The Last Stroke Part 2

CHAPTER XIV.

A GHOST.

When Ferrars found himself alone he lost no time in locking his chamber door and beginning his study of ancient news.

Taking the newly arrived paper from beneath his pillow, where he had hastily thrust it, he spread out the mutilated copy beside it and speedily located the clipping which should explain, or interpret, Charles Brierly's last letter.

Putting the perforated paper over the other, as the quickest means to the end, he drew a pencil mark around the paragraph which appeared in the vacant space, and then, without pausing to read it, he reversed the two sheets and repeated the operation.

This done, he took up the marked paper and sat down to read and digest the secret.

"It won't take long to tell which side of this precious ​square of paper contains the thing I want, I fancy," he meditated, as he smoothed out the sheet.

The printed paragraph outlined by his pencil was hardly three inches in length, and he read it through with a growing look of comprehension upon his face. "I wonder if that can be it?" he said to himself at the end. And then he slowly turned the paper and read the pencil-marked lines upon the other side.

When he had perused the brief lines over, his brow knit itself into a frown, and he re-read them, with his face still darkened by it. Then he uttered a short laugh, and laid the paper down across his knee.

"I wonder if the other fellow will know which side was which!" he muttered. "I'm blest if I do!" He sat for half an hour with the paper upon his knee, looking off into space, and wrinkling his brow in thought. Then he got up and put the two papers carefully away.

"I'm very thankful that I did not speak of this to Brierly," he thought as he went out and locked his door behind him. "It would be only another straw—yes, a whole weight of them, added to his load of doubt and trouble."

The two paragraphs read as follows, the first being an advertisement, with the usual heading, and in solid nonpareil type:—

​

"Charlie: A. has found you out. He will not give me your address. Be on guard at all times, for there is danger. All will be forgiven if you will come back, and F. will help you to avoid A. You are not safe where you are. The city is better, and we cannot feel at ease knowing the risk you are running. At least stay where you are. Your brother or some friend ought to know. For your own sake do not treat this warning as you did A.'s other threat. He means it. Still at G. Street.

"M."

The second paragraph was in the form of a would-be facetious editorial paragraph, and ran thus:—

"Not to have a fortune is sad enough, but to go up and down in the land a millionaire and never know it is wretchedness indeed. Many are the foreign fortunes seeking American heirs, if we are to believe the advertising columns, and the heirs seeking fortunes are as the sands of the sea in number.

"There have been the Frayles, and the Jans, and a long retinue of lost heirs to waiting estates, and now it appears that the great Paisley fortune rusts in idleness and shamelessly accumulates, while the heirs of a certain Hugo Paisley, an Englishman who was last heard from in the Canadas many years ago, are much to be desired ​now that the home supply of English bred Paisley stock is run out."

There was more to this screed below the line which marked the lower end of the clipping, but it contained no further reference to the Paisleys, merely dilating in a would-be humorous manner upon the degenerating influence of the foreign legacy upon the American citizen. But the advertisement upon the other side had been cut out in full, and exactly at the beginning and end.

It was puzzling and disappointing in the extreme. Ferrars had really looked upon this cut newspaper as his strongest card when he should have found the missing fragment, and now——! He thought and wondered, and re-read letter and clipping again and again, but to no good purpose, and at last he locked away the puzzling documents and went out to make a morning call upon Mrs. Jamieson.

That evening he talked first with Robert Brierly and then with the family lawyer, and to both he put the same direct questions, "What could they tell him of the early history of the Brierlys? of Mrs. Brierly's family and ancestors? Had they any relatives in England or Scotland, say? Were there any old family papers in the possession of either?"

Of Robert Brierly he also asked if, to his knowledge, ​his brother had had at any time a love affair—not serious, but amusing, perhaps—a student's flirtation, even. Also, when and for how long, if at all, had the brothers been separated since their schooldays?

And Brierly had replied that he knew very little of his father's ancestors, beyond the fact that his grandfather Brierly was a Virginia gentleman, and his father an only son. The family, so far as he knew, had been Virginians for three generations, and what more, pray, could an American ask? As for his mother, she had been a Miss Louise Cotterrell of Baltimore, her father a railway magnate of renown. In her desk, very much as she had left it, in a closed-up room in the old house, were bundles of old letters and ancient family papers, so his father had once told him; he had meant to examine them some time, but had not yet so done. If Ferrars desired it he would do this soon.

So far as his dead brother was concerned, Brierly was sure there had never been a love affair of even the most ephemeral sort. In fact, Charles had always been shy of women, and used to shirk his social duties as much as possible. Hilda Grant was, without doubt, his first and only love. As to their separations, there had been several. To begin, Charlie had been in college a year after he (Robert) had been graduated, and the following year, "because the boy had seemed run down and in ​need of rest and change," he had spent a few months upon a ranch in Wyoming with a college friend. Then the two had made their European tour, and since, their only long separations had been when his work as journalist had taken him away from the city, sometimes for weeks, until Charlie had taken this school as a relief from his theological studies.

From Mr. Myers he could only learn that the father and mother of Robert and Charles Brierly were of good families, well known in their respective states, and both, he believed, "were as distinctly Americans as the war of the Revolution could make any American citizen of English descent." As to Charlie Brierly, Myers "didn't believe the boy had ever looked twice at a girl until he met with that lovely, sad-eyed sweetheart who, it was plain, was wearing out her heart in silent grief for him."

Then Ferrars went to see his supposed cousin, and asked her to review, mentally, her latest talks with her lover, and to see if she could not recall some mention of a discovery, a surprise, a perplexity possibly, which he wished to lay before his brother when he should come. But she shook her head sadly.

"Was he, to her knowledge, in the habit of collecting odd things from the newspapers?"

She shook her head. "He did not think very highly of our daily papers, and seldom if ever read beyond the ​news of the day. The scandals and criminal reports he abhorred," she said.

"And he never alluded in any way to his family history, you say? Think, was there no mention of family facts or names?"

She looked up after some moments of thought. "I can only recall one thing which, after all, does not contain information, except as regards the two brothers. Charlie was speaking of the difference of their temperaments. Robert, he said, was intensely practical, living in and enjoying most, the present, and by anticipation, the future, while he (Charlie) was a dreamer, loving the past, and idealising its history. To illustrate, he told how, as boys, he loved to hear his mother, whom I fancy he resembled, tell the tales she had heard at her grandmother's knee, of the early days, the French convents, the Indians, the colonists, the quaint living, the speech, which had for him such charms, while Robert would only hear of the fighting and would run away from the ancestral history."

Hilda, grown accustomed to his numerous queries and scant explanations, was not surprised at Ferrars' hurried departure at the end of the catechism, and he went back to the doctor's cottage with just one faint little possibility as a reward for all this interviewing. He had known Mr. Myers in the city, as a successful detec​tive is apt to know an able lawyer, well by reputation and personally a little, and he was glad to find in him a friend to the Brierlys, dead and living.

Going back that night he said to himself:

"It's of no use to try to go on like this; a confidant will save me a lot of time, and Myers is the man. I can't call upon the doctor; he's got his profession, and he belongs here. Myers can make my business and Brierly's his at need. Besides, he's a lawyer and won't be knocked entirely out by my wild theorising, and he's the one man who can get access to the ancestral documents at need."

He found the lawyer still upon the doctor's piazza, and without the least attempt at explanation invited him into his own room, where they were still closeted when, at midnight, Robert Brierly went slowly toward the Fry cottage, and the doctor, who never got his full quota of sleep, went yawning off to bed.

Mr. Myers spent five days in Glenville, and then went back to the city, taking Robert Brierly with him, "for a purpose," as he said to the doctor and Ferrars. "He can come back in a day or two if he chooses," the lawyer added, "but in truth, Robert, unless you're needed here, which I doubt, you'll be better at work. Mr. 'Ferriss-Grant,' here, will summon you at need."

When they were on board the train, and the lawyer ​had exhausted the morning paper, he drew close to his companion in that confidential attitude travellers fall into when they do not converse for the entertainment of all on board, and said:

"Robert, I want to tell you why I so insisted upon your company back to the city. I want you to rouse yourself, to open your house, and when you first have looked over your father's and mother's private and business papers, I want you to turn over to me all such as are not too sacred for other eyes than yours; all letters, journals—if there are such—all, in fact, that deal in any way with your family, friends, and family history."

Brierly turned to look in his face.

"This is some of Ferrars' planning," he said.

"It is, and it has my hearty endorsement. Don't ask questions. Frank Ferrars knows what he is about."

"No doubt of it. I only wish I did."

"You'll know at the right time. And if it will be a comfort to you, I'll admit that, while I am to a certain degree in his confidence, I know no more what or whom he suspects than you do, for he won't accuse without proof of guilt, however much he suspects or believes. But I know this, Ferrars is convinced that the secret of your brother's death lies in the past."

​"And in whose past?"

"In his own, in that of your family, or of Hilda Grant."

At the beginning of the following week Hilda Grant resumed her duties as school mistress, the place of Charles Brierly being filled by a young student from the city.

Mrs. Jamieson, meantime, had called upon Hilda, the call had been returned, and the two were now upon quite a friendly and sympathetic footing; it was not long before the fair, black-robed little figure was quite familiar to the children, to whom she gave generously sweets, pleasant words and smiles.

Sometimes she met Ferrars, who would look in now and then at the recess or noon hour to keep up his cousinly character, and Hilda Grant's clear eyes saw, day by day, the blue eyes of the pretty widow taking on a new look and noted that, while she was at all other times full of easy, charming chat, the approach of "Mr. Grant," would close the pretty lips and cause the white eyelids to quiver and fall.

The understanding between Hilda and the detective was now almost perfect, and one day, Ferrars, having asked her if she had ever heard Mrs. Jamieson speak of leaving Glenville, or name her place of residence, Hilda replied—

​"I have heard her express herself as well pleased with Glenville, and I think she is in no haste to go. In truth, Mr. Ferrars, I am beginning to feel that, in seeing this lady as a means toward a selfish end, we, or I, have done wrong. That she is a woman of the world, and has seen much of good society, is evident, but she has lived, of late, a lonely and much secluded life, she tells me, her late husband having been a somewhat exacting invalid for two years before his death; and forgive me for my great frankness, I fear that because of your absorption in this trouble of mine, you have not thought or observed, how 'much' your acquaintance is becoming to Mrs. Jamieson. One woman can read another as a man cannot, and I must not let you serve me at the cost of another's happiness perhaps."

"Miss Grant, is this a riddle?"

"Mr. Ferrars, no. Must I say plainly, then, that you are making yourself quite too interesting to this lady?"

Ferrars turned his face away for a moment. Then he replied slowly, as if choosing his words with difficulty.

"My friend, I believe time will prove you the mistaken one. I cannot take this flattering idea of yours to myself and venture to believe in it, but should it ​have the smallest foundation in reality, rest your conscience upon this candid declaration. The lady cannot feel more interest in my unworthy self than I in her; from the first moment almost I have taken an interest in Mrs. Jamieson, such as I have seldom felt for any woman. Shall we let the subject rest here? Be sure I shall not let any personal interest conflict with, or supersede, the work I came here to do."

In later years Hilda remembered these words.

During the next two weeks the wheels of progress, so far as Ferrars' work was concerned, moved slowly, and even rested, or seemed so to do.

To be baffled in a small town, and by a small boy, was something new and surprising in the experience of detective Ferrars, but so it was. Work as he would, finesse as he might, he could find no trace of the boy, "about half grown, with dark eyes and hair, freckles, a polite way with him, and a cap pulled over his eyes," and this was the best description Mrs. Fry could give of the strange lad.

"If Mrs. Fry was not the honest woman she is," said the doctor, "I should call that boy a myth. How could he come and go so utterly unseen by all Glenville."

Samuel Doran, who still believed that "Mr. Grant" was Mr. Grant, and thought it most natural that he ​should turn his attention to the mystery surrounding the murder of "his cousin's lover," thought otherwise.

"Pshaw!" he objected, "look at the raff of half-grown boys racing up and down these streets from sunset to pretty late bedtime, for kids, and how much different does one boy look from another in the dark? Mrs. Fry herself only saw him out in the twilight."

Ferrars reserved his criticism and opinions for the time.

Doran had taken upon himself the investigation of the "boat puzzle," as he called it, for the skiff remained, after many days, still drawn up, unmoored and unclaimed, by the lake shore; and at last, by dint of much driving up and down the lake shore road and interviewing of boat owners, he brought to Ferrars this unsatisfactory solution.

Two weeks before the murder the skiff had been owned by a certain Jerry Small, hunter and fisherman by choice, blacksmith by profession. On a certain day a man dressed in outing costume had entered Small's shop, asked about the boat, and made him such a liberal offer for it, that Jerry had at once closed with him. The shop stood upon the outskirts of the town and close to the lake. The man had said that he was coming out from the city in a few days for a few weeks in the country, meaning to secure board, if possible, ​near the lake shore. If Mr. Small did not mind, the boat might stay where it was until his return; the money was paid down, and Small engaged to care for the boat.

One day, after much agitation, Small decided that it must have been the day of the murder that he missed the boat; and one of his "kids" told him that "a gentleman with flannel clothes and whiskers" took away the boat "right early," and neither boat nor man had ever reappeared.

Then Ferrars tore his hair and fumed at the long delay only to learn that Jerry Small had left his house on the day after the murder to attend a sick brother, and had returned just two days ago.

"It's of no use," fumed the detective to Doctor Barnes; "I shall put a couple of fellows I know in the Jerry Small vicinity; it's right in their line of work, and probably they'll find the man and boy together—in Timbuctoo."

"And you will remain in Glenville, eh?" queried the doctor, grinning openly.

"Yes," with an answering grin, which somehow the doctor did not quite understand. "I'll stay—for a while longer."

As they sat at lunch next day a small boy brought Ferrars a note from the teacher.

​"Come to me at once.—H. G."

That was all it said, and Ferrars lost no time in obeying the summons.

"You may not see much in my news," Hilda said, as she closed the door upon intruders. "But I have got Peter's story out of him at last."

"The foolish boy? Ah, that is something after all, at least, I hope it will prove so. Well?"

"It was slow work, for the boy has been terribly frightened. His story is most absurd."

"No matter, tell it in your own way."

"He says still that he saw a ghost—a live ghost. That it arose out of the bushes and waved its arms at him. It was dressed 'all in white like big sheets,' Peter said, and its face was black, with white eyes. It spoke to him 'very low and awful,' and told him to lie down and put his face to the ground until it went back into its grave. If he looked, or even told that he had seen a ghost, the grave would open and swallow him too. Then it held up a 'shiny big knife' and he tumbled over in sheer fright. After a long time he began to crawl toward the road; and when he at last looked around and saw no ghost anywhere, he ran as fast as he could. I am afraid," Hilda added, "that you'll think as I do, that some of the school boys have played the poor child a trick, or else that he has ​imagined it all. It's too absurd to credit. Still, as you made a point of being told at once of whatever I might learn from Peter, I kept my promise. I'm afraid I've spoiled your luncheon." She finished with a wan little half smile.

The detective's face was very grave and he did not speak at once.

"Is it possible," she ejaculated, "that you find anything in the boy's story?"

Ferrars leaned forward and took her hand. "Miss Grant," he said gravely, "I believe that poor foolish Peter saw Charles Brierly's murderer."

He got up quickly. "Do you think the boy could be got to show you where he saw this apparition?"

"I asked him that. He thinks he might dare to go if he were protected by 'big mans.'"

"Then, arrange to leave your school for a short time, at, say two o'clock. I shall get Doran and his surrey. Have the boy ready——"

"Pardon me, I will say nothing to Peter. The surrey will be enough, he is wild to ride."

"That will be best then. I shall lose no time. I have a strong reason for wishing to see the precise place where this ghost appeared."

The sight of the surrey filled poor foolish Peter with delight, and he rode on in high glee, sitting ​between Hilda and Ferrars, whom he had learned to know, and like, and trust. When they were abreast of the hill Hilda bent over him.

"Now, Peter, tell me just where you saw that ghost."

Instantly the boy's face blanched and he cowered in his seat, but Ferrars with gentle firmness interfered. Peter would show him the place, and then he would drive away the ghosts. Ghosts were afraid of grown men, he averred. And at last, hesitating much, and full of fears, Peter was finally persuaded, yielding at last to Doran's offer to let him sit in front "and drive one of the horses."

As they reached the lower end of the Indian Mound, the boy's lips began to quiver and one arm went up before his face, while he extended the other toward the thickest of brushwood before described by Ferrars. "That's where," he whimpered. "It comed up out there."

"From among the bushes?"

"Ye-us."

"Did it have any feet?"

"Oh-oh! Ony head and arms—ugh!"

"Turn around, Doran," said Ferrars sharply, and then in a lower tone to Hilda, "I shall go to the city to-night."

When Hilda reached her room, at the close of the ​school, she found this letter awaiting her, "left," Mrs. Marcy said, "by her cousin":

"Dear Cousin,—Even if you had been disengaged, I could have told you nothing except that what I have learned to-day impels me to look a little more closely to the other end of my line. For there is another end.

"Now that I shall have the two men on duty in the south end of the county, and with the doctor and Doran alert in G——, not to mention yourself, I can go where I have felt that I should be for the past week or more. Will you keep me informed of the slightest detail that in any way concerns our case? And will you do me one individual favour? I trust Mrs. J—— may not leave this place until I see you all again, but should she do so, will you inform me of her intention at once? You see that I am quite frank. I should deeply regret it, if she went away before I could see her again. Destroy this.

"Yours hopefully,⁠

"Ferrars." 

 

CHAPTER XV.

REBELLION.

May had passed, and June roses were in late bloom. The city was horrid with the warm sun-filtered air after a summer shower, and Robert Brierly looked pale and languid as he stepped from an elevator, in one of the great department houses wherein Ferrars had his bachelor quarters, and walked slowly to his door.

Possibly it was the warmth of a very warm June, or there may have been other causes. At any rate Frank Ferrars' face wore an almost haggard look in spite of the welcoming smile with which he held out his hand to greet his friend, for friends these two had grown to be during the past weeks. Friends warm and true and strong, in spite of the fact that the mystery surrounding the death of Charlie Brierly remained as much of a mystery as on the day when foolish Peter Kramer led the detective to the scene of his ghostly encounter.

​There were dark lines beneath the keen gray eyes, which, Rob Brierly had declared, "compelled a man's trust," and the smooth, shaven cheek was almost hectic, symptoms which, in Ferrars, denoted, among other things, loss of sleep.

There was a moment of silence, after the men had exchanged greetings, and it seemed, almost, that each was covertly studying the other, and then Brierly tossed down his straw hat, and pulling a chair directly in front of that in which the detective lounged, said, abruptly:

"I shouldn't like to quarrel with you, Ferrars, but I've something on my mind, and I'm here to have it out with you."

"Oh! Then I am in it?" the detective spoke nonchalantly, carelessly almost, and as the other seemed hesitating for a word, he added: "Give us the first round, old man. I'm apprehensive."

"H—m! You look it. Ferrars, do you know that for weeks, ever since my return from Glenville, in fact, I have been under constant surveillance?"

"Constant sur—. Excuse me, it's not polite to repeat, Brierly, but what do you mean?"

"What I say. It's plain enough, somebody is watching me, following me day and night."

"Pshaw! You don't mean that, man!"

​"But I do. And that is not all," he leaned forward and fixed his eyes upon those of his vis-à-vis as if watching for the effect of his words. "I have been slowly discovering that I am being controlled—constrained—in many ways."

"Upon my word!" Ferrars was leaning back in his chair with his face a mask, expressing nothing but grave attention. "Make it plainer, Brierly."

"I will. I'll make it so plain that there will be no room for misunderstanding. When I first came back from Glenville, I did not go out much, especially evenings, but when I did, I began to fancy that I was spied upon, followed, and, after a time, I became sure of it."

"Stop! When did you observe this first?"

"I think it was on the third night after my return. I was going down to the Lyceum Club rooms, when something caused me to glance at a fellow on the other side of the street. You know my eyes are good!"

"Unusually so."

"Well, I came out in a very short time, alone, and the same fellow was lounging so close to the entrance that I recognised him at once."

"A bungler, evidently."

"Perhaps. Well, I met two men whom I know, just outside, and they dragged me back with them. When at last I left the place, I started to walk home, and when ​I got upon the quieter streets I soon became conscious of some one keeping so evenly opposite me across the street, that I began to watch, and as the fellow glided, as quickly as possible under a street lamp, I recognised the same man."

"And you have seen him since?"

"Himself or another. A disguise is easy at night. I have been watched, at any rate, and followed again and again."

"Ah! And could you imagine his motive?"

"No." A look that was almost of anger crossed Brierly's face. "But I have wondered if it was the same as yours, and Myers, when you have contrived to keep me from going here and there, or doing this or that, unless accompanied by one or the other of you two."

He bent forward again after this utterance. His eyes seemed to challenge an answer.

But it did not come. Ferrars only sat with that look of grave inquiry still upon his face. He knew the man before him.

"Ferrars," exclaimed Brierly, when he saw that no answer, no defence, was to be made, "will you look me in the face and say that you, and Myers also, have not connived to keep me under your eyes? to accompany me when that was practicable, and to prevent my ​going when it was not? I can recall several occasions when——"

He stopped short, checked in his utterance by a sudden, subtle change in the face of Ferrars, who had not stirred so much as an eyelid, but who spoke at once quietly, but with a certain tone of finality, of decision.

"Brierly, do you believe that James Myers is your friend, in the full meaning of the word?"

"I do! It is not that I doubt, or that——"

"And do you believe," went on Ferrars, putting aside his protest with a peremptory gesture: "do you believe that, while thus far I seem to have failed in unravelling the mystery in which your brother's death seems enshrouded, I have given it my most faithful study, my time, thought, effort and labour? That, in short, I have been true to your interest at all times?"

"I know it. You have been all that and more. You must hear me, Ferrars. And I beg that you will answer me. Why am I watched, thwarted, cajoled? Why do you and Myers fear to let me out of your sight? A few weeks ago you found, or seemed to find, your chief interest in Glenville; you looked for clues, for developments, there; and yet, you have not visited Glenville since you left it so suddenly. Even your own personal interest has not drawn you there for a single day."

​"By my 'personal interest' you mean what, Brierly?"

"You know what I mean. Pardon me, and do not misunderstand me. I could not fail to see that you were interested in Mrs. Jamieson, and why not?" While Brierly spoke, the detective arose and began to pace the floor with lowered eyelids and slow tread. Brierly watching him, was silent a moment, then he seemed to pull himself together and to speak with enforced calmness. "Ferrars, do you know what thought has taken possession of my brain until I cannot shake it off?"

"Assuredly not," going on with his promenade. "But I shall be glad to hear."

"I have begun to fear—yes, to fear—that you have found some reason for suspecting me, and that your horribly acute logic has even caused Myers to doubt too."

"Man!" Ferrars swung about and suddenly faced him. "Much meditation has surely made you mad. Now, in heaven's name, so far as may be, let us understand each other. First, you are utterly wrong."

"Ah!"

"Next, you speak of Mrs. Jamieson, and of my 'personal interest.' I admit, willingly, that I am interested in that lady. But my personal feelings and interests must be subservient for a time to your business."

​"Pardon me."

"And now, I did leave Glenville to follow you, and see that you did not spoil my plans by any rashness."

"You are talking a puzzle!"

"Let me talk it out then, for you have forced my hand. But for this I should have gone on as before. And I did not dream that Mr. Myers and I were playing our game so stupidly, so openly; nor that you, owing to your present preoccupation, would prove so astute."

"You have not bungled, be sure of that. You have been most wonderfully keen and clever, but it was this very preoccupation, as you call it, my abnormal sensitiveness, in fact, which made me study your every word and set me searching for its hidden meaning; and so I could not fail to see that you were handling me, hedging me about, for some purpose."

"Ah! You have said the word, Brierly." Ferrars resumed his seat opposite the other, and his tone became once more composed. "We were trying to 'hedge you about,' to put up a wall between you and the assassin who killed your brother. Wait! Let me say it all. It is little enough. Do you remember telling me of an 'assault' upon your brother, made by footpads, not long before he came to Glenville?"

​"Yes."

"It was that which gave me my first real clue. It confirmed one of the few theories that seem to fit, or cover, the case so far as known; but it wanted confirmation. I found nothing in Glenville that was in any way opposed to this theory which I was growing to believe in, but, on the other hand, I found nothing there to strengthen it. When you left that place, I meant to follow soon. Meantime I had confided my theory to Mr. Myers, who promised not to lose sight of you before I should arrive."

"But why? Why?"

"Because I then believed, as I do now, that that attack upon your brother last summer was the first act in the tragedy which has robbed you of him. I believed the plot to be far-reaching. It may be a case of vengeance, a family feud. The motive is yet to be discovered, but I will admit to you that I have had, from the first, a reason to think that the affair has not yet ended; and so, as soon as I could, I followed you to town. It was well that I did so. Before I had been your shadow forty-eight hours, I had proof that you were being otherwise watched and followed."

"Great heavens! And that is why——" He stopped short and bowed his head.

"That is why Myers and I have been such officious ​friends, why we have advised, remarked, and why I have tried to trace to his lair the man who has been your very frequent shadow."

"And you think he is——"

"The assassin himself or his tool."

"Good heavens! And you cannot guess his motive?"

"We might guess, of course, half a dozen motives. What I have hoped to find was something, some fact in your family history, your father's life, or your mother's, perhaps, that would fit into one of these guesses or theories, and make of it a probability."

And then the two went all over the array of possible reasons and motives, and Brierly again protested his lack of any knowledge which might serve as the feeblest of guides to the truth.

"There's one other thing," said Brierly, at last. "I want to know if the new man, whom Myers took on soon after you came to town, is one of your sleuths? He has annoyed me more than once by his persistent attentions."

Ferrars smiled. "I never supposed you a reader of the penny dreadful, Brierly," he said, "and 'sleuth' is a word which makes the actual detective smile, and which is not known to the professional vocabulary. Hicks is my man; yes. And he has followed you by day and ​night when you have not had the company of either Myers or myself."

Robert Brierly threw back his head and folded his arms. After a moment of silence he got up and stood before the detective.

"Ferrars," he said, "I owe you and my absent friend an abject apology for my unworthy suspicions, my impatience under restraint. And now, I beg of you, let this end. I am warned, and I do not think myself a rash man. I believe I can protect myself, and how can I endure the thought that I must be hedged about by this constant guardianship, which may last indefinitely? Withdraw Hicks, and give your own valuable time to better things. Rather than go about knowing myself so fenced in and guarded, I will lock myself up in the attic, and remain a recluse and invisible. Heavens, man! am I so stupid or cowardly a man not to be able to cope with an enemy whom I know to be in ambush at my very heels?"

CHAPTER XVI.

"OUT OF REACH."

Much as Ferrars regretted Brierly's discovery, he was not much surprised by it, nor could he avoid or refuse an explanation. Robert Brierly was not a child. He was a strong man, and a brave one; and Ferrars, putting himself in the other's place, felt at once the force of his words, the right of his position; and, after a day or two, he withdrew Hicks from his post. At the same time he observed with surprise and some misgiving that the shadow was no longer on duty. With two trusty and able men, by turns, always on watch within sight of the Myers place, no glimpse of him had been seen for more than a week.

And then, like a lightning flash from a clear sky, the blow fell.

It was Sunday evening, and in the aristocratic uptown street where the Myers lived there reigned a ​Sabbath quiet, for the habitues of the little park beyond had left it with the fading twilight, and had already passed on their way townward.

Robert Brierly had been indoors since morning, and now, shortly after Mr. and Mrs. Myers had walked down the tree-shaded street, toward the church on the avenue three blocks away, he came out upon the broad front portico and stood for a moment looking idly up and down.

There had been concessions on both sides, since that interview between Brierly and Ferrars in which the former had demanded an explanation; and the withdrawal of Hicks had been but one of the results; another had been a promise, given by Brierly, whereby he pledged himself not to walk the city streets alone after dark, but if unaccompanied to take a cab, there being a stand only two blocks away, in the direction of the park.

These cabs, when wanted, were to be called by one of the servants, and to take him from the door; but on this Sunday night, as Brierly looked up and down with a growing wish to drive about town and have a talk with Ferrars, he remembered that on Sunday the servants were allowed to go out; all save one who must remain in charge, and decided that it would be absurd to stand there "like a prisoner bound ​by invisible chains" and wait for a chance to bring either carriage or policeman. He had received on the previous evening letters from Glenville, from Hilda and Doctor Barnes, and his curiosity had been aroused by the contents of both. He had not seen the detective for four days, and he fancied that he, too, would have had news from the little lakeside town; more explicit and satisfactory news, doubtless, than that contained in his own letters.

"How absurd!" he muttered, apropos of his own thoughts. "No doubt I'll meet a hack before I reach the corner," and he lighted a cigar and went down the steps, glancing, from sheer force of habit, for the street at that moment seemed quite empty, up and down, as he went toward the cab stand.

"I was sure of it," he said again, as he neared the corner, at the end of the block farthest from his home. "There they are, both of them."

He was looking ahead, where a cab was coming at a slow trot toward him, while around the corner, still nearer, a policeman had just appeared.

As the two men approached each other the officer, who had been looking toward the approaching cab, turned his face toward Brierly, just as he was passing under the glare of a street lamp, and stopped short.

"Excuse me, sir; this is Mr. Brierly, I believe?"

​Brierly nodded.

"Mr. Brierly, may I have a few words with you? I have been lately put upon this beat, sir; changed from the next lower one; and there is something you ought, for your own safety, to know. Will you walk a few steps with me? I hardly like to stop; I ought to be at the next corner right now, in fact."

Brierly looked toward the approaching cab. "The truth is," he said, "I want very much to get that cab down town; otherwise——"

"Oh, I'll fix that, sir." And the officer took a step out from the curbstone and, standing under the glare of the light just above, held up his hand, and whistled shrilly. "Follow us a few steps, Johnny," he said to the driver. "You are wanted down town." Then, turning toward Brierly, "If you'll just step across the street after me, I'll tell you what you ought to know. It's a short story." And he crossed the street briskly, and paused on the opposite side to await the other.

"You see, sir," he began, as Brierly joined him, "we can walk slow for a few steps here, where all's quiet."

Brierly paused to look back. The cab was turning at the corner, and it followed them, at a snail's pace, and close behind, down the still and shady side-street. "You see, I've been noticing, for a couple of weeks, or ​maybe more, a fellow who just seemed to patrol the street next below this, almost as faithfully as I did, and for quite a time I wondered why; and thus I began to watch him, till I found that his promenades always took him round the corner, and seemed to bring him up right opposite the house you live in. I guess I ought to step a little brisker, sir; somebody's coming. The man was not very tall, and thick set like, and if I hadn't taken notice of him, at the first, almost, I might not have recognised him, for he changed his clothes almost every trip; sometimes dressing common, sometimes quite swell; but I knew him every time."

"Make it as short as you can, officer; we're almost at the corner."

"All right, sir." The man glanced back. "Your cab's here, all right, sir. I was just going to tell you how we came to arrest the fellow."

"Ah!" Brierly smiled in the dusk. It had puzzled Ferrars or seemed to, the sudden cessation of the spy's visits, and now he would be able to enlighten the detective. "You have him, then? This shall be worth something to you."

"I don't want a reward for doing a plain duty, sir. Just walk on ahead for a step; somebody's coming."

Preoccupied with the story, and without glancing ​behind, Brierly did as he was told, and had advanced not ten paces from the corner, when there was a swift blow, a fall and a cry, three pistol shots in swift succession, and the rattle of wheels; all so close together that the time could have been counted in seconds.

"Brierly! Are you badly hurt?" The revolver fell from the fingers of the man who had prevented the second blow, and put to flight the sham policeman, who had so deftly contrived his appearance, with the aid of the cab, between the rounds of the policeman proper, the latter now came up panting, his footsteps hastened by the shrill call of the whistle in the hands of the new or latest comer. And then the inmates of the neighbouring houses rushed out, and, for the moment, there was confusion, consternation and clamour.

"Is he dead?"

"How did it happen?"

"Was it a sandbag?"

"To think of a holdup on this street!"

"There was a carriage, I'm sure."

And then the policeman was flashing his lantern about among them, as he bade them stand back, and the rescuer, who looked like a workman in his Sunday clothes, looked up, from the place where he knelt, supporting the head and shoulders of the unconscious man, and said:

​"Gentlemen, this is Mr. Brierly, Robert Brierly of 1030 C—— Avenue; the Myers house, only two blocks away. He must be taken home at once. Has any one a cot? No, he must be carried." For at the name of the Myers house, a gentleman had proffered his carriage at once. "And, officer, call up help. If possible, that cab must be traced. Send to the stand just above and find out what cabs have left it within the past quarter hour. Let some one go ahead and bring Doctor Glessner from just opposite 1030. He's at home."

"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Myers, two hours later, when the injured man—his wounded head carefully dressed—lay, still dazed and in a precarious condition, in his darkened room, with a trained nurse in attendance.

Ferrars having seen his friend in his own room, and in the hands of the doctors, had not waited for their verdict, but had set off to put in motion his plan for hunting down the would-be murderer, and he had but now returned, full of anxiety for the fate of the sufferer.

"How did it happen? After all our precautions, too!"

"It's easy to tell how it happened," replied Ferrars with some bitterness. "It happened, first, because ​the enemy outwitted me, in spite of my cordon of guards; and, second, because Brierly lost patience and exposed himself."

"But how?"

"I can only give you my theory for that. He was alone in the house, eh?"

"Yes. We were both out when he went."

"He wanted, doubtless, to go to town. There was no servant at hand whom he wished to send, so he walked toward the hack stand, or so I suppose. At the corner he met a policeman, as he thought, of course, and so, for a moment did I. They stopped, spoke together, and the sham policeman hailed an empty cab that was close at hand; then they crossed the street, the cab following, and the policeman seemed to be doing the talking, as I saw when they passed under the light at the corner. I had suspected some new plot, from the fact that the spy had so suddenly disappeared, and I had watched your place, in person, for the past three nights."

"Oh! And that is why we have seen so little of you?"

"In part. Well, I made up my mind, when they walked away together down that tree-shaded cross-street, that there was something wrong. I was on the opposite side, and concluded to close up, seeing ​that the cab was getting very near and edging close to their side, against all rules of the road. I had got half way across, and was just behind the cab, when I saw Brierly step ahead of the other, and then came the blow. As I sprang forward the cabby gave a loud hiss and the scoundrel saw me, and sprang for the cab with his arm still uplifted for another blow. I fired twice running, the third time turning long enough to send another shot at him as he entered the carriage door. Then he was off. I think he was hit, once at least."

"He will be caught, don't you think so? A cab driving like mad through those quiet streets?"

"No. He will not be caught, I fear."

"But why?"

"Because he will have had a second vehicle, a carriage, no doubt, not far away, and he will leave the cab, which will slacken up for a moment for that, and then dash on."

"How can you know that?"

"Because, when I find that I am dealing with a clever rascal I ask, what would I do in his place? And that is what I would have done."

"Well, well!" The lawyer sighed. "Poor Robert."

"If he only had been less impatient!" exclaimed Ferrars.

​"If we had been wiser, and had not left him! The boy was in a peculiarly restless mood. Even my wife had observed that since morning."

"And why since morning?"

The lawyer looked at him gravely for a moment. "Did you ever hear of Ruth Glidden?" he asked.

"The orphan heiress? Of course; through the society columns of the newspapers."

"Ruth Glidden and the Brierly boys grew up as the best of friends and neighbours. The elders of the two families were friends equally warm. I believe in my soul that Glidden would gladly have seen his daughter marry one of the Brierly boys. And if things had run smooth—but there! Brierly was accounted a rich man, and he was until less than a year before his death, when the failure of the F. and S. Railway Company, and the North-Western Land concern, within three months of each other, left him a heavy loser. Even then, if Glidden had been alive all might have been well. But he died, two years before Brierly's death, and Ruth went to live with her purse-proud aunt, her father's sister. The two families had resided for years, side by side, on this avenue."

"And where is Miss Glidden now?" asked Ferrars.

"Here in this city since the day before yesterday. ​She and her aunt have been abroad for a year, but I believe that they care for each other, though Robert is so proud, and that is not all. The brothers have each a few thousand dollars still, and it appears that shortly before his death, Charlie—he was always a methodical fellow—instructed his brother, in case of his sudden death, to make over all of his share to Miss Hilda Grant. Robert told me of this upon his return with the body, and he also said that all he possessed should go, if needful, to the clearing up of this murder mystery."

"It may be needful," sighed Ferrars. "I fear it will be."

"Then, good-bye to Robert's hopes! With it he might make a lucky hit; might have a chance. Without it"—he shrugged his shoulders—"what can even so bright a journalist, as he undoubtedly is, do to win a fortune quickly. And he won't accept help, even from me, his father's oldest friend."

"No," said Ferrars, gloomily. "Of course not How could he? Mr. Myers, I'll be honest and tell you that I'm afraid we've struck a blank wall. Things look dark on all hands, just now, for poor Brierly."

"What! Do you think the clue, the case, is lost then?"

"Not lost. Oh, no. Only, I fear, out of reach."

CHAPTER XVII.

RUTH GLIDDEN.

Francis Ferrars sat in his sanctum, one could scarcely call it an office, although he received here, now and again, visitors of many sorts on business bent. For, since his coming to America, five years before, to find the heiress of Sir Hillary Massinger, he had read many another riddle, and now, as at first, he worked independently, but with the difference that he now undertook only such cases as especially attracted him by reason of their strangeness, or of the worth, or need, of the client.

Two letters lay before him, and as he pondered, frowning from time to time, he would take up one or the other and re-read a passage, and compress his lips and give vent to his thoughts in fragmentary sentences. For he had grown, because of much solitude, to think aloud when his thoughts ​grew troublesome, voicing the pros and cons of a case, and seeming to find this an aid to clearness of thought.

"It's a most baffling thing," he declared, taking up for the third time a letter in the strong upright hand of Doctor Barnes. "I wonder just what the man meant by penning this," and once more he ran his eye over this paragraph which occurred at the end of a long letter:

"Mrs. Jamieson has not forgotten you. She asks after you now and then, when we meet, and desires to be remembered to you. She is not looking well, and, I fancy, finds Glenville duller than at first."

"I'll wager she does not think of me any oftener than I of her. And she can't know how ardently I long to stand before her and look into those changeful, blue-green eyes of hers. What strangely handsome eyes they are—And say—Ah! how will those eyes look then, I wonder?"

Presently he turns the sheet and reads again:

"I think you did well to instruct your two men here to make use of, and place confidence in Doran. He's a host in himself. And what do you think of the tramp they have traced to the vicinity of that ​boat on the morning of the murder? He was seen, it appears, by at least three."

"Umph!" laying down the letter. "If you were here, my dear Barnes, I would tell you frankly—I feel just like being brutally frank with some one—that I have no doubt that the tramp is a link—there seems to be so many of them, and all detached—a link—and that he approached the boat in that tramp disguise, after separating from his confederate at some more distant point. Bah! It looks simple enough. Confederate leaves vehicle—or two horses, possibly—they could slip off the saddles and hobble them in a thicket, where they would look, to the passer-by, like a pair of grazing animals, or they might have used a wagon, travelling thus like two innocent bucolics. Then how plain to me, the assassin goes through the woods, watchfully, like an Indian. The tramp boatman patrols the shore, to signal to the other when the victim appears; or, should the assassin on shore be unable to creep upon his prey, the assassin in the boat may row boldly near, and, at the signal from the other, telling him there is a clear coast, fire upon the victim. If he is sure of his aim, how easy! And if seen by the victim, well—'Dead men tell no tales.'"

​He muses silently awhile now, puts down the doctor's letter, and takes up the other.

"This," he murmurs, "is tantalising." And then he read from a letter, signed "Hilda G——."

"Mrs. Jamieson begins to complain of the dullness of this place, in spite of the fact that she has had a visit from her husband's brother, a Mr. Carl Jamieson. He did not make a long visit, and I saw but little of him. He is something of a cripple, a sufferer from rheumatism, and just back from the hot springs. I met him but once. He looks and talks like an Englishman, and has a dark eye that betokens, if I am a judge of eyes, a bad temper. I give you these details knowing that all concerning the little blonde lady is of interest to you."

"Of interest!" he muttered "I should think so! Doubly so, now that there's so little else of interest, or——" He stopped short, and wheeled about in his chair. His office-boy had swung open his door, and was saying:

"A lady to see you, sir." And Ferrars arose to confront a visitor, a brunette so tall and lissom, so glowing with the rich hues of health and beauty, so clear of eye, and direct of gaze, that Ferrars could not at ​first find his usually obedient tongue, and then she spoke.

"Mr. Ferrars!" her voice was a low, rich contralto. "I am Miss Ruth Glidden, and I have come to you to seek information concerning the awful death of my friend, Charles Brierly. Pray let me explain myself at once."

Ferrars bowed, placed her a chair, and closed the half-open door.

"The Brierlys and my own people were old friends, and Robert and Charles Brierly were my childhood playmates. I arrived home, ten days ago, after a year spent in Europe, and learned, soon, of Charlie's sad fate. While this shock was still fresh upon me, I heard of Robert's narrow escape from a like attack. Mr. and Mrs. Myers are my dear friends. I have spent much of the past week under their roof, and——" There was a little catch of the breath, and then she went bravely on. "And I have had a long, frank talk, first with Mrs. Myers, and then with her husband. He has told me all that he could tell. He has assured me that you are wholly to be trusted and relied upon, and, knowing my wishes—my intentions, in fact—Mr. Myers has advised me to come to you."

"And in what way can I serve you, Miss Glidden?"

​"Please understand me. I have heard the story; that there are clues, but broken and disconnected ones; that you know what should be done, but that there is a barrier in the way of the doing. Mr. Ferrars, as a true friend of Robert Brierly, I ask you to tell me what that barrier is? I have a right to know." The rich tints of olive and rose had faded from her rounded cheek, leaving it pale. But the dark eyes were still steadily intense in their regard.

As Ferrars was about to reply, after a moment of silent meditation, the door opened, and the boy came in again, softly and silently, and placed upon the desk a handful of letters, just arrived; laying a finger upon the topmost one, and glancing up at his employer, thus signifying that here was his excuse for entering at such a moment.

The letter was marked "immediate," and the handwriting was that of James Myers.

With a murmured apology, the detective opened it, and read—

"My Dear Ferrars,—During the day you will no doubt receive a call from Miss Glidden. I cannot dictate your course, but I write this to say that no friend of Brierly's has a better right to the truth—all of it—nor a stronger will and greater power to aid. Of her ​ability to keep a secret you can judge when you meet her.

"Yours,⁠
"James Myers."

When he had read this letter Ferrars silently proffered it to his visitor, and in silence she accepted and read it.

"I was strongly inclined to accede to your request, after, first, asking one question," he said, when she gave the letter back, still without speaking. "And now, having read this, I am quite ready to tell you what I can."

"And the question?"

"I will ask it, but have no right to insist upon the answer. Have you any motive, beyond the natural desire to understand the case, in coming to me?"

She leaned slightly toward him and kept her earnest eyes steadily upon his face as she replied, "I cannot believe that you credit me with coming here, on such an errand, simply because I wish to know. I do wish to know as much as possible, but let me first tell you, plainly, my motives and why I have assumed such a right or privilege. To begin, I am told that Robert Brierly will not be able to think or act for himself for some time to come."

"That, unhappily, is true."

​"And how does this affect your position?"

"It is unfortunate for me, of course. The case has reached a point when I can hardly venture far unauthorised, and yet no moment should be lost. The time has come when skilled investigations, covering many weeks, perhaps, as well as long journeys, are necessary. We need also the constant watchfulness of a number of clever shadowers."

"And this requires—it will incur great expense?" she asked, quickly. "Is it not so?"

Ferrars bowed gravely.

"Mr. Ferrars," she began, and there was a sudden subtle change in her voice. "I am going to speak to you as a woman seldom speaks to a man, for I trust you, and we must understand each other. Two years ago, when I was leaving my old home for my aunt's house, having still a half year of study before me, with the year abroad, already planned, to follow, Robert Brierly came to bid me good-bye, and this is what he said; I remember every word: 'Ruth, we have been playmates for ten years, and dear friends for almost ten years more. Now I am a man, and poor, and you a budding woman, soon to be launched into society, and an heiress. I would be a scoundrel to seek to bind you to any promise now, so I leave you free to see the world and to know your own heart. I have not a fortune, but ​if labour and effort will bring it about I hope to be able to offer you a fit home some day, for I love you, and I shall not change. I want you to be happy, Ruth, more than all else, and so I say, go out into the world, dear, and if you find in it a good man whom you love, that is enough. But, remember this, as long as you remain Ruth Glidden, I shall hope to win you when I can do so and still feel myself a man, for I do not fear your wealth, Ruth, only I must first show myself to possess the ability to win my way, on your own level."

She paused a moment, and bent her face upon her hand. Then she resumed, almost in a whisper. "He would not let me speak. He knew too well that he had always been very dear to me, and he feared to take advantage of my inexperience. I loved and honoured him for that, and every day and every hour since that moment I have looked upon myself as his promised wife, and have been supremely happy in the thought. And now——" There was a little pause and a sobbing catch of the breath—"Have I not the right, Mr. Ferrars, to put out my hand and help in this work? To say what I came here to say? My fortune is ample. It is mine alone. I am of age, and my own mistress. Take me into your confidence, to the utmost, make me your banker, and push on the work. Robert Brierly may be helpless for weeks or months longer. Charlie Brierly ​was a brother to me. No one has a stronger right to do this thing."

"Miss Glidden, have you thought or been told that——"

"That Robert may die? Yes. But I will never believe it. And, even so, there is yet more reason why this work should not be dropped, why no moment should be lost." She paused again, battling now for self-control; then—"There is one other thing," she resumed. "Mr. Myers has told me of the young lady, poor Charlie's fiancée. Will you tell me her name? He did not speak it, I am sure, and I want to write to her, to know her."

"That will be a kindly deed, for she, too, is an orphan. Her name is Hilda Grant."

"Hilda! Hilda Grant! Tell me, how does she look?"

"A brown-haired, grey-eyed, sweet-faced young woman, with a clear, healthy pallor and a rich colour in her lips alone. The hair is that golden brown verging upon auburn; she is tall, or seems so, because of her slight, almost fragile, gracefulness."

"Ah! Thank you, thank you. This is my own Hilda Grant, who was my schoolmate and dearest friend, and who cut me because she was poor, and buried herself in some rustic school-house. She shall not stay there. She shall come to me."

​"I fancy she will hardly be induced to leave Glenville now."

"I must see her. She will come up to see Robert, surely!"

"She is only waiting to know when she may see him."

"Of course. And now, it is agreed, is it not? You will take me as a silent partner?"

"Since Mr. Myers sanctions it I cannot refuse. Besides, I see you are quite capable of instituting a new search, if I did."

"I will not deny it." And they smiled, each in the other's face.

"Perhaps," he said, now grave again, "when I have told you all my ideas, theories, and plans, you will not be so ready to risk a small fortune, for, unless I am greatly in error, you will think what I am about to propose, after I have reviewed the entire situation, the wildest bit of far-fetched imagining possible, especially as I cannot, even to you, describe, name, or in any manner characterise the person, or persons, whom I wish to follow up, for months it may be, and because the slender threads by which I connect them with the few facts and clues we have, would not hold in the eyes of the most visionary judge and jury in the land."

​"It will hold in my eyes. Do you think I have not informed myself concerning you and your work? Is not Elias Lord my banker, and Mrs. Bathurst persona grata in my aunt's home? I am ready to listen, Mr. Ferrars."

CHAPTER XVIII.

SUDDEN FLITTINGS.

For two weeks Ruth Glidden stood at the right hand of Mrs. Myers, and supplemented the trained nurse in the sick room.

At first she only entered while the patient slept, but after a few days the stupor began to lessen, and the Mightiness, with which it had alternated, to decrease. And then one day he knew them, and, by the doctor's orders, the nurse withdrew and Ruth came to the bedside and sat down beside him.

"Robert, dear," she said, smiling down upon him, "you have very nearly let that wretched footpad spoil the good looks of the only lover I ever had, and to prevent further mischief I am come to take care of you." She said very little more then, but gradually the patient found himself being ruled by her nod, and liking the tyranny; so that when he was told that he was going ​away to try what change of air and scene would do for his maltreated head, he listened to her while she told him a tale which seemed to interest her much, and through which the names Ferrars, Myers, Hilda, and the pronouns "they" and "them" often occurred. And then it came about that, supported to a carriage and transferred then to a swinging cot, he was taken on board a Pullman sleeper, and, with nurse and attendant, was whirled away southward.

Two days later, James Myers said good-bye to wife and friends and set sail, on board the good ship Etruria en route for Europe.

"Yes," he said to an acquaintance whom he met at the wharf. "I've wanted to make the trip, you know, for a long time, and now a matter of business, the looking up of certain titles and records, makes the journey needful, and I can combine pleasure and business." And then he turned away to say a few last words to Francis Ferrars before the signal sounded, and he must say good-bye to his anxious wife, to serious-faced Ruth Glidden.

"And now," said the detective to Ruth, "the next flitting will be toward Glenville."

Before the end of that week Mrs. Myers, who stood staunchly by Ruth, and would not hear of her going alone, Ruth herself, and a keen-eyed ​maid—not the one who had accompanied the young heiress home from Europe, but another supplied by Mr. Ferrars—all arrived at Glenville, and took quarters at the Glenville House, where Hilda Grant soon sought her friend, and promised herself much comfort in her society.

At first, Miss Glidden did not seem to desire acquaintances, and Mrs. Jamieson complained that she found herself almost deserted, Hilda was so preoccupied with her newly-arrived friend. But this was soon changed.

Miss Glidden and her party had at first been placed in quarters which the young lady did not find to her taste. There must be a pleasanter chamber for her friend, Mrs. Myers, and a reception room for their joint use, and it ended in her securing the little parlour suite adjoining that of Mrs. Jamieson.

For a time even this close proximity did not seem to break the ice, and while having been introduced by Hilda, the two ladies were for some days strangers still.

For reasons which Ferrars might have explained if he would, Hilda Grant had not visited Robert Brierly while he lay under the care of doctor and nurse, and now that they were together, the two girls, having first exchanged fullest personal confidences, had much to say about Robert and his dead brother.

​At the end of their first confidential talk Ruth had said: "Apropos of this, Hilda, my dear, let me remind you that I have not outgrown my dislike of being quizzed or questioned by the simply curious, for the sake of curiosity. I know what a small town is, and so, I warn you not to let the dear inhabitants know that I am more than a friend of your own. To proclaim me a friend of the Brierlys as well, will be just to expose us both to the inquisitive, and to set vivid imaginations at work."

Hilda's eyes studied her face a moment. "I think you will not be troubled. My acquaintances all know that I do not willingly talk on that terrible subject. Even Mrs. Jamieson, who saw its fearful beginning and who is with me often, seldom speaks of it to me."

"The pretty widow? Mr. Ferrars, pardon me, your cousin, spoke of her more than once," and Ruth cast a keen side glance at her friend's face.

"And she speaks of him, now and then."

"As which?"

"As my cousin; for so she believes him to be."

"And you think them mutually interested? I must really see more of my pretty neighbour."

Miss Glidden and her party had been a week in ​Glenville when "Mr. Ferriss-Grant" arrived, and spent a few days in the village, making his home at the doctor's cottage, and passing most of his time with Hilda and her friends. Mrs. Jamieson had now made better progress with her fair and stately neighbour, and they might have been seen strolling toward the school-house together, or driving along the terrace road—for Mrs. Jamieson had declared that the tragedy of the lake shore had spoiled the lakeside road for her—in Doran's pony carriage, and, sometimes with "Miss Grant's cousin" for charioteer.

One evening the little party sauntered away from the pretty hotel together to walk to Hilda's home and sit for an hour upon Mrs. Marcy's broad and shaded piazza, which Mrs. Jamieson declared so charmingly secluded, after the chatter and movement, the coming and going upon that of the Glenville House.

They had been taking tea with Mrs. Myers and Ruth, Hilda, Mrs. Jamieson, and the sham cousin, who seemed to rather enjoy his rôle, if one might judge by his manner, and they seemed inclined to pass the remainder of the evening together.

They had not been long seated upon the vine-shaded piazza when Doctor Barnes came up the walk and dropped down upon the upper step, like one ​quite at home. It was now more than two weeks since Robert Brierly had been carried southward and the people of Glenville, for the most part, had heard most discouraging reports from the invalid, most of them given forth by the doctor, or "Sam" Doran, who, by the way, had been for the past month entertaining a warmly welcomed and much quoted "first cousin" from "out west."

The doctor held a letter in his hand, and seeing this, Miss Grant's cousin asked carelessly:

"Any news of general interest in that blue envelope, doctor?"

They could not see the doctor's face, but his voice was very grave when he replied, "I'm sorry to say yes. Our friend down south is in a very bad way."

"Mr. Brierly?" exclaimed Mrs. Jamieson. "Oh, doctor, tell us the worst." And then she murmured to Ruth, who sat near her, "Miss Grant's friend, you know, but of course you do. I have grown as much interested in his welfare, somehow, as if he were not really a stranger, whom I never saw but once."

The doctor had left his place, and crossed to the open window, through which the lamp-light shone upon the open letter.

​"I think I can see to read it," he said, and bent over the sheet. "The writer says:

"I fear our friend will not see many more Florida suns; will not be here with us long. The change has been surprisingly rapid, and the heart is now seriously implicated. Do not be surprised if ill news comes at an early day."

He folded the letter. "Ill news should always be briefly told," he said.

When the ladies came in, that night, having parted from the two gentlemen who had escorted them as far as the piazza steps, they found Miss Glidden's maid hovering in the passage, near her mistress's door.

"Miss Glidden, ladies," she began in evident agitation, "I have been terribly frightened. Some one has been in your room, and, I fear, in that of this lady also. I sat, for an hour, on the back piazza with two of the housemaids, and when I came up, only a few steps from this room, some one slipped out from Mrs. Jamieson's door and round the corner toward the south hall. I did not think about it until I had gone into your room to make all ready for the night, and then I saw the closet door open, and the things upon your table pulled about as if some one had hurried much, and had left, when they ​found it was not a sleeping room. Then I thought of the next room, of the person coming out so still and so sly——"

Miss Glidden pushed past the maid, and opened her own door. "Look in your room, Mrs. Jamieson," she said, "and see if you have really been robbed before we alarm the house. Susan, go with her."

Mrs. Jamieson found that her door was indeed unlocked, and her inner room showed plainly that a hasty hand had searched, here and there.

"It's lucky that I never leave money where it can be got at," she said to Ruth, when she had taken in the full extent of the mischief, "and that I haven't taken my jewel box from the hotel safe for three days. Even my purse was in my chatelaine with me. I find absolutely nothing gone. But my boxes, my frocks, my boots and wraps, even, have been pulled about. It's very strange. The thief must have been frightened away before anything was taken."

"Perhaps," suggested Miss Glidden, "the person wanted clothing, and heard Susan coming down the hall."

It was very strange, but, although they called the landlord, and told him privately of the invasion, and though there was a quiet but strict investigation, nothing came of it, and no one was even suspected.

​"It was certainly some one from outside, who slipped in through some open door in the dark, while every one was out upon the piazzas, or in the grounds. These halls are not lighted until quite dark, sometimes, I find. I am thankful that you met with no loss, ladies," said mine host.

Next morning Mrs. Myers declared herself more than ready to leave Glenville. The thought of being in a house where an intruder found it so easy to make free with a lady's wardrobe, was not pleasant, and she hoped Ruth would not ask her to spend another week in the town. In fact she only stipulated for a fortnight's visit with her friend, Miss Grant, upon which Ruth promised that they would really go very soon, although she was enjoying herself.

Three days later a party of the Glenville's guests set off, after an early breakfast, for a long drive and a day's fishing, at a spot some miles distant and near the north end of the lake, at a famous picnic ground. Mrs. Jamieson was one of the merry crew, and she urged Ruth Glidden to join them, as did the others, all; but Ruth "never fished and detested picnics;" besides, the other people, she declared, were for the most part utter strangers, and Hilda and "Mr. Grant" were not invited.

When Mrs. Jamieson came back with the rest of ​the tired merry-makers she knocked at Ruth's door to announce her return.

There was no response, and she entered her own rooms where she found, conspicuously placed, a note. It was in a strong masculine hand, and she opened it quickly, looking first at the name at the bottom of the sheet. It was F. Grant.

She caught her breath, and sat down to read, wondering still and her heart beating strangely.

"Dear Madam"—so ran the note—"You will be surprised, I know, to hear of our so sudden departure. Poor Brierly is dead, and we start to-day by the four o'clock express, hoping thus to reach the city before the party from the south arrive there. They started, we learn, on Tuesday morning. Mrs. Myers and Miss Glidden have kindly accompanied us, that my cousin may have the comfort of her friends' companionship, and the protection of the elder lady, whose guest she will be. In the haste of departure I am commissioned to say what they would have gladly said in person. For myself, while I trust we may meet again, and soon, may I presume to ask—in the event of your going away from Glenville, for my cousin has said it was possible—that you will let the doctor know where we may in future ​address you? In the hope of seeing you again, at an early date, I am,

"Sincerely and hopefully,⁠
"F. Grant."

An hour later she sent for Doctor Barnes, who came promptly.

"Doctor," she began, as soon as he had entered her room, and closed the door. "I won't try to deceive you. I have had twinges of neuralgia to-day, and my bottle is quite empty. But I want, most of all, to hear more about this sudden flitting. They have left me just a line of farewell. Of course I know about poor Mr. Brierly. There's no doubt of his death."

"Not the least in the world, I regret to say."

"It is very sad, but I suppose they were prepared for the news."

"Yes."

"Now tell me about Miss Grant. Is she not coming back to her school?"

"I don't quite know. Her cousin, who is a very successful man in business, goes abroad soon, and he would like to have her among her friends. Miss Glidden is anxious to keep her for a time at least. I believe she, Miss Grant, had a few words with Doran. I fancy it will end in her resignation."

​"Then how I wish she would come abroad, if not with her cousin, then with me. For I shall go soon, I quite think. In fact there are business matters, of my husband's, money matters that require my presence. I must write to Miss Grant."

"Then address her at the Loremer House for the present. Miss Glidden has a suite of rooms there."

A week later Mrs. Jamieson, accompanied by her friend, Mrs. Arthur, looked in upon Doctor Barnes.

"I have come to say good-bye, doctor," said the former. "I leave here in the morning. My brother-in-law, who is on his way eastward, after a second hurried western trip, will be in the city to-morrow; I meet him there, and we sail in three days. Mr. Grant has written me that the ladies are all out of the city, so I shall not see them, but he thinks they will all be in London before the end of summer."

Thus of all the active dramatis personæ of our story, but few were left in Glenville by mid-July.

"And so the pretty widow's gone," said Samuel Doran to the doctor, the day after this final flitting. "Looks like Glenville couldn't be a healthy place in July. Even my 'first cousin from out west' skipped out sort of sudden yesterday; couldn't stay another minute."

​"You don't look heartbroken," suggested the doctor.

"Oh, I can spare him. Anyhow, I guess 'twas time he went. Powerful eater, that first cousin of mine," and Doran grinned from ear to ear.

CHAPTER XIX.

THROUGH THE MAIL.

From James Myers, Att'y, to Wendell Haynes, solicitor, with offices in Middle Temple Lane, off Fleet Street, which is London's legal heart and brain and life. Fleet Street, with such a history past, present, and to come, as may never be written in full by all the story-telling pens combined in this greatest literary centre, and working harmoniously; no, not in the space of a lifetime. Drafted in the office of the American lawyer, two days before his setting sail from New York, bound for London; and it was received, owing to stress of weather, five days before its writer set foot on British ground; and read by its recipient with no little surprise.

This is what it contained:

​

"Wendell Haynes, Esq.,⁠
⁠ "Middle Temple Lane, etc., London.

"Dear Sir,—After four years I find myself in the act of reminding you of my continued existence, and of your promise of proffered help, should a day come when you, on that side, could aid me, on this, because of what you chose to consider your debt to me. To proceed: in two days I set out for England, and it will take me, upon my arrival, many days, perhaps, to find out what you, with your knowledge of places and people, and your easy access to the records, can do in half a day, no doubt. I feel sure that I can rely upon you to do for me this personal favour, which is not in the direct line of your business routine, perhaps, but is quite within your ability, I trust and hope; and without taxing too much your time and energy. And now to business.

"I have reason to think that a certain Paisley estate over there awaits an heir; and that one Hugo Paisley, or his heirs, have been advertised for. To know the exact status of the case, and something about the people with whom I may have to deal, at once, upon my arrival, will help me much. And it is to ask for this information at your hands that I now address you, and, being sure of your will to aid me, as well as confident of your ability, I shall ​trust to hear that which I so much wish to know, upon my arrival in London, and from you.

"I sail by the Etruria and shall stop at Brown's.

"Yours sincerely,⁠
"Jas. Myers."

Wendell Haynes, solicitor, smiled as he read this missive. He had a most vivid remembrance of his first and only visit to America, and of his meeting with James Myers, quite by accident and shortly after his arrival in Chicago, which city had seemed, to the visitor, a more amazing thing than the howling wilderness which he had been in daily expectation of seeing, would have appeared to him.

In his efforts to run down a friend from the suburbs, Myers had consulted a hotel register, and seeing the name of the English lawyer, written by its owner just under his eye, he had first looked at the man, and then at the name, and, upon learning that he was an utter stranger to the city, and to the ways of its legal fraternity, he had presented his card.

Solicitor Haynes had visited America and the "States" to investigate what had appeared to be an effort, on the part of American agents, to cheat the widow of a certain English ranch owner out of her ​just rights and lawful income, and the assistance rendered by Mr. Myers had earned him the lasting and earnestly expressed gratitude of his brother attorney, who asked for nothing better than an opportunity to repay the favour in kind, and no time was lost in the doing of it; so that when James Myers arrived at Brown's, and put his name upon the big register, the following letter was promptly handed him across the clerk's desk:

"James Myers, Esq.,⁠
⁠ "Brown's Hotel, London.

"Dear Sir,—Your favour of … was very welcome, affording me, as it did, some small opportunity to return a very little of what I owe you for many past courtesies and most valuable service, and I have lost no time in looking up the information you desire.

"There is a large estate, that of the Paisleys of Illchester, awaiting the next of kin, who should be, so far as is known, the descendants of one Hugo Paisley who left this country nearly eighty years ago, and whose heirs, male or female, are entitled to inherit. There has been an effort made to hear from these heirs, and, strange to say, there has been no reply, nor has any other claimant appeared of lesser degree. If you ​will call upon me upon your arrival I will give you all details and addresses so far as known to me, and shall be very glad if I can be of yet further use.

"Yours sincerely,⁠
"W. D. Haynes."

"You see," said Solicitor Haynes, at the close of an hour's talk with Lawyer Myers, "thus far all is quite clearly traced, and there is no doubt of the rights of the Hugo Paisley heirs—if such are to be found, and if they can prove their heirship."

"And the family, here in England, is quite extinct, then?"

"In the direct male line, yes. There may be cousins, or more distant relatives, but the father of Hugo Paisley had four children, the three eldest being boys, the youngest a girl. This girl married young and died childless. The elder son married, had one son, who did not live to become of age, and himself died before he had reached his forty-second year. Then the second son, Martin, inherited, and the last of his descendants died not quite two years ago, a widow and of middle age, I hear."

"And there have been no claimants?"

"None, I am told. The case was advertised, both here and in the United States, but with no results ​as yet, unless——" The solicitor stopped short and looked keenly at his visitor. "Something," he said, "has surprised, and I could almost imagine, disappointed you."

"You are quite sure of this?" the other urged, unheeding the last words. "There have been no claimants, near or remote?"

"Absolutely none." The solicitor looked again, questioningly, into the face of his vis-à-vis, and then something like surprise came into his own. "Upon my soul, Mr. Myers, if I were to express an opinion upon your state of mind, I should say—yes, upon my word I should say that you were disappointed, absurd as that would seem."

"Disappointed—how?"

"Because, by Jove, there have not been any applicants or claimants for Hugo Paisley's money."

"Well, you wouldn't be far wrong. I am surprised, at any rate, and I shall have to admit that this fact disarranges my plans, stops my hand, as it were." He got up and took his hat from the table. "I came here with the intention of telling you a rather long story, in the hope of enlisting your interest, perhaps your aid. Now, I find that I must defer the story, and go at once and cable to friends at home."

He wasted no more words, but, promising to dine ​with his friend later, hurried back to his hotel, where he found a cablegram awaiting him.

Previous to his departure from New York, Ferrars had given him a code by which to frame any needful cable messages, concerning the business of the journey, or the people whom it concerned. The detective had warned all of the little group, now so closely bound together by mutual interest and in the same endeavour, to be constantly on guard against spies.

"Unless I am greatly mistaken," he said, "every effort will be made to keep in view all who are known to be connected with the Brierlys and their interests, and the fact that we are fighting an unknown quantity makes it the more necessary that we use double caution. We don't want another 'blow in the dark,' any of us; and, above all, we do not want to be followed across the water, and shadowed when there."

The wisdom of this was admitted, for, since the attack upon Robert Brierly, the unseen foe had become a bugbear indeed to Hilda and Ruth; and they abetted Ferrars in all possible ways, no longer questioning and with growing confidence in his leadership, in spite of the seeming absence of results.

The cable message which Mr. Myers read was worded as follows:

​

"Jas. Myers, etc., etc.

"H. has seen brother, who is watching affairs, unable to sail at present; letter follows.F."

These were the words; their meaning, according to the chart, was this:

"Hilda has seen the western tourist. He is watching us, and we will not attempt to sail until he is off the scent.F."

Half an hour later this message went speeding back to New York, and from thence westward:

"To F. Ferrars, etc., etc.

"Case all right; way clear; no claimants."

Which meant precisely what it said.

A few days later two letters passed each other in mid-ocean. The one westward-bound read thus:

"My Dear Ferrars,—It will not take me long to tell all that I have to tell concerning my mission. As I had anticipated, Mr. Wendell Haynes was more than ready to assist, and had the few facts I now give you ​already tabulated and awaiting me. Here they are in the order of your written queries:

"1st. The Paisley fortune is no hoax. There is a fine country seat, a factory, a town house, and various stocks, bonds and city investments amounting in all to above a million in American dollars.

"2nd. The English Paisleys are quite extinct, and the claim to the whole estate can surely be established by our claimant.

"3rd. And this may change all your plans possibly, and will startle you quite as much as it has me. There has been no effort made by any one to claim or get possession of the property, and there is no clue to such a person if he, she, or they exist. This balks us. How shall I proceed? Was ever a trail so completely hidden?

"Mr. Haynes has placed himself, and his knowledge and resources—both being extensive—entirely at our disposal. If you still think well of the advertising plan, wire me. I am idle until I hear from you, and mean to employ myself doing London, which will render my part of the enforced waiting very pleasant.

"By the by, I omitted to say that there have been but two 'notices' published. No unseemly haste, you observe. Awaiting your reply, I am,

"Yours sincerely,⁠
"Jas. Myers."

​The letter which passed this midway was from Ferrars, and contained some information.

"Dear Sir and Friend"—it began—

"This finds us all in the city, the ladies at the flats, and myself in the old quarters, with which you have lately grown familiar. I fancied that we were quite snugly placed and could pass our period of waiting your summons with some ease of mind. Your house, which looks as untenanted and forbidding as possible, has been viewed, your caretaker says, by a 'party' who, from the description, I take to be the man whom we have termed the 'westerner,' and who was seen for a day or two in Glenville.

"But I have been rudely aroused from my comfortable sense of security. Yesterday Miss Grant and Miss Glidden were down town, and were driven out of the avenue by a long political parade. Driving down a cross street their coachman turned up Clark Street, only to find that another contingent was moving into that street, at the upper corner of the block. It was moving toward them, and the man quickly reined his horses close to the curb to await the passage of the line. Directly opposite the carriage was the sign, so frequent upon that street, of three balls, and while Miss Hilda gazed with some idle curiosity at the, ​to her, strange sight, a man came out tucking something into his waistcoat as he stepped down upon the pavement, glanced about him, and, without seeming to observe the carriage, or its occupants, walked quickly away. She had seen him, twice at least, at the Glenville, and she knew him at once. She ordered the driver home by a round-about road, but she is certain that the man was the same whom we thought a spy or worse. The most disagreeable feature of this is that I have not yet seen the man, watch as I would, and if he is watching us, he has the advantage. If the worst comes to the worst we shall have to spread out and go aboard our boat, when the time comes, singly and in disguise.

"Evening—

"Since writing the above I have visited the place of the three gilt balls and have found, at last, 'a straight tip.'

"The fellow had just redeemed a watch, pawned three days ago. It was a very pathetic story that we got out of the warm-hearted pawnbroker. The young man was overjoyed to be able to claim his watch so soon, for it was a keepsake given him by his dead father, and he 'prized it beyond words.' The watch was a fine foreign made affair, and on the inside was engraved Charles A. 'Braily' or ​'Brierly'; he could not remember exactly. So, you see, the probability is that we have stumbled upon the watch stolen from Brierly's room in Glenville, which the fellow first pawned, from necessity perhaps, and then hastened to redeem, having taken the alarm in some way. He may even have been made aware that a description of the stolen watch and jewels had been lodged with the police. But all this is guessing. I am still confident that we shall find the solution of our problem on the other side of the Atlantic. Miss Glidden is still bent upon crossing, and your wife is her willing abettor. As for the fifth member of our party, he is at present like wax in our hands. Mind I say our, not mine alone.

"There is nothing new from Glenville—how could there be—now? I need not tell you about ourselves; Mrs. Myers, I know, keeps you well up in our personal history. And so, good luck to you. From yours in good hope,

"F. S. Ferrars."

Two days later this letter reached Ferrars.

"Glenville, July———

"Ferris Grant, Esq.

"Dear Sir,—Yesterday, too late for the mail, I struck luck, at least I hope you will call it luck. ​It came through our 'girl,' that is, the young woman who presides in my kitchen; she has a chum in the kitchen of the Glenville, and last evening they were exchanging confidences upon my back porch. It appears—I'm going to cut the story short—it appears that the night clerk is a kodak fiend, and a month or two ago the fellow, after being guyed about his poor work until he got rattled, vowed he'd contrive to get a picture of every person who set foot in that house for the next month to come, and that they should be the judges as to whether the pictures were good or not. Now it turns out that our traveller from out west was one of the victims of this rash vow, and when I found it out I lost no time in getting that picture. The fellow likes to drive my horses, and he always owes me a pretty good bill. I enclose to you this masterpiece of art. As you never saw him, to your knowledge, and as I had one glimpse, you will be glad, I dare say, to be told that the Glenville House people think it a good likeness.

"There's nothing else in the way of news, and so, good luck to you, and a good voyage.

"Samuel Doran."

When Francis Ferrars had looked long at the picture enclosed in Doran's letter he started, and ejaculated, ​in the short, jerky fashion in which he used habitually to commune with himself, "That face!—I've seen it before—but where?" And then he suddenly seemed to see himself approaching the City Hall, and noting, as he walked on, this same face.

It was the habit of the detective to see all that came within his range of vision, as he went about, but he might not have retained a memory so distinct if he had not, in leaving the very same place, encountered the man again, his position slightly shifted, but his attitude as before, that of one who waits, or watches.

For some moments he looked thoughtfully at the picture, which was that of a dark and bearded man wearing a double eyeglass, and then he placed it under a strong magnifier, and looked again.

"Ah!" he finally exclaimed, "I was sure of it! The man is in disguise!"

He took the picture at once to the ladies' sitting room, and held it before the eyes of Hilda Grant.

"Do you know it?" he asked.

"That!" She caught it from his hand, and held it toward the light. "It is the man whom——" She paused, looking at Ferrars, inquiringly.

"Whom you saw at the pawnshop?"

"Yes. And——"

"And at Glenville?"

​"Yes, at the hotel."

"And he was tall, you say, and broad-shouldered?"

"Yes."

"Strong looking, in fact. As if——" He checked himself at sight of the intent look upon Ruth Glidden's face, and she took the word from his lips.

"As if," she repeated, icily, "he could shoot straight, or strike a man down in the dark." She arose and took the picture. "It is a bad face," she said, with decision.

"It is a disguised face," replied Ferrars. "Nevertheless, I think I shall know it, even without the beard and thick, bushy wig. Let me see?" He took a piece of paper, and a pencil, and placing the photograph before him, began to sketch in the head, working from the nose, mouth, eyes and facial outlines outward, and drawing, instead of the thick, pointed beard, a thin-lipped mouth and smooth chin. Then, when the young ladies had studied this, he copied in the moustache of the photograph.

"It belongs to the face," he observed, as he worked; "and probably grew there."

Late that night, as the detective sat alone in his room with a pile of just completed letters before him, he again drew the photograph from its envelope and studied it with wrinkling brow.

"If you are the man," he said, with slow moving lips ​that grew into hard, stern lines as he spoke—"If you are the man I will find you! If you have struck the first blow—and it's very possible—you also struck the second. But the work is not yet finished, and, unless my patience and skill desert me, the last stroke shall be mine."

CHAPTER XX.

A WOMAN'S HEART.

The blow dealt Robert Brierly by the sham policeman had been a severe one, and at first it had been feared that he would recover, if at all, with his fine intellect dulled if not altogether shattered. But the best medical skill, aided by a fine constitution, and above all, the new impulse given his lately despondent spirits by the appearance at his bedside of Ruth Glidden, her eyes filled with love, and pity and resolve, all had combined to bring about good results, and so, one evening, not quite two months after that blow in the dark, he found himself sitting in an easy chair, very pale and much emaciated but, save for this, and his exceeding bodily weakness, quite himself again. Indeed a more buoyant and hopeful self than he had been for many a day, and with good reason.

At first, and for one week, his mind had been a blank, then delirium had claimed and swayed him, until one ​day the crisis came, and with it a sudden clearing of mind and brain.

Through it all Ruth had been beside him, and now she called the doctor aside and spoke with the grave frankness of a woman whose all is at stake, and who knows there is no time for formalities.

"Doctor, tell me the truth. He will know me now, and he must not see me unless—unless I tell him I have come to stay. Will a shock, such a shock, render his chances more critical? The surprise and——" She turned away her face. "Doctor, you know!"

Then the good physician, who had nursed her through her childish ills, and closed her father's eyes in death, put a fatherly hand upon her shoulder. "There must be absolutely no emotion," he said. "But a happy surprise, just now, if it comes with gentleness, and firmness—that tender firmness to which the weak so instinctively turns—will do him good, not harm. Only, it must be for just a moment, and he must not speak. My dear, I believe I can trust you."

He called away the nurse and beckoned Ruth to follow him. Then he went straight to the bedside, where the sick man lay, so pale and deathlike, beneath his linen bandages.

​"Robert," he said, slowly. "Listen, and do not speak. I bring you a friend who will not be denied; you know who it is. You must not attempt to speak, Rob, for your own sake. If I thought you would not obey me I would shut her out even now." And with the last word upon his lips he was gone and Ruth stood in his place.

Involuntarily the wounded man opened his lips, but she put a soft finger upon them, and shook her head. She was very pale, but the voice, which was the merest murmur, yet how distinct to his ears, was quite controlled.

"Robert, you are not to speak. I have promised that for us both. I have been near you since the first, and I am going to stay until—until I can trust you to others. And, Rob, you must get well for my sake. You must, dear, or you'll make me wear mourning all my days for the only lover I have ever had. Don't fail me, my dear." She bent above him, placed her soft, cool hand upon his own, pressed a kiss upon his brow, and the next moment the doctor stood in her place, and was saying, "Don't be uneasy, Rob, old man; that was a real live dream, which will come back daily, so long as you are good, and remember, sir, you have two tyrants now."

And so it proved.

​When Brierly was at last fit to be removed to that safe and comfortable haven—not too far from the doctor's watchful care—which they fictitiously named the South, Ruth bade him good-bye one day, with a tear in her eye, and a smile upon her lip.

"You will soon be a well man now," she said to him. "And when that time comes, and the tyrant Ferrars permits it, you will come to me, of course." And with the rare meaning smile he knew and loved so well, and so well understood, she left him, to bestow her cheering presence upon Hilda Grant and Glenville.

And now, on a fine midsummer night, thinner than of old, and paler, with a scar across his left temple, and a languor of body which he was beginning to find irksome because of the revived activity of the lately clouded and heavy brain, Brierly sat in a pleasant upper room of a certain hospitable suburban villa, the only south he had known since they bore him away from the Myers' home, and whirled him away from the city on a suburban train, to stop, within the same hour, and leave him, safely guarded, in this snug retreat.

"You see," the detective was saying, "I had found this series of tiny clues, and thought all was plain sailing, until that mysterious boy paid his visit to your brother's room and left almost as much as he ​took away. That forced me to reconstruct my theory somewhat, and set me to wondering just what status Miss Grant held in the game our unknown assassin was playing. For I will do the young lady, and myself, the justice to say that I never for a moment doubted her. That fling at her gave me, however, a key to the character of the unknown." He was silent a moment, then, "After all," he said, "it was you who gave me my first suggestion of the truth."

"How? when I had no conception of it?"

"By telling of that attack upon your brother the winter before his coming here."

"I do not recall it."

"I suppose not; but in telling me of your brother's career, before his going to Glenville, you spoke of an accident which occurred to him, an accident which was eventually the cause of his going to Glenville. I made a note of this, and, later, questioned Mr. Myers. He told me of the attack at the mouth of an alley. How two men assailed your brother, and only his presence of mind in shouting as he struck, and striking hard and with skilled fists, saved him from death at their hands; how he warded off, and held, the fellow with the bludgeon, but was cut by the other's knife. I might not have been so much impressed by these details, perhaps, had I not learned that your brother was ​returning from a visit of charity to the sick, a visit which he had paid regularly for some time. Then I thought I saw light upon the subject."

"Yes." Brierly bent toward the detective, a keen light in his eyes. "I have been very dull, Ferrars, but I have had time for much thinking of late. I think that, at last, I begin to understand."

"And what do you understand?" A slow smile was overspreading the detective's face.

"That my brother and I have had a common enemy. That nothing short of both our lives will satisfy him; that the attack upon Charley, nearly a year ago, was the beginning—that, having taken his life, they are now upon a still hunt for mine—and that, but for you, they would have completed their work that evening when, chafing, like the fool I was, under restraint, I set out alone, and met——"

"A policeman." Ferrars' lips were grave, but his eyes smiled. "It was a close squeak, Brierly. The fellow very nearly brained you. And now"—and he drew his chair closer, and his face at once became grave almost to sternness—"we want to end this game; there is too much risk in it for you."

"You need not fear for me, Ferrars. From this moment I go forward, or follow, as you will, blindly; you have only to command. What must I do?"

​"Prepare to go aboard the Lucania five days from date in the disguise of what do you imagine?"

"A navvy possibly."

"No. I know the boat's captain, luckily, and I know that a party of Salvation Army officers are to sail that day for England. We will go aboard, all of us, in the salvation uniform and doff it later, if we choose."

"You say all of us?"

"I mean Mrs. Myers, who goes to join her husband and see London and Paris; Miss Glidden, who goes because she wills to go and because she believes that Miss Grant can be best diverted from her sorrow, and strengthened for her future life, by such a journey, Miss Grant, ergo, and our two selves." He leaned back and watched his vis-à-vis narrowly from underneath drooping lashes. He was giving his client's docility a severe test, and he knew it.

As for Robert, he remained so long silent that the detective, relaxing his gaze, resumed—

"I won't ask you to take too much upon trust, Brierly. Our present position, briefly told, is this. We are nearing the climax, but we cannot force it. One point of the game remains still in the enemy's hands. And the scene is shifted to England—to London, to be literal. The next move must be made by the other side. It will be made over there, and ​we must be at hand when the card is played. If all ends as I hope and anticipate, your presence in London will be imperative, almost. As for the ladies, Miss Grant's presence may be needed, as a witness perhaps, and certainly nothing could be better for her than the companionship of her friend, Miss Ruth, and the motherly kindness of Mrs. Myers, just now."

Robert Brierly turned his face away, and clinched his hands in desperation. He was thinking of Ruth, and an inward battle was raging between strong love and stubborn pride.

"And now," went on the other, as if all unheeding, "concerning the disguises. I have told you of the person seen by our spies at the Glenville House, for a brief time?"

Brierly bowed assent.

"He, this man, was only described to me, but seen by Miss Grant."

"Oh!" Brierly started.

"Lately, we have received, through the good offices of Mr. Doran, a picture of this man—it's growing late and I'll give the details at another time—I have believed this man to be one of your enemies, quite possibly the one."

"One of them?"

"Yes. And large and muscular enough he is, to have been your assailant, and——"

​"And my brother's murderer?"

"In my opinion they are not the same. But we must not go into this. Some one has kept us—that is, yourself, Miss Grant and myself, in the character of her cousin—under constant watch, almost. There must have been tools, but this man I believe to be the chief, on this side."

"Great heavens! How many are there, then?"

"Honestly, I do not yet know. The answer to that is in Europe. But this man—he has been shadowed since Miss Grant saw him on Clark Street—has already sailed for England. My man escorted him, after a modest and retiring fashion, to New York, and saw him embark. I propose that we go east by different routes. The ladies one way, you and I by another. They will hardly imagine us all flitting by water, and their spies will hardly be prepared for a sea voyage, even should one of us be 'piped' to the wharf. Of one thing I must warn you; you are not to set foot in London, nor to put yourself in evidence anywhere as a tourist, until you are assured that you may walk abroad in safety. To know you were in England would be to render your opponents desperate, indeed."

"You have only to command. I am as wax in the potter's hand henceforth. And now I ask you on the eve of this long journey why my brother and myself are ​thus hunted. How we stand in the way of these enemies of ours I cannot imagine."

"That I am ready to tell you, since you ask no more. You stand between your enemies and a fortune."

"Impossible!"

"I knew you would say that. But wait." Ferrars rose abruptly. "I shall not see you again before we leave for New York," he said, taking up his hat. "Come with me across the way, I must say good-bye to the ladies; they——"

"Do they understand?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Myers and her two charges were pleasantly bestowed just across the street, in one of the cosy and tree-encircled cottages of the aristocratic little suburb, in which the party had found a retreat. And all three were still upon the broad piazza when the two men appeared.

No other occupants of the house were visible, and before long Robert Brierly found that, by accident or design, the detective, Mrs. Myers, and Hilda, had withdrawn to the further end of the long veranda, and that Ruth Glidden had crossed to his side, and now stood before him, leaning lightly against a square pillar, and so near that he could not well rise without disturbing her charming pose.

​Before he could open his lips she was speaking.

"Robert, don't get up. Please do not. There is something I must say to you. I have seen the trouble, the anxiety in your face to-night. I know what Mr. Ferrars has been saying to you; at least I can guess, and I understand."

"Ruth!"

"Don't speak. Let me finish, Rob. If I didn't know you so thoroughly, if the whole of your big, noble heart had not been laid bare to me, as never before, during your illness, I should not dare, would lack the courage to say what I will say, for your sake, as well as for mine." She caught her breath sharply, and before he could command the words he would have spoken, she hurried on.

"Don't think that I do not know how you look upon this journey abroad, in my company, and now——" She paused again. "This is very hard to say, Rob, and I am not saying it well, but you will not misunderstand me, I know that; and I can't lose your friendship, Rob, dear, and the pleasure your company will be to me, if we can set out understanding ourselves and each other. You have let Charlie's death and the money loss this search may bring you, crush out all hope, and you have been steeling yourself to give me up; to forget me. But do you think I will let you do this? I know your pride, ​dear. I love you for it. But why must it separate us utterly? You are not the only man in this world who must win his way first, and whose wife must wait. I have waited, and I shall wait, always if need be. But it need not be. You will be the King Cophetua to my beggar maid yet. Oh, I know. I am afraid of nothing but your horrible self doubt, your fear of being——"

"Of being called a fortune hunter, Ruth."

"Well, you shall not be called that, sir knight of the proud, proud crest. Listen! You must be to me the Robert of old; not avoiding me, but my friend who understands me. We are both free to go abroad, and with a chaperone, as we are going, would not be de rigueur otherwise; and this subject is not to be referred to again, until the quest upon which we are starting—yes, I say we—is at an end.

"Who knows what may happen between our going and our home-coming? At the worst, I am still your friend, and shall never be more to any other man." She was about to move away, but he sprang up and caught her hands.

"Ruth! You have given me new life. And you have shamed me. It is of you I have thought, when I have tried to tear myself away and leave you free to choose another."

"Robert, for shame. Shall you 'choose another' then?"

​"Never! You know that!"

"If I did not I should never have spoken as I have just now."

"But there are so many who might give you everything."

"There is only one who can give me my heart's desire."

"Ruth, my darling, if I were rich, or if you were poor, no man should ever win you from me. But the world must never call Ruth Glidden's husband a fortune hunter."

"It never shall. Never!"

"And so, you see——"

"I see the folly of what I have said. What do we care for dame Grundy? And why should you and I be foolish hypocrites, deceiving no one? In my heart of hearts I have been your promised wife always. I think I have the little ring with which we were betrothed when we were ten years old. We will go abroad as lovers, Rob, and if you cannot offer me a fortune—it must be a very large one to satisfy me—before we return, I shall give all mine to the London poor, and you will have to support me the rest of my days. What folly, Robert, what wickedness, to let mere money matters come between you and me!"

CHAPTER XXI.

"QUARRELSOME HARRY."

The Lucania had been in port forty-eight hours, and Mrs. Myers and her party had been snugly quartered in one of London's most charming rural nooks, at Hampton Court, with Robert Brierly close at hand, before Ferrars ventured to visit the city.

Mr. Myers had discreetly remained in London, going from thence to meet his friends at Hampton Court, but Ferrars, for reasons which he did not explain, went to the city, as soon as he had assured himself of the comfort and safety of his party, this assurance including the provision of a watchful aid, who kept guard whenever Robert Brierly, himself now well convinced of the need of caution, ventured abroad.

Leaving Mr. Myers thus to enjoy an evening with his wife and friends, Ferrars hastened to "the city," where every stone seemed familiar, and many faces were those ​of friends or foes, well known and well remembered. To escape recognition his own countenance had been simply but sufficiently hidden behind a disguise of snowy hair and rubicund visage, both assumed as soon as he had parted from the group at Hampton Court, for Ferrars realised that the battle was now on, and he had no idea of giving the foe the chance possibility of an encounter. He was well known at Scotland Yard, as well as to the chief of the department of police, and it was to one of these officials that he made his way, for he had two reasons of his own for hastening on, in advance of the party.

Not long before leaving the "States," he had received a dainty notelet. It could not have been called a letter. It came through the hands of Doctor Barnes, and it was signed, "Lotilia K. Jamieson."

It is late afternoon when Ferrars reaches Oxford Street, after his interview with several official personages, during which he has bestowed upon each a number of typewritten cards, bearing what seems to be a brief descriptive list, and as many photographs, faithful and enlarged copies of the "snap shot" furnished him by the hand of Samuel Doran.

He alights from an omnibus at the end of Regent Street, and stands, for a moment, looking down Oxford ​Street. He is not in haste, for he lets cabs and omnibuses rattle by him, or stand, waiting for fares, and walks slowly on and on. A mile and a quarter of shops, that is Oxford Street, but Ferrars foots it sturdily. Past the Circus, beyond the region of Soho, and he slackens his pace and consults a tiny memorandum book. Who ever saw Frank Ferrars produce a letter or card, for reference, in the streets of a crowded city? Then he smiles and paces on.

Bloomsbury. He is walking slowly now, and under his low-drawn hat his eyes are very alert.

And now he is in that portion of Bloomsbury where, earlier, very early in the century, the wealthy, and those of high degree resided. It is comfortable and middle class now, and our pedestrian passes a certain pleasant semi-detached house—not large, but eminently respectable—with a stealthy, lingering glance, pausing, before he has walked quite beyond it, as if to note some object of fleeting interest. Two or three times, within the hour, he passes that house, now on this side, now on that; once on the top of an omnibus, once in a cab, and driving very slowly, and as close as possible.

It is fairly dusk when he slowly ascends the well scrubbed steps, with the reluctant air of a man by no means sure of himself. He carries a small package beneath his arm, and a card between the fingers of his ​left hand, to which he shifts the package as he rings the bell.

"I beg your pardon, young Miss." It is a sour-faced damsel of uncertain age who melts perceptibly under this adjective. "Will you tell me if Mrs.—Mrs.——" He peers near-sightedly at the card he holds, and slowly pronounces a name.

"No, sir; this is not the place."

"But, doesn't the lady stop here, Miss? It's some'res in this here block, and somehow they've forgot the number, you see. Is there a lady guest maybe, or a boarder belike?"

But the maid, quite melted now, shakes her head, and tells him that beside her mistress, whom she names, and her mistress' niece, who stops with them, "off and on," there are no ladies in the house.

The detective blunders on down the street, and, when the lamps are lit he passes the house again. The lamps are lighted in the little dining room now, and through a window which projects upon the corner, he can see a table set for two. And now at last he is rewarded, for a maid enters and places something upon the table; a lady follows, glances at the table, walks to the window, and turns, with a quick, imperious gesture, toward the maid; a little lady, with a fair face, pale, fleecy hair and wearing a flowing silken gown of some soft violet shade. ​She sweeps past the maid and seats herself at the head of the table, while the young person—it is the same who attended so lately at the door—comes forward to close the curtain. Slowly it is drawn together, shutting in the lights, the table and the violet-clad figure, but not until the watcher outside has caught a glimpse of a man, tall and, yes, handsome, in a dark fierce fashion, who is entering at the door on the other side of the room.

The watcher passes on. He has seen, once more, the woman who has, according to his own confession, aroused in him "a profound interest." And he has also seen, whom and what? A brother? A lover? A rival, perhaps? Ferrars hails a passing cab now, and is driven swiftly towards his room in the Strand, and as he rolls along, this comment, which may mean much or little, passes his lips.

"So my little lady has doffed her mourning. I wonder what that may mean?"

"I'm very sorry, Ferrars, but I fear there's a great disappointment in store for you."

"A disappointment! How? And in what respect, Mr. Myers?"

Ferrars was seated opposite Mr. Myers in the office of Wendell Haynes, solicitor, in Middle Temple Lane, where he had hastened on the morning after his little ​adventure in Bloomsbury, and so prompt and eager had he been that he had encountered the American lawyer at the very threshold, Mr. Myers having just arrived, with equal haste and promptness, from Hampton Court.

Solicitor Haynes and the English detective were not unknown to each other, and when they had exchanged greetings, the solicitor left the others together in his inner office. He was, by this time, fully acquainted with all the facts, so far as they were known to Mr. Myers, and he left them with a promise to rejoin them soon, when they should have compared notes and gone over the ground already known to the busy solicitor.

There was a look of suppressed eagerness upon the face of Ferrars, as he seated himself opposite the shrewd American lawyer. His face, his manner, his very silence and alertness as he held himself erect upon his chair, a picture of calm force, long suppressed, but now out of leash and ready for anything—anything except inaction; and that, his very attitude seemed to say was past.

Mr. Myers had waited a moment, after they were left alone together, for Ferrars to speak the first word, but the latter only sat still and waited, and the lawyer, with characteristic directness, spoke straight to the point. He had what he felt to be bad news to impart, and he did not delay or play with words in the doing it.

But if he had expected disappointment or any change ​to cross that keenly questioning face, he looked in vain. Ferrars only sat leaning slightly toward him, waited a moment, and repeated his last words.

"In what manner? How disappointed?" And then, as the lawyer still hesitated, he went on. "You find the case as it should be, eh?"

"The case! Oh, yes!"

"Are there any flaws?"

"No," broke in the lawyer.

"Any unexpected delays?"

"No."

"Any new claimants?"

"No, Ferrars. The Hugo Paisley will case is one of the simplest and clearest of its kind. The last incumbent surely must have had a wonderfully clear idea of how to do the thing he meant to do. Once the claim is proven, and he makes that work easy, there need be no delays, no chancery, no holding back for big fees. The agents in the case are paid according to their expedition, and have every incentive to haste. With the proofs in hand the heir could step at once into his fortune, a matter of £200,000."

"An American millionaire, eh?" Ferrars smiled. "That, then, is quite as it should be, especially as the young lady is here. Well, then, you advertised, according to your report?"

​"Yes, we advertised. A very craftily worded document calculated to arouse the dilatory claimants to prompt action."

"And, did it not?"

"It did, yes."

"Then, in heaven's name why must I be disappointed in any way?"

"Because I fear the claimant—we have seen but one—is not the person you hoped to find."

Ferrars actually smiled. "Describe the person," he said.

Without speaking, the lawyer held out to him across the table a visiting card, a lady's card, correct according to the London mode of the hour, and bearing a name which Ferrars read aloud with no sign of emotion in his face.

"Mrs. Gaston Latham." He looked up with the card still between his fingers. "Is she the solitary heir?"

"No; there are two children; girls of twelve and nine."

"And her proofs?"

"Seem to be perfect, making her the next in line of succession after——"

"After the Brierlys, of course."

Mr. Myers nodded and the detective looked down again at the address upon the card.

​"Lives in the city, I see! Are the children with her here?"

"Only the younger, I am told. The elder has 'an infirmity,' and is at present in an institution. It seems a great cross to the mother; in fact her anxiety and distress, because of this child, have made her almost indifferent about this business of the fortune. In short"—and here the lawyer glanced askance at his vis-à-vis—"I'm afraid she is not the—the sort of claimant you have expected to see. And there seems to be no one of the other sex in the family."

"Well, well!" Ferrars threw himself back in the big office chair, assuming an easy and almost careless attitude.

"Tell me all about her, Myers. Is she old, or young? Handsome or not?"

The face of the lawyer was overspread with a cynical smile. He had expected to see disappointment, consternation, perhaps, in the face of the detective, when he heard that the English claimant to the Paisley fortune was a woman lorn and lone. His heart was in the work they were engaged upon. Robert Brierly's interests were his own; but, still, this cool, emotionless detective, whom he liked well, had more than once piqued and puzzled him. He believed that Ferrars was quite prepared to meet with, and hear of, quite another sort ​of claimant, and he was now looking to see him at last stirred out of his provoking calm.

"Mrs. Gaston Latham is not a claimant to whom one could object, upon the ground of unfitness. She would make a very handsome and gracious dispenser of the Paisley thousands."

"Too bad that she will never get them!" And Ferrars smiled.

"She is a woman of medium height, and rather—well—plump, and while her hair is snowy white, she does not look a day over forty. She has the fine, fresh English colour, blue eyes, that require the aid of strong eyeglasses, and a voice that is very high-pitched for an Englishwoman, and that sounds, I am sorry to say—for she's really a very intelligent and winning little lady—somewhat affected at times. She dresses in soft grays and pale lavenders, as you may be interested to know." And here the lawyer smiled broadly.

"That," commented Ferrars, with no cessation of his own gravely indifferent manner, "for a 'plump' woman, is a great mistake. A plump person should never assume light colours." And then the eyes of the two men met, and over each face there slowly crept a smile that grew into a laugh.

"Upon my soul, Ferrars," exclaimed the elder, "I believe you have heard of this Mrs. Latham!"

​"Not to make a mystery of it, Mr. Myers, I'll explain that I have heard of Mrs. Latham. But, I give you my word, I did not look to find her the claimant. You have heard us, some, or all, speak of Mrs. Jamieson!"

The lawyer nodded and a smile of meaning crossed his face.

"Well, I have lately learned that she might be found at a certain number in Bloomsbury, and addressed, in case of her temporary absence, in care of Mrs. Gaston Latham, an old family friend."

"I see!" The lawyer was silent a moment. Then he looked the detective frankly in the face. "To be perfectly candid with you, Ferrars," he said, "I have thought that you looked to see a different sort of claimant, more than one perhaps, and that this lady could not, by any possibility, be the expected one. I fancied this would trouble, perhaps hinder, if not quite balk you."

"Honestly, Myers, I have wondered not a little what sort of claimant I should meet, and I am neither surprised nor disappointed. I see what is in your mind; you looked to see the conclusion of the game here and soon, eh?"

"I admit it."

"And I hoped it. I do hope it. We must strike our ​final blow now if ever. We can depend upon Mr. Haynes."

"Entirely."

"And you have fully enlightened him?"

"To the extent of my own knowledge?"

"Then let's call him in, and I will put my cards upon the table. We shall need his help, but I'll explain that later."

When the English solicitor had joined them, Ferrars briefly reviewed the events surrounding and connected with the death of Charles Brierly, and the attempt upon Robert's life; and when he was sure that they understood each other, thus far, and that the English lawyer was deeply interested in the case and had committed himself to it, he summed up the situation thus.

"You will see, of course, that I might make a bold stroke and arrest my suspects at once; or, at least, as soon as we could lay our hands upon them, but the case is a complicated one, and having it in my power to make our quarry commit themselves altogether, I do not intend to leave them a loophole of escape. I have not been entirely open with you; you must take my word for some things. I have put the Scotland Yard men on the lookout for our man; I do not know his name, but I think they will have no trouble in finding him, by acting upon my hints. There is much which even I do ​not understand, in his connection with the case. I do not believe him to be the master spirit, and I want to let him have his fling over here."

"Do you mean," broke in the solicitor, "that you do not intend to arrest him, as soon as found?"

"He must be kept under close espionage, when traced, but so long as he does not leave London, he must be left quite free to come and go at will. There is much that is still hazy, concerning his appearance in Glenville, and I look to him to lead me to another—to the other, in fact."

"And," urged the solicitor, "do you feel safe in venturing this? May he not shun those places?"

"Listen! The man's name I do not know, but I know what he is. There are plotting villains in this world, who might scheme forever and still be often penniless. This man is a gambler. In Chicago he pawned the watch stolen from Charles Brierly's room, knowing that there was risk in so doing, but desperate for the money it would bring. He won soon after, and aware of danger ahead, for he had good reason to think himself followed over there, he at once redeemed his pledge. He does not dream that we are here, and the finances at headquarters, I have reason to think, are running low. To play he must have money, and when he has lost he will either pledge or sell the remainder of the jewels stolen ​from the writing desk. They were of considerable value, as I have discovered."

"Ah!" Mr. Myers looked up quickly.

"Oh, that's no secret. Hilda Grant saw the jewels, and knew their value."

"May I ask why you presume that all the stolen jewels are in this man's possession?" asked the solicitor.

"Because they were stolen, in the first place, not for plunder's sake, but to mislead; and the party who took them lost no time, I am sure, in passing them on, and out of the town. It is hardly likely they would have divided them."

"Then you look upon this man as in truth little more than a cat's paw?"

"In some respects, yes. He does not take this view, however, and now I want to hear all about your interview with this lady, Mrs. Gaston Latham."

"According to your instructions," said Mr. Myers, "I remained in the background. Mr. Haynes was the spokesman."

Ferrars turned toward the solicitor, who began at once.

"There is really very little to tell. Of course I quite understand that the claimant was to be held off, and the next interview to take place in your presence."

​Ferrars shook his head. "I fear we must change our plans somewhat. The fact is," here he glanced up and met the eye of Mr. Haynes, a queer smile lighting his own, "I have found just now, that I knew a lady who seems to be a friend of this Mrs. Gaston Latham, and an inmate of her house in Bloomsbury. Now it might be a little awkward for me to appear before my—the lady in question, as the opponent of her friend. In fact, I must not appear in the matter—not yet, at any rate. And, upon my word, Mr. Myers, since our friend has taken up the rôle of Spokesman-in-chief, you and I will both stand aside, just at first. May we count upon you?"

"I shall need some coaching, of course," suggested the solicitor.

"Of course; and that you shall have at once. But first, when is she to call again?"

"When I give the word."

"Give it at once, then; to-morrow at 2 p.m. Tell her to come alone. You can arrange for us to hear the interview, I dare say?"

The solicitor swung about in his big chair. "You see those two doors?" he asked, quite needlessly pointing at the two doors, at opposite corners of the inner wall, "They open upon my private chamber of horrors. Formerly there was a partition, and two smaller rooms. ​The partition has been removed. In the morning I will have my man move that tall bookcase across the door at the right. The door, behind it, can then stand open, and you can hear very well. I will have my desk and the chairs moved nearer that corner. Will that do?"

"Excellently; only I must see the lady in some way."

"Then, if you will come in some slight disguise, you can sit at my clerk's desk, over by that window, with your back to the light. I will dismiss you, and you can go out to join Mr. Myers, through the left-hand door."

They inspected the inner room, and Ferrars, gauging the distance with his quick eye, made a suggestion or two regarding the placing of the desks, and the visitor's chair, and then they sat down to discuss the part the solicitor must take in the coming interview.

That evening when Ferrars strolled into his room after an early dinner, he found a note from a certain police inspector, in whose charge he had left the hunt, or rather, the watch for the suspected stranger. The note contained a summons, brief and peremptory, and he hastened to present himself before Inspector Hirsch.

"We have found your man," were the inspector's first words, when the detective was left alone with him. "And it was an easy trick, too, for all your fears to the contrary. I tell you, Ferrars, when a sport who lives ​only to gamble and bet on horses, comes back to London after any long absence, he's sure to go to one of a dozen flush places I can name, as soon as he can get there. And, if he's heeled he'll go to them all. Just give him time. I didn't neglect the houses of mine uncle, but I also sent a squad around to these other places."

"And you found him?"

"We found him. And that's not all. We have found a name for him."

"Good! What is it?"

"He goes by the name of 'Quarrelsome Harry' among his kind. Harry Levey is the way he writes it."

Ferrars pondered a moment "M—m—I'm not surprised," he said finally. "I was sure he was that kind. What's his specialty besides being quarrelsome?"

"Cards, and crooked bookmaking, I fancy. But Smithson, who seems to have known him of old, says he's up to most sorts of shady business, when his luck's down."

And the inspector went on describing the search for "Quarrelsome Harry" who had been "spotted" at a time when he was in a fair way to prove his right to his sobriquet. For he had been losing money all the previous night, and had sought his room in a dingy house in Soho, in a very black mood.

Here, so the shadow had reported, "Quarrelsome ​Harry" had remained until late noonday, emerging then to lunch at a coffee-house, and to take his way, for what purpose the watcher could only guess, to Houndsditch, where he seemed quite at home among the Jews in several cafés and "club rooms," where he tarried for a greater or shorter time, and seemed to be looking for some one—some one whom he did not find, it would seem, for he left the neighbourhood as he came, alone and with a lowering face.

"Looking for a loan, I'll wager," declared Ferrars. "By to-morrow he'll be visiting my uncle. I'll have to leave him to your men to-night, I suppose, Hirsch, but to-morrow I will go on guard myself."

He made a note of the Soho street and number, where Harry Levey had lodged, and then he took out his cigar case and the two men sat down together to talk about London, and compare notes. For they were old acquaintances, and could find much to say, one to another.

An hour later, when Ferrars arose to go, the inspector looked at his watch.

"By Jove! Frank, you don't mind my calling you that, eh? It seems like old times, half a dozen years ago. Say, it's almost the hour for the Swiss to report. He's on duty now looking after your man; wait till he comes in. Hobson must already have gone to ​relieve him, if he can find him. Harry was airing himself along the embankment when last heard from."

It was nearing ten o'clock, but Ferrars resumed his seat and his cigar very willingly, and Inspector Hirsch set out a very pretty decanter of something which he described, while pouring it into the glasses, as both light and pleasant.

At half-past ten "the Swiss," as rank an Englishman as ever ignored his h's, came in beaming.

He had left "'Arry," as he familiarly called the man he had been set to guard, in a front seat in the gallery of the Vaudeville theatre in the Strand, and Hobson was sitting just three seats away, and nearest the "halley."

"E's got a sort of green lookin' young duffer with 'im," went on the Swiss, "and they seem to be goin' to 'ave a night of it."

Ferrars got up quickly. "Come out with me, inspector," he said. "I may want you to call off your man. And, say, let me have one of your badges. It may come handy."

CHAPTER XXII.

IN NUMBER NINE.

As the inspector and Ferrars approached the theatre they were obliged to slacken their pace, for, although the performance must have been well on its way, there was a crowd about the entrance.

"It's a first night for some new 'stars,' now that I think of it, and you'll find a lot of the sporting gentry here whenever a new and pretty face, that has had the right kind of advertising, is billed. That accounts for our friend's presence here, of course," said the inspector.

They made slowly their way toward the entrance, and as they reached it, and were about to pass within the brilliantly lighted vestibule, Inspector Hirsch grasped his companion's arm and pulled him back within the shadow of a friendly bill board.

"H'sh!" he whispered. "Here's Hobson!" He ​drew Ferrars still further out of the crowd. "He must have lost his man, or else—hold on, Ferrars; I'll speak to him." And he glided into the crowd and Ferrars saw him pause by the side of a flashily-dressed young fellow, who seemed utterly absorbed in trying to revive a smouldering cigar stump. He gave no sign of recognition as the inspector paused beside him, and seemed engrossed with his cigar and his own thoughts, but Inspector Hirsch was back in a moment with a grin upon his face.

"Your man has tired of the Vaudeville," he said, "and Hobson got close enough behind him—the other chap's still with him, too—to hear them planning to go on to the Savoy for a short time. Harry's evidently doing the theatres with his 'young duffer,' as the Swiss calls the fellow, and will probably pluck him if nothing intervenes." He looked hard at Ferrars. "My man won't lose sight of them. Want to go on to the Savoy?"

"By all means," replied Ferrars, and they set out, noting, as they skirted the crowd, that Hobson was no longer visible.

Crossing the street, they hastened their steps, and upon arriving at the Savoy, took up their station near the entrance once more. The crowd here was not dense, and they had not long to wait before two ​men approached from the direction of the Vaudeville, walking slowly, and entered the vestibule of the Savoy.

The taller of the two was broad shouldered, dark and handsome, after a coarse fashion, while the other was smaller, with a weak face and uncertain manner. Both were in evening dress, and when they entered the theatre Ferrars and the inspector followed.

"I can stay with you an hour longer," said the latter. "Then I must go about my own affairs."

Ferrars nodded. He was watching "Quarrelsome Harry" closely, and after a time, as that personage began to look about as if in search of some expected face, he procured an opera glass, and with its aid began to sweep the house.

Then, suddenly, he started, and, after a long look at a certain point in the dress circle, he turned quickly toward the inspector.

"Do you know any one in authority here?" he asked.

"I know the head usher over there; or, rather, he knows me."

"That will do. Just call him, won't you? Introduce me. Tell him I'm after a crook who is up to mischief here, and ask him to help me."

After a time this was accomplished, and soon after the inspector took his leave.

​And now came the entre-acte, and a number of ladies left their places and went, some to the cloak-room, some to the foyer. The two men in whom Ferrars was interested went out among many others, and Ferrars followed. In the refreshment room they took places at the side, and the detective, contrary to his usual plan, passed them, and took a place midway between that occupied by the two men and a certain table, further down, where a party of six were seated.

To the waiter, who came to serve him, Ferrars said: "Send me your chief waiter," and slipped a coin into his willing hand.

When the chief waiter came, the two exchanged some whispered sentences, and then, as the man withdrew, our detective addressed himself to his light repast. He had been careful to keep himself unseen, so far as Harry Levey was concerned; and he had now chosen his seat behind a pillar, which hid him from view, while he still could, by moving slightly, look around it.

It was while taking one of his frequent peeps around this pillar that Ferrars saw "Quarrelsome Harry" tear a leaf from a small pocket-book and write a few words upon it, doing this in the most unobtrusive manner possible, with the bit of paper upon his knee.

Since they had exchanged those few whispered words ​together, Ferrars and the head waiter had not lost sight of each other, and now a slight movement of the brows brought the man to Ferrars' table.

"Now," whispered the detective, "and be sure you are not observed."

The man nodded and passed on, seeming to scan, with equal interest, each table as he passed it. Nevertheless, he saw a note slipped into the hand of a vacant faced young waiter, and a few words of instruction given. Then the young man turned away, and began to move slowly toward the opposite side of the room.

A little beyond Ferrars' table he encountered the head waiter, present arbiter of his destiny.

"Kit," said this personage, in a low tone, "slip that note you carry into my hand and wait behind the screen yonder until I give it back to you. Quick! No nonsense, man; and mum's the word!"

As between a stranger with a liberal tip, and the august commander of the dining-room corps, Kit did not hesitate, and a moment later the head waiter dropped the note into Ferrars' palm with one hand, while he placed a bottle of wine beside his plate with the other.

Putting the bit of paper between the two leaves of the menu card, Ferrars boldly read its pencilled message.

​

"Drive to the Café Royal. Ask to be shown to No. 9. I will join you there soon."

A moment later this note was placed, by Kit, beside the plate of the one for whom it was intended. The next, Ferrars, having tossed off his glass of light wine, arose and sauntered out of the refreshment room.

But he did not return to the theatre. Instead, he took a cab and was driven to the Café Royal.

Here again he sought out a person in authority, to whom he exhibited his star, and a card from Inspector Hirsch, and was at once shown to No. 8.

"If questions are asked," he said, as he slipped a goodly fee into the hand of authority, "remember that No. 8 is vacant, but is engaged for an hour later."

Left to himself, Ferrars moved a chair close to the wall between himself and number nine. It was but a flimsy barrier of wood and he nodded his approval, turned down the jet of gas, until it was the merest speck, and sat himself down to wait. But not for long; soon he heard the next door open, a sweeping, rustling sound, and the scraping of a chair. Then a bright light flashed up, the door closed, and all was still for a short time.

Then, again the door opened, there was a heavy step, low voices, and Ferrars knew that he might, if he would, ​lay his hand upon those whom he had sought so long, and, for a time, it had seemed, so hopelessly.

"Are we quite alone here, do you suppose?" It was a man's voice, strong and somewhat gruff. "Let us see." And he rang the bell. The man who had admitted Ferrars, and who had no mind to fall out with the police, responded, and at once showed conclusively that the adjoining rooms, Nos. 8 and 10, were quite deserted, although, he admitted, he had locked No. 8 in order to secure it for a party at midnight; whereupon wine was ordered and he was at once dismissed.

"Well," began the heavier voice again, "why in the name of goodness haven't you pushed things more? I told you, from the first, that all was safe. There will be no crossing the big pond now. How long do you mean to dally?"

"We can't dally now," replied the lighter voice. "Didn't you see the notice in the papers? They are calling for the heirs. I don't understand it, but they tell me that unless we come forward now, the matter will be referred to some other court, and then there must be a long delay. No, I must produce those papers now, and if there should be any question, any flaw——"

"Pshaw!"

​"Or if they should call for further proof of identity, you know. Suppose some one should be found, at the last moment, acquainted with her!"

"Bosh! How foolish!"

"Or who remembered me!"

"I tell you this is folly! Latham's first wife died so long ago, and at a Swedish spa. And she never had many friends. As for relatives, well, we know there are none now."

"Sometimes I fear the children will remember; that it will all come back to them, some day."

"I tell you this is simply idiotic; the time has come, and everything is in train. You have all the papers, certificate of marriage, copy of will, and who is to prove that the first Mrs. Latham died, and that she was the last of the Paisley line, on this side, or the other? You were married abroad, you have all her family papers and her jewels. Her children call you mother."

"And hate me!"

"Well, that won't cut any figure. Besides, we must have money. You and I have put our little all into this scheme. How much longer can we live decently unless you claim this estate soon? I must have money! Do you mean to see your brother starve?"

"Hush! You are not my brother, remember that; only my brother-in-law."

​"All right. How lucky that Latham's brother never came back. Now, what did you especially want to say to-night?"

"This. I must meet those lawyers to-morrow."

"Oh! And I as nearest male kin, must be your escort, and support you through the trying ordeal."

"Not at all. I am especially requested to come alone."

"The d——!"

"But they will want corroborative testimony, and I want to beg of you not to take anything to-morrow, and not to stay out the rest of the night. Much depends upon the impression we make. And if we should fail——"

"We can't fail; or you can't. Aren't you next-of-kin?"

Ferrars got up and crept noiselessly to the door. He had heard enough, and he had much to do. A new enquiry to open up. He knew that he should find Hobson, who had not been dismissed, outside and near, and he meant to leave "Quarrelsome Harry" to him once more.

"Look after him sharp, Hobson," he said, when he had found the man in the outer room. "And ask the inspector to have a warrant ready in the morning. We must arrest him to-morrow. He is to be taken for ​conspiracy and attempted murder. That will do for a beginning." And leaving the pair in No. 9 to their plotting, and to the watchful care of Hobson, Ferrars hastened from the place.

CHAPTER XXIII.

TWO INTERVIEWS.

And now let us turn the clock back a few hours, that we may relate how Hilda and Ruth made the well-laid plans of Ferrars of no effect, so far as himself and another were concerned.

Mr. Myers had left the ladies of his party safe in their snug quarters at Hampton Court, and went early to the city to meet Ferrars, as has already been related; but if he expected them to remain in statu quo on such a day, and in easy reach of Bond Street, it speaks ill for his knowledge of women, especially of Ruth Glidden, who knew her London well, and who—when Mrs. Myers began to long to see the inside of Howells and James, and their royal array of painted and other rare china, and Hilda looked yearningly over the guide-books for the city—took matters into her own hands.

​There was no reason why they should not go to town, especially, so she privately informed Mrs. Myers, as Hilda was moping. She could guide them anywhere where they might wish to go.

And this is how the three ladies came to be seen at Marshall and Snelgrove's, linen drapers, so called; at Redmayne's and Redfern's, and at Jay's, for Hilda's sombre bedecking. Jay's has been called the "mourning warehouse" of the world, not because Jay keeps on tap a perennial and unfailing supply of tears, but because "all they (feminine) that mourn" may be suitably clad—at enormous expense, by the way—by Jay and Co.

And here it was that our little party, sweeping into one of the superb parlours where models display Jay's sombre wares, came face to face with Mrs. Jamieson, who, seated upon a broad divan, was gazing at a little blonde, of her own size and colouring, who displayed for her benefit a flowing tea-gown of soft, black silk, lighted up here and there with touches of gleaming white.

Of course there were greetings and exclamations, and such converse as may be held in so public a place; and Ruth, who, somehow, made herself spokesman for the party, exclaimed that they had "just run over for that little outing, and because Hilda needed the change. ​Oh, yes, they were well escorted; Mr. Myers was with them, and also Mr. Grant."

At the name, which was the only one by which she knew Ferrars, Mrs. Jamieson flushed and paled, and the smile with which she received this news was slightly tremulous. And then she told them how she was stopping, for a short time, with a friend in Bloomsbury. Her husband's business affairs, that had called her so suddenly back to England, were now almost settled. And then she should leave London for a time. She had been thinking of a place in Surrey; she hoped to be in possession soon, and then surely they would not return too soon for a visit to her among the Surrey Downs? And where were they stopping?

Upon which Ruth confided the fact that they were not yet in permanent quarters. They must be settled soon; however, meantime, etc., etc., etc.

They parted soon, and it was only when they were riding homeward that it occurred to them that Robert Brierly's name had not been spoken, and that Ferrars, perhaps, would not be best pleased to know of their unpremeditated excursion.

As for the little widow, she went back to Bloomsbury in a state of excitement unusual for her.

To know that "Ferriss Grant" was in London, and that she might see him soon, set her pulses beating, and ​her brain teeming with plans for their meeting. What had brought him to London just now? What, indeed, save herself? Unless—and here she paled, and her little hands were clenched till the black gloves burst across the dainty palms—unless it were Ruth Glidden.

What was Ruth Glidden to the Grants? she asked herself futilely, and why were they together? And then for ten minutes Mrs. Jamieson wished she had never seen Ferriss Grant.

"I was very well content until then," she assured herself. "And my future seemed all arranged; and now——" she longed to meet him, and yet—

"If he had but waited, or if I had not been so hesitating! Now I must go on, and he must not know. A month later and I might have received them all in my sweet Surrey home, have met him with full hands, and there would have been no need of explanation, while now!" She struck her hands together, and set her lips in firm lines. "I must see him once, and then we need not meet until all is arranged. If I only knew where to send a note."

She had been absent since luncheon, and upon her arrival at home she found this brief note awaiting her:

"Mrs. Jamieson.

"Dear Madam,—Being in London for a short ​time only, and with little leisure, I take the liberty of asking if I may call upon you in the morning, at the unfashionable hour of eleven o'clock?

"Yours respectfully,⁠
"Ferriss Grant."

It was late when she reached Bloomsbury, and she had little time to dress for dinner and the evening, for she was going out again, but she replied to this note, bidding him come, and assuring him of his welcome at any hour. Then, reluctantly, and with a look of distaste, amounting almost to repugnance upon her face, she began to dress for the evening.

When Ferrars reached his rooms, after leaving the café, his lips were set, and his eyes gleamed dangerously, for a little time he paced the floor, and then, impelled by some thought, he looked to see if any letters had arrived during his absence. Yes, there they were, half a dozen of them. He glanced at their superscriptions, and then opened a little perfumed and black-bordered envelope. It was Mrs. Jamieson's reply to his note of the afternoon, and he read it and put it down slowly.

"I shall be prompt," he said to himself, "to keep that appointment, and I wonder whether its outcome will make me more or less her friend. If it will alter or ​modify my plans; and if, having met this once I shall have the courage, the hardihood to meet her again, and to say what I must say if we meet." He put down the little note and took up the one next in interest.

The handwriting was that of Ruth Glidden, and the stationery that of a fashionable Piccadilly dressmaker.

"Dear Mr. F."—so ran the note—

"I am aware that you did not wish us, any of us, to be seen of men in London until certain things were accomplished, and I take upon myself all the blame of the little journey we, Mrs. Myers, Hilda, and myself, took this afternoon. We felt quite safe in visiting a few shops 'for ladies only,' but at the third we met Mrs. Jamieson. This may, or may not, be of moment to you. At all events, I have eased my conscience, and Hilda's, by letting you know. Nothing of any moment was said on either side, and no questions were asked.

"Yours penitently,⁠
"Ruth G."

Over this womanlike note Ferrars wrinkled his brows, and finally smiled.

"I had not meant that they should meet until—but pshaw! What does it matter? Everything seems urging me on and shaping my course. So be it! It is ​time for the last stroke, and to-morrow, before this hour, I shall be a free man, or a failure."

Ferrars was prompt in his appearance at the Bloomsbury cottage, and Mrs. Jamieson had been for a long half-hour awaiting him alone in the little drawing-room Her face was somewhat pale, and there was a hint of agitation in her greeting, and a shade of gravity in his.

She talked of Hilda, and was full of pleasure at their meeting; and by and by she spoke of Ruth, her beauty, her grace, and style. Was it true that she was an heiress? And was she not, in some way, related to Miss Hilda and himself. Or perhaps to the Brierlys?

It was the first mention of that name by either, and Ferrars, looking into her eyes, answered:

"She bore the same relation to Robert Brierly that Hilda bore to Charles. They had been lovers since childhood."

"How sad, strange, and romantic! How pitiful!"

"The sadness outweighs the romance, and it is strange that the same hand should have struck at the happiness of both their friends. I have asked myself," he went on musingly, "what would be the fate of the destroyer of so much happiness, if these two girls could be made judge and jury, with the slayer at their mercy."

​"Ugh!" The lady shuddered and turned her face away. "The thought is unnatural!"

"I don't know; women have been dread enemies before now, and are generally good haters. They make great criminals, too. But I fancy a woman must always betray——"

"Mercy!" She crossed the room suddenly to change the position of a translucent screen through which the sun had begun to filter. "You are positively gruesome, Mr. Grant! Let us change the subject. Or, first let me ask if they have found any trace of the cr— the person?"

"The clues have been very unsatisfactory for the most part. But the ladies both hope to see justice done yet. We all hope it, in fact."

"And what is most lacking?"

"From the first, the motive seemed most difficult to discover. But we won't dwell upon this longer now, Mrs. Jamieson."

"Ah! And I was just getting up courage to ask you to tell me what had been done, what progress had been made; I was so near to being a witness, you know, and——"

"And of course you are interested, I quite understand that. If you really care to hear, Mrs. Jamieson, I will tell you the whole story when next we meet. ​It is quite interesting. I will tell you that and other things." He arose and stood before her. "I must not tarry now. Shall you be at liberty this afternoon?"

"I am so sorry. I am promised to my hostess. She thinks I live too secluded a life. But I am about to make a change." She brightened visibly as she told of her Surrey prospects, and her hope of seeing his party, and himself, there. And then her smile faded.

"I fear I may not see you again for at least a fortnight. I have promised Mrs. Latham, my hostess, that I would go over to Paris with her. She has been very good to me," she faltered. "How long shall you remain in England?" she added.

"More than a fortnight at least."

"I shall see you again?"

"Mrs. Jamieson, never doubt it." He was drawing on a glove, as he uttered the words, and across the busy fingers he looked into her eyes. "It was to see you that I came to England, and so——" he bowed low, "till we meet." He caught up his hat and stick, and before she could put out a hand had bowed himself from the room, and she heard his quick receding step across the little vestibule.

For many moments after, she sat where she had sunk down at his sudden going, and presently the slow ​tears fell upon the hands that supported her bowed face.

For years she had been an unhappy woman, living an unloved, unloving life. Then ambition and hope had taken hold of her mind, and she had tested herself, and found, in that small body, the strength to dare much, and to risk much; and now—how she thrilled at the thought—wealth, success, and love; all would come to her together. What else could his words mean? She had only to be courageous and firm for a little while. To be patient for a few more days, and then—— She sprang to her feet and flung her arms aloft. She wanted to shout for triumph. "Victory!" she said aloud. "Is there another woman in all the world who can say that she has conquered fate, and gained all the good she has worked and wished for?"

And just then, the maid's voice broke in upon her dream.

"Madam, the charwoman is here for the money. Do you still wish me to give her the little suit?"

The woman turned as suddenly as if Nemesis had spoken.

"Yes!" she said, and the voice was husky, and the face almost terror stricken.

"Ruth."

​Robert Brierly came up the piazza steps, where Ruth sat alone, and dropped upon the topmost one, at her feet. "I have just received a note from Ferrars."

Ruth looked up from her bit of needlework. There was a note of suppressed excitement in his tone, which she was quick to observe.

"He seems to have changed his mind," Brierly went on, "and bids me come up with Myers."

"To-day?" The work fell from her hands.

"Now. In half an hour."

"But Robert, after all his caution!"

"Let me read the note, dear," he said, unfolding the sheet he had held in his hand. "It is very brief and pointed:

"'Dear Brierly,—Come up with Myers, and be sure that you are not observed when you enter Haynes' office. He will know what to do with you. If I have not been an awful bungler—and I don't think I have this time—you will stand a free man to-night, able to go up and down the earth without menace from the assassin's knife, and will have come into your own, which means a fortune.

"'Ferrars.'"

"Ruth," he spoke softly, "Do you know what that means?"

​"Better than you do, perhaps." She spoke hurriedly, as if to gain time, and her cheeks were already aflame. "Your mind was so entirely set upon finding Charlie's murderer, Rob, that they thought it best not to risk a new anxiety by telling you too much about the other; besides, there could be nothing certain, you know, until Mr. Myers had investigated. You had a hint of it."

"Oh, to be sure. And I have not been quite blind to their kindly cunning. Will it be a very great fortune, Ruthie?" He caught her hand, and held it fast.

"Very!"

"Because if it is, I intend to come back and lay it all at your feet, formally, abjectly, and with utmost speed."

Ruth wrestled away the imprisoned hand and gave her chair a backward push.

"Robert Brierly, if you dare to come to me and offer me a fortune, a hateful old English fortune—that I despise; if you only ask me to accept you after you are sure of that money, I won't! I will not! Never!"

"Ruthie!" She sprang up, but he was before her. "Oh, you can't escape now. I intend to propose to you this minute. I'll run no risks, after such a threat as that. Ruth, if you run away, I will shout it after you, and Mrs. Myers and Hilda are half way down the stairs now. Quick, Ruth, dear, will you marry me? I sha'n't let you go until you say yes."

​And then, in spite of herself, Ruth's laughter bubbled over.

"You stupid! As if we hadn't been engaged for years! At least I have."

Half an hour later when Mr. Myers and Brierly came out upon the piazza together they found Ruth awaiting them there, equipped for a journey.

"Why, Ruth," said the lawyer, "are you going to the city?"

"I am going with you!" the girl replied firmly. "You need not argue. I mean to go. And Mr. Ferrars will not object. He will need me."

CHAPTER XXIV.

MRS. GASTON LATHAM.

Solicitor Wendell Haynes sat at his desk, at half past two, seemingly busy, while across the room, at a smaller desk, sat a second person, with his shoulder toward the outer door, and a screen partially concealing him. From the inner room came the low hum of voices. At the side of the room where the clerk's desk stood, and the tall bookcase towered before the concealed door, the curtains were lowered; but there was a strong light upon the solicitor's corner, and upon the chair, placed near his desk, manifestly, for a visitor.

When Ferrars appeared without the disguise he was expected to wear, the solicitor wondered. But the detective explained in a few words. He had made certain discoveries which would enable him to end a very unpleasant piece of business at once, he hoped. And his disguise would only hamper him.

​"I must ask you, however, to add something to your rôle," he said finally, and at once made plain what more would be required of the solicitor.

As for Ruth Glidden, she had waited in dignified silence, and much to the wonder of the politely reserved solicitor, until Ferrars appeared, and then she went straight to his side.

"Mr. Ferrars," she said, so low that the others caught only the soft murmur, "It came to me, almost at the last moment, that a woman might not be amiss here now if she comes alone. You can trust me, surely?"

Ferrars gave her a sudden look of gratitude. "Thank you for showing me my own brutality," he replied. "I can trust you, and I do thank you; there could have been no one else." And Ruth went back to the inner room smiling a little, as she met her lover's eye.

To guard against all emergencies, the detective had left with the inspector a card telling him, and his men, where a telegram would reach him at different hours of the day, and at a quarter past two a message arrived, bearing the signature of the Swiss.

"Q. H. and a lady on the way to meet you now."

So it ran, and having read it, Ferrars asked:

"Is your boy safe, Mr. Haynes? and trusty?"

​"Quite. I find him really valuable."

"Then please instruct him to go and bring a brace of policemen, as soon as he has shown the next arrivals in." And he held out the telegram by way of explanation, adding, as the solicitor read and returned it, "The man is coming, too. I can't just see why. But we will soon know. By the way, that door on the north side, in the inner room; where does it lead one?"

"Into a side hall, connecting with the other."

"I thought so. Then, as soon as they are in, I will just slip out, myself, and see my man, who won't be far from your door, you may be sure, once his quarry is inside. He will be needed, perhaps, to serve the warrant, which he carries, ready for an emergency. Hist!"

There was the sound of an opening door, and, as Ferrars seated himself, the office boy entered and announced the two visitors.

The lady, who entered and bowed in stately fashion to the solicitor, was all in gray, except where, here and there, a bit of violet protruded. The hair, which was white, rather than gray, was worn low about the ears, and rolled back from the centre of the forehead, giving an effect of length to the face. The eyes looked dark, behind their gold rimmed glasses, and seemed set far back, in dark hollows. The mouth was slightly sunken, but the cheeks and chin, though pale, were sound and ​smooth, and the brow showed a scarcely perceptible wrinkle, beneath a veil of gray gauze spotted with black. She had a plump figure, its fulness accentuated by her rustling gray silk gown, with its spreading mantle glittering with steel beads, and finished with a thick, outstanding ruche at the neck. Atop of the high coifed white hair, sat a dainty Parisian bonnet, all gray beads and violets, and the small hands were daintily gloved, in pearl gray.

"I have taken the liberty of bringing my husband's brother, Mr. Haynes," she said, as she advanced into the room, "Mr. Harry Latham."

The tall, dark fellow behind her advanced, and proffered a hand with an air of easy geniality.

"Mrs. Latham," he explained, "fancied I might be of some use by way of identification. I hope my presence is not de trop; if so——"

"You are very welcome, sir. Sit down, pray, and we will begin our little inquiry. You have brought the papers, Mrs. Latham?"

Mrs. Latham, who had been looking with something like disapproval upon her aristocratic face, toward the partly visible person behind the screen, turned toward the speaker, and, as she advanced to lay a packet of papers, produced from a little bag, upon the desk, the solicitor called out, as if by her suggestion, "Richards, I ​shall not need you for an hour or more." And before the lady could turn toward him again, the man at the desk had vanished through the door just at his back.

Glancing toward this closed door, the lady seated herself, and drew the packet toward her. "I suppose we may begin with these?" she said, untying the packet with deft fingers, and laying the papers one by one upon the desk before the solicitor, as she talked. "I think all the needed proofs are here; my marriage certificate, and that of my mother as well; other family papers that may, or may not, be of use—letters relating to family matters and to the Paisleys of an earlier day—a copy of the will of Hugo Paisley the first, letters announcing the deaths of various members of the family; also a copy of my grandfather's will. I think you will find them quite correct, and conclusive." She stopped, and looked at him inquiringly. "You will need to examine them, of course, if only for form's sake?" she asked, somewhat crisply.

"Possibly, yes. All in good time, madam." The solicitor took up one of the papers, and glanced at the first words.

"I would like to ask," now spoke Harry Latham, "how soon—supposing of course all things are correct, and Mrs. Latham's claim proved—how soon can she ​take personal and complete possession of the property? I am a busy man, myself, and my time——"

"I fancy you will not be needed after to-day," broke in Mr. Haynes, somewhat abruptly. "As to the property, once the claim is proven there need not be a day's delay. The late incumbent was a very far-seeing person." He turned abruptly to Mrs. Latham. "Madam, may I ask why you were not more prompt in putting forward your claim to so fine an estate?"

She turned toward him with a slow smile.

"That is a most natural question. I did not at first imagine myself a claimant; a certain Hugo Paisley, the younger, or his heirs, was before me in the line of succession, and I have waited to see if they would not be heard from. I had no wish to claim that which might not have been mine."

"And you are satisfied now that no such heirs exist? Of course this must be proven."

"Of course, I have been at some pains, and to much expense, to learn if there were such heirs. With the help of friends we made inquiry in the United States, where Hugo went years ago. He was never heard of again."

"And was your search rewarded by definite news?"

"By an accident we learned of a member of the family, and through him traced all the remaining ones. They were three, a mother, the great granddaughter of Hugo ​Paisley, and two sons. The mother has been dead some years. They were not a rugged family."

"Consumption," came from the dark man at her elbow.

"Yes, consumption. The two sons died within a few months of each other."

"I see. And of course you have the proofs of death?"

"They can readily be proved at need," the lady coldly answered.

"Then there remains but one more question, where you are concerned. Supposing your claim to be disputed, could you prove beyond a doubt that you are the Bessie Cramer, who was the last descendant in this country of the Paisleys, your mother having been a Paisley?"

"Of course!"

"And you are then able to furnish proof that there was no other Mrs. Gaston Latham? That Gaston Latham married only one wife?"

A loud laugh broke upon this speech, and the man arose.

"Would the word of Gaston's only brother be of any worth as a witness to the marriage, the only marriage of his only brother? Fortunately I knew Miss Bessie Cramer as a slim young girl. I was a boy in roundabouts then."

Solicitor Haynes arose, and looked gravely down upon ​his client, ignoring the man's words, and even his presence.

"I must tell you, Mrs. Latham, that there has been a claim set up by the American heirs."

"There are no heirs!" warmly.

"Only yesterday I had a visit from an American gentleman, a Mr. Myers, attorney-at-law. Do you know of him?"

"I know no Americans, and very little of the country."

"Then you have never crossed the ocean?"

"No, indeed! It's quite enough for me to cross the channel."

"Mr. Myers has presented a claim." The solicitor's eyes were narrowing.

"For whom?"

"For—a—I think the name is Brierly; as I was about to say, having made an appointment with you, I thought it best that you should meet him." He touched the bell at his side, as he spoke the last word.

"But," interposed the man, "this is some old claim, or else a fraud! The Brierlys are dead!" The last words harshly guttural.

The office boy had entered now, and Mr. Haynes quietly gave his order.

"See if Mr. Myers is in number seventeen, William."

"Mr. Haynes," said Mrs. Latham, with a touch of ​haughtiness, "Why should I need to see this man? These deaths can be proved."

The solicitor bowed formally. "So much the worse for Mr. Myers and his claim," he said. "Of course you must meet him; there's no other alternative. He is a gentleman, and he certainly believes in his claim."

"He's not up to date, then," interposed the brother-in-law, somewhat coarsely, and even as he spoke the door opened, and Mr. Myers, having taken his way around by the side hall, entered, hat in hand.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE LAST STROKE.

As the solicitor turned toward the newcomer, the man and woman exchanged glances, and while he was still confident, not to say defiant, he looked to the unobservant solicitor with a nervous, apprehensive glance, and leaning toward her would have whispered a word of his anxiety; but she shook her head, and the next moment the solicitor was naming them to each other and, as Mr. Myers paused before the lady, continued with the utmost directness—

"Mr. Myers, this lady denies the existence of any and all American heirs. She fears you may have been deceived. Do you know this man Brierly to be living at present?"

"I believe him to be living."

"Mr. Myers," said the lady, sweetly, "I am very sorry to think or say it, but you have certainly been grossly ​tricked! If you have seen a would-be claimant, you have seen a fraudulent one. How long, may I ask, since you left America?"

"I have been in England for some time, and I will admit, madam, that I do not quite understand this case in all its details. Still, may it not be possible that you have been misled? There seem to have been complications." He checked himself, and appeared to be considering his next words, then he resumed—"I think I can help to clear up this misunderstanding. I brought with me here a young man lately from the United States. He claims to have seen a Mr. Brierly very recently. With your permission I will ask him to join us."

The Lathams again exchanged swift glances, and the man gave his head a quick negative shape. But the solicitor went promptly to the door. They did not hear the brief order he gave the boy, and he did not come back at once.

"Who is this young American who has seen the invisible? And how came he here to-day?" asked the man, who was now frowning heavily and moving restlessly in his seat. "What is his name?"

Mr. Myers had picked up a book off the desk, and was turning its pages slowly. He seemed hardly to hear the fellow's words.

​"He's a very bright young fellow," he said, musingly. "I don't think he would be easily deceived. He's quite a clever detective, in his way." He was studying the pair from under bent brows. Just then Mr. Latham's hat fell from his hands to the floor, and before he had recaptured it, the solicitor had entered, followed by a serious-faced young man, whom he carelessly named to the two strangers.

"Mr. Grant."

The lady's hand went suddenly to her heart, and her face was ashen beneath the dotted veil.

"Are you ill, madam?"

"A twinge," she faltered.

"It's neuralgia," declared the man, drawing his chair toward her. "She's subject to these sharp attacks. Better, Bessie?"

She nodded, and fixed her eyes upon "Mr. Grant," to whom Mr. Myers was saying:

"This lady, Grant, is positive that the Brierlys, of whom you have talked to me, are not now living. There has been tricking somewhere, and deception. Will you help us to understand one another?" The lawyer's face had grown very grave.

Francis Ferrars seated himself directly before the woman, whose eyes never left his face now, and were growing visibly apprehensive.

​"There has been more than tricking, worse than deceit here, and if I am to make it clear to you, madam, I must begin at the beginning. So far, at least, as I know it."

The woman bent her head slightly. "Go on," said the man. He had never seen Ferrars either in propria persona, or as Ferriss Grant.

The detective began with a brief sketch of the Brierly brothers, and then described, vividly, the discovery of Charles Brierly's dead body beside the lake at Glenville. He paused here, and his voice grew stern as he resumed—

"I had never seen Charles Brierly in life, but, standing beside his dead body, looking down into that face so lately inspired by a manly, strong soul, I knew that here was murder. There was no possibility of accident, and such men, I know, do not cheat death by meeting him half way. It was a murder, and yet he had no enemies, they said.

"The case interested me from the first, and when I had seen the sorrow of the fair girl he loved, and who loved him, I gave myself eagerly to the work of seeking the author of this most cowardly blow.

"That night I walked the streets of Glenville alone, and, passing a certain fashionable boarding house, I saw, in a room lighted only by the late moonbeams, ​the shadow of a woman, who paced the floor with her bare arms tossing aloft in a pantomime of agony, or shame."

He glanced about him. The two lawyers were standing side by side near the door, erect and stern. The man in the chair opposite was affecting an incredulous indifference. The room was intensely still when the voice ceased and no one stirred or spoke.

"Next morning, early, I viewed the scene of the crime, and I saw how easily the destroyer might have crept upon an unsuspecting victim, owing to the formation of the shore, the shelter of the trees and shrubs, and the protection of the curving Indian Mound. There had been showers two days before, and in certain spots, where the sun did not penetrate, the earth was still moist. Under a huge tree, just where the slayer might have stood, I found the print of a dainty shoe, or rather, the pointed toe of it. In two other sheltered places I found parts of other footprints, and, a little off the road, in a clump of underbrush, I found two well-formed footprints, all alike, small, and pointed at the toe. But I found something more in that hazel thicket. I found my first convincing, convicting clue. It was just a shred, a thread of a black mourning veil, such as widows wear. Later I found a poor simpleton who had been in the wood on the morning of the murder, ​and who had been horribly terrified. For a time he would only cry out that he had seen a ghost, but by and by he grew more communicative, and from what he then said—for he described the 'ghost' at last as a thing all white with a black face—I knew how to account for a white fragment which I found not far from the black one. A hired carriage had passed over that lakeside road on that fatal morning, and I learned that the lap cover with it was 'large and white.' Large enough to cover a woman of small stature, who, with a black veil drawn close across her features, and rising suddenly from among that clump of hazel, could easily terrify a simpleton into leaving the place where his presence was a menace."

He paused a moment, but he might as well have been looking upon carven statues. No one stirred, no one spoke, and he resumed his fateful story.

"Then came the inquest. I believed, even then, that I knew the hand that took Charles Brierly's life. But I did not know the motive, and, until I did, my case was a weak one. Besides, a woman sometimes strikes and still deserves our pity and protection. 'I must know the motive,' I said, and waited. Then, at the inquest, as Robert Brierly, the brother of the dead man, whose presence in the town was known to only a few, came forward to testify, a woman, who did not know ​him, and whom he did not know, fainted at sight of him, and was taken out of court. Then I knew the motive."

"Ah-h-h!" A queer sighing sound escaped the lips of the woman still sitting stonily erect before him; but he hurried on.

"But knowledge is not always proof—in a court of law—and I must have proof. That night a woman, dressed as a boy, by courage and cunning combined, forced her way into the rooms so lately occupied by Charles Brierly. Fear of detection had begun its work upon her mind, and she went, most of all, to try and throw justice off the track. In Brierly's desk she left a letter, very conspicuously placed, an anonymous letter, so framed as to throw suspicion upon the dead man's betrothed. This again showed the woman's hand. She also carried away a watch, a pistol, and some foreign jewellery and dainty bric-a-brac, to make the work seem that of a thief; and last, she found, upon a letter file, a newspaper clipping, which she also carried away. If she had left that I might have overlooked its value. As it was, I found the paper from which it had been cut, secured a second copy, and discovered my clue to the tangle. It was an advertisement for the heirs of one Hugo Paisley, and I soon found that the Brierly brothers were the sought-for heirs. Then I knew that ​Robert Brierly's life was also menaced, and I warned him, and tried to set a guard about him.

"In the meantime a boat had been found, not far from the scene of the shooting; it had been seen on the lake that morning, and its occupant was a spy, keeping watch up and down the road, and the hillsides, while his confederate carried out their programme of death. I had already fixed upon the woman, and now we began to look for the man."

Just here the man calling himself Latham got up stiffly, and moved toward the window near the clerk's desk, where he leaned against the casement, as if looking down upon the street. No one seemed to notice him, and the narrator went on:

"And now I had to find my final convincing proofs of the motive and the deed. The brothers Brierly were, all unknown to themselves, the heirs to the Paisley estates, and of Hugo Paisley, by descent. Through some error the murderers of Charles Brierly had been led to think him the sole living member of the family, and when Robert Brierly stood forth at the inquest, the woman who had shot down his brother with hand and heart of steel, fell fainting at the sight of him, and, perhaps, at the thought of her wasted crime.

"And now it was a drawn game, in which both sides ​were forced to move with caution, and, for a time, I could only watch the woman, on the one hand, and the safety of Robert Brierly on the other, for he now stood between the plotters and their goal.

"But despite my watchfulness, the second blow fell, and the first time Robert Brierly ventured upon the city street alone, after dark, he was struck down, almost at his own door. It was a dangerous injury, and, lest the assassins should find a way to complete their work, we took him away, as soon as he could be moved."

The woman was sitting very erect now, her eyes smouldering behind the gleaming glasses, her hands tightly clinched upon her knee.

"I knew that we must force the issue, then," Ferrars went on. "And Mr. Myers came over here to substantiate his client's claim to the Paisley estates, and to look up the pedigree, the past and present history, of the other claimants. How well he succeeded need not here be told. He did succeed."

Mrs. Latham had risen to her feet, and, for a moment, seemed struggling for composure, and the power to speak clearly.

"All this," she said then, "which is very strange, does not explain why you dispute my claim in favour of a dead man. As for this murder—if you have proved what you charge——"

​"One moment," Ferrars broke in. "Let me add, in that connection, that one night one of my agents, in the character of a burglar, entered this woman's room at her hotel in Glenville. She found in a trunk, the veil from which the black fragment, found on the bush, was torn; and also a suit of boy's clothes. The veil she brought away, the clothes were given away to a poor woman only this morning, and she sold them to my agent. As for the man, he has been traced by the stolen watch and jewelled ornaments. He tried to sell, and did pawn, them in Chicago, in New York, and here in London. In fact the chain of evidence is complete; nothing more is needed to convict these two."

The woman's face was white and set. "After all," she said in a hollow voice, "you have not proved that the Paisley estate is not mine by right. Mr. Brierly, the elder, being dead!"

"Even so, the second wife of Gaston Latham cannot inherit, and her brother, even in the character of brother-in-law, cannot share the inheritance. One moment," for the woman seemed about to speak. "Let me end this. Last night, in room number eight at a certain café, I heard the plotters in conference, and I know that the daughter of Mrs. Cramer, who would have inherited after the Brierlys, is dead. The game is up, Mr. Harry Levey. You and your sister have aimed two heavy ​strokes at the happiness of two noble women, and the lives of two good men, but the final stroke is mine! And now, Mrs. Jamieson, if that is——" He did not finish the sentence. The man Levey had drawn closer and closer to the inner door, while Ferrars spoke, and now with a swift spring he hurled himself against it, plunged forward and would have fallen had not Ferrars, always alert, bounded after him, and caught him as he fell. For the inner door had opened suddenly, at his touch, and when Ferrars drew the now struggling man backward, and away from it, the others in the room saw, in the doorway, a man and woman side by side.

At sight of Robert Brierly's face the woman, who had faced the ordeal of denunciation and conviction almost without a quiver, threw up her hands, and uttering a shrill scream, a cry of mortal terror and anguish, fell forward upon her face.

Then came a moment of excited movement, which would have been confusion but for the quick wit of Ruth Glidden, and the coolness and energy of the detective.

While the entrapped villain was struggling like a fiend in the grasp of four strong men, Ruth knelt beside the fallen woman and lifted her head.

The next moment two or three officers came hastening in, and Ferrars and Brierly, seeing their captive in ​safe hands, came together to her aid. She looked up at them with a questioning face.

"Did you know?" she asked, her face full of horror. "Did you know her?"

Ferrars nodded, and as the officers led their captive, cursing and blustering, out at one door, he lifted the senseless woman, and carried her to the couch in the inner room.

"Bring water!" Ruth commanded, "and leave her to me."

As the two men closed the door between them and the two so strangely different women, Brierly laid a hand upon the detective's shoulder.

"Ferrars," he said, "what did Ruth mean? Who is that terrible woman? And how is she concerned in your story? It is time I should know the truth."

"Quite time. That woman is Mrs. Jamieson, or the person you knew under that name. She is cleverly disguised, but I expected some such trick. She went to 'the States' to rid herself of you and your brother; and she took that man, who is really her own brother, and who tried to kill you, as her fellow criminal."

"And did she——" Brierly stopped, shuddering.

"She shot your brother; there is not a doubt of it."

"My God! And I thought——" They were alone in ​the office, and Brierly dropped weakly into the nearest chair and dropped his face upon his hands.

"You thought," finished Ferrars, "that I was interested in the woman. I was. I suspected her from the very first, and so did Hilda Grant."

In the inner room, Mrs. Jamieson opened her eyes and looked up to meet the gaze of the fair woman who was in all things what she was not.

Ruth bent over her, a glass of water in her hand.

"Drink this, Mrs. Jamieson," she said simply.

A shudder like a death throe shook the recumbent form. She lifted herself by one elbow, and caught at the glass, drinking greedily. Then, still holding the glass, she said slowly:

"Then you know me?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"By your voice, a little, but mostly by what Mr. Ferrars said."

"Mr. Ferrars!" she gasped. "Do you mean him?"

"I mean the man you have called Grant. Did you never guess that he was a detective?"

"And he knew!" The woman arose to her full height and again, as on a night long since, and in another country, her arms were tossed above her head, as Ruth ​nodded her answer, and for a moment her face was awful to look upon, so tortured, so despairing, so full of wrath and wretchedness and soul torture and heart agony, for women can love and suffer, though their souls be steeped in crime.

Ruth, who had taken the half emptied glass from her hand as she struggled to her feet, now put it down, and, startled by her look and manner, moved toward the door, but the woman, her face ghastly, cried "Stop!" with such agonised entreaty that the girl drew back.

"Don't!—I can't see him yet—Wait!—Let me——" She sank weakly back upon the couch, and Ruth noted, while turning away for a moment, how her hand toyed with her dainty watchguard, in seeming self forgetfulness, drawing forth the little watch, a moment later, and looking at it, as if the time was now of importance. Then she threw herself back against the cushions.

"My—vinaigrette—my bag!" she moaned between gasping breaths.

The little bag had been left in the outer office, where it had fallen from her lap, and Ruth opened the door of communication a little way and asked for it, saying, as Ferrars came toward her, "Not yet."

As Ruth turned back, she heard a sharp little click, like the quick shutting of a watch case, and when she ​held out the vinaigrette, Mrs. Jamieson was swallowing the remainder of the water in the glass.

"Your salts, Mrs. Jamieson."

The woman looked up with a wild scared look in her eyes, and held out, for an instant, the little jewelled watch.

"For years," she said, in a slow, strange monotone, "I have faced and feared danger, and failure. For years I have been prepared! Because of my cowardice, and my conscience, I have always kept a way of escape." Her fingers fluttered aimlessly and the watch fell upon her lap. Her last words seemed to come through stiffening lips. Her face grew suddenly ghostly gray. Ruth sprang toward the door.

"Don't let him come yet." With these words the dying woman seemed to collapse, and sank limply back into the cushions; her head drooped, her chin dropped.

Ruth flung open the door with a cry of terror, and the four men—for the two lawyers had returned from their escort duty—gathered about the couch. They saw a shudder pass over the limp frame. The fingers fluttered again feebly, there was a spasmodic stiffening of the figure—and that was the end.

Four weeks later, a group of people were standing ​upon the deck of a homeward bound steamer, about to set out upon her ocean voyage. They were five in number, and they were welcoming, each in turn, the man who had just joined them.

There had been a quiet wedding, a few days before, at a little English church, and Ruth Glidden had become Ruth Brierly as simply as if she were not an heiress, and her newly made husband not the owner of English lands, houses, stocks, and factories, that changed him into a millionaire.

"I could see no good reason for delay," Brierly was saying, as he grasped the hand of Ferrars, whose congratulations had been hearty and sincere. "Neither of us have need to consult aught save our own wishes; and besides our nearest friends are with us."

"Besides," interposed the smiling woman at his side, "we have been an encumbrance upon Mr. and Mrs. Myers for so long—and it was really the only conventional way to relieve them of so many charges. And then"—and here she lowered her tone, and glanced toward Hilda Grant, who, having already greeted Ferrars, was standing a little aloof—"we can now make a home for Hilda, and have a double claim on her."

"In all of which you have done well," smiled Ferrars. "My only regret is that I must bring into this parting moment an unpleasant element, but you may as well ​hear it from me." He beckoned the others to approach; and, when they were close about him, said, speaking low and gravely: "'Quarrelsome Harry' has escaped the punishment of the law."

"Escaped!" It was Mr. Myers who repeated the word. "Do you mean——?"

"I mean that he is dead. He was shot while trying to escape. He had feigned illness so well that they were taking him to the hospital department. He tried a rush and a surprise, but it ended fatally for him. He was shot while resisting re-arrest."

"It is better so," said Mr. Myers. "They have been their own executioners. What could the law have added to their punishment?"

"Only the law's delays," said Ferrars, and then he turned to Hilda Grant.

"This is not a long good-bye," he said gently. "At least I hope not. I shall be back in 'the States' soon. And, may I not still find a cousin there? Or must I stand again outside the barrier alone?"

"You will always find an affectionate cousin," said Hilda, putting out her hand.

And now it was time to leave the ship. All around them was the hurry of delayed farewells, the bustle of late comers, the shifting of baggage, smiles, tears, last words.

​Ferrars would remain for a time in London, but he knew, as he answered to the call "all ashore," that when he returned to the United States he would find in one of her fair western cities, a warm welcome and a lasting friendship.

The plot, by which the beautiful tigress-hearted woman whom they had known as Mrs. Jamieson had hoped to achieve riches, was cleverly planned. The real claimant had died in a remote place, and there were no near friends to look after her interests, or those of her young children. And then Harry Levey's sister, beautiful, and an adventuress, from choice, like her brother, had beguiled Gaston Latham, and had, by frequent changes of abode, by cunning, and by fraud, merged her own personality into that of the former wife. Then had come the baffling discovery of heirs in America, the plotting and scheming to remove them from their path—and the shameful end.

"Ferrars is a strange fellow," said Robert Brierly to his wife, one moonlight night, as they sat together, and somewhat aloof from the others on deck. "Do you know he was the sole attendant, except for her servants, at that woman's burial. He went in a carriage alone. Was it from sentiment, or sympathy, think you?"

It was the first time the dead woman had been spoken of, by either, since that trying day of her exposure and ​death, and Ruth was silent a moment, before she answered; the awful scene coming vividly before her. Then she put her hand within her husband's arm, and said, slowly, softly:

"It was because he is a good man; because she was a woman without a friend, and because she loved him."

There was a long silence, and it was Ruth who next spoke.

"Have you ever thought, or hoped, that the friendship and trust that has grown out of Hilda's relation to Mr. Ferrars might, sometime, end in something more?"

"No, dear, and this is why: Yesterday, Ferrars said to me 'There is a friend over in Glenville whom I hope you will not forget. Let him be your guest. And, if the day should come when your sweet sister that was to be should enter society and be sought by others, give the doctor his chance. He has loved her from the first.'"

Ruth sighed.

"Hilda is too young to go through the world loveless and alone. Yes, and too sweet. And the doctor is a noble man. But all this we may safely leave to the future, and to their own hearts."

THE END.

​

The Gresham Press,

UNWIN BROTHERS.

WOKING AND LONDON.

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