instinct that governed her, it would not have been possible to expose them.

“No-no,” she said, “I--I’m not well.”

As she spoke, she had to fight a powerful desire to burst into tears. But her latent fear of this man had suddenly grown. Overdriven as she was, however, she was yet conscious of a stern need to keep a hold upon herself. She knew nothing, less than nothing of her host, beyond the fact that he was smooth of speech. On the surface he was a gentleman, but as he stood looking down at her now she glimpsed in his dark eyes that which seemed to countervail everything.

Again she shivered. The sense of helplessness was paralyzing. It was as if a chasm had abruptly opened right under her feet. She was at his mercy. But she must not give one thought, so long as a spark of will remained with her, to the possibility of throwing herself upon it.

He continued to stand looking at her while she fought against a welling weakness that must have been only too patent. Then, as if a little puzzled by her, he went and fetched a glass from another part of the studio. He poured out a small quantity of spirit and offered it neat.

“Drink this. It’ll do you good.”

His voice, for the first time, had the grip of authority. He held the glass to her lips, but as if containing deadly fumes they shrank from contact with it.

“Don’t be a little fool.” The sharp tone was like the touch of a whip. “Why don’t you do as you are told?”

She had not the strength to resent the command even if she was able to muster the power to resist it.

“Look here,” he said, confronted by a limit to patience. “Why have you come? What’s the matter with you? Tell me.”

She remained mute. There was nothing she could tell. A lodging for the night, food, advice, protection were what she sought. Dominated completely as she was by hard necessity, she yet dare not confide in Keller. The subtle change that had come upon him since he had fixed up the screen and poured out the whisky filled her with an intense longing to get away. In spite of a growing weakness, which now threatened dire collapse, the subtle feelers of her mind were on the track of danger.

With a slow gathering of will that was a form of agony, she tried to collect the force to rise from the perilous comfort of the low wicker chair. But she was not able to rouse herself to action before the effort had been nipped by his next remark.

“If you’ve no intention of sitting to me, you’d better say in two words why you’ve come here.”

The voice was no longer smooth; there was a cutting edge to it, lacerating to June’s ear.

“I wanted you to lend me a sovereign.”

It was the literal truth. But the unguarded words slipped from her before she could shape or control them. Almost before they were uttered she realized their bitter unwisdom.

“You can have a sovereign--if that’s all you want.” His tone grew light again. “But it’s only fair and reasonable that you should earn it first.”

Strive as she would, she was not able to keep a faint dew of tears from filming her eyes.

“No need to take off more than your bodice, if that’s what’s troubling you.”

With her shoulders on fire, she could not take off her bodice, even had she wished to do so.

She sat inert while he continued to stand before her. The thread of will she still had, fully concentrated though it was on getting away from him, was now unequal to the ugly challenge of his voice and eyes.

“Let me go,” she half whimpered.

Suddenly, in her own despite, her defences had begun palpably to fail. The blunder was fatal--if the cry of nature overdriven can be called a blunder. His eyes pinned hers. Trembling under the spell of their hard cunning she began to perceive that it was now a case of the serpent and the bird.

A frown darkened his face as he cast back to the first meeting with this girl. He tried to recall their conversation in the teashop two days ago. At the time it had interested him considerably, but he had laughed over it since, and decided to dismiss it from his mind. She had told him a cock-and-bull story about a picture. He could not recall the details of an absurd yarn which had not seemed worth his while to remember. At the best it was a bald and unconvincing narrative. But it concerned a Rembrandt. No, not a Rembrandt. A Van Roon!

With a heightening of curiosity, Adolph Keller gazed at the hunted creature now shrinking from his eyes. By Jove, she looked as if she had been through it! Something pretty bad must have happened to her quite recently. But why had she come to him?

Thoughts of the picture set his active mind to work. She had come to him because she was in want of money. So much, at least, was clear. To judge by the look of her, she had probably, at a moment’s notice, been turned out of house and home. A domestic servant, no doubt, and no better than she should be, although a certain taste about her much-rumpled clothes and an attempt at refinement of manner suggested the wish to rise above her class.

In the midst of this quick mind process, Adolph Keller saw the brown paper parcel. It was in the place where his visitor had laid it when she had first sat down. He noticed that she had cunningly reared it by the farther side of her chair, so that it might be beyond the immediate range of his eye.

Keller’s pulse quickened, yet he allowed no hint of his intriguing discovery to shew in his manner. Once again it changed towards his guest. The tone of sharp authority vanished. Twisting a dark moustache round strong, yet delicate fingers, his air of extreme gentlemanliness verged upon the sugary, as he said: “I don’t like to see you like this. I don’t really.”

The tone’s unexpectedness, perhaps even more than its kindness, moved June to further tears.

“You had better tell me, hadn’t you, just what’s upset you?”

She shook miserably. And then, thrown off her guard, by this new note of concern, she found the courage to venture again: “Please lend me a sovereign and let me go. I promise solemnly to pay it back.”

He smiled in a way obviously to reassure. “What’s your hurry, my dear girl?” Soft, as were the words, they yet caused the design to fail.

Their non-effect was clearly visible in the girl’s tragic eyes. She was caught in a trap; all his trimmings and posturings seemed only to emphasize the fact that she had no means of getting out.

Like a powerful drug the brutal truth attacked her brain. It was as if its higher nerve centres could no longer act. She was completely in the power of this man. And only too well did she know that he knew it.

Inevitably as fate, those slim fingers dipped towards the side of her chair. “What have we here?” The inflexion was lightly playful, yet it drove all the blood from her heart. “May I look?” His hand closed on the parcel before she could muster one futile finger to stay it.

Galvanized, as if by electricity, she sprang up from her chair without knowing what she did. “Please--it’s mine!” Without conscious volition she tried weakly to defend her property.

He put her off with the cheery playfulness of a teasing brother. “Just one little peep,” he said. The treasure was yielding its wrappings already to those deft fingers. Smiling all the time, he treated the thing as a mere joke. And he was able to give the joke full effect, because, not for an instant did he expect it to turn out anything else.

XXXIX

ADOLPH KELLER gave a low whistle. He took in his breath quickly. The treasure, in its rare incredible beauty, had declared itself to his eyes. And to the eyes of an artist, wholly unready for the revelation, it came in a single devastating flash.

“My God!” he said, in a whisper, half rapture, half surprise.

Aglow with excitement he removed the shade from the electric lamp. Holding the picture beneath the light, an arm’s length away from his eyes, he turned it over several times in that fashion of the expert which June had now learned to dread. And then humming softly, and with his fingers still enclosing it, he passed beyond the screen to a table on which lay a microscope.

With a feeling of nausea, June watched everything he did. Only too well she knew that the microscope would simply feed his excitement. In a fresh spasm of weakness, she reeled against the chimneypiece. She had now the sensation of having fallen over a precipice into a bottomless pit. Already she was sinking down, down, down into night and damnation.

Keller soon returned, microscope in hand; and while he plied it under the lamp she dare not glance at his face. Passively she waited for his next words. The power of action had left her.

When, at last, he did speak, his voice was calmer and gentler than she looked for. “Tell me,” he said, “how did you come by this rather jolly old thing?”

The tone of playfulness was almost silly. But she was not deceived, for striking through it was the oiliness of Uncle Si. And she knew that she had only to glance at that face shining pale under the lamp, which was a thing she dare not do, to carry the resemblance farther.

“Tell me,” he repeated softly.

A sense of destiny seemed to weigh her down.

“It has been given to me.” Her voice was hardly audible.

“Given to you.” He smiled a little, as his mind went off in search of the half forgotten fragments of their talk two days ago. “Let me see--your best boy, wasn’t it?--who made you a present of a picture--by a well known R. A.?”

June did not know how to answer, yet she was able to realize that an answer of some kind was imperative.

“That’s it,” she said. There was nothing else she could say.

“I rather like this thing, do you know.” His voice was acquiring a sort of growing brightness which seemed quite to admit her to his confidence. “It might almost have been painted by the snuffy old Scotsman--one MacFarlane by name--who first shewed me how to draw. It’s just in his manner. By Jove!”--The voice of Adolph Keller seemed to glow with humour--“I can almost see that cantankerous whiskyfied old fool daubing that water and those trees. But in his day not a bad painter, you know, not a bad painter.” And the voice of the pupil tailed off in a note of reluctant affection of which he seemed half ashamed.

It was June’s turn to say something, but her frozen lips could not utter.

Keller, holding the picture in both hands, gave her a side look, which he tried, as far as he could, to conceal. In the midst of this scrutiny, he said: “To you, I expect, one picture is very much the same as another?”

“I know what I like,” June was able to answer, perhaps for no better reason than that by now she understood only too well that it hardly mattered what she answered.

“Well, anyhow, that’s something,” said Keller, with a forced laugh. “Great thing to know your mind in these little matters. Nice of your best boy--was your best boy, wasn’t it?--to give you this. Not that it’s worth much to the ordinary buyer. Pictures are like lovers, you know. Their beauty, sometimes, is in the eye of the beholder.”

It sickened her to hear him lie in this way. The deadly sensation of falling, falling, falling came over her again. But she let him run on. For one thing she lacked the power to check him; and even had the power been hers it would have been worse than futile to try to do so.

XL

“LOOK here,” said Adolph Keller, in the midst of his prattle. “I’ve taken rather a fancy to this bit of a thing. Suppose you let me have it. I’ll give you a landscape in exchange; I’ve one or two that are not so bad, and you shall have your pick. Moreover,” and he fixed June with a steady eye, “you shall have your sovereign as well.”

She shook her head tensely. Inclination now wished to tell him the fabulous worth of the picture; but prudence said no. The calculated way in which he had lied was proof enough that he knew its value already. She held out her hand. In a voice dry and choking she said: “Please give it to me. I ought to be going.”

He gazed at her with the eye of a condor. “Much better take what you can get for it, hadn’t you? It’ll be a difficult thing to sell, you know. This is quite a fair offer.”

“Give it me, please,” June gasped miserably.

“Don’t be a little fool.”

The tone was like the closing of a door. She knew at once that he had not the remotest intention of giving it back to her. And what followed immediately upon the words made the fact only too clear. He laid the picture on a table some little distance away, and then pouring out a quantity of spirit he drank it neat. His next act was to produce a case from which he took forth a pound note.

“Here you are,” he said roughly. “Take this and be jolly thankful. And then make yourself scarce, as soon as you like.”

It was an intimation that there was going to be no more pretence. The tone was that of a cynical bully who judged it to be best for both parties that the owner of the Van Roon should now be given an unmistakable perception of reality.

Overdriven as June was, the knowledge that at the very last she was to be robbed of the fruits of her hard-won victory was more than she could bear. Faced by this man’s cool insolence and mean cunning, she was swept by a tide of rage. He knew that she could have no proof of ownership, and he was going to reap a full advantage from the fact. At that moment, of an unendurable bitterness, she was spurred and lashed by the same Devil which two hours ago had driven Uncle Si to frenzy.

“The picture’s mine,” she cried hoarsely. And then, advancing towards the table. “Give it me ... you thief!”

At the ugly word he recoiled a step, but the next instant he grabbed her by the wrists. In the struggle to get free, she felt his evil breath upon her face. Many a dram must have gone to so much foulness; as his powerful grip slowly fastened upon her there came swift knowledge of a new and more urgent peril.

* * * * *

She was alone with this man in his own flat. Utterly without a means of defence as she was, she had been mad enough to offer him a physical challenge. In a few seconds she would be at his mercy. And then, inflamed by drink, and being the kind of beast that he was he would insist upon the spoils of the victor.

Before she was fully alive to what was taking place she found herself forced slowly backwards to the wall. She knew then that she was fighting for her life, and for that which in this unspeakable moment implied so much more.

“I’ll teach you to come here, you----!” His face was that of a maniac.

She gave a shriek of terror and lashed out wildly at his shins. Fighting like a tigress, at first she kept him at bay. The power of his hands was terrific, but she did not scruple to use the weapons nature had given her. After a long and horrible minute of claws, teeth and feet, in the course of which she bit him savagely, it grew reasonably clear to Adolph Keller that if only she cares to use it, the female of the species does not lack a means of defence.

“You beauty!” he gasped, as he struggled to shift his grip upon her.

Goaded by the furies he found his way at last to her throat. And then she felt that he was going to kill her. Moreover, as his madman’s grip began slowly to distil her life through its fingers, he perceived how simple a matter it was going to be.

XLI

KELLER’S own defences were almost down, but just in the nick of time was he able to realize this fact. And man of calculation that he was, even in this moment of madness, when each devil in his soul conspired for his final overthrow, he was able, by dint of underlying coolness of blood to make a powerful effort to save himself.

He longed to kill this wretched girl, but as he pressed his fingers into the soft and delicate throat, he was stayed by thoughts of the price that would have to be paid for wreaking an insane passion upon her.

For a wild instant he feared that the premonition had come too late; the primordial beast in his heart had slipped its chain. Already it had tasted blood. In this frenzy of revolt, the fetters imposed by centuries of civil life were hardly likely to be submitted to again.

Gasping and helpless June felt that she was dying. The clutch upon her was that of the garotte. Her eyes began to darken. Clawing the air for the breath she could not draw, the end that seemed inevitable now was yet far off.

At last, as if responding to her prayer, a kind of stupor came upon her. But how tardily! Brain, heart, soul, body contended no more against a power beyond their own; at last her slow life was ebbing. The end of torment indescribable would be akin to joy.

Æons seemed to pass. A flicker of summer lightning, ages off, came and was not. So faint it was and so far that it could only be reckoned in terms of eternity. More light flickered which, of a sudden, grew miraculously near. The vivid sense of pain returned; she grew alive to the fact that the harsh glare of the electric bulb, which was still unshaded, was beating down upon her eyes.

Powerful arms were about her, she was being supported. The fumes of raw spirit were in her nostrils, a glass was pressed against her lips. She fought again to get free, only feebly now, for this was but a last reaction of a dying will. Yet the final word of all was nature’s. When mind itself had ceased to count, the life-force grasped wildly at the proffered means of life.

“Thank God!” she heard a thick voice mutter. “I felt sure you were a goner.”

A livid face, whose eyes seemed to blind her own, materialized suddenly before her. “Drink it up, damn you!” said the voice hoarsely. “And then get out--you----!”

It was insult for the sake of insult, and therefore the full measure of her victory. But it meant less than nothing to June now. She scarcely heard, or hearing did not comprehend. Beyond pain and suffering, beyond good and evil her torn spirit only craved release.

As soon as the fire in the glass had kindled her veins this desire was met, less, however, by the operation of her own will than by the will of Keller. As if she had been a noisome reptile whom his flesh abhorred, and yet had a superstitious fear of killing, he dragged her out of the room, along the short passage as far as the door of the flat. Slipping back the catch, he flung her out on to the landing.

As she fetched up against the iron railing opposite the door, which guarded the well of the staircase, she heard a low hiss: “Take yourself off as soon as you like, you----, or you’ll find the police on your track.”

XLII

JUNE had no idea of the time that she lay in a huddle against the railing. But it may not have been so long in fact as it was in experience. Shattered she might be, yet unknown to herself, there was still a reserve of fighting power to draw upon.

Cold iron, moreover, and raw air had a magic of their own. Clear of that mephitic room and the foul presence of Keller, a fine human machine began slowly to renew itself. Except for a faint gleam from the room out of which she had just come, stealing through the fanlight of the door out of which she had been flung, there was not a sign of light upon the staircase. The entire building appeared to be deserted. Its stone-flagged steps were full of echoes as soon as she ventured to move upon them; and when clinging to the railing for support she had painfully descended two she entered a region of total darkness.

It was like going down into a pit. Could she have only been sure that death awaited her below, she might have been tempted to fling herself into it headlong. But she knew that the ground was not far off.

Three or four steps more brought her to the vestibule. At the end of it was a door, open to the street. Outside this door shone a faint lamp, round which weird shadows circled in a ghostly witch-dance. The night beyond was a wall of horrors, which she had lost the will to face.

Met by this pitiless alternative, she recoiled against the wall of the vestibule, huddling in its darkest corner, behind the stairs. Crouching here, like a hunted thing at bay, she fought for the courage to go out and face her destiny.

She fought in vain. Half collapsed as she now was, a spur was needed to drive her into the grim wilderness of the open street. One glance at the crypt outside sufficed to tell her that with no point to make for, it would be best to stay where she was and hope soon to die.

Why had she not had the sense to throw herself down the stairs and kill herself? A means would have to be found before the night was out. She could bear no more. A terrible reaction was upon her. It was as if a private door in her mind had suddenly given way and a school of awful phantoms had rushed in and flooded it.

She was living in a nightmare that was too bad to be true. But it was true and there lay its terror. Adrift in the dark canyons of that vast city, penniless and alone, with the marks of thieves and murderers upon her bruised body, and her treasure stolen, there was only one thing to look for now.

Death, however, would not be easy to come by. As she huddled in cold darkness in the recess behind the stairs she felt that her will was going. To enter the night and make an end would need courage; but a miserable clapping together of the jaws was sign enough that the last hope of all was slipping away from her.

XLIII

COWERING in body and spirit in that dark corner, time, for June, became of no account. Perhaps, after all, she might be allowed to die where she was. As a kind of inertia crept upon her she was able to draw something of comfort from the thought. It would be better than the river or being run over in the street.

She grew very cold; yet a lowering of the body’s temperature induced a heightened consciousness. Aches and pains sprang into life; the forces of her mind began to reassert themselves; the phantoms about her took on new powers of menace. Gradually it became clear to June, under the goad of this new and sharper phase of suffering, that mere passivity could not induce the death she longed for.

No, it was not in that way the end would come. She would have to go into the shadow-land beyond the lamp, and seek some positive means of destroying herself. For that reason she must hold on to the fragment of will that now remained to her. It alone could release her from the awful pit in which she was now engulfed.

She gathered herself for an effort to move towards the fog-encircled light at the entrance to the street. But the effort, when made, amounted to nothing. Her limbs were paper, all power of volition was gone.

The October raw struck to her blood. She began to whimper miserably. To pain of mind was added pain of body, but the delicate apparatus from whose harmony sprang the fuse of action was out of gear. Something must be done; yet no matter how definite the task, any form of doing was beyond her now.

At this dire moment, however, help came. It came, moreover, in an unlooked-for way. She heard a door slam over head. There was the sound of a match being struck, and then came a gingerly shuffle of feet on the stone stairs.

Someone was coming down. June cowered still lower into the dark recess at the back of the stairway. A man was approaching. And by the flicker of the match which he threw away as he reached the floor of the vestibule she saw that the man was Keller.

Faint and but momentary as was the glimpse afforded, June, with every sense strung again to the point of intensity, saw that under Keller’s arm was a brown paper parcel. The sight of it was like a charm. Some fabulous djinnee might have lurked in that neat package, who commanded a miraculous power of reaction upon the human will.

Keller struck a second match and peered into the shadows. June knew that he was looking to see if she had lingered there, but the light could not pierce to the corner in which she crouched; and it burnt itself out, leaving him none the wiser.

Without striking another match Keller moved away from her towards the doorway, and as he did so June felt a swift release of heart and brain. A thrill of new energy ran through her. No sooner had Keller passed out of the vestibule, beyond the lamp into the fog, than without conscious impulse or design she began to follow him.

It may have been the reasoned act of a lucid being, but at first it did not appear to be so. Once, however, her limbs were moving, all her faculties, now intensely awake, seemed as if by magic to bear them company. As soon as she reached the open street, with Keller a clear ten yards ahead, the keen air on her face had an effect of strong wine. Her nerves felt again the sense of motion; the impulse of the natural fighter unfurled strong pinions within her. All the virile sense and the indomitable will of a sound inheritance rallied to her need.

Growing sensibly stronger at every yard, she followed Keller round the corner into Manning Square. The mist was thick, the lamps poor and few, but as well as she could she kept on his track. Lurking pantherlike in the deep shadows of the house-walls, she had approached within five yards of him by the time he had turned the corner into a bye-street. He went a few yards along this, and then zigzagged into a squalid ill-smelling thoroughfare whose dismal length seemed unending.

June had no difficulty in keeping up with these twists and winds, for Keller, impeded by the fog, moved slowly. For her, however, the fog had its own special problem, since there was a danger of losing him if he was allowed to get too far ahead; and yet if his steps were dogged too closely there was always the fear that he might turn round suddenly and see her.

At last the interminable street seemed to be nearing its end. For June, whose every faculty was now strung up to an unnatural acuteness, saw but a short distance in front the brightly lit awning of the Underground looming through the fog.

In a flash she realized the nature of the peril. Only too surely was this the bourn for which Keller was making. Once within its precincts and her last remaining hope would be gone.

It must be now or never. The spur of occasion drove deep in her heart. She knew but too well that the hope was tragically small, but wholly desperate as she was, with the penalty of failure simply not to be met, she would put all to the touch.

Closer and closer she crept up behind the quarry. But the entrance to the Tube loomed now so near that it began to seem certain that she must lose him before she could attempt what she had to do. Abruptly, however, within ten yards or so of his goal, Keller stopped. He began to search the pockets of his overcoat for a box of matches to relight his pipe which had gone out. While so doing, and in the preoccupation of the moment, he took the parcel from under his right arm, and set it rather carelessly beneath his left.

Providence had given June her chance. Like a falcon, she swooped forward. Aim and timing incredibly true, at the instant Keller struck a match and bent over his pipe, her fingers closed on the Van Roon, and whisked it out of his unguarded grasp.

XLIV

AS June turned and ran she heard a wild and startled oath. Before her was the eternal fog-laden darkness of the narrow street. But now it struck her with a thrill of pure terror that the mist was not thick enough to conceal her flight. The swift surprise of the onset had gained for her a start of a few yards, but instantly she knew that it would not suffice.

She ran, all the same, as if her heart would burst. But her legs seemed to wear the shackles that afflict one in a dream. Her most frantic efforts did not urge them on, and yet, in spite of that, they bore her better than she knew. Not a soul was in sight. She could hear Keller’s boots echo on the damp pavement as they pounded behind her. It could only be a matter of seconds before his fingers were again on her throat. But this time, before robbing her of the Van Roon and getting clear, he would have to kill her.

The vow had hardly been made, when at the other side of the street she saw a thread of light. It came from a house whose door was open. Instinctively she turned and made one final dash for it. This was the last wild hope there was.

A man, it seemed, was in the act of leaving the house. Wearing overcoat and hat, he stood just within the doorway peering into the murk before venturing out. June flung herself literally upon him.

“Save me! Save me!” she was able to gasp. “A man! A man is after me!”

The house was of the poverty-stricken kind whose living room opens on to the street. June had a confused vision of a glowing lamp, a bright fire, a dingy tablecloth and several people seated around it. Her wild impact upon the man who was about to put off from its threshold drove him backwards several paces into the room. At the same instant a female voice, loud and imperious, rose from the table.

“Shut the door, Elbert, can’t yer? The fog’s comin’ in that thick it’ll put out the perishin’ fire.”

The bewildered Elbert, raked fore and aft by fierce women, automatically obeyed the truculent voice at his back, even while he gave ground in a collision which seemed to rob him of any wit that he might possess. With a deft turn of the heel, he dealt the door a kick which effectually closed it in the murderous face of the halting and hesitating Keller.

June, shuddering in every vein, clung to her protector.

“Gawd-love-us-all!” Cries and commotion arose from the table, yet almost at once the imperious voice soared above the din. “Set her down, can’t yer, Elbert? Didn’t yer see that bloke?”

“Ah--I did,” said Elbert, stolidly pressing his queer armful into a chair near the fire.

“Better git after him lively,” said the voice at the table. “He’s the one as did in Kitty Lewis last week.”

Elbert, a young man six feet tall and proportionately broad of shoulder, was not however a squire of dames. With a scared look on a face that even in circumstances entirely favourable could hardly rank as a thing of beauty, he moved to the door and slipped a bolt across. “Not goin’ near the----” he said, sullenly. “Not goin’ to be mixed up wiv it--not me.”

The voice at the table, whose owner was addressed as Maw, proceeded “to tell off” Elbert. He was a skunk, he was no man, he was a mean swine. In the sight of Maw, who ran to words as well as flesh, Elbert was all this and more. She rose majestically, threatening to “dot him” if he didn’t “’op in,” and she came to June with an enormous bosom striving to burst from its anchorage, an apron that had once been white, and with her entire person exuding an odour peculiar to those of her sex who drink gin out of a teacup.

Three other people were at the table, and they were engaged upon a meal of toasted cheese, raw onions and beer. Of these, two were girls about sixteen, scared, slatternly and anæmic; the third was a toothless hag who looked ninety; and as the whole family, headed by Maw, suddenly crowded round June, the terrified fugitive, shuddering in the chair by the fire, hardly knew which of her deliverers was the most repulsive.

June fought with every bit of her strength against the threat of total collapse that assailed her now. In the desperate hope of warding off disaster, she gathered the last broken fragment of will. But nature had been driven too hard. For the second time within the space of one terrible hour, she lost the sense of where she was.

XLV

THE faces, with one exception, had receded into the background, when June returned slowly and painfully to a knowledge of what was happening. Maw was bending over her, and holding a cracked cup to her lips, and also “telling off” the others with a force and a scope of language that added not a little to June’s fear.

Perhaps the smell of its contents had quite as much effect upon the sufferer as the cup’s restorative powers. It was so distasteful to one who had been taught to shun all forms of alcohol, that a sheer disgust helped to bring her round.

At first, however, her mind was hardly more than a blank. But when, at last, a few links of recognition floated up into it out of the immediate past and hitched themselves to this strange present, a shock of new terror nearly overwhelmed her again. Recollection was like a knife stab. The Van Roon! The Van Roon! Where was it? Oh, God--if she had not got it after all!

The thought was pain, pure and exquisite. But the case did not really call for it. She was clutching the Van Roon convulsively to her breast like a child holds a doll. As she wakened slowly to this fact her brain wonderfully cleared.

The mind must be kept alive, if only to defend this talisman for whose sake she had already suffered so outrageously. She did not know where she was, and the evil presence holding the foul cup to her lips, and those other evil presences filling the background beyond gave her an intense apprehension.

Maw, however, in spite of a general air of obscenity, meant well. It was not easy for this fact to declare itself through that loud voice and ruthless mien; but gradually it began to percolate to June’s violated nerves, and so gave her a fleck of courage to hold on to that sense of identity which still threatened at the first moment again to desert her.

“Where was you goin’, deery?”

Rude the tone, but when June’s ear disentangled the words, she was able to appreciate that they were spoken in the way of kindness. But if the knowledge brought a spark of comfort it was quickly dowsed. Where was she going? To that grim question there was no possible answer.

“Scared out of her life, poor lamb!” said Maw. With furtive truculence she announced the fact to the rather awed spectators who gathered once more about the sufferer.

“Where you come from?”

June’s only answer was a shiver. The frozen silence was so full of the uncanny that Maw shook her own head dismally and tapped it with a grimy finger.

In the view of Maw, for such a calamity there was only one remedy. Once more the cup was pressed to June’s lips; once more it was resisted, this time with a hint of fierceness reassuring to the onlookers, inasmuch that it implied a return of life.

“Looks respectable,” said the cracked voice of the crone, who was now at Maw’s elbow.

“Where was you goin’?” demanded Maw again.

June was beyond tears, or she would have shed them. Now that the facts of the situation in all their hopelessness were streaming back to her, a feeling of sheer impotence kept her dumb.

“Off her rocker,” said Elbert gloomily.

XLVI

AMID the silence which followed Elbert’s remark, June fought hard to cast her weakness off. She wanted no longer to die. The recovery of the talisman inhibited, at least for the time being, that desire. Acutely aware that the Van Roon was still miraculously hers, she felt that come what might she must go on.

But her position was hopeless indeed. She dare not venture out of doors, with a murderous thief waiting to spring upon her. And if venture she did, there was nowhere she could go. Besides, had there been any place of refuge for such a weary bundle of frightened misery, without money and with a sorry ignorance of the fog-bound maze of bricks and mortar in which she was now lost, there would have been no means of getting to her destination.

At the same time, she had no wish to stay with these uncouth, ill-looking, evil-smelling people one moment longer than was necessary. In a curiously intimate way she was reminded of that grim story Oliver Twist, which had so powerfully haunted her youth. To her distorted mind, this squalid interior was a veritable thieves’ kitchen, the crone a female Fagin, the angel of the cup, a counterpart of Bill Sikes, and the gloomy, beetle-browed Elbert a kind of Artful Dodger grown up. She and her treasure could never be safe in such a place, yet at the other side of the door nameless horrors awaited her.

In June’s present state it was far beyond her power to cope with so dire a problem. Keeping a stony silence as those faces, devoured by curiosity, pressed ever closer upon her, she half surrendered to her weakness again.

Amid the new waves of misery which threatened to submerge her, she was wrenched fiercely back to sensibility. The Van Roon was torn by a strong hand from her grasp. As if a spring had been pressed in her heart she rose with a little cry. Maw was in the act of handing the picture to Elbert. “There’s a label on it, ain’t there?” she said.

Still half stupefied, June clung to the table for support, while Elbert, who was evidently the family scholar, read out slowly the name and address that was written upon the parcel: “Miss Babraham, 39b Park Lane, W.”

June was hardly in a state just then to grasp the significance of the words. Her mind was wholly given up to concern for the treasure which had passed to alien hands. And yet the words had significance, even for her, as the mind-process they induced soon began to reveal.

A locked door of memory, of which she had lost the key, seemed to glide back. Thoughts of William, of his friend, the tall, beautiful and distinguished wearer of the blue crepe de chine, and of Sir Arthur, her father, came crowding into her brain. And with them came a perceptible easing of spirit, as if they had been sped by the kindly hand of that Providence, of whom she had never been so much in need.

The recognition of this acted upon her like a charm. Girt by the knowledge that she was not alone in the world after all, and that friends might be at hand if only she could reach out to them, her mind began once more to function.

Even while Maw and Elbert were occupying themselves with the parcel’s address and its specific importance, June was fain to inquire of an awaking self how such magic words came to be there at such a moment. Casting back to recent events, over which oblivion had swept, she was able to recall certain strands in the subtle woof of Fate. Days ago, years they seemed now, Miss Babraham had sent to William a picture frame to be restored. The stout brown paper in which it had been wrapped appealed to June’s thrifty soul, and she had stowed it away in her box for use on a future occasion. Her mind’s new, almost dangerous clarity, enabled her to remember that upon the paper’s inner side was an old Sotheran, Bookseller, Piccadilly label which bore the name and address of Miss Babraham.

The piecing together of this slender chain gave June the thing she needed most. At this signal manifestation of what Providence could do, hope revived in her. If only she could get to Park Lane--wherever Park Lane might be!--to Miss Babraham.

As if in answer to the half-formed wish, Maw’s dominant voice took up the parable. “Elbert, you’d better see this lidy as fur as Park Lane.”

XLVII

ELBERT did not welcome the prospect with open arms. Nature had not designed him for such a task. All the same, Maw was imaged clearly in his mind as one whose word was law.

At the best of times, Elbert’s obedience to that word was apt to be grudging. And to-night, with murder lurking outside in the darkness, he was full of a disgusted reluctance at having to face such a prospect. Even in circumstances wholly favourable to it, the countenance of Elbert was not attractive; to June at this moment it was very much the reverse. She felt that its owner was not to be trusted an inch.

Meanwhile her mind was growing very active. Miss Babraham’s name and address, that magic omen, was like an elixir; it quickened the blood, it strengthened the soul. If only she could bear her treasure to Park Lane all might yet be well!

Urged by this spur, native wit sprang to her aid. The first thing to be done was to get clear of present company. She was haunted still by the likeness to Fagin’s kitchen; but also there was a recollection of the fact that a Tube Station was only a few yards along the street. That was the haven wherein salvation lay.

Pressing hard upon the hope, however, was the dismal knowledge that only one penny remained in her pocket. This sum could not take her to Park Lane, unless that Elysium was close at hand. Alas, it was not at all likely. Her ignorance of London was so great, moreover, that she would need help to find her way there; and in the process of obtaining it in her present state of weakness she might be caught by new perils. For it was only too likely that Keller was lurking outside in the fog, waiting to spring upon her and tear the Van Roon from her grasp at the first chance that arose.

Beset by such problems, June felt that she was between the devil and the deep sea. Perhaps the best thing she could do was to dash along the street to the Tube, and then put herself in the hands of the nearest policeman. But even to attempt such a feat was to run a grave risk.

Elbert, in the meantime, scowling and disgruntled, was bracing himself under further pressure from Maw to brave the perils of the night. June felt, however, that it would be wise not to saddle herself with this reluctant champion if it could be avoided. To this end, she was now able to pluck up the spirit to ask what was the best means of getting to Park Lane.

Maw did not know, but Elbert when appealed to said that she could take the Tube to Marble Arch, or she might turn the corner at the end of the street and pick up a bus in Tottenham Court Road.

How much was the fare? Twopence, Elbert thought. Alas, June had only a penny. She was painfully shy about confessing this difficulty, but there was no help for it.

“Don’t you worry, Miss. Elbert is goin’ to see you all the way.” And Maw fixed a savage eye upon her son.

Much as June would have preferred to forego the services of this paladin, Maw’s ferocious glance settled the matter finally.

“And you’ll carry the pawcel for the lidy,” said Maw, as Elbert, scowling more darkly than ever turned up the collar of his overcoat.

XLVIII

THE Van Roon, at that moment, was in the hand of Maw. And although June was on fire to get it back, her natural faculties had the authority to tell her that undue eagerness would be most unwise. She must be content to await her chance, yet there was no saying when that chance would come; for Maw was careful to hand personally the parcel to Elbert.

Before June set out on her journey one of the girls pressed a cup of tea from the family brew upon her. It was lukewarm and thrice-stewed, but June was able to drink a little and to feel the better for it. She was in a high state of tension, all the same, when Elbert opened the street door, her treasure under his arm, and she followed close behind him into the darkness.

Surely Keller must be out there in the fog, waiting to attack them. Her heart beat wildly as she marched side by side with Elbert along the street towards the Tube. Distrust of her cavalier was great. Should he guess the value of the thing he bore, as likely as not he would play her a trick. But for the moment, at any rate, this fear was merged in the sharper one of what was concealed by the fantastic shadow shapes of that dark thoroughfare. Less than a hundred yards away, however, was the Tube Station. And to June’s unspeakable relief they gained its light and publicity without misadventure. Here, moreover, was her chance. While Elbert searched his pockets for fourpence to purchase two tickets for Marble Arch, she insisted on relieving him of the parcel. Once restored to her care, she clung to it so tenaciously that the puzzled Elbert had reluctantly to give up the hope of getting it back again.

Going down in the lift to the trains, with the surge of fellow passengers guaranteeing a measure of safety, June allowed herself to conclude that Elbert, after all, might be less of a ruffian than he looked. If he had no graces of mind or mansion, he was yet not without a sort of rude care for her welfare. By no wish of his own was he seeing a distressed damsel to her home, yet the process of doing so, once he grew involved in it, seemed to minister in some degree to a latent sense of chivalry. At all events he had a scowl for anyone whose elbows came too near his charge.

Arriving at Marble Arch in due course, the heroic Elbert piloted the fugitive out of the station and across the road into Park Lane. Here, under a street lamp, they paused a moment to examine the label on the parcel for the number of the house they sought. Thirty-nine was the number, and it proved to be not the least imposing home in that plutocratic thoroughfare.

Elbert accompanied June as far as its doorstep. Before ringing the bell she said good-bye to her escort with all the gratitude she could muster, begging him to give her his name and address, so that she might at least restore to him the price of her fare. Yet the squire of dames saw no necessity for this. His scowl was softened a little by her thanks, but his only answer was to press the electric button and then, without a word, to slink abruptly away into the fog.

XLIX

JUNE felt a wild excitement, as she stood waiting for the answer to her ring. The stress of events had buoyed her up, but with Elbert no longer at her side and the door of a strange house confronting her, trolls were loose once more in her brain. A fresh wave of panic surged through her, and again she feared that she was going to faint.