Life—and a Fortnight

Part One — Helen

Chapter One

“Is He Dead?”

It was not the right setting for a murder. That was Dick’s first unconsidered thought. Other things came afterwards; a sense of horror; queer jumbled feelings of pity and disgust. The man lay so utterly ungainly and hideous in death, his pyjama-clad body sprawling across the threshold of the door, his face twisted upwards lying in its welter of blood on the tiled verandah. He was an elderly, stout, grotesque looking man. There was nothing of the dignity of death about his position; his blotched, smeared face seemed still to be twisted in terror.

Dick stepped gingerly a little nearer and stared down at him. He remembered now. Last night he had seen this man at dinner in the hotel dining-room, sitting at a table, with two ladies. Tourists, Dick had taken them to be; the place just now was swarming with American tourists. Indeed, that was how the hotel had sprung into existence, to serve the American tourist traffic. Otherwise, what on earth would an hotel be doing here, in Ruanda, just at the foot of the Mountains of the Moon? That was why the setting was all wrong. Dick gave his shoulders the little shrug that was peculiar to him and looked away from the body on the floor.

Dawn—it was really barely dawn—-was creeping soft-footed across the cleared space in front of the hotel.

She gathered the shadows round her as she moved, drove them in front of her. Faint outlines of trees, and flowers and far away watching hills became visible. The outside world was almost ethereally lovely, cool and fragrant with the beauty of the African dawn.

When the hotel had first leapt into existence on this spot, rising out of nothing with an immense clatter and confusion, Dick, for one, had been inclined to look upon it as an excrescence. It was not right that people should drag civilisation into the very heart of Africa, and flaunt it in front of her eternal, scornful hills. Dick had an immense reverence for Africa; the love for her, which wakes sometimes in a white man’s life and is more hard to kill than love for any woman, moved in his mind, side by side with a queer unnameable fear. He was a great deal too young and self-confident ever to admit this fear, but it was there none the less. It had come to him first, when waking one morning like this before the world itself was well awake, he had seen Dawn go stealing across those faint far away mountains and had watched the snow glitter to sudden life under the first touch of the sun.

That had been out on his own shamba though, not here, standing on the tiled verandah of this new hotel, with a dead body lying at his feet. Dick Stanley’s place lay ten miles out of the station and he lived there for the most part, month in and month out, entirely on his own, supervising his acres of coffee trees, watching the blossoms fall, the fruit ripen and redden, herding his native labour into long lines for the picking and pruning and weeding. It was essentially a lonely life. Perhaps the loneliness had taught him his love for Africa, had helped in some way to implant the fear in his mind. He was an odd lad, his fellow planters said. For one thing, he was far too young for the job, and, in so many ways, he was far too old for his youth. Women, meeting him, thought at once of his mother. What must it feel like to know that one’s son was out in a country like this, all on his own? Africa, so women early realise, is in very truth a hard stepmother. She takes and uses and bends and breaks the men who serve her. Very rarely do they win either to fame or glory in her ranks. Her great solitudes engulf them; her myriad diseases track them down; her insects, working like silent, soul destroying armies on her behalf, tease and torment and betray them. It takes a strong man to hold his own against Africa, and women, looking at Dick Stanley, were not inclined to credit him with great strength. For one thing his eyes were too beautiful. “He must,” said one romantic minded lady, “have got his mother’s eyes. You can see his soul behind them, and it would be terribly easy to hurt his soul.”

It is not entered on the official records of Ruanda that she tried. As a matter of fact, Dick’s real nature was not quite so soulful as those blue eyes of his might have led one to suppose, but it would have been quite true to surmise from them that he was rather oddly sensitive for a man. It was also correct to conclude that he had inherited them from his mother. He had got her mouth with its queer cut, utterly attractive lines, its very rare smile and its customary droop of sheer pathos; but his hair was dark and unruly, curling, which is a thing a man’s hair should never do, whereas hers in her youth, had been the colour of flaming corn, and was still, as Dick remembered seeing it last, a queer, metallic gold, very smooth, no shining strand ever out of place.

It was distinctly odd, but, standing there, with that dead unpleasant thing at his feet, Dick suddenly thought of his mother. Visioned her with almost startling clearness as he had seen her last. It was because of his mother that he had chucked up things and come to Africa, setting his teeth as it were, hurling defiance at all his world and what they expected of him. He came, after all, from a brilliant political family. It had all been mapped out for him by innumerable uncles and aunts, and then suddenly at twenty, he had utterly and absurdly rebelled. He would do as none of them wished; he was sick of it all. The stupid aimlessness of life, doing things that bored you, dancing with girls, making love to them, spending money, getting into rows. There had been one girl! Lord, he must be stark, staring mad to stand thinking about that kind of thing now with this murdered man in front of him and all the rest of the hotel asleep!

What had made him get up so early? Just one of those stupid incomprehensible rebellions of his mind. Two days ago, Johnson, his nearest fellow planter, a stout, cheery gentleman of forty-two, very fond of whiskey, had called in at Dick’s place in passing.

“Young fellow-my-lad,” he had said in all solemnity, “do you know we decided at our last meeting that you were growing into a mouldy recluse?”

“Oh, indeed,” Dick had said, towards other men he occasionally adopted a supercilious air of aloofness, calculated to annoy. “Do I ask why?”

“Well, as to that, you please yourself,” roared Johnson. He had to roar because he had not bothered to stop the engine of his motor bike, and it was noted for making more noise than any other motor bike in the Protectorate, “because I’m going to tell you in any case. You aren’t sociable enough, you don’t go out sufficiently. Now Africa will put you down and jump on you, if you don’t look out. What’s the matter with the new pub at Ruanda?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Dick had answered. “For God’s sake, get off that machine and throttle it. Come inside and have a drink.”

That was not the type of invitation that stout Johnson was apt to ignore. He had clambered off the bike and lumbered in Dick’s wake on to the verandah of the latter’s very small house.

“It is honest advice,” he had explained. “You’ll go native if you don’t wake up. Now, there’s a bit of white fluff staying at the hotel just now . . .”

“Do you mean a girl?” Dick had asked.

“Yes, Master Blue Eyes—a girl. Now you take my advice and buzz in and see her. Spend the night there, have a few drinks, be matey. It will do you a heap of good. There’s even talk of a dance. . . .”

So much for Johnson. At least, he had said a lot more, but Dick had barely listened. A good deal of Johnson’s conversation had to be glossed over. But for some obscure reason, or was it so very obscure when one remembered that one was only twenty-two and had not seen a white girl for two years, his advice remained and bore fruit, and the result had been this week-end at the hotel.

Gad! It was not as though he was not scornful enough about the hotel in his mind. It was so blatantly civilised. There it sat smug and self-satisfied, the bananas pushed almost out of sight, its garden trim and neat, its bedrooms positively suburban in their respectability. Electric light, fixed baths, dainty furniture, carefully arranged flowers on all the tables, and outside Africa. Pushed as far out of sight as possible, granted, but still there she was, her great far away mountains scornful in their immense silence.

And what was that queer grunting noise? Dick lifted his head to listen. There must be a leopard somewhere quite near—slinking away in the wake of the dawn. Oh, this was Africa all right.

Last night the gramophone, a very resplendent gramophone, had positively blared out its defiance to the uncannily silent, brilliantly lit African night. The moonlight had swept right up to the tiles of the verandah and been put to flight there by the electric light. And they had danced, the queer assortment of American tourists and Government officials and rowdy planters out for a night’s spree. Dick had not danced. He had lounged about, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his somewhat shabby lounge suit. Johnson’s “bit of fluff” had been disgustingly disappointing. A painted, powdered damsel from Nairobi, travelling with some cinema show. There had been that girl who had dined, he remembered her now, with this dead man. Dick had thought her rather intriguing, very pale, very clear cut, her hair like a boy’s, faint gold, shaped to the lines of her head. But she had slipped away somewhere after dinner, and it had meant that finally Dick had lounged off to the bar and drunk far more than was good for him, and become noisy and self-assertive and argumentative.

That kind of thing and Africa with her pale, radiantly clear moon, her watching hills, her slinking, crouching leopards! They were not the right setting—just as this dead man . . .

Well, he had wakened up, disgusted with himself, very early—was it possible that some sound had wakened him—and he had dressed and plunged out into the dawn and decided that he would find his bike and get off on it back to his shamba before anyone was awake.

Before anyone was awake! This man at his feet had been awake and had lived and been terrified and died. It was really time he, Dick, did something about it. What did one do? Wake the hotel? Plunge into that silent, darkened room and see if . . . Jove, some one else must be awake too, must be hiding . . .

How had they killed him? It was rather repulsive touching the dead body, but as he knelt beside it and put a tentative hand on one of the clenched fists, Dick realised with a shock that this man’s death and his own stumbling exit from his room must have been almost simultaneous. Whoever had killed this man, and instinctively Dick thought of it as murder, must have seen Dick emerge, might still perhaps be watching Dick as he knelt and touched and felt.

The idea gave him an unpleasant sensation of danger. He rose quickly to his feet.

“Hi! Johnson—Martin—Stanhope!” he yelled, naming his three bottle companions of the night before. “Hurry up! Come out here—there’s been murder done . . . murder . . .”

How oddly the words re-echoed, seemed to go floating down the empty verandah, hurtling itself against shut doors.

“Quo hie, quo hie!” He raised his voice again, in the native tongue this time, surely some of the boys must be about, “Jangu-Yangu . . .”

The door behind him, the room out of which the dead man must have stumbled, was a little ajar, he thought he could see something stirring beyond the shadow of its half-drawn curtain.

Despite the loveliness of his eyes and the sensitiveness of his mouth, no one had ever been able to call the boy Dick a coward.

He sprang now straight for that moving shadow, pushing the door open with a clatter, half tearing down the intervening curtain.

The girl of last night stood just in front of him. In the faint light, he could see the long, barely concealing flimsiness of her nightgown. Her grey blue eyes were very wide and frightened, she seemed to be holding something in her two hands, clenched in front of her.

From behind him, Dick could hear the sounds of opening doors, the shouts of rudely awakened people asking what was the matter. Who had called them? What did it mean? He stood staring at the girl. His figure, silhouetted against the brightening light outside must have seemed alarming enough. It was obvious, anyway, that she was terrified. He saw her lips struggling for speech, knew that she swayed towards him, something fell out of her hands with a clatter to the floor.

“Is he—is he dead?” she whispered, and pitched forward and fell against Dick in a dead faint.

Chapter Two

Adventurous Eyes

Helen Dawson was more conscious of terror and remorse than she had ever been before in all her life. And that was no small thing, for in her thirty-nine years of very eventful living she had come through a great many intense emotional scenes.

She adored, generally speaking and describing it in her own vivid phraseology, the drama of life.

Everything about Helen Dawson was vivid. Her beauty, the flame in her large dark eyes, the colour of her mouth, the red that ran riot through her hair. Still red gold, still riotous, despite the almost remorseless approach of forty years. Her whole personality was vivid. She moved and spoke and laughed and cried with the same intense eagerness. She had no settled home, no husband to all intents and purposes, though she called herself Mrs. Dawson. She just moved about the world, following each fresh trend of fashion. Unkind people deemed her an adventuress, but that was only because she allowed whoever happened to be the infatuated male of the moment to keep her and pay all expenses for her. A precarious enough existence as she herself knew, only perhaps never till this moment had she quite realised the perilousness of a position such as hers.

She stayed, despite all her terror, her usual vivid energy, very still, pressed close up against the window of her room, half concealed by the curtain, peering out. The verandah was full of people now. They were talking excitedly in whispers, herding together, looking, peering over each other’s shoulders at something that lay on the floor just beyond her range of vision. Scraps of their conversation reached her, stirred across the tumult of her own thoughts.

“God! Do they think it can have been a leopard?” she heard one man say.

A little shiver shook her, hearing the words. She put quick hands up to her mouth to stop a scream. She had known that something like this must happen from almost the first moment of her meeting with Thomas Bacon. It had been a queer indefinable sense of premonition. She had moved, as it were, unwillingly through their first weeks of friendship towards the closer intimacy that had lately held them. At times, she knew that she loathed herself for being intimate with men like Thomas Bacon. He had been so utterly unlovely, so contemptible. Pig like, she had said that once, using his name to make a mock of him, in person and manners. And now Thomas Bacon . . .

With a start of quick, quite decided horror, she realised that the slight sound audible within the room itself and just behind her, meant that someone was opening the bathroom door. She must have forgotten to lock it when she came in last night, or had it been early this morning? And now someone, something was coming in.

She turned at once to face the intruder. That was like Helen Dawson, instinctively she faced trouble. Brought close to her like this, clothed in the tangible flesh of another human being, her terror dropped back to its right proportions. She was no longer submerged in it. After all, she had only got to keep cool, defiant, she had faced situations as risky as this before.

She was, probably she was quite well aware of that, for Helen never misjudged her weapons, very beautiful standing there. The pink silk of her nightgown, the half covering shimmer of the wrap she had thrown around her, set off most becomingly her thrown back head with its waves of red gold hair. Her lips were a little parted, her eyes, the lashes sweeping up from them, marvellously alight.

Just inside the door, holding in his arms the limp figure of a girl, was a young man. It was light enough in the room now for them to see each other quite distinctly. The sun follows close upon the heels of dawn in Africa. He was a very young man, Helen saw that at once, and equally at once she knew herself attracted. Was it his mouth, or his eyes, or the clean brownness of well cut limbs and face? She had not for the moment time to analyse the attraction, only the fact of its being there altered her pose at once. She no longer stood entirely on the defensive, here, rather, was something which she must attack.

“What on earth are you doing?” she said in her cool, clear voice, “here, in this room, with Esther?”

The girl in the young man’s arms she had scarcely glanced at. She had recognised her at once. Esther was most decidedly the kind of creature who would faint at inconvenient moments—she had obviously fainted now.

The young man, he seemed, for so young a man, singularly calm and collected in such a predicament, let his blue eyes rest for a moment on Helen’s face, then they just flickered over the rest of her attractive costume and came back to the pale gold head resting against his arm.

“She has fainted,” he announced, quite unnecessarily. “May I put her down on your bed?”

He did not, however, wait for her answer. He had walked quickly to her bed and laid his burden down.

“There’s a man outside,” he explained carefully, his blue eyes looked straight into Helen’s dark ones. “On the verandah. He’s dead. She came out of her room and saw him. I guess it gave her a shock. I only just caught her in time. And there are such a crowd of people out there, she . . . well, I mean . . . she isn’t overdressed, I thought. . .”

Laughter woke in Helen’s eyes, dimpled her mouth. “Were you shocked?” she asked. “No, let’s be serious.” She moved closer to him. Dick noticed for the first time, though it was by no means to be the last, that the scent or powder that she used was fragrant like the fragrance of roses held in one’s hand and crushed. “You say her room, but her room is along on the other verandah.”

“I don’t know how far she had come,” lied Dick. “I was kneeling by the dead man. I just looked up and saw her . . .”

“But how awfully unlike Esther,” Helen began. She broke off quickly. “It doesn’t matter . . . did you say the man outside was dead?”

“Yes,” Dick nodded.

She shivered, drawing the wrap closer round her, staring back at the window. “How awful!” she whispered. “Do you know who it is?”

“The man who . . .” No, he could not say it just like that. “I don’t,” he admitted. He looked back at the girl lying on the bed. A faint colour was coming into the white cheeks. “I dashed through the nearest room I saw,” he added, “and turned right, and this was the nearest door I saw. I was damned glad to find it unbolted.”

“So you walked in,” nodded Helen. She smiled at the sudden flush that her eyes could call to life on the brownness of his face “Not always a wise thing to do.”

“Well, I had to put her down somewhere,” Dick explained. “You,” he hesitated, “You dined together last night, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You brought her to the right room as a matter of fact. I’ll look after her.”

“Then I—I suppose I melt away,” smiled Dick. Absurdly he felt that he had known this woman for ages, there was nothing sudden or unexpected about the knowledge that was between them.

“Well,” she confessed, her eyes smiled at him. “I am really hardly any more dressed than Esther and, oh, how dreadful of me to forget—outside they’ll want you, won’t they, to explain how you found . . . did you find . . .?”

“Yes, I was out before anyone was awake,” Dick acknowledged. He moved to the door. “I can’t tell them much beyond that.”

She moved quickly again, so that she was level with him when he reached the door, her hand for a second brushed against his.

“You won’t tell them about Esther, will you?” she asked, her eyes flickered and fell before his . . . “I mean . . .”

“Good God, no,” he answered. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“No,” she nodded. She was very close to him now, her fragrance was all about him. “Won’t you tell me your name?” she asked. “We’ll meet—afterwards. This—I mean—we are going to be friends, I feel it.”

“Stanley,” he answered. He was a little surprised at himself, because he realised that it was difficult for him to keep his voice absolutely steady. “Richard Stanley, and yours . . .?”

“Ah, you’ll find out that,” she laughed, a little delicious sound of whispered mirth. “Au revoir, Mr. Stanley.”

“Goodbye,” he answered, his spirit flashed to sudden boldness. “Don’t forget—friends,” he said.

A little sobbed cry from the bed made them both turn round. The girl was sitting up, she was staring at them with terrified grey eyes.

“Hullo, Esther,” said Helen, with not unkindly indifference. “Feeling better? You’re quite safe in here, silly kid.”

The grey eyes stared beyond her at Dick. “Go away,” the girl whispered. It was so shrill it was more a scream than a whisper. “Go away, oh, please go away.”

“Not very grateful, is she?” said Helen. “Perhaps you had better go. She’ll be all right later on.”

Odd that the girl should look at him like that, feel like that about him. Standing outside the door which had been closed behind him, Dick reflected on the oddness of women. Not that he really knew very much about them, but he had always liked to pretend that he did. And now here he was, plunged out of utter dullness into the most intense excitement of conjecture and surmise. Miss Grey Eyes, “Baby Eyes,” he called her, half scornfully in his mind. What on earth, for instance, had she been doing in the dead man’s room with the revolver in her hands? And was it because she knew that he knew that she had been there that her eyes had held such terror, looking at him across the woman’s beauty? God! But how beautiful the other woman was! Her waved hair, her parted lips. His mind tingled with sudden warmth, remembering. And why the Hades had he stooped and put that revolver into his pocket just after the girl had fainted? What on earth was he to do with it now?

The hotel was built with its bedrooms out in a long line, verandahs at front and back. This back verandah on which he stood was deserted, though from all over the hotel he could hear sounds of people waking, moving. Just for a second or two Dick stood looking round him, assuring himself that there was no one in sight. Then, very deliberately, he strolled to the edge of the verandah, took the revolver out of his pocket, rubbed it all over with his handkerchief and dropped it into the shallow gutter that ran at the verandah’s edge.

He shrugged his shoulders over that quixotic act, shoving his handkerchief back again into his pocket. Why was he taking all this trouble to shield an unknown girl? He was not even very much interested in her, though, to begin with, he had felt a sudden, intense desire to safeguard and protect her. But now, somehow, there were three of them involved in the secret of the dropped revolver, and the predominating interest lay in the woman to whom he had just finished speaking. So warm and glowing and intensely alive, her image remained in his mind.

Assuming what carelessness he could, Dick strolled round to the front verandah and joined the excited crowd there. Mason, tall, long limbed, impressive, was in charge of the proceedings, attired in a pair of very vivid orange pyjamas, surmounted by a short rain coat. Mason was manager and proprietor of the hotel. He had sunk a great deal of money in the concern, and was a confirmed and loud-voiced asserter of its ultimate success. To make an up-to-date hotel pay its way in the wilds of Africa, where it is dependent on a tourist traffic, brave enough to face the discomforts of a motor journey several hundred miles in length, is no small enterprise, and there had been a great deal of scepticism directed at Mason’s effort by the old hands of the country. But, so far, he had ploughed ahead with a cheery disregard of the most well meant advice. The affair of this morning though had rather thrown him off his balance. A death of any sort is no very good way of securing custom for an hotel, especially in a country where Death has already a most unpleasant reputation for arriving unannounced. If it should happen to be murder though—and murder had been the first word shouted, that might put a different complexion on the case. There is a certain gruesome curiosity which will draw people from miles away to see the place where a murder has been committed.

Johnson, Dick’s stout friend and neighbour, was kneeling by the body on the floor. He looked up as Dick pushed his way to the front.

“Where you been, Stanley?” he asked. “Weren’t you the one to raise the alarm?”

Immediately they were all looking at him, the queerly dressed crowd gathered there on the sun splashed verandah. They were attired in all types of pyjamas and dressing gowns. Dick seemed the only man present who had been up and dressed before coming out. It made him feel antagonistic, all their watching faces. He shrugged his shoulders, answering.

“Yes, I found him,” he admitted. “Came out of my room and stepped on to him almost at once.”

Mason pounced on him. “You saw nothing—heard nothing?” he asked. “Look here, it seems as though a leopard, you can see it’s had its pads in the blood. It wouldn’t leave its kill unless disturbed.” He pointed to some marks along the floor.

“Opening my door would disturb it,” said Dick. “I saw nothing. Do they think a leopard killed him?”

“Hardly that,” Johnson grumbled. “I’ve been twenty-five years in these parts. I’ve never known a leopard . . .”

“He might have felt sick—giddy in his room,” someone suggested. “Opened the door, fallen out. The brute, if it was lurking about, would take that as its chance, wouldn’t it?”

A woman in the crowd gave a little scream. “It’s so awful,” she said, “to think a leopard . . .”

“Well, we had better send for the police,” suggested Mason. “Get hold of the mission doctor. Have all this cleared up. I’m sorry, good people.” He waved rather fatuous hands. “This ought not to have happened. Casts a blight over our pleasant little party.”

He always spoke like that, Mason, as though the people at the hotel were his guests by special invitation.

“Where did you get hid, Stanley, that’s what I want to know?” asked Johnson.

He stood up by Dick, slipping a fat hand on the boy’s arm. “What made you shout and then run?”

“I did not run,” said Dick. They had to stand aside to let Mason superintend the covering up of the body. “To tell you the truth, Johnson, I never thought of a leopard . . .”

“Leopard be damned! “said Johnson, crisply. “It’s no leopard killed that man.”

“No,” agreed Dick, “that is what I thought. It seemed to me he had come stumbling out of his room after . . .” He broke off. “Anyway, it struck me it might be worth seeing whether there was anyone there, or outside at the back. He . . he was quite warm when I touched him.”

“Humph! That’s nothing!” grunted Johnson. “A body stays warm more or less for eight hours. Well, did you see anything—anyone?”

“No,” lied Dick. “They had had time to get off, whoever it was.”

Mason came bustling up to them again. “I say, Stanley,” he brushed between them. “You’re dressed. Get on your bike like a good fellow and buzz up to the Mission. Fetch Doctor Heath for us, will you, eh? I’ve notified the District Commissioner; he is in charge of the police here; in case, eh, well, just in case it’s murder.”

“I guess it most certainly is,” said Johnson, briefly. “And I can tell you why I’m so sure.”

He held out his hand and opened it slowly under Mason’s nose. On the palm of it lay an empty cartridge case.

“Where did you find that?” asked Mason. “Here, on the floor? Gee, that looks odd, doesn’t it?”

“An automatic revolver,” said Johnson. “I know the kind well. The hotel has got to be searched for that, Mason, before it gets done away with.”

Dick turned from them. What a fool he had been not to throw that revolver further out of sight! Would its possession be traced to either of the women, the girl with the cool, fair hair and grey eyes, or that other . . . “Anyway,” his thoughts leapt to sudden life, “she could not have had anything to do with it. She was there in her room—just out of bed, I should gather.”

“I’ll be off,” he announced, “to give your messages. I was on my way back to the shamba when I stumbled on this. I may as well push off, I suppose.”

“You had better come back here first,” argued Johnson. “You may be wanted. After all, you found him.”

“Oh yes, come back,” Mason gesticulated. “I don’t want it to seem that this . . . this frightens any of my guests away.”

“Very well,” Dick nodded briefly. “I’ll come back then.”

After all, that would mean that he would see her again, the all-engrossing lady of the shimmering draperies. Dick was thinking of her to the exclusion of everything else as he pushed his motor bike out, preparatory to mounting it, so that he gave a very perceptible jump of surprise when a voice spoke to him just behind.

“Where are you off to, young man?” said the voice, with clear and, in some way, very authoritative precision.

Dick swung round and stared at his questioner. His first feeling was one of annoyance, but the man standing in front of him, smiling at him out of kindly, if very keen, brown eyes, was not the type of personality upon whom one vented annoyance. He was a big, heavily set man, somewhere in the forties, with a strong, yet sensitive face, very large ears and a mouth, the lines of which were bound to command respect from any and everyone. He gave one the almost instantaneous impression of being a man used to handling and commanding other men, used to understanding them too. There would be no nonsense from anyone, once he was in charge of affairs.

Dick, for instance, accustomed at all times to resent authority, answered him quite meekly.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I am going up to fetch the Mission Doctor,” he said.

The man on the steps nodded. “I am a doctor,” he announced. “Not that I wish for a moment to usurp the prerogative of the Mission. My name is Staines, Major Staines, the Deputy P.M.O. of this Protectorate.”

“Oh,” said Dick. There did not seem anything else to say; he turned his attention to his motor bike.

“The thing is,” Major Staines’s calm voice continued, “ought I to allow you to go on this message?”

That did flick temper to life. Dick threw back his head, his face flushed.

“What the Hell do you mean?” he asked.

Major Staines chuckled. It was a perfectly friendly little sound; also he came down the steps and stood with one hand on the handle of Dick’s bike.

“This morning,” he announced quietly, “I happened to look out of my bathroom window at the critical moment when you were carrying that young lady out of Room 9. You know, I could not help being intrigued.”

“Well,” said Dick, sullenly. Major Staines for the moment was thinking what amazing blue eyes he had got. “There’s nothing in that. She fainted on the outside verandah and I carried her through the room to get her away from the crowd.”

“Humph! “said Major Staines. He prided himself on being able to sum up men with comparative ease and accuracy, and, as far as that sense went, he could not feel that this lad had committed a murder.

“Then the revolver, I suppose, had nothing to do with it?” he asked, drily.

Chapter Three

Helen of Troy

One had to go back a bit into his history to understand Dick Stanley. That, at least, was what Major Staines felt. He could not just settle the matter by telling those in authority what he had seen. That did not satisfy him, and would most certainly involve the lad in a series of very unpleasant predicaments. If he had killed this man, this fat, bloated multi-millionaire from America, there must be some story behind it. And Major Staines was intensely interested in stories. He liked evolving them. He was on two months’ sick leave because he had been most strenuously overworked of late years, and only yesterday he had been thinking with settled resignation of the dullness of the weeks that stretched in front of him. Now here was a live colourful story, fairly throbbing and asking to be dissected. All his keen interest in human nature stirred to the surface of his mind as he stood there with his hand on Dick’s bike.

“You see my point, don’t you?” he asked quizzically.

“I can see you think you have a point,” admitted Dick. He gave his shoulders that queer elusive shrug that was so typical of him. “Why not make it then? Why not accuse me openly of murder?”

“Because I don’t feel . . .” Major Staines began. He looked back for a second at the hotel. He was taking a good deal upon himself, that he very fully realised. “Look here, let’s talk this out, shall we?” he suggested. “Supposing I stand aside with my point, let you go on and deliver your message to the Mission, and then suppose you come back and give me an hour’s quiet talk. We’ll see what we can evolve out of it all, shall we?”

“I did not murder him,” said Dick. The blue of his eyes never wavered from Major Staines’s watching brown ones. “And I have no idea who did, but I know he was murdered. That is all I can tell you, sir.”

“Quite so,” nodded Major Staines. “That is as far as we both get, isn’t it?” He drew back from the bike. “Well, I’ll leave it to you. Look in and have a talk with me when you get back, if you feel so inclined. I’ve got the only private sitting room in the place reserved for me; that small room next the bar. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my points to myself.”

He stood watching Dick’s motor bike disappearing in a swirl of turned up dust.

“I wonder what kind of swine the dead man was,” he thought to himself, “and how much that boy knows about the girl having done it.”

At least, it was all very interesting and he did not feel inclined to hand over his knowledge wholesale to the Criminal Investigation Department. They would be wired for, of course, as soon as the District Commissioner took charge. In imagination, he could see them arriving in their cars. A joyride from the capital, that’s how they would look upon it. And Armstrong, the man in charge, was no fool, even though he was a policeman. He would get down to clues pretty quickly; ferret out the dead man’s past; find out all there was to know about his relations with the girl, what it meant to her whether he died or lived. Women, that was Major Staines’s honest opinion, were such damned fools. He always felt immensely sorry for them, and vaguely irritated by them. They played about so with life, mucked up things. Even the most straight and placid living man was apt to have his life mucked up by a woman. And love! A terrifying and mysterious disease that. If only doctors were able to find a swift and sure cure for the ridiculous infatuation of man for woman, woman for man, what an immense amount of suffering the world would be saved; mental suffering, moral suffering, even bodily suffering. He had seen men, quite decent strong men, reduced to a dithering state of nerves by love. He had no use for it himself. He was a grown man, but as a boy he had once burnt his fingers in the fire. And suddenly an almost intense desire woke in him to protect the lad of this morning, to steer him free of whatever pitfalls the girl with fair hair had dug for him. “If I make up my mind that he had nothing to do with it,” he took his inward resolve, “I’ll damn well see that she doesn’t drag him in for any stupidly heroic reason.”

He strolled back up the verandah and turned in at the dining-room for breakfast. Already order of some sort was beginning to emerge out of the confusion. Quite a number of the early morning crowd were dressed by now and breakfasting. Fat Johnson and two other planters were at a table together. They talked in loud, expressively cheerful tones; they were not going to allow the damned gloom of the affair to weigh on them whatever happened.

Johnson was recounting some hair’s breadth escapes that he had had with leopards, “ugly, slinking, cowardly devils, leopards! They would not go for a man unless he was ill or wounded. Oh, once anything was down—yes—the smell of blood drew them, he had known that happen before.”

Major Staines drew out a chair at their table and sat down.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked. He switched the conversation round by degrees to the boy. Dick—Richard Stanley—they told him his name was.

“Rum kid, ain’t he?” said Johnson to no one in particular. “Too damned conceited for my taste,” said the long, lean man sitting opposite. Vernon, as far as anyone knew anything about him, had come out to Africa twenty years ago, intent then on thrusting aside all conventional standards. He had been a law unto himself for more years than anyone cared to count. It had made him aggressive and self assertive and careless in his appearance and conversation. Major Staines, looking at his red brown face, his hard yet eager eyes, his vast expanse of chest, which a shirt devoid of buttons left open for all the world to see, decided in his quick way that here was a man on whose word it would be perfectly useless to rely and who would yet—by the iron steadfastness of his courage—be sure to stand by you in the most unpleasant emergencies.

“A tough nut,” as Major Staines put it to himself; “A rough house,” as his fellow planters called him.

The other man at the table, much younger than either of his companions, still bore on him the unmistakable marks of a public school. He was a pleasant faced, obviously anxious to please youth, with a very reverent admiration for the lone man and his opinions.

“Would you say conceited?” he asked now diffidently. “I think Stanley’s not sure of himself—shy.”

“Mother’s darling,” snorted the man Vernon. “What the hell is he doing out here, anyway. His people have got pots of money, and, with a face like his, he ought to be a cinema star.”

“He’s got the place nearest mine,” Johnson explained to Staines. Vernon was the sort of man who was always talking, and to whom no one listened much. “He’s not a bad lad, no fool either.”

“Know his people at home?” asked Staines. “Oh, Lord, no,” Johnson chuckled. “but I’ve seen photos of the home palace. Vernon’s right about the money, there must be pots of it.”

Staines let his eyes wander round the room. He was startled to a certain mild surprise at seeing the girl of his thoughts sitting at a not very distant table. She was eating porridge, which struck him as being a curious commonplace thing to do the morning after having committed or witnessed a murder. But she looked played out all right, frightened. He could half imagine that with every gulp of porridge she took, she gulped back tears. What damned fools women were! He shifted his gaze and looked at her companion, and at that, just for a brief moment, he held his breath, time and lost delights and dead—very dead he had imagined—love swept past him as he sat looking. Helen! Helen by all that was wonderful and rather awful. “Helen of Troy” as he had been used to call her.

“Is this the face that launched a thousand ships . . .?” Silly, clattering memories invaded his mind.

Last night he had arrived late while everyone was dancing. He had not looked into this room, he had just gone straight along to bed.

Her name! Probably her name now would convey nothing to him. When he had known her she had been Helen Langley. That was fifteen, twenty years ago! She had been married even then, but he had heard afterwards that she had left Langley and gone off with someone else. Would she have come with him if he had asked her those fifteen years ago when honour, to him at least, had seemed an unbreakable wall between them?

Helen, Helen of the warm, quick laughter, the fluttering hands, the eyes which had such power to make one dream.

In a moment she would look up and see him. That would bring all the past shattering about their eyes. After all now he was elderly and prosaic and safe, and, anyway, he had long ago given up believing in love.

He pushed back his chair and stood up. “See a friend of mine over there,” he said. “Must just go across and say ‘How d’ye do?’”

She looked up, of course, and watched him coming towards her. He saw a little flicker of amused recognition pass across her eyes, then, with a laugh, she stood up, holding out her hands.

“Why, surely,” she said, “It is—it’s Tony, isn’t it?”

“Major Anthony Staines, at your service,” he answered bowing gravely.

“But how altered!” Her eyes challenged his, her face flushed a little. “Tony, what on earth are you doing here?”

“It’s I that ask that question,” he said. “After all, this is my habitat. I’ve been here close on fifteen years. I started at the bottom of the medical ladder. I am now practically at the top. But you—you are some visitant from another world. A tourist, you aren’t an American tourist, are you?”

The laughter, he thought, died rather suddenly out of her eyes. It was almost as though she winced.

“Ridiculous creature,” she said. “Sit down and be introduced. Esther, this is Major Staines, a very old friend of mine. Esther is an adopted niece, Tony.”

Major Staines looked for a moment into the most frightened grey eyes that he had ever seen in a girl’s face. They made him think of some gentle, utterly wild creature caught in a trap of man’s making.

“She has got another name, I suppose,” he smiled at her, trying to reassure her terror.

“Of course,” Helen answered, “Miss Esther Blain, if you must be so particular.”

They had sat down again and she leant towards him clasping her hands on his arm. “Oh, Tony, I am most amazingly glad to see you,” she sighed.

“Do I take that as a compliment?” he asked, “or does it merely denote the fact that I can be useful to you?”

“Both,” she nodded quickly; the girl with the grey eyes turned to a pretence of porridge eating. “You’ve heard, of course, about last night. Well—er—Esther and I—we were travelling with him. It is all so awful.”

She went on talking wildly as though to stem the question in his eyes. “We did not know him very well. We met him in Cairo—was it twelve months ago, Esther? and he suggested this tour. So we came, and now . . .”

Major Staines was not really listening very attentively to her hurried, breathless story. He kept his eyes lowered. He was thinking of Helen Langley of the old days and of the love that he had given her, and he was realising—and the realisation brought with it most unexpected regret—all the roads her feet must have travelled since those days. It was not that she was any the less beautiful; where the flaw came, he could not exactly say, but flawed she was, let his mind wince away from that knowledge, however much it liked.

“Well,” he said, when she paused for breath, “I’m here, entirely at your service; you’ll know that having seen me. And, as a matter of fact, I was interested already. Have you any other friends up here?”

“No,” she answered quickly. “We’re entirely alone and I suppose there will be all sorts of things like an enquiry. They’ll want to ask us questions, won’t they, and we know so little about him. He was very wealthy . . .”

“An American multi-millionaire,” he nodded. “I had heard that.”

Mason’s voice could be heard outside, raised in eager explanation. He passed along the verandah, followed by a tall, thin man in plain clothes and a stumpy, important looking personage in khaki uniform. They had some native eskaries with them and Mason was being very impressive. Staines, looking across at the girl, saw that she had given up all pretence at eating and was sitting staring in front of her with her wide, terrified eyes.

“I see the D.C. has arrived,” he said. “Now they’ll get down to things. He is an energetic little devil, Samson.”

The girl pushed back her chair and rose. “Do you mind if I go to my own room?” she whispered. “I—oh, I can’t bear any more.”

Major Staines had, naturally enough, risen too. Helen kept her seat; her eyes studying the girl were a little cold.

“You are being stupid, Esther,” she said; “after all, neither of us can lay claim to any affection for Mr. Bacon. Go and lie down though. I’ll be along presently.”

The girl went, and Major Staines sat down again. “She is only a kid,” he remarked philosophically; “obviously death frightens her.”

Helen sat for a second or two, frowning, then she swept him a look under her lashes. How provocative they had always been, those lashes of hers!

“I am worried about Esther,” she admitted; “it is one of the things that worry me most. Can we go anywhere and have a talk?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Staines answered, “I’m up here on two months’ sick leave, so I’ve been honoured with the only private sitting room available. Will you do me the honour . . .?”

“Oh, Tony,” she caught her breath on mock laughter, “don’t let us stand on such ceremony with each other.”

She rose. “Have you forgotten . . .?”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” he interrupted, and for the first time in their interview, he looked straight into her eyes. “I think you know that.”

She coloured faintly. She could still then colour at the thought of memories. “Let’s go to your sitting-room,” she said, “I’ll tell you all I know and you shall advise me. Tony, you were always so good at advice.”

He turned to lead the way; then, remembering something, looked back at her.

“By Jove,” he said, “I had almost forgotten. I have an assignation in the aforesaid room with a young gentleman, the possessor of an amazing pair of blue eyes . . . do you know him? But no, you can’t—you said you know no one here.”

“What’s his name?” asked Helen, but already her lips were stirring to a smile. “Is it Stanley—Richard Stanley?”

“Then you do know him,” he began.

She interrupted. “Only since this morning,” she explained. “He—well, he sort of enters into the worry. Can’t I come, too, to your assignation?”

“Will he be shy talking in front of you?” he asked. “I want to get something out of him, but what he has got to say may be of some help or interest to you.”

She slipped her hand on to his arm. “Do let me come,” she said. “I only saw the young man for a moment this morning, but, as you used to say, he interests me enormously. And he and you and I . . . well, perhaps we’ll find we’ve got to stand together through what is to come.”

If it had been any other woman, of course, he would have refused, but almost at once, seemingly, she had stepped back into the place his allegiance had always kept waiting for her. Let the flaws be there, the dust of her journeyings, she was still to him, Helen Langley.

“Come on then,” he said; “only if he shuts up like a clam in front of you, you mustn’t mind if I push you out, because I am almost sure my young friend knows something about what happened last night and I want to get out of him what it is.”

She paused to look up at him. “Do they think then . . . “ she hesitated, “that Bacon has been murdered. I thought a leopard . . .”

“Oh, no, not that,” he answered. “Even in Africa, leopards are not so obliging.”

“Oh! “she whispered, and seemed to hang back a little. “How perfectly awful! It will mean, won’t it, so much coming out?”

He did not ask her to explain. He wanted as much as possible to shut his mind to that side of the story.

“Here we are,” he said, pausing at the door of the sitting-room, “and our young friend is before us, it seems. Won’t you go in?”

He stood aside to let her pass, so that he did not see the little flame of eagerness which ran from eye to eye, as Dick rose to greet her.

“You, again,” said Helen, softly—sweetly. Staines did hear the sweetness. It served to waken fresh chords of memory. “It seems we really are destined then to be friends.”

Chapter Four

Dick

To go back in Dick’s history did not entail going very far. His own memories reached back to the time when he was ten and when he had first run away from school.

There were, of course, other memories beyond that, but they were confused, dimly coloured. Through them all, the image of his mother moved, rather as one might imagine God moving across the face of the world which He had created. Dick had been so entirely his mother’s. Other relationships had counted not at all. And then with the severity of absolute bleakness had come that awful year at school.

He had not known till then that unhappiness existed; it flayed his spirit as a whip will tear the skin away from live flesh. He was everything, in the opinion of the other boys, that a boy ought not to be and they made no attempt to mince their sentiments about it.

The thing culminated in his running away, but he ran—as it happened—into a changed world. His mother, it seemed—the thing meant very little to him, even when it was carefully explained—had married again; her interests had swerved in other directions. Dick had had one interview with the tall, rather silent gentleman, whom he was led to understand was his step-father, and then he had been sent back to school. Even now sometimes with a twinge of pain he would remember the utter loneliness that had seemed to descend on him during that return journey. He set his teeth, and shrugged his shoulders and ploughed his way through things—but always that loneliness remained. It was like a raw wound in his heart.

But at least one thing had been gained—the power of setting his teeth and shrugging his shoulders. The horrors of school life fell back to their proper proportions after that. Not that he was ever very popular at school. That sense of loneliness built up a barrier between him and his school mates. He had the reputation for being moody, or conceited, or desperately shy; it depended on the point of view of the onlooker. For himself, there was nothing very pleasant that he could look back on during all those years—and still, vaguely hovering over them as it were, there was the shadow of his mother. He had adored his mother, and pushed even to the outskirts of her life, he still adored.

Then had come that brief spell when she had taken him back again, older now, more able to understand. He gathered that, in some way or other, the man who had called himself his step-father had failed his mother. He was never to be referred to again. Dick was to help her to forget. They travelled pretty extensively during the years when Dick should most certainly have been completing his education in far different ways. Knowledge he undoubtedly absorbed, but it was not of much use to him, and it brought with it the bitterness of disillusionment. He was a good looking boy and it amused women to make love to him. Whether it amused him equally in turn is open to doubt. Most deplorably early in life Dick found that women were rather tiresomely the same and the loneliness in the centre of his life persisted.

He was, or so most people thought, thoroughly spoiled before he returned with his mother to settle for an odd season or so in town. The type of youthful Don Juan accords but ill with the average Englishmen’s idea of manhood. Nobody paused to wonder whether or not it was Dick’s fault, they simply disliked him and, more or less, left him alone.

In Africa, according to his own half-informed thoughts, he would damn well build up a new life for himself. But it should be a clean life and no woman but his mother should have any share in it.

To have reached a decision of that sort at the age of twenty betokens a most unpleasant precocity, and, there was no doubt about it, Dick was precocious. But for the rest, he could be put down as odd, or conceited, or merely desperately alone—that again depended on the onlooker’s point of view.

For instance, it is very certain that Major Staines and Helen did not view him from the same standpoint. To Tony, he was nothing but a lad, rather a nice lad, Tony thought, sensing, as very few men bothered to sense, the loneliness of the boy, the courage which lay behind set teeth and shrugged shoulders; whereas to Helen . . . it would be difficult really to define what Helen thought of Dick. The attraction was there, and that was all she bothered about for the moment. She was anxious that his eyes should challenge hers, his lips smile, his brown face flush. Their hearts spoke the same language; it was like a little leaping flame of fire between them; it ignored other things such as age and position and situation, and made straight for the primitive fact.

“I am a man, and you are a woman,” his eyes said, and hers made answer “Yes.” That was the sudden, unexplainable bond between them.

All this, as a matter of fact, is rather fanciful and absurd.

What they really did was to sit one on either side of Major Staines and listen very decorously and reply sedately to the questions he had to ask both of them and if the air was warm with their unspoken thoughts he, at least, was quite unaware of it. It is possible to be very fond of a woman and yet not have the slightest idea of what she is thinking.

Helen told the two of them all she knew, or, at least as much as she thought it was necessary they should know about Thomas Bacon. He was, it appeared, enormously wealthy and he had been very fond of splashing his wealth about. He had insisted, for one thing, upon paying all their expenses on this trip, hers and Miss Blain’s.

“It was not, you must understand,” Helen explained, her eyes discreetly lowered, “the sort of trip I could afford to take on my own. And I have always so wanted to see Africa. It was a very great temptation. And then . . .” She looked up at Dick. He sat for the most part of the interview with his eyes on her face, and whenever she looked up, she caught that flicker of warm blue. “You see I saw he had taken an almost sentimental interest in Esther—and from what we could gather, he was a bachelor—it seemed a very wonderful thing for her.”

“She did not seem to like him much,” said Dick. He stirred in his seat and took his eyes away from the woman who so intrigued him. For the moment he was thinking of the girl and the terror that had been on her face.

“What makes you say that?” asked Staines, slowly. “This, I think, is where we get down to your share in the story, young man. I gather that before this incident of fainting you had spoken to the lady, met her earlier in the evening, perhaps?”

“No,” answered Dick, “I told you all I knew this morning. We didn’t speak to each other. She came along the verandah and the sight of the dead man frightened her. That wasn’t unnatural, there was a lot of blood about. I saw she was going to do a flop and I caught her. Then—well, it was just after I had shouted out to rouse the hotel. I knew the verandah would be full of people in a minute. The man’s bedroom door was open. I bolted in with her.”

“And then?” asked Staines.

“Then, well, it did not seem right somehow to leave the girl there in the man’s room—if there had been murder—suicide—oh, you know how one thinks at those times. I thought I’d take her through into the first empty room I came to and lay her down on the bed. I thought an unlocked door probably meant an empty room, so I barged into your place.” He looked at Helen. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “I was out of bed,” she explained to Major Staines; “the noise had wakened me. I wasn’t very dressed though.” She smiled at Dick. “And—well, you did alarm me.”

“I know. I must have looked a bit mad,” Dick admitted. “Of course, I knew, as soon as I saw you that you and the dead man—well, I mean, you had dined together the night before, hadn’t you? I had seen you. I was afraid I would give you an awful shock if I told you who it was that was dead.”

“You had seen us the night before then?” said Helen. How much exactly had this young man seen?

“Only for a minute or two at dinner,” he answered. “I noticed you, of course” though that was not strictly true, it was Esther he had noticed, “and then, afterwards, Mason was telling the fellows in the bar about Bacon. How impossibly rich he was, how he travelled with wads of banknotes. Mason had seen them—or something.”

Helen heard a little hard laugh. “Yes, he travelled with them,” she admitted, “but he always gave them to me to look after at night. Do you know it’s odd, I hadn’t thought of it before to-day, but always ever since I’ve known him at all, well, I have known that Tom Bacon was afraid of being murdered.’

“Ah!” said Major Staines, “now what made you know that?”

“Well, there was his revolver to begin with,” she answered; “he was never without it, and sometimes he used to talk, you could see he was frightened, about some man he had once done down, who had sworn to get even with him. And—oh, how extraordinary that I should have forgotten, but that—that was one of the reasons why he wanted to come up here. Why he did not want to come alone. He hoped to find this man and pay him back some of what had been owed him. Square him, he called it, so that he could grow old in peace. Oh, Tony,” she turned to Major Staines and caught his arm, “supposing that was what happened last night. Supposing his enemy tracked him down, wouldn’t give any quarter, wouldn’t be squared . . .”

“Killed him with his own revolver?” said Major Staines, “Humph!”

And across the space of the room, his eye met Dick’s. “Why, exactly,” he asked, “did you so carefully dust that revolver before you threw it away?”

“You!” whispered Helen. Her hands fell away from Major Staines. She turned to stare at Dick. “Oh, it can’t have been you.”

“It was not,” said Dick. He said it as though to reassure her was the most important thing in the world. He kept his eyes on hers, till hers flickered and fell. “And as for dusting it,” he went on, “well, I suppose that was natural. You see, it occurred to me, once I had got rid of the young lady, that I had been a damned fool to pick up that revolver. If it was found on me, what would everyone think? I don’t know much about police methods in this country, but at home, they’d ferret out my finger marks as I had touched the thing, wouldn’t they? It seemed only sensible to dust it.”

“It was,” agreed Major Staines; “only somehow, I thought . . .” He broke off. “No, it is a puzzle, I admit,” he ended instead.

There was a discreet knock at the door; the man Mason thrust his head in.

“The District Commissioner would like to see you, Major Staines for a moment,” he said. “You know, I never realised, sir, that we had in our midst the Deputy P.M.O.; you must have thought it peculiar . . .”

“Not at all,” Major Staines hastened to interrupt “As a matter of fact, I don’t want to be drawn in. I’m on sick leave. I’ll come along and see Samson, though.”

He passed out of the room behind Mason and in the little silence that followed, Helen sat very still with her eyes lowered waiting for Dick to speak. She knew, almost exactly, what he would say. It was her answer that she had to weigh very carefully in the balance.

“You knew Major Staines, before . . . before this?” asked Dick, finally. “I saw when you came into the room with him that you must have known him a long time.”

“Yes,” she answered with seeming abstraction, her fingers moving slowly backwards and forwards across the soft texture of her frock. “Once, oh, ever so long ago, he—he was in love with me.”

“Why do you say it like that? “Dick asked. “Ever so long ago . . . it sounds as if . . .”

“It sounds as if I was old, doesn’t it?” she interrupted, and she looked up. “Well, so I am,” She made a little sweeping movement with her hands. “Oh, ever so old!”

He stood up abruptly and moved towards the door. Mason had left it open. At the end of the verandah he could see Staines in conversation with a man in khaki uniform.

“That’s nonsense, isn’t it?” he argued; there came that quick shrug of his shoulders; he turned to face her; “I suppose any amount of men have been in love with you,” he said.

Helen rose with a little laugh. When she moved, it seemed as though she shook out of her short silk skirts the fragrance of hurt roses. “My dear child,” she remonstrated, and coming over and standing beside him, so close that her shoulder brushed against his, “that’s the worst of youth. It never knows when, and when not, to talk of love. Do you know that all through this perfectly solemn interview with Major Staines—and at one moment of it I thought you were going to be accused of murder—your eyes have been making love to me?”

“You . . . “ began Dick; his self assurance rather left him, but, despite his knowledge, he was very young; “you are very lovely,” he said, a little hoarsely.

“And you, my dear,” she answered, her eyes challenging his, and then dropping away as though afraid, “are rather adorable. But we’ve got to be sensible and together” her voice became graver, “we’ve got to stand by that silly girl Esther, haven’t we?”

“You’re fond of her?” asked Dick. “It would hurt you . . .”

“Of course I am,” she nodded; “I’ve looked after her now, on and off, for years. I am always very glad that I didn’t have a daughter because I don’t attempt to understand girls, but if I had . . . You know I happen to know that you haven’t told the truth about Esther, so far,” she broke off to say.

He moved a little. “What do you mean?” he asked. “It is true she was frightened and fainted . . . I carried her into your room . . .”

“Yes, that’s true,” she agreed, “but, oh, most noble knight, she was not on the verandah, she was in Bacon’s room, and the revolver dropped out of her hands as she saw you.”

“She told you about it?” he stared. “You need neither of you be afraid. I won’t give her away. She must have been pretty desperate with fright . . . or disgust.”

Helen gave a little wry smile. “She went there of her own free will,” she said.

“That’s what I can’t understand. He was always a beast—I knew that. But I thought Esther . . .” She gave a little very realistic shiver. “Oh, what’s the use of thinking one understands people,” she whispered. “ Anyway, there’s something else that you don’t know yet. She had a cloak on over her nightgown when she went into his room; now she can’t find it. She thinks it must have fallen off when . . . It’s got a note from him in the pocket, asking her to come.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Dick. He looked ridiculously boyish. “That’s done it, hasn’t it?”

“We’ve got to save her,” said Helen. “No one has got to know that she was so stupid as to go to his room like that. She’s such a little idiot, Esther, but there’s no vice in her. That is what makes me feel so terribly that it’s my fault.”

“How could it be?” he said hotly. “You are standing by her like an absolute brick.”

“If the worst comes to the worst,” she said, looking at him, “I can say it’s my coat—my letter. There’s no name on it, she says. Let them think what they like. But you—oh, somehow, isn’t it ridiculous of me?—I do not want you to think it.”

He could not say anything, but the colour swept over his face looking at her, and something in Helen’s heart wavered, and was sorry, and drew back ashamed before the thing she planned.

“Ah, don’t,” she said quickly, and put her hands on his, “you are so young and I am most horribly middle-aged, but there’s been friendship in your eyes when you look at me. I . . . I want to keep it there.”

Major Staines came back along the verandah to them. “It seems it’s murder all right,” he said. “Shot through the back of his head. Some bright spark has found a revolver dropped outside. No other clues of any sort. You had his money, you say?” He looked at Helen. “Ah well, there’s nothing we can any of us do at the moment. The room is sealed up. The C.I.D. have been wired for, and no one is to be allowed to leave the hotel. We just twiddle our thumbs and think.”

“What merciful Providence sent you here to comfort me,” said Helen; “I should have had hysterics otherwise. Mr. Stanley, be a lamb, and leave the two of us to talk about past things, will you? And don’t forget what I’ve told you is my secret—mine and yours. We won’t let anyone else share it.”

Chapter Five

For the Sake of Old Love

“And what exactly is the secret that you share with this estimable young man?” asked Staines, as they turned back into the room.

“You always wanted to know secrets,” Helen teased him, “you seem to think that a secret shared is a secret intensified.”

She sat down in the easy chair and leant back. Her head against the dark cushions was like a flower, he thought. “Do you know, Tony?” she said softly, “that young man thinks he is falling in love with me.”

“And you?” Major Staines stood with his back to the fireplace and looked down at her; “have you taken to baby-snatching in your old age, Helen?”

She caught her breath on some sound, half laugh, half sob and leant forward quickly, covering her face with long slim fingers.

“That was unkind,” she whispered, “but most horribly true.”

She laughed and looked up at him.

“Oh, Tony, I’m quite, quite hopeless,” she confessed. “I always have been ever since the year one, and that’s why you wouldn’t have anything to do with me, even in those days—oh, ever so long ago—when you thought you loved me.”

“I never thought it,” he answered. “I knew it. I am not a fellow who lets go of knowledge easily.”

She sat looking up at him, her chin cupped in her two hands. “Tony, life’s been damnable,” she said softly. “I’ve—it has been like a sea, great waves drowning one pulling one under just as one hoped to swim to land. And under the waves there is dirt and slime and weeds. Tony . . . why did not your love save me from that?”

“Could it have saved you,” he asked gently, “any more than Langley’s, Helen? Langley loved you all right.”

“I know,” she admitted, “but he wasn’t any use, Tony.”

“What happened to Langley? “Staines asked. “Do you care to tell me?”

Helen lowered her eyes and sat very still, staring at the empty fireplace. It was like her life, she thought vaguely, because when she indulged in retrospective surveys of her past she was always inclined to clothe them in poetical thoughts. So many fires had been kindled in her heart and they had flamed up and left nothing, not even ashes that one could sweep up and treasure and perhaps cry over now and again. There was nothing there that she could show Tony. Nothing that he could for one second understand, only emptiness and ugliness.

“I left him.” She spoke at last slowly. “Didn’t you always know that in the end I should leave him? I went away with Charlie Dawson. You never met him. He did not marry me, not even when Frank divorced me, so though I use his name, I’ve no right to it. He was rather a pig-dog, Charles. I think from the beginning you would have known that he was that. Frank knew it. And after . . . well, I just drifted. Tony, do you know at all what that means? I’ve no money of my own, at least, nothing that you could count as money. There’s a little, Frank allows me. I’ve taken fun where I could find it—love . . . That boy just now, Tony,” she caught her breath on a sigh . . . “He said, ‘I suppose any amount of men have been in love with you.’ It made me feel most terribly, just for a moment, the cheapness of my life.”

Major Staines took his eyes away from her and looked out over her head at the hard, bright sunshine. It hurt him to look at her. He was not, as he had said, a man who changed his thoughts easily, and he had been very much in love with her in those far-off days.

“And was this man, Bacon,” he asked stiffly, “your lover?”

“Oh, would one call it that?” she asked. “He paid for me and I hated him.” She said it with sudden surprising fierceness; “I hate even to speak of him. The memory of him is like—like a black smear across my thoughts.”

She stood up dramatically. “Tony,” she said, “for heaven’s sake, help me out of this, don’t let people know. I—I’m like something caught in a trap. Oh, say if you like that it is a trap of my own making, the agony, the shame is just the same.”

“And the girl?” said Major Staines slowly, “do you know at all how she comes into it?”

“I don’t,” Helen confessed. “I’m in the dark there. You heard the boy’s story. This morning, when he had left her in my room, I tried to find out naturally what had happened. She seemed distraught—frantic with terror. He, Bacon, had written asking her to come to his room. She got the note after she was undressed, ready for bed. She just put a coat on over her nightdress, she said, and went.”

“Do you think she killed him?” asked Staines. “I don’t know.” Helen’s face stiffened a little. She looked away. “She won’t tell me anything. Something happened to terrify her, that’s all one can gather.”

“He must have said something very imperative in his note to bring her out like that at night,” said Staines.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Helen, “Esther is oddly impulsive. She—well, she never saw him as evil. He was always spending money on us, ‘ragging’ her as though she were a child, and she is most dreadfully ignorant about things, Esther. She says she has left the letter in the pocket of her coat, and the coat is in Bacon’s room.”

He brought his eyes back to hers, unwillingly enough.

“I’ll stand by you in this,” he said slowly. “You know that; because of old, unforgettable things. But you’ve got to tell me the truth as you know it, Helen. Otherwise I shall only blunder where I want to help. Do you know anything about young Stanley, other than what you have admitted to knowing, here in front of me?”

“I never saw him till early this morning,” she answered quickly. “He can’t have been the man of whom Bacon was so afraid. He is far too young. I don’t—I don’t, honestly think that he knows any more than he has told us.”

“Well, then, if we wipe him out,” Staines reflected, “there’s only the girl left and this problematical man. I’ve got to get down to this. Nothing will move for to-day. Try not to worry more than you can help, Helen, and keep very quiet about everything. If I can manage it, I’ll get into the room and retrieve Miss Blain’s letter. That is better got out of the way, anyway.”

So much for the sake of old love; yet the thing weighed almost unbelievably on his mind. He would have liked to wipe it out and go away and forget. Forget that he had ever loved a girl called Helen Langley, and all that had happened to her. Sometimes love is like a snake in one’s hand—it turns and strikes when we least expect it.

Since he could not go away and could not forget, he settled down to doing what he could to help her. The District Commissioner had not yet left the hotel; Staines caught him walking across the cleared space to get into his car.

“I am curious,” Staines confessed, “to see this man that has been killed. I wonder if it would be possible for me to have a look at the body.”

“Professionally?” asked Mr. Samson. He was a small, precise, fussy little man. “There is no question apparently as to how he died.”

“I know there isn’t,” admitted Staines. “No, it is just a sort of rank curiosity. Crime—the detection of crime—has always been a hobby of mine.”

“Well, I don’t see how we are going to keep you locked out,” grinned Samson, “if you want to go in. Come along back with me now. He’s an unpleasant looking sight. I’m arranging for the funeral to-morrow morning.”

“And Armstrong, I suppose, can’t get here before the afternoon?” said Staines.

“Don’t expect him till then, but he’ll hardly want to see the body,” Samson explained; “the medical evidence is quite straightforward. He had not gone to bed. He put up, so far as we can gather, no sort of a struggle. It looks as though he had been talking to someone quite amicably; as though he had turned towards the door to open it to let them out, or to go out himself, and he was shot while his back was still turned to the person. He must, the doctor thinks, have had the door open before the shot was fired because in the position in which he was found it looks as though he had pitched clean forward and twisted his face upwards in a kind of death spasm.”

“What about the leopard?” asked Staines, “I heard rumours . . .”

“Yes . . .” Samson nodded. “Just to add a really grotesque touch to the story there was a leopard. As a matter of fact, it has been about round the station for the last week or two. I’ve seen it myself. I suppose it was slinking about, smelt the blood and came round to investigate.”

He stopped and unlocked the door of the bedroom. “You’ll see, it has clawed the wretched man’s face, one sort of pat with its paw. But the poor devil was dead before that, the doctor says; he must have died quick, on the heads of the shot.”

“I see,” Staines agreed. “Gad, it’s mysterious, isn’t it? Who could have wanted to . . . What end did they serve? You don’t want to bother to come in with me, do you?” he asked. “I’ll nose round and lock up after me and send you back the key.”

“I suppose that will be all right,” agreed Samson. “I’ve been nauseated once this morning. Come along down to my office when you’ve finished and we’ll go back to my house and have a spot of lunch.”

“Right,” said Staines, “I’d like to.”

An eskari stood at attention and saluted as Samson let him into the room. “I’ve got guards back and front,” Samson explained. “I suppose it’s imperative nothing should be touched.”

Major Staines went forward slowly after he had closed the door behind him, and for a minute or two he stood looking down at the sheeted figure on the bed. He had no wish to uncover it or to look at its face. From all he had heard that morning he knew he would experience neither pity nor regret. It seemed a good thing that men like Thomas Bacon should die; a just reward that their deaths should be neither peaceful nor easy. For if the dead man could speak, what horrible stories would he not tell of love dishonoured, of faith trampled on and honour bought and sold.

The room, he noticed, glancing round it quickly, had obviously been left untouched. There were the dead man’s evening things flung over the back of a chair, his handkerchief dropped on the floor, his cigarettes and matchbox, with a half-burnt cigarette lying across it, on the dressing table. The chair in front of the looking glass had been pushed a little askew and left like that as though Bacon had been sitting there the night before and swung round on it and risen to greet someone coming in.

Major Staines moved over to it and stood beside it without touching it. He was trying to reconstruct in his mind the events of last night. Whoever then had come to see Bacon had come in by the back way. That was why he had had to swing round in his chair. Had he been surprised at the arrival? Alarmed, or merely intrigued? The burnt away cigarette could not tell him much, nor the dropped handkerchief on the floor. He moved again and stood by the window. Soft blue curtains draped it artistically. This was what the management called The Blue Room. There was a round blue carpet on the floor, blue silk shaded the electric light. Standing there by the curtains Major Staines became aware of the faint indefinite scent of dried rose leaves. Romantic thought that of the management to keep their linen press perfumed with dried roses. He looked about him, sniffing a little and something caught his eye. A fragment of flimsy white lying on the floor, half concealed by the curtain. Major Staines stooped and picked it up and immediately the scent of roses grew stronger, blew as it were against his face. So this was the real fragrance holder! A lady’s handkerchief. He held it in his hands looking down at it, his eyes narrowed to a frown. Whoever had held this last had been undoubtedly agitated. It was crushed and twisted and torn at. He could imagine frantic fingers—not over strong, or the wretched flimsy thing would have been in pieces. The girl! . . . He looked up quickly, staring across the room. According to the boy Stanley, the girl had never been in the room. She had come along the verandah and seen the dead man and fainted. No use to picture her then standing terrified, frantic, half concealed by this fragile curtain, whose folds still held faint memory of the perfume she had worn. And if not the girl—who then?

A sudden vision of Helen came to him, but, oddly enough, it was not Helen as she was now, that he saw, but that other Helen of twenty years ago, laughing, radiant eyed, her fingers brushing his lips.

So Helen had been here sometime last night. She had not told him that. She had not thought it necessary perhaps. Bacon had bought and paid for her, she came and went presumably as he liked.

And it had not been Helen whom Bacon had swung round in his chair to greet. He would hardly bother to do that for Helen.

Major Staines slipped the pocket handkerchief into his pocket and stepped out into the centre of the room again. At the foot of the bed was a low settee. It had a pile of clean clothes on it, fresh back from the laundry and huddled in one corner a rather gaily coloured mackintosh. No man’s garment that. He picked it up reflectively and a name tape caught his eye. “Esther Blain” he read.

“She just put a coat over her nightdress and went.” That was how Helen had described it.

Which of them was lying to him, Helen, or the boy, Dick Stanley—the boy of the amazingly blue eyes?

Was it the girl whom Bacon had turned and risen to greet, and had young Stanley . . . ?

“I shall have to see what she has to say about this,” thought Major Staines, and he weighed the mackintosh in his hand as though he half expected that the feel of it might elucidate some mystery for him.

And so holding it, he suddenly remembered the note and put his hand into the pockets of the coat and felt for it. His search was rewarded; his fingers folded over a crumpled bit of paper, but before he could pull it out and look at it, a noise at the door caught his attention.

The eskari on duty was contesting someone’s right of entry.

“You get out of my way, you blasted black nigger,” he heard a somewhat fierce voice declaim, “or I’ll knock you down.”

The language, fortunately, at this stage merged into the native tongue. The speaker was evidently a very expert and fluent swearer in Swahili.

Major Staines slipped his discovered bit of paper into his pocket, dropped the mackintosh back on the settee and moved across to the door to investigate.

The lean, long planter whom he had met at breakfast, and heard spoken of as Vernon, stood just outside. He was glaring very ferociously at the none too bold native policeman, and his face and hairy expanse of chest seemed more fiercely red than ever.

Staines gathered that his morning’s beverage had not been limited to coffee.

“What’s up?” he asked, “the man is right. No one is allowed in here.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?” asked the man Vernon. He swayed a little towards Staines. “I say, old bean,” he muttered, “it’s . . . it’s damned imperative I should see him.”

“Why?” asked Staines. “He’s not at all a pleasant sight.”

“That’s all right,” Vernon waved large, intensely powerful hands beneath whose threat the eskari visibly shivered. “Don’t mind that. Just want to satisfy myself.”

“What of?” asked Staines again.

Vernon lurched his face still nearer. “That he is dead,” he said thickly, “and that he is the bloke I took him to be last night. Because if he is and he’s dead, it’s what I’ve been waiting for these twenty years!”

Chapter Six

Have You Fallen in Love?

James Armstrong, Head of the Uganda Criminal Investigation Department, was a man, so his detractors said, more like a ferret in appearance than any other human had ever been known to be. His detractors were not few in number; a more unpopular man it would not have been possible to find. He had a form of snarling, sarcastic humour which was hardly likely to endear him, even to those on whom he did not exercise it. For the rest, he was tall and very slight, oddly angular, with a long, pale face, fair hair which he wore brushed off his forehead in a peak that added to his height and very sharp blue eyes, partially concealed behind tinted glasses.

It was his mouth that was so like a ferret’s, as a lady had once pointed out. It was a large slit-like mouth, very full of sharp-pointed teeth. When he smiled, which was generally at his own humour, the lips seemed to stretch tight above this formidable array of ivories, giving to his face a queer, inhuman expression.

But he was clever. No one, for one moment, attempted to deny that. If James Armstrong got down to a case, he worried it through to its just conclusion, however numerous and however strong in lies the witnesses for the defence happened to be. In that, he certainly lived up to his nickname; no poor rabbit of a criminal ever escaped him.

Major Staines had no personal liking for the man, but he was a very real admirer of his brains and he felt that in this case, for the sake of all concerned, it behoved him to be on Armstrong’s side rather than against him.

Armstrong drove up to the hotel late the following evening, with something of a flourish. He had a fine Buick car and it was loaded to its full capacity with handsome looking eskaries, very trim and spruce, their red fezes sitting at just the right angle, the black tassels swinging with each movement of the wearer’s heads.

One of them leapt out and opened the door of the car as it drew to a standstill, and stayed smartly at the salute while Armstrong, looking very unlike a police officer, unpacked his long legs and climbed laboriously out. He was never a quick or a smart mover. For all his slimness and length, he was singularly ungraceful.

Mason, of course, was there to receive him; the other detained visitors at the hotel, Staines among them, sat about on the front verandah and watched the arrival.

“This unfortunate affair,” Staines could hear Mason bubbling over with information; “the poor man was buried this morning . . .”

Armstrong seemed to brush the gesticulating figure out of his path.

“I’ve had full particulars from the D.C.,” he snapped. “Before it gets too dark to see properly, I wish to inspect the room, and I can tell you straight away that I don’t want assistance from anyone.”

His sharp eyes roamed over the length of the verandah; he caught sight of Staines and nodded.

“Hullo, Staines,” he said, “you are here, are you?”

If ever Armstrong condescended to notice anyone, you could make a pretty shrewd guess that that person was head of some department, or likely to be, in the near future. Staines knew that it was his official position that was being recognised, not his personality. He strolled forward though with the purposeful intent of keeping up the condescension.

“Had a good run up?” he asked.

Armstrong grinned. “Not bad; two hundred and six miles in seven hours, eh! What are you doing—sick leave?”

“Yes,” Staines admitted. “And an unexpected excitement.”

“Humph!” snorted Armstrong. He turned away.

“Well, I must get down to it,” he added. “Come on, Fazil Khan. See you later, Staines. Anyone else dining at your table?”

“No,” said Staines, still punctiliously polite. “We’ll join up, shall we?”

“Just as soon,” grunted Armstrong; he had been too gracious perhaps, he felt. After all, Staines was only Deputy P.M.O. “They look a mouldy crowd here.”

He lounged off in the wake of a still anxious to assist Mason. Fazil Khan and one of his confrères brought up the rear. They looked debonair and important, swaggering along the verandah with their bare feet and their bold inquisitive eyes.

Major Staines went back to the table where he was sitting with Helen, Esther Blain and Stanley.

“Our keen witted, if slightly unpleasant, official is now in charge,” he said; “the thing will not long remain a mystery.”

“You think that?” said Helen. She was the only one who answered. Dick kept his eyes lowered, and as to Esther, the girl never seemed to have really emerged from the state of terror which had held her from the first. “It will be a comfort, won’t it, when someone knows something.”

Dick lifted his eyes for a second and glanced at her. “I don’t see,” he said with a certain sullenness, “how he can find out much. What’s he got to go on?”

“Ah that,” Staines spoke lightly, “it’s amazing what these police fellows go on—a frayed bit of thread—cigarette ash in the wrong place—a dropped letter.”

The girl Esther spoke for the first time: “Will they, will they hang whoever did it?” she asked.

Helen laughed. “Esther’s mind leaps ahead,” she said, as though to explain her laughter; “with the arrival of the policeman, she sees the noose.” She stood up. “This place gets on my nerves badly, Tony. Perhaps that is hardly to be wondered at. Do you think there would be anything against your taking me for a drive?”

Staines was watching the girl Esther, because at Helen’s laugh, Esther had looked up at her and it occurred to him for the first time that in Esther’s face there was just a faint shadow of the loveliness that had been Helen’s. The girl lacked life and colour; that was what made her seem almost plain in comparison with her brilliant companion. And another thing was there to notice; in those grey blue eyes of hers, as she had looked at Helen, there had been almost unbounded adoration.

“Jove, how Helen has always made people love her,” thought Staines; “made them, and had nothing to give in return.”

“I think I’ll be allowed to take my car out,” he answered, “and you in it. Shall we go?”

He saw the little swift glance that Helen gave the girl, then she looked back at him, laughing again.

“Tony, in your heart of hearts, are you half afraid?” She made pretence to mock him. “Do I stand in need of a chaperone?”

“Always, I should imagine,” he answered. “However, if you are keen on a tête-à-tête, I’m on.”

“Well, then let’s go,” said Helen. She stood up and now her eyes challenged Dick’s. “You’ll stay, won’t you, Mr. Stanley?” she asked, “and amuse Esther till we come back?”

She moved away without waiting for an answer, her hand slipped engagingly on to Staines’s arm.

“You see, Tony,” she explained, “I am trying to be good—throwing them together. “Youth calls to youth—the wide world over. Isn’t that what you wanted to make me understand yesterday morning?”

“When I talked of baby-snatching?” he asked. “Your methods, Helen, are capable of two interpretations.”

“What do you mean?” She stopped in mock offence to ask, one foot on the step of the car.

“Only,” he answered gravely, “that one might think you made him jealous of me, whilst throwing him at Miss Blain’s head. Oh, my dear,” he smiled aside her remonstrance. “Don’t let us waste our time talking of him. Get in, I’ll drive you, and while we drive, let’s talk. There’s much I want to ask you and two things I want to show you.”

The two left on the verandah did not, it appeared, have much to say to each other. Major Staines’s supposition had been correct. Jealousy was moving like a little sluggish flame across the background of Dick’s thought. Love in the young leaps quickly to life, and dies down with equal rapidity. Perhaps it is in reality too frail a thing to dignify by the name of love, this leaping of the pulses called to life by adventurous eyes, this warm swift rush of desire that feeds itself on perfumes, colours and a dream.

Helen was Dick’s dream-lady. He thought of her like that. Some being radiant and desirable and far-away—as far away as any star could be to any moth. He did not place her with age, or clothe her with the garments of convention. At twenty-two, you may be excused for labelling things with their wrong names. And in any case, is it not probable that the warm mind of youth and the keen cool intellect of age must have different names for the thing which all men, at some time or other in their lives, call love? For love to the philosopher is a word derived from a Greek root meaning “Charity,” and love to a young man is a sudden leap of the pulses, a riot of thought and a dream brought to life. So Dick loved—or thought he loved—his dream Helen, had known for certain that he thus loved her through twenty-four interminably long hours, and was most bitterly aware of the fact that Staines also loved her and stood more chance of being loved in return.

It was Esther that spoke first. “Will you come and walk in the garden?” she said, her voice very stiff and staid. “I want to say something to you, and here there are so many people to overhear.”

He looked up at her at once and found her face flushed to sudden colour. She seemed oddly perturbed by this thing that she had asked.

“Why, of course,” he answered, and rose and moved towards the steps, she following him.

The space in front of the hotel, beyond the drive which swept up to the front steps, had been planted out as a flower garden. Narrow paths ran between beds of tall flowering plants. Everything grew in a riot of confusion, dennias, larkspurs, cannas, roses, low growing phlox, and sunflowers that towered high above one’s head. The soil was new and turbulent; it threw up the splendour of colour and scent with a lavish indifference. Only a few months ago this had been a tract of land on which the elephant grass grew and flourished. This English garden had taken root here with an almost more surprising speed than the growth of the hotel.

Dick and his companion walked in silence till they were out of sight and hearing of the hotel verandah, then Esther turned to him with a little catch of her breath.

“I’ve just got to know,” she said. “You . . . you think I killed him, don’t you?”

Dick was sorry for her distress. He had been sorry for her the night before last when she had stood facing him in that room for those few seconds with such terror in her eyes.

“Well,” he began, “whatever I think—it doesn’t matter. I mean I shan’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, but it does matter,” she spoke quickly. “To me it matters that you should think that.”

She stood in front of him twisting and wringing her hands. “You’ve got to believe me,” she whispered. “Please, please look straight at me as I say it. Then you’ll know I’m not lying.”

Dick lifted his eyes, as in duty bound, and looked straight into hers. They were very grey eyes; he thought about them for a minute or two. The lashes shading them were long and dark, but the eyes themselves were light, clear pools of greyness.

“Do you think I killed him?” asked the girl. Dick looked away again quickly. He was more than ever sorry for her, but it did not alter or shake his belief.

“You were in the room,” he spoke slowly; “the revolver dropped out of your hands—ah, don’t be frightened. I shan’t tell that to anyone else, but what is your object in asking me, in trying to make me believe . . .”

“Because,” she interrupted quickly, “don’t you see . . . you and I . . . the others, it doesn’t matter what they think, but you are my generation . . .”

What odd words she used, standing there, stammering in front of him. “Helen—Helen can make one believe anything,” she finished lamely.

He felt stirred to sudden anger. “She’s fighting her hardest to keep them from believing that you did it,” he said quickly.

“I know,” she interrupted again. “She’s so awfully clever—Helen. Oh, don’t think that I don’t admire her; love her most awfully, I do. I’d die gladly if it would do her any good. I mean I’d let them hang me . . .”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Dick roughly. “How would that help her in any way? If you take my advice—and in talking to me like this, you are sort of asking it, aren’t you?—you’ll try and not be so afraid about everything —at least, you’ll try and not look afraid. We are all fighting for you, Mrs. Dawson and I, even Major Staines, though he doesn’t know what we know.”

“You and Helen,” said the girl slowly. “Are you falling in love with Helen?”

“That is not the sort of question I can answer.” Again he was angry with her. Anger stirred against the pity in his mind. “And you have no right to ask it. That has got nothing to do with you, has it?”

“No,” she admitted. “Only . . .”

“Well, don’t let’s discuss it,” he interrupted quickly. “Look here, these are the things for you to know and remember when that man Armstrong gets down to asking questions. You never went into Bacon’s room—you had the note asking you to come—you came along the verandah and as you reached the door, he stumbled out and fell. That frightened you—you felt sick and faint. You did faint, that bit is true at least. It was I who found you. As a matter of fact,” he thought quickly, “I was there a minute or two after Bacon fell. It was I who carried you through the room, and it was I who let the mackintosh thing you had got over your shoulders fall off in the room as I was carrying you. Have you got all that?” he asked, with amazing sternness for him.

“You carried me,” she repeated, “I remember waking up in Helen’s bed and seeing you standing at the door.”

“Yes, and you weren’t very pleased to see me,” he said gruffly, “you shouted out, ‘Go away!’ or words to that effect.”

“I know,” Esther admitted, “I thought . . .”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t think,” said Dick. He put his strong browned hand over hers that were still twisting and turning. “This is what you’ve got to remember. You were not in the room at all. I carried you through. It’s all right about the letter. Staines has seen to that.”

“You haven’t asked me why I was in the room,” said the girl; a rather painful colour flooded her face, but she kept her eyes on his. “I suppose you think . . .”

Dick took his hand away and gave the quick, characteristic shrug to this shoulders. “I have not thought about it,” he said. “It has really got nothing to do with me. Shall we go back to the hotel now? I expect I ought to hang about somewhere handy, as I was the first person who found him.”

She turned and walked back beside him, without further argument. Her head of rather pale gold hair came just level with his shoulder. Once or twice Dick glanced at her. She was rather delicately lovely and it was odd how she appealed to his sense of chivalry. It was not quite true to say that he had not thought about what her presence in Bacon’s room might portend. He had thought about it more than once. It made him angry to think about it, but in some queer way his anger was not directed against her. He wanted to protect and safeguard her from the results of what she had done.

“You do understand, don’t you,” he asked suddenly on a gentle tone, “how we must all stick to the same story you, and I, and Mrs. Dawson? Staines doesn’t really come into it; he is just an interested outsider.”

“Yes, I understand,” she answered; “I’ll do as you and . . .” she hesitated for a moment, “Helen want,” she said, slowly.

Chapter Seven

The Ferret

Armstrong spent exactly an hour in the dead man’s room. He took with him his two debonair eskaries. Presumably he had them trained to act on the lines laid down by him. There was at least nothing in the room which had not been most thoroughly investigated before the hour was up. And nothing escaped Armstrong.

He emerged at the end of that time, leaving his two henchmen to restore order among the chaos caused and sent for Mason.

“This man Bacon,” he said, running his fingers backwards and forwards across thin lips, “was travelling with two ladies.”

“Yes—yes,” said Mason. He was only too delighted to enlarge. “A Mrs. Dawson and her companion, Miss Blain. Charming ladies, both of them. The elder one, Mrs. Dawson, very striking looking. Very—quite exceptional for this part of the world.”

“Indeed!” commented Armstrong, “and these ladies’ rooms were situated where?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Mason explained, “Mrs. Dawson had the pink room. That’s the one next to Mr. Bacon’s. We gathered . . .” He glanced at Armstrong to see whether he had gathered anything. “Well, naturally—you know . . .”

Armstrong’s face betrayed nothing, only his thin lips twitched a little. There was not much that he did not know by now as to the relationship which had existed between Mrs. Dawson and the dead man.

“And the younger woman?” he asked.

“Oh, she was in what we call the Bachelors’ Wing,” Mason answered. “Single rooms, you know.”

“How soon did either of the ladies come on the scene of action after the crime? “Armstrong asked.

“Oh, well—er—I don’t really know,” Mason admitted. “Not at once, by any means. Now I come to think of it though, Miss Blain was in Mrs. Dawson’s room—the—er—the pink room when I went in. I felt it incumbent on me to go in and break the—er—tragedy to Mrs. Dawson. It would never have done if they had just—er . . . stumbled on the body lying out on the verandah.”

“You saw Mrs. Dawson then before the police arrived, and Miss Blain was with her?”

“Yes, that is so,” Mason nodded. “I remember being—er—struck with it at the time. Miss Blain appeared to be asleep in Mrs. Dawson’s bed, but Mrs. Dawson herself was up and dressed.”

“Indeed,” said Armstrong again. It was a word he was rather fond of using, and it invariably betrayed a cynical disbelief in whatever the person talking to him happened to have said.

Mason plunged into further explanations. “Oh, naturally they had heard that something unpleasant, even tragic, was on foot; Mrs. Dawson’s window almost opened over where the dead man lay. I gathered from something that Mrs. Dawson said that Miss Blain had received a shock. She had run out when she had heard the noise and either seen the body, or heard someone call out ‘Murder!’ Anyway, she was very considerably upset. She is, it seems, a delicate, sensitive girl.”

“Indeed!” Armstrong’s customary remark fell like a splash of cold water on to Mason’s enthusiasm. He glanced up uneasily.

“You surely don’t think . . .” he began.

“I am here to think,” said Armstrong. “If Mrs. Dawson is in the hotel, I should like to see her for a few moments, privately. I should think the room which I have just inspected, and which is free of its late tenant, would do nicely.”

“Mrs. Dawson may have some scruples,” objected Mason; “women are highly strung in these matters. There is my office, I can place it entirely at your service.”

“Ask Mrs. Dawson whether she has any objection.” Armstrong smiled his tight, unpleasant expression of mirth. “I am quite willing to humour her.”

Helen Dawson returned from her drive with Staines, and with the crumpled piece of paper, which he had most chivalrously given her unread, destroyed, faced her interrogator with characteristic courage.

He was not a man against whom any of her well tried weapons would be of use. She sat through the interview with eyes lowered and hands clasped loosely on her lap. They sat side by side on the settee at the foot of the bed on which Bacon’s dead body had lain. Helen had made no demur to that, and only once or twice in the interview did Helen lift her head and look straight at Armstrong. She was not the type of woman he had expected to find. For once in a way, his keen mind stumbled, trying to sum her up. He ended the interview not much further on than he had been at the beginning, though Helen had told her story clearly and concisely.

He knew, for instance, all about the dead man’s wealth, his peculiarities, his nerves. He heard all that Helen apparently knew about the man who owed him a grudge, and of whom he had obviously been afraid. He gathered that this trip to the Mountains of the Moon Hotel had been undertaken solely with the idea of getting into touch with this mysterious enemy and attempting to buy off his hate.

“He had papers with him, which were to help him locate this man,” Helen explained. “And though he never mentioned his name, I think he knew it, or at least he knew under what other name the man was at present living.”

“Yes,” admitted Armstrong, “he knew that.” Her own side in the story she stated simply, without any prevarication. “We were not married,” she said, “but we lived together. We have known each other about a year. The night before last—yes, I was in this room with him, till about 3.30 a.m. Naturally, I do not want that known by everyone; it robs me of what little pride I have left. We parted perfectly amicably—there was no reason why we should do otherwise. He was always very good to me and generous with his money. I went out of the door leading on to the verandah, my own is just next to it. As far as I know, no one saw me.”

“And will you please tell me where he was standing, or sitting, or lying when you last saw him, Mrs. Dawson?” asked Armstrong.

“He was sitting on that chair by his dressing table,” Helen answered, slowly. “He had just lit a cigarette. For a man, he was horribly” (Armstrong thought the word queer and looked up at her quickly) “fastidious over his appearance.” There was no change in her voice or manner. “He always rubbed some kind of cold cream into his face at night. I think he was just starting to do that as I left.”

“Did he swing round in his chair—I mean twist the chair round to say good-night to you?” asked Armstrong.

“I don’t think so,” she answered quietly, “I don’t remember his doing that.”

He made no comment and she went on with her story. “I went to bed,” she said, “and dropped asleep almost at once. I am a very good sleeper; it is never difficult for me to go to sleep and on this occasion I was tired. We had motored, you know, the two hundred miles from Kampala.”

“Indeed!” said Armstrong. Behind the pale tinted glasses his eyes studied her, but he left the story entirely to her, he was not going to assist her by questions.

“We were all tired,” said Helen, “I must have slept really very soundly for I heard nothing at all until the morning, when I heard a man’s voice shouting outside. I remember I sat up with a start because there was something imperative about his voice, but even when I heard him cry out ‘There has been murder done—murder!’ I did not in any way connect it with Mr. Bacon.” She sat a little forward; she gave Mr. Armstrong the impression that she was groping on his behalf through vaguely remembered thoughts. “You see, though Tom had always been panicky about this man murdering him, I had thought—well, I had thought it was rather rot. Do you think anyone would ever hate anyone else through twenty years well enough to murder him in the end?”

“It depends,” Armstrong answered drily, and again he sat silent, just watching her.

“Like a ferret,” thought Helen, remembering Major Staines’ half serious description, “and I am the rabbit twisting and turning in its hole. He thinks of me like that.”

She threw her head a little back. This was one of the occasions when she looked straight at him and caught in response the blank stare of his glasses.

“Well, anyway,” she went on, “I slipped out of bed of course, and threw a shawl round me and ran to the window. I did not open it—I don’t quite know why, but there seemed quite a lot of people out there and I wasn’t very properly dressed. But I tried to see what I could and though I could not see anything of what had happened, I gathered from what the people said that there was a man lying there outside Tom Bacon’s room, dead.”

“You thought then that it might be your friend? “Armstrong did condescend to ask.

She shook her head, her eyes thoughtful. “No,” she said, “it’s funny of me, but I didn’t. I heard someone say something about a leopard, and I thought that in all probability it was a native who had been killed. But I did not have much time to think because just at that moment, my bathroom door opened and Mr. Stanley came in, carrying Esther—Esther Blain, you know, is my young companion—in his arms.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Armstrong. He suddenly took his eyes away from her and stared thoughtfully at the blue print curtain hanging half across the window. “And who,” he asked slowly, “is Mr. Stanley?”

“I really don’t know,” Helen admitted. “A young man, oh, very young. I think he is a planter in this district. I had really never seen him before, but it seems he was the first person to find Mr. Bacon’s body; it was he whom I had heard shouting out.”

Mr. Armstrong seemed to have no comment to make to this. They sat in silence for a minute or two. It was Helen felt, the most nerve breaking silence she had ever had to endure.

“I suppose,” said Armstrong, presently, “that this Mr. Stanley has some story to account for his walking about at that hour of the morning, to say nothing of the young lady in his arms?”

“Oh, yes.” Some new note in her voice attracted his attention; he brought his eyes back to her face. “He explained at once. Esther had come running along the verandah, hearing him shout; she saw the body on the floor and, well, she is young, you know, a little hysterical, she just flopped. And it seemed to him that the best thing he could do was to carry her into someone’s room before the crowd came along, and the door of Mr. Bacon’s room was open, so he just dived in.” And then she made a little movement with her hands. “I suppose it occurred to him that being nervy and hysterical, a girl would just hate to wake up and find herself in the dead man’s room, so he barged through with her into my room.”

“Indeed,” said Mr Armstrong, “a thoughtful young man.”

Told like that, the story sounded so weak, she could hear its weakness.

“I know it sounds odd,” she admitted, “but when you question him, I think you will see it’s the truth. He is just one of those quixotic, hot headed boys who think a lot about what women feel and don’t feel. Do you know what I mean?”

Apparently, Mr. Armstrong did not. At any rate, he disregarded the question.

“Did you know, Mrs. Dawson,” he asked instead, “that amongst his papers, Mr. Bacon left one assigning a large sum of money for you in the event of his death?”

“I knew that he had made provision for me,” she answered; “he very often spoke of it.”

“Yes, quite so,” he assented, and sat looking away from her in silence for a minute or two. “I take it,” he said presently, “that you recognise this as belonging to Mr. Bacon?”

He drew out the automatic revolver from amongst a pile of papers that he had beside him, and laid it gingerly on her lap.

“Yes,” admitted Helen, “it was Mr. Bacon’s. He never went to bed without putting it under his pillow. Not since we came out here.”

“Indeed,” said Armstrong. He took it back, balancing it in his hands. “And last night,” he asked, “I am not tiring your mind too much am I? but do you remember seeing this revolver lying about while Mr. Bacon was talking to you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she answered. “It was lying on the dressing table, over there, on the far side, near the curtain, while he was rubbing the cream into his face; I noticed it.”

“From the door?” he asked, “as you were going out?”

Helen flashed a quick glance at him. She could not at the moment remember the exact period at which she had noticed that revolver lying near Bacon’s podgy, unbelievably hateful hand. She could not remember, and it was just possible that Armstrong’s question laid a trap for her.

“Yes,” she spoke quickly. “I think that was when I saw it. But, of course, a little thing like that, it would be easy, wouldn’t it, to get it mixed up?”

“Yes, it might be easy,” Armstrong agreed. He turned away from her to replace the revolver, then stood up, rubbing stiff white hands together.

“Well, for the moment, I think that is all, Mrs. Dawson. I must of course question this young Mr. Stanley and the lady—Miss Blain, I think you said her name was. But really one expects to get very little out of questions.”

He moved over to the dressing table and touched one or two of the things there with random fingers, not looking at her. “It is so easy for people to answer with a lie, isn’t it?”

Helen rose too. Did a rabbit feel this leap of the heart, she wondered, when it saw a new bend in its earth passage? “I suppose they can,” she answered, “but you, and people like you, are trained to catch out liars, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps we are,” he nodded; “the process, none the less, is sometimes slow and involved.”

“I can go then?” asked Helen from the door. “After to-morrow we shall none of us be detained here, shall we?”

He lifted his head to look at her. His glasses were most irritating. They reflected the light, the half open door, but they were like an absolute wall in front of his eyes. She could not even be certain whether his lids were raised or not.

“You are not thinking of leaving the country at once, are you?” he asked.

“Well, there is nothing that attracts me very much to it after this has happened,” said Helen. “Mr. Bacon, I think, intended to stay a month. He proposed a shooting trip from here.”

“Yes,” said Armstrong. “Well, a month I should think, probably sooner, will see this cleared up.”

“Do you mean,” asked Helen, and now she threw her head a little back, and there was a certain bright hard defiance in her eyes, “that I shall not be allowed to leave till it is cleared up?”

“Ah that—no—” Armstrong smiled. “That would be too arbitrary. But. . .” He spoke with grave deliberation. “Let us see what to-morrow and the day after bring forth,” he said. “I may not have to detain either you or myself after that.”

Chapter Eight

Hell Laughs

William Vernon was a complete and very capricious law unto himself. He had no fixed place of abode, and, though he called himself and was frequently alluded to as a planter, he had never tilled an inch of ground or sown a seed of any sort. He was a hunter of big game and he had mysterious interests in the Congo, which entailed long absences from the haunts of men. He came and went as he pleased. He made this remark with some violence on the evening following the murder when a slightly harassed Mason announced to the hotel guests the magistrate’s request that no one should be allowed to leave until after the inquest.

“I don’t care two hells for any blasted magistrate,” said Vernon. He had been drinking heavily all day and now every visible portion of his skin—and his shirt was more buttonless than usual, was a flaming red.

“If I want to leave this stinking hole, leave it I do. What the hell has the inquest got to do with me?”

“Well, it hasn’t really got anything to do with any of us,” explained a perturbed hotel manager, “but if one person does do a bunk after a direct order of this sort, it will naturally cast suspicion on him.”

“Yes, don’t be a dithering fool, Vernon,” fat Johnson thrust in. “God knows your own past record won’t bear digging up. You stay quiet, go to bed and sleep off that drink.”

Vernon leant a little closer across the table towards Johnson, and his fist thumped an accompaniment to what he said.

“Are you trying to throw it up in my teeth that I’m a gaol bird?” he asked. “There’s no man done that to me and lived this last twenty years!”

“Of course not, Vernon.” Mason attempted to pour oil on the troubled waters. “Nobody is suggesting anything.”

The long, lean man sank back in his chair and let his chin fall down on his chest. “You are a blasted fool, Mason,” he said gravely; “everyone out here knows that I’ve served time for something I never did. But what everyone does not know is that the man who put me in to cover his own back is dead—ah, ah, ah!” He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Dead! Isn’t that a good joke, and now all the devils in hell are dealing with his soul as he”(his voice dropped to a mutter), “God curse him, dealt with mine.”

Major Staines, passing the door and hearing the shouted laughter, paused and looked in. So his acquaintance of this morning, whom he had just prevented punching an eskari’s head was still drinking. In wine there is often truth. It might just be the man would give himself away. He strolled over and joined the party and Mason immediately rose apologetically to his feet.

“Just a little too much booze, sir,” he whispered to Staines; “this man very seldom comes in here. A very little goes to his head. We are just getting him off to bed.”

“That’s a damned lie,” said Vernon; he jerked his head back to look at Staines. “Hullo, old Red Tabs,” he roared. “You here again!”

“I heard you laughing,” said Staines; “I looked in to see what the joke was.”

“Laughing, was I?” grunted Vernon. He slouched forward and played a tattoo on the table with his fingers. “Do you think there is laughter in Hell?—if so, some of them are holding their sides at this moment! Listen, you chaps.” He glared at each of them in turn. “Would you like to hear the story of my life—any of you? It’s slick on my tongue now, stirred up somehow by something that has happened. All the muck and the filth and the soul rot. . .”

He seemed on the point of tears, the easy, facile tears of whiskey. Johnson was disgusted and said so.

“It has been stirred up by drink,” he said, “that’s what has stirred it. You ain’t fit for a decent bar, Vernon.”

“I really think,” agreed Mason. He stooped over Vernon gently expostulating. “Come along, my dear old chap, let’s tumble you into bed.”

“Oh, you go to Hell!” snapped Vernon. He waved two enormous fists in the air. “I am not going to bed in this blasted hotel with that rotting corpse in one of the rooms. I am packing up my kit and trekking. You let anyone stop me who can!”

He lurched to his feet and stood swaying and catching at imaginary supports. “Come on now,” he asked, “who is going to fight me?”

“No one,” said Staines, quietly. “I am coming along to your room, and you are going to tell me the history of your past life.”

“A private detective, are you?” said Vernon. He threw back his head and gave his great roar of laughter. “Come on then, I’ll make your ears burn. The things I’ve done, the things I haven’t done, ha, ha! You shall try and disentangle them.”

He went lurching towards the door. Mason put a tentative hand on Major Staines’ arm.

“There is no occasion for you to bother, sir,” he said, “We’ll manage him, his friends and I.”

“I’m interested,” Staines explained; “from a professional point of view, the man is a study.”

He followed his grotesque companion, who went stumbling and swaying down the verandah towards the Bachelors’ Wing. Outside the murdered man’s room the eskari on guard tried to obliterate himself in the shadows. He had no wish for a further encounter with the fierce red savage. The movement though caught Vernon’s attention. He drew himself erect and scowled at the closed door.

“Death’s too good for some people,” he said thickly; “Don’t you agree with me, you private detective fellow?”

Major Staines drew alongside and put a friendly but firm hand on the other’s arm. “You know you wrong me,” he said. “I am not a private detective. But I am interested in you and in how that dead man (he nodded towards Bacon’s room) came to die.”

Even through his drunkenness, self-preservation stirred across Vernon’s mind. “Think I killed him?” he asked and turned aside to spit. “God, I expect there are more people than you want to know that.”

He allowed himself to be led to his room after that and sat for some time on the edge of his bed, giving Staines a very maudlin and bellicose account of the events in his life which had led him finally to a wild trekking life in and around the Mountains of the Moon.

“Gold!” he suddenly branched into that. There was gold to be found in the Mountains, far richer veins than had ever been found so far in the Congo. Not that he was going to give its whereabouts away, not even to a kindly interested chap like Staines. But it was there; enough to make him a millionaire. “Don’t I know it?” he chuckled, and sat rocking himself on the bed. “Don’t I know every square inch of those infernal hills? Spots where no other white man has gone, rivers that no one knows aught about, and gold . . .”

He paused and blinked suspiciously at Staines. “Can gold buy back a man’s soul?” he asked.

“I should not think so,” admitted Staines. He had listened very patiently to a long recital of grievances and ill luck and desperation, but he had really gleaned very little information. “Tell me about the man, Tom Bacon,” he suggested, “and why you hated him.”

“And how he died, eh?” growled Vernon. “Oh, I know what you’re after, old sobersides. But what I know I’m keeping to myself. I’m not as drunk as all that.”

And presently, with his secret, if in truth he possessed a secret still untold, he stretched himself out on the bed, still fully clothed even to his boots, and fell asleep, with the disarming suddenness of a baby. There Major Staines was forced to leave him. He had at least achieved Mason’s ambition and got him safely and quietly to bed.

But in the morning and very much to the consternation of Mason, it was found that Vernon had gone. He had packed up his kit, which consisted of a haversack, and trekked off back to his beloved, well-known mountains as he had said he would do.

“There will be no finding him,” Johnson affirmed. “He’s cuter than any native at the disappearing trick.”

“He has damned well got to be found,” stated Armstrong, and sent out his eskaries and their confederates in all directions, while volunteers with cars scoured the main road.

The inquest, however, had to be held without him; from Armstrong’s point of view that was highly unsatisfactory.

Major Staines’ evidence, which he volunteered on hearing that the man had absconded, attracted everyone’s attention to Vernon. People began to remember now the things that Vernon had hinted at and muttered about on his periodical visits to Ruanda, when he would come in, intent on getting drunk as speedily as possible and staying drunk as long as the authorities would allow him to continue drinking. He had always, it seemed, one or two of them volunteered the information, nourished this bitter grudge against someone; he had always talked of murder, and revelled in gruesome descriptions of how he would carry out his revenge. And Vernon had arrived at the hotel on the night of the dance, the man Johnson testified to this, quite sober and dangerously sullen. He had stood looking on at the dancing for a little and Bacon had been there. Bacon had not danced, but he had passed through the room in one of the intervals with the girl, Miss Blain, and gone out into the moonlit garden. And Vernon had turned round to stare after them. “A girl like that and that damned swine,” Johnson had heard him mutter. He had not thought anything about it at the time. Vernon was always rather violent about women and men with money. He was always violent anyway in his language. And after that Vernon had gone off to the bar, but he had not drunk much that night, or talked. Sullen he had been, sitting brooding over something, whilst the rest of them had made merry and argued and fought. Vernon had started to drink the next day after the murder. He had begun as soon as the bar was open. Drink after drink, treating no one—just pouring it down his own throat, and he had started talking, boasting. No one had paid much attention to him because he was always like that, once he started to drink.

The questioning of Esther Blain went off comparatively innocuously after that. Armstrong seemed to have lost interest in her and she stuck with a certain quiet courage to her story. She had heard someone calling out and she had snatched up her mackintosh and thrown it round her and run out. And then she had been frightened, she had seen the body on the floor, the blood, she did not remember any more, but Mrs. Dawson had told her how someone had caught her and carried her through Mr. Bacon’s room and into Mrs. Dawson’s and laid her on the bed.

Yes, she had danced with Mr. Bacon the night before and in between the dances they had gone for a stroll in the garden. She had not noticed any man in particular. She had not danced to begin with, because she was awfully tired and she had gone to her room to go to bed. But she had only just started undressing when a boy had brought a note from Mr. Bacon to say that Aunt Helen had gone to bed and he was all alone. Would not she come out and dance? So she had slipped on her dress again and gone back and they had danced several times. Mr. Bacon must have taken her to her room and said good-night about half-past twelve. She was not sure of the time, but thought it was about then.

No, Mrs. Dawson was not really her aunt, but she always called her Aunt Helen. They had been living together for about four or five years, but she had known her for a long time before that. They had been travelling with Mr. Bacon for the last six months.

She did not know anything at all about Mr. Bacon except that he was always very kind to her, and he was obviously very rich because they always travelled in the most comfortable and the most expensive way.

No, Mr. Bacon had never said anything to her about being frightened of anyone, nor had he seemed nervous, or in any way other than ordinary during the evening together.

Of course she had been terrified when she heard that he had been murdered; it had made her feel ill for days.

“It is so awful,” she said in her soft, slightly husky voice; “please need I talk about it any more?”

Mr. Armstrong signified to the District Commissioner, who was acting Magistrate, that he had no other questions to ask and Mr. Samson, bowing most politely, told Miss Blain that her evidence had been most satisfactory and clearly given. Helen, as the girl slipped into the chair beside her, put a warm hand over Esther’s and whispered, “Well done, you were splendid!”

She got no answering pressure, nor did the girl lift her eyes to meet her smile, perhaps Helen hardly expected that. She had not really hoped that Esther would be able to lie so well. She had thought that Armstrong’s blank stare would have terrified the girl into some stupid admission of how she had been in Bacon’s room, and why. It was stupid and unsavoury and sordid. She was glad it had not come out.

Dick was standing up now telling his share in the night’s doings. From time to time, across the other people sitting and standing all round the room, his eyes would look for Helen. He never smiled looking at her, and it was perfectly ridiculous the way her heart gave a little leap and a flutter as her eyes met his. To-day, she was arguing with herself as to the ridiculousness of this new attraction.

“What is happening to me,” argued Helen’s mind, “that now, just now, when everything is sort of settling down into flat peace, this should come into my life? Love—oh, I am sick of love. It is like some kind of drug habit. Why can’t I break free from it and wash my heart and mind clean? How does one wash one’s heart? I would like to make him love me—just for a little—it could not be for long, of course. I’m forty.”

The thought stabbed at her heart as a knife might have done held in the hand of an enemy. Forty years! That was old age. Of what use to try and think of it jauntily as the prime of life.

And the boy! Why, he had all life in front of him. She could shut her eyes and vision the girls and women whom he had still to love. And so shutting them for a moment against that blue searching glance she opened them again and noticed for the first time, it seemed, Esther’s pale, rather indefinite beauty; the wistfulness of the girl’s side face, the dark lashes hiding the clear grey eyes!

If he was going to love anyone it should by rights be Esther!

Helen lowered her eyes quickly. She felt a warm flood of colour stealing across her face. She knew that her hands clenched lying one within the other in her lap.

“If he gives it me, why shouldn’t I take it?” her mind argued. “Supposing it’s the last. After this, I’ll grow old.”

Major Staines sitting next her leant sideways and brushed her arm with his.

“We’re nearly through with it,” he whispered. “I think the man Vernon has switched old Armstrong off some awkward questions.”

She had forgotten all that for the moment. He thought when she lifted her eyes to look at him that they were more warm and glowing than he had ever seen them. He was glad for her sake that things were going like this, that she was to be saved some of the open shame and calumny.

Of course, Armstrong knew. Armstrong had spoken about it to him off-handedly with rather a beastly sneer. Major Staines had had to pocket his fists and his temper. There was nothing unusual in what Armstrong had said.

“I knew Mrs. Dawson a good many years ago,” he had explained stiffly in answer. “When she was still a girl. That is why I count myself as a friend.”

Armstrong had cocked that thin head of his and peered through his glasses.

“Indeed,” he had said drily, “that is most interesting.” And apropos of nothing he had asked Staines whether he had noticed in his inspection of the dead man’s room (for that of course had had to be confessed) that the mosquito netting of the window had been cleverly cut with some sharp instrument so that it hung in its place like a flap, easily movable.

“No,” Major Staines had answered, “I did not examine the window, or the room, for that matter.”

Armstrong had grinned. “I suppose it was the corpse that attracted you,” he had said. “All the same, there were one or two rather interesting points about the room.”

He might have meant anything, or nothing, of course. You never got much further in a game of bluff with Armstrong. Anyway, awkward questions were being avoided, and the verdict until Vernon was found would have to be ‘Murder against some person or persons unknown.’

It must have been a relief to Helen that the girl was going to get off. Perhaps that was what made her look for the moment so lovely—the relief. Poor beautiful Helen, whose feet had travelled such unpleasant roads.

“It’s all over, pro tem,” he said. “Shall we move outside?”

They moved out, the three of them together and on the verandah Stanley joined them. They were like four conspirators, their eyes saying things their lips could not say.

“Well,” said Dick, “that’s that!” His eyes glanced from Helen to Esther and back again to Helen. “What is everyone going to do now?”

“Are we allowed to do as we like?” Helen asked Staines.

“Indubitably,” he answered, “though I expect Armstrong will want to keep in touch with you for a day or two till he finds Vernon, or clears the matter up otherwise.”

“Yes, that is what he said,” she acknowledged. Esther broke in with, for her, odd impulsiveness, “oh, need we stay here? It is all so terrible, I feel . . .”

It seemed to Helen as though Dick made some slight movement of his hands, as though he were going to touch Esther and quieten her, but it was at Helen that he looked.

“I wondered if you would come back with me to my place,” he said. “Major Staines, too. I can house you all, and though I can’t altogether answer for the cook . . .”

“As though that mattered,” Helen interrupted; “it would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Esther? And, Tony, of course you must come to amuse me while the young people amuse each other.”

Esther stirred suddenly, her face flushed. “How can you, Helen,” she whispered, “talk about amusing ourselves while . . .?”

“My dear,” said Helen lightly, “spilt milk is a thing I have never cried over. You will come, won’t you, Tony?”

“Well, I’d like to,” he said; “If not just now, then a little later on towards the end of the week. I really want to keep an eye on Armstrong’s activities.”

“Can you bear me then as chaperone?” Helen asked Dick; she laughed at the anger in his eyes. “I’ll promise to be a discreet one.”

“If I want chaperoning,” said Dick, giving his shoulders their little elusive shrug, “then I’ll submit with a good grace, and I’m sure Miss Blain will concur.”

He did not wait for Esther’s answer or look at her again. “I’ll get on ahead,” she said to Helen, “and get things ready for you, and perhaps Major Staines will drive you out, even if he doesn’t stay.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll do that,” agreed Staines. “I shall hope to join you in two or three days’ time if you will have me.”

Chapter Nine

Esther

Esther Blain! Her character and personality came very slowly to life in Major Staines’ thoughts in the days that followed. He saw a good deal of her for, though he did not take up his residence at Dick Stanley’s invitation, he drove across pretty frequently just to see how they were getting on and to report on Armstrong’s doings. Armstrong stayed on at the hotel. He was inclined to secrecy though he took his meals at Major Staines’ table and apparently handed on any information he had gleaned. Vernon was still at large, but a rumour had come through from some of the mountain people, who came backwards and forwards across the tracks trading in rice from the low lying lands on the further side, that a mad Musunga (European) had been seen camped out in the bamboo forests at the top of the mountains. Armstrong was thinking of going in personal pursuit.

“Care to come with me?” he asked Staines casually, one evening as the two of them sat together, three weeks later. “I believe the mountain climbing is pretty strenuous.”

“I would like it,” answered Staines; “I am getting very bored with my sick leave. When are you thinking of starting?”

“I never believe everything I am told,” said Armstrong, “so I’ve sent Fazil Khan to find out what truth there is likely to be in the rumours. He should be back to-morrow night, and then, if our mysterious friend is really up on top, I shall start after him the following morning.”

“Well, if you’ll let me come, I’ll enjoy it,” Staines said, and for the rest of the evening he sat rather silently—Armstrong was sometimes an immense talker—smoking his pipe and thinking of Esther Blain. For if the man Vernon was run to earth it would mean the exploding of the theory that he had had anything to do with Mr. Bacon’s death. And behind the lean aggressiveness of Vernon, Staines saw the girl’s shrinking, terrified figure, her pale gold hair, her clear eyes.

It was not that he was in any sense of the word romantically interested in her. His days for romance were over. Only he was so desperately sorry for her. What stupid, blundering search for amusement or sensation had plunged her into this unsavoury intimacy with Bacon. What horror had nerved her hand to the firing of that fatal shot? He had thought of her at first as a rather colourless individual, probably a pretty good sample of the useless type of modern girl, who seems to exist for the purpose of personal adornment and amatory adventures behind which no real red colour ever flows. But in these days of companionship with her he had come to other conclusions. The girl had unexpected strength behind her silences and, if she spent a good portion of her time in polishing her nails and rubbing her hair with a silk handkerchief to make it shine, she was capable of other thoughts and feelings.

Perhaps it was her upbringing that could account for this terrible situation in which she found herself. He led her once or twice to talk of herself, strolling round the garden of Stanley’s plantation, or sitting in the square open place which he used as a verandah. The coffee trees which grew close up to the garden were in flower; in the evenings the fragrance of them would be blown all about the place. And when Staines was there, the party paired itself off like that, he and the girl, Helen and young Stanley. Sometimes, Staines was inclined to be grimly amused at Helen’s preference for young Stanley. What did the girl think about these things? He was to discover that she was quite definitely reticent about present events, though of the past, once they had got on to that, she talked quite freely.

She had an attractive voice with its faint huskiness, its sometimes eager cadences. He remembered that Helen had first said of her: “Esther is oddly impulsive.” She made him think of an eager child as she sat beside him, her feet gathered under her, her hands clasped round her knees, telling him about her school life, the first time she had been to London, her first trip on an ocean liner. Young enthusiasm, a quaint medley of commonplace adjectives—topping—jolly—awful fun—and behind them all the grim haunting spectre of murder done which must one day be paid for. That accounted probably for the silences that would creep sometimes across her chatter; for the look of fright in her eyes, for the fits of depression that would at times engulf her.

Once he had found her in tears, sitting huddled up on the sofa, the only English-made bit of furniture which Stanley had in this so-called drawing-room. It had been sent out to him by his mother; it was heaped up with brilliant coloured cushions that she had chosen for him, and Esther had been sitting with her head buried in one of the cushions.

Major Staines had heard her sob as he came in.

Poor kid, poor desolate, terrified child, facing alone the horror of the thing she had done. He had been very much touched. A child crying—not howling from rage, but really crying—is one of the most pitiful things in God’s most pitiful world.

He had wanted to comfort her. After all, if she told someone and definitely shared the burden of her knowledge, it would be easier for her to bear. But at his first words, at the touch of his hand on her shoulder, she had wriggled herself away and stood up and run over to the little mirror that hung over the rough fireplace. It was a useless kind of mirror to try to see yourself in, one of those round concave affairs designed to reflect all the room in miniature, but she had stood there defiantly, her back to Major Staines, rubbing her eyes, powdering her nose, and when at last she had swung round to look at him, she had been laughing.

“I wasn’t crying,” she had said, “don’t dare say I was.”

Well, that at least showed courage. He had had to respect it.

“No, of course, you weren’t,” he admitted gravely; “it was a bad attack of hiccups.”

She had stood there for a minute or two, looking at him, one foot tapping on the floor. Then she had announced that Helen and Mr. Stanley had gone down to the river. “Helen wants to see whether there is a place there where we can bathe. Shall we follow them?”

That was the afternoon on which she had first spoken to him about Helen and Helen’s influence on her life.

“It is one of my first memories,” she had said, “Helen coming to see me at school. Sometimes I feel as though every bit of fun or happiness that I have ever had in my life has come to me from Helen. You don’t know, nobody can know how good she has been to me.”

“I know her at least as having a very kind heart,” he had answered gravely.

“She isn’t any relation of mine,” Esther had explained, “but I think she was a great friend of my mother’s, and my mother died when I was five. I don’t remember her at all—nor father. When I was quite tiny, I was sent to a Convent School—the nuns looked after me. Do you know the first time Helen came to see me, I must have been about six I think, I asked the nuns afterwards if she was an angel.”

“She was very beautiful,” Staines had answered. “When I knew her twenty years ago, she was more beautiful than anything else I had ever seen.”

“She is very beautiful still, don’t you think? “Esther had said; “Mr. Stanley thinks she is beautiful.”

It was the first time that Staines had ever heard her refer to that. He stole a quick glance at her face. Against the green of the leaves, under the shadow of her hat, her face looked pale, expressionless. “And to me, too, she will always be beautiful,” she had added slowly.

“And then how did it come about that you and she started travelling together?” he had asked.

“When I was seventeen,” Esther had answered, “the nuns spoke to me. They told me that it was Helen who had so far paid everything for me; they said they had had a letter from her that week—she was abroad in Egypt, I think—saying they must ask me now which I would prefer to do, to be trained for some profession or come and act as companion, adopted daughter, to herself. They read me a bit of her letter, I can remember it so awfully clearly.”

“Perhaps I won’t be easy to live with,” she had written.

“I am spoilt and selfish, but I am awfully much alone, and I would like to have her with me.”

“The nuns did not quite approve, I could see that, of course, but I—oh, it was heavenly.” Sudden unexpected laughter woke in her eyes, and rippled across her face. “That first year with Helen, I can’t hope to tell you how lovely it was.” She had stopped in the path and turned to face him; now he saw that there was a little colour in her cheeks, her eyes shone, she looked warm, alive and animated.

“Major Staines,” she said, “wouldn’t you feel if you were me that there was just nothing you would not do for Helen? I mean, how can I repay her? I’ve lived with her now for four years, she has given me everything—oh, I do feel an absolutely mean beast when I grudge her . . .”

She had broken off quickly and turned and resumed her walk.

It certainly seemed as though she owed something to Helen. It had occurred to Staines then that it was just possible she had fired the shot thinking to free Helen from something that had become hateful to her. Did Helen realise that, know the motive?

“I don’t know. She won’t tell me anything.” That was how Helen had answered his question on the first day. But she might since have won the girl’s confidence. It was odd how none of them ever talked of this matter that lay so uppermost in their minds. Who had killed Tom Bacon? At least one of them, if not the other two, must be able to answer that question. Yet between them it was never asked; it was like a shadow that stood just outside all their conversations. Even Helen, if she broached the subject in the rare moments when he found himself alone with her, would turn from it half petulantly. “Oh, let’s leave it,” she would say, “Armstrong will find out, won’t he?”

That was exactly it. Armstrong would find out and pretty soon now that Vernon had not done it. Major Staines had been convinced of that ever since his talk with Vernon. The man had admitted and denied nothing, but he had been very frank in his disgust at not having achieved his revenge, and he had been too drunk to pretend to any such frankness. Of course, all this Major Staines might have told Armstrong in the first place, but it narrowed the thing down so horribly once you eliminated Vernon; behind him there was only this slip of a girl with her frantic or too generous motive.

If only they would confide in him, she, or Helen, or the boy with the amazing blue eyes, for it was pretty evident that Stanley knew something too, then he, Staines, would know where he was, what he was fighting to conceal. As it was they kept him on the outskirts of their thoughts. He could not ignore the sensation that they were using him rather, making a fool of him.

He drove over anyway the morning after Armstrong had announced his news of Vernon and for rather a wonder found Stanley alone. The lad strolled down to meet him through the coffee trees, and not for the first time Major Staines was struck by his hard clean look of health, the brown of his skin, the vivid colouring of his eyes. He was a good looking lad, there was no doubt about that, and rather likeable, but Helen was an idiot. Staines thought that without any unkind malice, to let herself imagine . . . Well, what did she imagine, after all he did not know.

“Hullo!” he called out cheerfully enough, “What has happened? Have the ladies deserted you?”

“They’ve driven in to Ruanda to do some shopping,” Stanley explained. “Wonder you did not pass them.”

“I came the highway from the hotel,” Staines answered, “that probably accounts for not seeing them.”

He looked at Stanley with his keen friendly eyes.

“As a matter of fact, I am glad of a quiet talk with you,” he added. “Our friend Armstrong has got word of Vernon.”

“Oh,” said Stanley. They strolled back together towards the house. “Whereabouts?”

“Well, the direction is vague,” Staines admitted. “In the bamboo forest on top of the mountain, but I think Armstrong will run him to earth all right, and then . . .”

“Yes—and then . . .” said Stanley. He sat down himself on the balustrade of his verandah and waved Staines to a chair. “Can I mix you a drink?” he asked.

“Not just yet,” answered Staines. He sat down and, leaning forward, held Stanley’s blue eyes with his. “Look here Stanley,” he said, “for God’s sake, let’s lay aside all this conventional ‘everything is for the best’ attitude. You and I know damn well that Vernon did not murder Bacon. Armstrong will know it in a couple of days’ time.”

“I don’t happen to know it,” said the boy slowly. He did not look away. “What makes you think I do?”

“Well, because, oh, look here, hang it all, let’s have the truth about that morning between you and me at least.”

“The truth,” repeated Stanley, “well, what is your idea of the truth?”

“I am damned well afraid that the girl did it,” said Staines quietly, “and I think Helen knows that she did, and I believe you do too. You are right to shield her, I’d do it in your place, but if once Armstrong finds out that that girl was in the room with Bacon when he died, that that was where you found her ten minutes later, all your story falls to pieces like a pack of cards.”

“Is there any reason why he should find out?” asked Stanley. “Mind you, I’m not saying that your idea is the truth, but supposing it were. Armstrong has not found out about it so far, why should he now?”

“There’s no knowing what Armstrong has found out,” said Staines gloomily. “He’s as close as a clam, and always mildly sarcastic whenever he mentions the case. Why are you determined to keep me outside what you know?” he asked. “Don’t you believe I’d do what I could to help her?”

“Of course,” said Stanley stiffly. He swung his feet out over the balustrade and stared at his coffee trees. If the truth were but known he had given very little thought to Esther and her predicament lately. There was one dream that engrossed his mind, day and night, sleeping or waking—the woman, Helen. The thought of her was like warm fire in his mind, and it was a dangerous fire. They had not as yet spoken of love, but it was always being hinted at and brushed away with laughter. She stood on the outskirts of his life, laughing at him. But though her lips laughed, and her words mocked, her eyes were different. Sometimes, he believed that she loved him and his thoughts would go plunging ahead through the danger and excitement of that belief if it were true. And at other times it would seem to him to be so utterly impossible that his spirit would be plunged in the despair which is a part of youth’s heritage. For if you can be gloriously happy when you are young, you can also be most wretchedly aware of despair, and the gold of life alternates with the black until such time as we have learnt wisdom and discovered that in reality all things are only grey. So in truth Dick had not had much time to waste on Esther and her predicament.

“I suppose,” he said slowly at last in answer to Staines’ question, “that we ought to talk the matter over with Mrs. Dawson, oughtn’t we? You see what I know,” and he glanced back at the other man, “is really her secret. I don’t feel at liberty to tell it till she gives me leave.”

“Quite,” agreed Major Staines. “Well, talk to her tonight. Get your line of action settled. Tell her I came out to-day on purpose to warn her. I’m going with Armstrong to-morrow; it can’t take us more than a few days to run Vernon to earth. We—you, I, Helen and Esther have got to be prepared for something after that.”

“You won’t stay and see Mrs. Dawson yourself?” asked Stanley. “She . . . well, she may need your help, your advice . . .”

Major Staines stood up. “I don’t think so,” he said; “I’ll do what I can with Armstrong, but it won’t be much.”

All the same he met the returning car just as he was driving off himself and stopped of course and got out to speak to Helen. It struck him that she was looking very radiantly beautiful. She had on a white dress and just under her chin she had tied a vivid ribbon of green that brought out dancing lights in her eyes.

“You came to see us and we weren’t here,” she said, leaning out of the car to speak to him. “What a shame!”

“Is it too late?” he asked. “How about getting out and walking down to the river with me?”

“And leaving Esther to drive back alone?” She hesitated and met the kindly mockery of his eyes and flushed as a girl might have flushed.

“Stanley is up at the house doing nothing,” said Major Staines. “He can amuse Esther.”

Helen looked back quickly at the girl sitting beside her. “Of course,” she agreed, “I had forgotten that. Very well. I’ll come.”

She opened the door and stepped out beside him. “Tell Dick I’ve met Major Staines, and we’ve gone for a stroll,” she added to Esther.

The girl nodded and started up the engine again without saying anything, and Helen turned away with a little sigh.

“Esther,” she said as though the sigh had brought with it a troublesome thought, “is very difficult to understand these days.”

“Don’t you think she has good cause to be difficult?” asked Staines, and he told her of his fears about Vernon and Armstrong and his talk with Stanley.

“There is nothing for it but to face the fact that she did it.” He spoke quietly. “I’ve really faced that from the first. The thing is, Helen, to try to prove some motive that will be strong enough to make people pity instead of condemn. It seems to me that it would be fairer to all of us if you told us exactly what you do know.”

Helen listened in silence. The laughter and radiance had died out of her face; she kept her eyes lowered.

“Why do you think that I know anything?” she asked.

“You aren’t going to tell me then,” he said softly. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve being shut outside, Helen.”

“Oh, it isn’t that.” She spoke quickly and turned in the path and faced him. “Tony, you’ve been wonderful to me. It’s just . . .” She broke off and turned back to her walk again. “I feel sometimes,” she said, “as though I were walking on the edge of a precipice and there is a bandage over my eyes. If I tear it off and look down, I shall fall. Tony, I don’t want to see the truth. I want to go on pretending just for a little, to keep the bandage over my eyes, to feel my way along . . .”

He was a little surprised at the intensity with which she spoke.

“This girl,” he asked, “Does she mean so awfully much to you, Helen?”

“Esther? “The name seemed to bring with it a shiver, she put up her hands to her eyes for a moment.

“Yes, of course,” she said, “Esther means a lot to me. Supposing . . . Tony, supposing they found out that she she had really killed Tom Bacon, what would they do to her?”

“It would depend so much,” he said, “on motive. That’s what I’m driving at, Helen. We might get her off on motive, if it was strong enough.”

“They hang women, don’t they?” asked Helen. “They hanged Mrs. Thompson, do you remember; I always thought that was so terrible, in a way, so unjust.”

“You mean the Bywaters and Thompson case,” said Major Staines. “I don’t know about unjust. She was a murderess all right in thoughts and dreams and written words, even if she did not do the actual killing.”

“A murderess!” whispered Helen, and again she seemed to shiver and he saw her hands clench.

“It’s a most damnably trying time for you,” he said quickly; “don’t think I don’t realise that, Helen. In a way, once truth is definitely out, the strain will lift, won’t it?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “The strain will lift. But I . . . I . . . it can’t be my lips that tell the truth, Tony. You must see that. Let them find out what they can. Let Esther tell what she likes. I can’t do anything. You see, Tony, even you in your mind, you blame me, you can’t help blaming me for what has happened. What would other people say, and feel, and think. Other people who have never known me, who have got no dreams of me in their mind to look back on.”

He was suddenly inexpressibly sorry for her, remembering how the truth which she had told him had in some way sullied the dream. The girl whom he had loved walked beside him, ousting this other, rather pitiful travesty of her beauty and her grace. He put out his hand and touched Helen’s softly.

“All right, old lady,” he said, “we’ll leave things to develop themselves. But you are wrong about the blame, Helen. I don’t find it in my heart to judge you.”

“Ah, you,” she said, and caught her breath on something half a sob, half a laugh, “you were always a blind old fossil even in those far off days when you would think of me as too good to tempt. Let’s go back to the house and be wildly and hilariously gay. It’s really the only thing to do.”

“And I, alas, can’t do it with you, my dear,” he answered. “I must get back to the hotel and Armstrong. I’ll let you know if anything develops.”

He went back with her till they got in sight of the verandah of Stanley’s house, then he turned and left her, went back to his car, and started it up and drove off. Her face went with him, the memory of her voice. He thought he did not love her any more, but pity breathing upon the ashes of dead love found them still warm.

He would like to do what he could to help her from being any more hurt. That was how he summed the feeling up.

Chapter Ten

The Scent of Roses

Helen was, as she said she intended to be, hilariously gay. Her gaiety swept like dancing sunshine about the house. Dick and Esther heard her laughing as she came across the grass to join them; they heard her singing as she moved from them into the house. She was going, she said, to change for dinner. “I am going to put on my most beautiful frock,” she added, “and we’ll have dinner out here, won’t we, Dick, and the coffee trees shall be all the other diners at the Carlton or some other place, and the stars shall be electric lights in Piccadilly Circus.”

“A very infra dig comparison,” remonstrated Dick. “The stars, Mrs. Dawson, oughtn’t to be likened to any such poor travesty of their glory. And I haven’t a most beautiful dress suit to wear, so I’d better be the waiter.”

“I like travesties,” said Helen. She paused beside him, and her eyes laughed into his. “And I love your old suit. So you can’t be waiter. You’ve got to be a gallant host.”

Esther said nothing. She sat a little turned away, her eyes watching the shadows that were beginning to creep about the garden. The darkness seemed full of swift, live shapes. They ran from coffee tree to coffee tree and threw black veils over the flowers and draped the bushes with sombre mystery. In a little while the air was going to be fragrant and heavy with scent that would be crushed out of the flowers’ hearts by the pressure of night. It ached in her heart the beauty of this garden, the beauty of the soft crouching night and watching stars. The bitterness of unshed tears was in the pain that all this beauty brought her. It was terrible how it could hurt to love someone. She had never thought of love as of something that could hurt one. She had imagined its coming, of course, dreamt of it. And always in her dreams, love had been strong, yet tender, and it had just been a case of giving him her hands and letting him lead her through a world grown suddenly radiant because of his presence. And now this was how love had come, stabbing at her heart through everything that was beautiful, torturing her dreams with his indifference, hurting her with casual, unfriendly hands.

Wherever she turned, whatever she did, she could not hide herself from this hurt. Dick’s face followed her into her dreams; it was his eyes she saw when she sat looking like that into the shadows of the garden, and Helen’s gaiety was like a knife that stabbed.

“You must put on your most lovely garments, too, Esther,” Helen’s voice challenged her across her thoughts. “To-night, let’s eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we . . .” She broke off with light laughter. “Well, let’s say, to-morrow, the deluge!”

She moved into the house; her singing came back to them.

“Only a rose I give you,” sang Helen.

Dick’s voice, speaking, sounded strained and nervous.

“Major Staines can’t have spoken to her,” he said.

“She seems wonderfully gay.”

“It isn’t life that matters.” Some words once read in a book stirred across Esther’s mind. “It’s the courage that one brings to bear on it.” She stood up. “That is Helen’s way of fighting things,” she said; “Gaiety, perhaps it is a good way.”

“I’m afraid you don’t feel awfully like being hilariously gay, do you?” said Dick; his eyes in the half light met hers and looked away quickly. He was sorry for her, but he had not at the moment much time for pity.

“No,” Esther admitted. “I do feel more like pleading a headache and going to bed, but I don’t think Helen would approve. So I’ll go and deck myself for the feast. After all as she herself says, ‘To-morrow the deluge.’ I shall be almost glad when that comes.”

“Why did you . . .” he began and checked himself and tried to speak as though it really mattered to him whether she suffered or not. “If you care to tell me . . . I mean it won’t go any further than me, and it might help to tell some one, mightn’t it?”

“Do you want to help me?” she asked. She stood, he thought, very stiffly beside him, her hands clasped in front of her. “Do you remember once I asked you a question and you wouldn’t answer me. I asked you something about Helen and it made you angry.”

He flushed. In the darkness she could not see that, but she felt his resentment in his answer.

“I have fallen in love,” he said hardly; “Isn’t that the answer to your question?”

Her hands loosened as though she let something fall out of them. “I didn’t have to ask,” she said, “I really knew. I don’t know how to tell you what is in my mind without making you angry. Helen is wonderful—she is just as wonderful to me as she is to you, but—oh, can’t you see . . .” An odd impulsiveness swayed her. “It’s only going to hurt you, loving her,” she said.

“Well, one doesn’t stop to count that, does one?” he asked. “I, at least, can’t calculate and weigh the cost of what I feel.”

“No,” she agreed quickly, and stood for a minute or two biting her lip. “She is so much older than you are,” she said at last.

“And that, too, I don’t count,” said Dick stiffly; “I can’t see that it has got anything to do with it.”

She made a little movement as though she had suddenly thought of something that must convince him, but just as quickly, it seemed, she pushed the thought away.

“You mustn’t think me disloyal,” she said. “It isn’t that, I . . . oh, it doesn’t matter . . . it is quite hopeless trying to explain. Let’s go and dress. Helen never takes long.”

They were all three of them, despite their various thoughts, surprisingly gay at dinner. They had it out on the stoop as Helen had suggested; the round table lit by four candles; the bare footed boys moving about in discreet attendance. They were like, Helen said, a little isolated spot of civilisation, and all round them the African night waited, and crouched and watched.

“If one is going to be very, very bad,” said Helen, “and primitive, and lawless, and immoral, Africa is the place to be it in, isn’t it? Don’t you think that nothing you would ever think of doing would ever surprise the bad old heart of Africa?”

“The watching eyes of Africa,” said Dick. “I evolved that sentence the other day and I am rather pleased with it, because—do you know?—I think one is conscious out here of being tremendously watched and spied on.”

“By whom?” asked Helen. “The natives; do you think they take any interest in what we say or do?”

“No, it isn’t exactly the natives,” Dick tried to explain, “it is more a sensation of some outside influence. Does it sound absurd to use a word like ‘malign,’ that waits, kind of, to trip one up.”

A little silence fell on the dinner table. The boys brought coffee and cleared away the remains of the meal. Then they disappeared discreetly to their own huts, which were situated at some distance from the house. Silence seemed to descend even over the kitchen. Hurricane lamps flickered backwards and forwards for a little and then went out. The darkness crept closer to the small table and the three white people. Now they were alone indeed. The African native comes very slowly to the habits of civilisation, he likes to shut the night out of his mind and sleep from sunset to sunrise.

Esther was the first to break that queer waiting silence. She stirred, pushing back her chair and standing up. The light from the candles, shaded by painted paper-shades, could not reach her face—she spoke out of the darkness.

“Will you mind,” she said, “if I go to bed? I’ve got a dreadful headache.”

“Oh, poor Esther!” It was Helen that answered. She looked up. Was that mockery, or contrition, or regret in her eyes? “Shall I get you an aspirin?”

Dick stood up too. Now there was just Helen left sitting in the circle of light, the faces of the other two were in darkness, only their hands showed.

“No, thank you,” said Esther, “I expect I’ll fall asleep.” She moved towards the door. “Goodnight,” she said softly, her voice was like a sigh on the still air.

Dick moved out of the candlelight to the edge of the verandah. Some pulse was beating in his throat. He was afraid of himself, and of the loneliness and the silence of the night.

Helen sat quite still. Her hands lay on the table in front of her. She seemed to be studying them. They say that age shows in a woman’s hands even when she can banish it from her face. Perhaps she was thinking of that. Or it maybe she was thinking of the love those two hands of hers had held and let go and snatched at, again and again. And in her heart, too, the loneliness and silence of the night brooded.

She spoke at last, turning a little to look at the boy’s figure, dimly outlined against the dark.

“Dick,” she said softly, “come over here, I’ve got something I want to say to you. Or wait, I believe it would be easier to say it in the dark.”

She rose and moved out of the light and came and sat beside him on the stone balustrade of the verandah. Her head was level with his heart sitting there and now the pulse in his blood became a maddening, throbbing force. He could hardly hear what she was saying because of it

“It’s a story I want to tell you.” She spoke very quietly. She was indeed, for the moment, looking into her own soul. Even the most frivolous of us have souls, into which we must sometimes look. “The story of a woman. Oh, Dick, of course you know so awfully little about women, you probably won’t pay any attention to her story at all. And yet I do want you to listen. I think she was probably more tiresome and inconsequent and immoral than most women are, because all her life, or so it seems to me, looking back on it, she has just squandered love, slopped over with it, taken it from this man and from that. Turned love into a dustheap in fact, so that now when her heart looks back to grope for memories there’s nothing there, Dick, but dust and dirt.”

She stirred a little, the fragrance of roses swept up to him.

“What has all this got to do with me?” he asked.

“Because . . . no let me go on with my story. I thought it out this afternoon how I was going to tell it you. Dick, sit down, my lamb. Towering over me like that, you make me feel afraid.”

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked. “Is it all just something for you to laugh at?”

“Ah, no,” she said, and there was more the sound of tears than laughter in her voice.

“The woman doesn’t laugh, Dick, because perhaps for the first time in her life she has found something that hurts her.”

“Not my love for you,” he said quickly, and put his hands out as though he would catch her to him and be done with this farce of their pretence once and for all.

But her very stillness, and she stayed quite still in his arms, silenced him. He stumbled to his knees beside her and hid his face against the folds of her gown.

“You know I love you,” he said brokenly; “does that hurt you?”

Her hands touched and caressed his hair. “Not your love for me, Dick,” she said, “but mine for you.”

“But why?” he asked and lifted his head quickly and sought to read her face where it stayed hid in the shadows above him.

“Because . . . oh, Dick, my dear . . . let me finish my story. Perhaps you’ll understand it and perhaps you won’t . . . but, dear . . . the heart of me wants to tell it to you.”

“Very well,” he agreed, and got to his feet again and sat down beside her, not touching her any more, his hands clenched on the stone of the balustrade.

“You shall tell me what you want, but it can’t make any difference to my love for you. I love you—the other things don’t matter to-night.”

“To-night!” She caught at the word. “Ah, supposing we loved each other to-night. We might—and yet I’d like you to know beforehand that I knew . . .” She broke off. “This woman whose story I was telling you,” she went on again, “I don’t want you to think of her as altogether bad, Dick. Some people would, and yet she did kind things, I think. She was generous, she loved to give, she was light hearted, happy. I don’t know why, I don’t suppose she had any right to happiness, but she was often quite superbly and ridiculously happy. And this went on, oh, for ever so long till one day she woke up and found that she had fallen in love. Oh, Dick, perhaps it had become a habit with her and meant nothing at all, with a boy, young enough to be her son.”

She put out her hand and touched him half-timidly. “You knew that, didn’t you?” she asked.

“I don’t see what it has got to do with it,” he answered stiffly. Because in her showing of it, the thing became grotesque and that hurt.

“Oh, my dear,” she whispered, “it has got so much to do with it. Because, you see, this was the first time in all her life that she had really loved, and now her love could not be satisfied just with the light giving and taking of kisses and laughter and desire that is easily satisfied, and soon sated. This time her love wanted other things, and it reached out into the future and it wounded itself against the knowledge that the future could not be hers—that she had no place there. And looking at the boy, loving him, she saw standing very close behind him, borrowing even his eyes and the tenderness of his mouth, a giant angel shape. And the name of the angel is Death.”

She broke off with a little shuddering cry and suddenly she was close to him, in his arms, her hair brushing against his lips. “Oh, Dick, hold me, keep me from him,” she was crying, “I . . . I’m so afraid of Death.”

He was startled by her sudden terror, his lips searching for her lips tasted the salt of her tears. He did his best to comfort her.

“It is such rubbish,” he said, “to talk like that. To let yourself imagine that kind of thing.”

But somehow or other that grey shadow had slipped between them. The night held terror now more than magic, the fragrance of roses hung dead in the air.

“I love you,” he whispered against her hair, and in truth he meant it, but for the moment Love was hushed from its high beating fever into something quiet and tender.

“You shall marry me,” he said, and at that, she laughed . . . a laughter, broken with tears.

“Not that,” she said. “That’s reaching into the future, where I’ve no part. Let’s snatch just a fortnight from Death, shall we? And afterwards, to the other woman, you won’t laugh about me, will you? Promise me that.”

“Why do you say such things?” he asked. “To make me angry. Don’t you believe in my love?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” she answered quickly, “but let me go now, Dick. I’ve spoilt things to-night with my stupidity and my tears. One should never cry over love, he hates being damped.”

She seemed to be laughing at him again, secure in her infinite knowledge, while he stumbled through feelings that shook and tore him. He could not understand her, he was a stranger to her moods.

“Why not to-night?” he asked, “if you love me?”

She would not answer, she would not explain. She seemed to wish to tantalise him with her silence, drawing back into the lighted circle of the candles.

“Other nights,” she whispered. “Other moons. Leave me my tears to-night, Dick.”

She stood a second or two, looking back at him. Her eyes were soft shadowed. She seemed to him more lovely and desirable than she had ever been. Just for a moment, and then she had gone and he was alone in the darkness with his own thoughts, with the silence of the night, with the faded perfume of dead roses.

“She loves me.” His thoughts burned and leaped ahead and visioned the future and it seemed as though in the darkness, the memory of her body pressed up against his, her lips warm under his; “What’s Death got to do with that?”

In front of her glass, a dimly lit glass and kindly therefore, Helen sat and took the jewels out of her ears and from round her neck. Her eyes faced truth at last—there was no escaping from it anymore. And being a woman, she turned from it, most deliberately.

“I love him,” she said. “It will be worth it afterwards . . . the hurt . . .”

Chapter Eleven

Deductions

Major Staines and Armstrong started off on their expedition the next morning. It was always somewhat of a labour getting Armstrong started off on a journey. For a keen witted, and he was undoubtedly that, methodical worker, he was the most untidy traveller it would be possible to imagine. Everything appeared to be left unpacked until the last possible moment. Order however emerged from chaos once Fazil Khan took charge. He swept everything into precision and the entourage started. They were to drive in the car to the base of the Mountains, transfer their loads there to the heads of porters and climb up on foot themselves. They took tents and provisions with them; the hotel had supplied them with cook and chop-box. Armstrong, judging from Fazil Khan’s report, thought they might be at least three or four days in camp.

They made, despite the intense delay which attended it, an early start. The world of long elephant grass and green banana trees was still all sodden with dew when they commenced their walk, but already the sun blazed to life behind their backs and the landscape, as they climbed, lay outlined in high lights and deep cast shadows. The path, once free of the plantations and grassy slopes, rose steeply. They could see it a ribbon of brown, losing itself far, far up above them. It dipped and disappeared into a soft shading of green, the commencement of the bamboo forest that lay a good two hours’ march in front. When they paused to rest and look back down the steeps they had surmounted they could see their porters struggling along, a long caravan looking like a line of ants with Fazil Khan bringing up the rear, his red fez a spot of vivid colour against the surrounding green.

Armstrong had to stop and rest quite a lot of times. There was very little strength in his long, thin legs. Once he threw himself down in the shadows of a little struggling tree that clung with tentacles rather than roots to the side of the wind swept hill.

“It’s a wild goose chase we’re on, isn’t it?” he grunted. “You and I, Staines, know damn well this man didn’t murder Bacon.”

If Staines was at all consternated by the remark, he concealed it.

“Do you know he didn’t?” he asked.

“Don’t you?” Armstrong countered. He cackled. He had for a man an unpleasantly high note of laughter.

“Well, no,” said Staines, “I don’t.” He sat down and pulled out his pipe, filling it with deliberate care, puffing at it for some time before it lit to his satisfaction.

“I’ve had my doubts, of course,” he admitted. “I told you the conversation that passed between us. Vernon had a grudge against Bacon, there is no getting away from that. And I think he is the type of man who would have killed him if he had got the chance.”

“Quite so,” agreed Armstrong. The sweat dried on his long thin face, leaving it unpleasantly pallid, the dryness of his lips exposed his teeth more than usual. “The point is—he did not get his chance. He was just too late.”

“But then . . .” began Staines. The other waved him to silence.

“I’ll tell you one or two things,” he announced, “which I couldn’t tell you down below, because . . . well, to put facts plainly, I didn’t trust your interest in the case.”

“Not trust it,” said Staines. “You don’t credit me, surely.” He almost laughed. “By Jove, that’s fantastic, if you like,” he added.

“I don’t credit you with anything outside stupidity,” said Armstrong, none too politely. “A man is always stupid once he allows a woman into his thoughts.”

“I see,” said Staines, slowly; “and you think my interest is too involved by my . . .” He hesitated for a moment, “old time friendship for Mrs. Dawson.”

“Oh, as to that,” said Armstrong, “that’s your affair. But, look here now.” He sat more erect, keenness suddenly shone in his eyes. “You had your prowl round that room before I went into it, didn’t you? What did you take out of it, I’d like to know.”

“Well, nothing that affected the case,” said Staines with what accuracy he could. “There was a note in the pocket of Miss Blain’s waterproof, but it was a purely personal epistle, which would have caused a good deal of discomfort to the young lady had it become public property.”

“Well, I’m damned,” said Armstrong. The information certainly seemed to switch him on to a new track of thought. “I could run you in for that, you know.”

“Quite possibly,” admitted Staines. “It has, I must even acknowledge as much, been on my conscience. But I really can assure you that the note gave no clue as to who might be the murderer of Bacon.”

“Indeed,” snorted Armstrong; he seemed to pause and re-sort his ideas. The safari of porters herded by Fazil Khan drew level with them and straggled past; the air for a few moments was polluted with the aroma of hot sweating bodies and unwashed rags.

“Got a keen nose for scent?” asked Armstrong, apparently apropos of their passing.

“Well, I can smell out my black brother as a rule,” laughed Staines. “You should smoke, Armstrong. Tobacco is a useful protection, sometimes.”

“It’s a stultifier to the senses, though,” said Armstrong. “You, for instance, might go through a room three or four hours, or say, even half an hour after some user of scent had passed through, and you would not detect her presence.”

Memory stiffened Staines to sudden attention. He tapped out his pipe before he answered. “I don’t suppose so,” he agreed.

“No, well that comes from smoking tobacco,” Armstrong pointed out. He rose to his ungainly length. “But tobacco couldn’t account for your being so damned stupid as not to see where that mosquito wire had been cut,” he added.

Staines rose too. “I did not examine the room,” he said. “I told you that. I am being honest with you.”

“At last,” Armstrong thrust in with a grunt, which Staines pretended not to hear.

“I used my official position,” he admitted slowly, “to get into the room and retrieve a letter for a lady. The thing spoken of like this sounds unpardonable, but at the time, it did appear to me to be quite a harmless bit of chivalry. After all, the dead man’s love affairs . . .”

“Well, we won’t argue about it,” interrupted Armstrong. “We’ve got a hill to climb, and that takes all my breath. Chivalry is about the most idiotic vice—or virtue—which women force men to exercise. I’m afraid, Staines, you’ve proved yourself an idiot where women are concerned.”

He had been in the wrong about that note; there was no use in attempting to argue the matter with Armstrong.

Staines relapsed into silence and anyway he had enough to occupy his thoughts. What exactly had Armstrong meant by his brief reference to the users of scent. Nothing at least that could in any way be put down to the safari.

Mid-day saw them in the shade of the bamboos. Here suddenly, after the almost intolerable heat of their climb it was cold. A wind that seemed to come straight from the mountain’s hidden heart of snow blew through the long aisles of bending bamboos and fluttered the dead spikes with which the ground was covered to a semblance of fresh life.

Armstrong complained more about the cold than he had about the heat. It was dreadfully treacherous, he said. The safari had to be stopped, boxes dumped on the ground and a general unpacking pursued—of course he could not know where anything was, thought Staines—until his white sweater was unearthed and his long form encased in that and a muffler added to it wound round his throat.

Fazil Khan had selected the place for them to camp. It was a dip in the hills at the top of the mountain. Sheltered from the wind, in deep shadow from the sun. A cool, pleasant spot amongst giant trees and ferns and at the edge of a stream whose waters started here and further on fluttered into a waterfall that fed the Semiliki plains with its broad river.

The tents were erected in no time, and hot tea provided for Armstrong. He drank it, to Staines’ contempt, with his feet planted in a mustard bath in order to ward off a chill. The cold certainly seemed to reduce Armstrong to a shocking state of nerves. Staines took his gun and wandered off, leaving him to it.

“I’ll be back by sun-down time,” he shouted back.

The forest world immediately engulfed him, shut out the tents and the porters’ hastily erected huts from sight, closed down on the noises of the boys getting the cook house ready and building up fires. He could have lost himself easily, had it not been for the little chattering stream along whose banks he kept. It was terribly dark and cold and stealthy in this forest. If he stood and looked up, far overhead, trying to push its way through thick curtains of leaves, he could just see the sun, but, to judge by the darkness underfoot, its beams had never even at mid-day succeeded in penetrating into these glooms.

And there was life all around him; he could hear it moving. Sometimes it scampered away at his approach, but except for a few monkeys who chattered and swung and peered at him from overhead, he saw nothing. It was uncanny that sense of a multitude of live things that kept hidden from sight.

Staines thought of the man Vernon living somewhere in this queer solitude, more intent on not being seen or found than the animals themselves.

He remembered Vernon’s drunken rambling talk about how he knew every square inch of these mountains. Would they find Vernon? And if they found him, how much nearer would Armstrong be to the truth?

Of course Armstrong was perfectly right. It had been rather silly and quixotic of Staines to allow himself to get messed up in a case of this sort, because, oh well, because of a dream. After all, what more was Helen to him? Helen with her dozens of love affairs since that love of his, which had blazed across his life and hardly even touched her! Helen, with her new ridiculous love affair!

God! What a stupid thing love was. And yet, if one shut it outside one’s life, ignored it, one became an old dried up stick of a fossil. As Armstrong had become. Armstrong, sitting in the midst of all this creepy, primeval splendour sipping hot tea with his feet in mustard and water.

“I’ll tackle Armstrong after dinner,” Staines thought “Find out what he really thinks. Try, perhaps, to get him to see the human side of the thing. That poor terrified slip of a girl!”

He went back to the camp. The boys had lit a huge bonfire. Armstrong’s figure, muffled up in innumerable woollen wrappings, sat as close to the blaze as he could with safety get his chair.

Staines bathed and changed into pyjamas and warm dressing gown and joined him.

All trace of light had flickered out of the sky. It was almost as though the darkness in its very intensity was pressing close up against the fire trying to smother it.

The boys moving about with their hurricane lamps, getting dinner ready, looked like giant fireflies. And now the forest had waked to a perfect inferno of small noises, the insect life of Africa which through the night keeps up its chorus of hate, praise or sorrow. Who can tell what it is?

They had dinner, a most excellent dinner, Fazil Khan saw to that, by the bonfire, and after dinner with some pleasant liqueur warming his veins and a breakfast cup of boiling hot coffee at his elbow, Armstrong thawed into a more genial conversation than Staines had ever known him indulge in.

“Guess you wonder how I am working out this case.” He came to that finally, after long-winded descriptions of past cases and a most intricate discussion on a theory of crime detection that some man in India was just bringing to perfection. “It’s the sort of work you’ve always taken an outside interest in, isn’t it, Staines?”

“It is,” Staines admitted. “I’ve dabbled in it, unprofessionally, whenever I’ve got a chance.”

“Well, the less we say about your unprofessional conduct the better,” chortled Armstrong. “Let’s get back to your inspection of that room, step by step; I’ll tell you what you missed.”

“It was not an inspection,” Staines pointed out cautiously. “I’ve told you I went there for a set purpose and, having achieved it, I did not do any looking round.”

“You did enough to puzzle me,” snorted Armstrong. “For one thing you went across to the windowsill and you stood there for more than a couple of minutes.” He waited for no answer. “Presumably, once there, something caught your attention and you paused to study it. Well, it wasn’t the half-burnt cigarette, that you could have seen better from the other side, and it wasn’t the slit in the mosquito net because, according to yourself, you never noticed that, so it must have been some quite other thing that arrested your attention.”

“But how on earth . . .” protested Staines . . .

“My dear man, in this country,” Armstrong interrupted, “the dust gives more secrets away than it contains. And that is saying a good deal. Your footprints puzzled me at first; for one thing, they were imposed on someone else’s, and for another, I did not, to begin with, know you had been in the room, and I wondered who the man might be who had stood there. It wasn’t Bacon. I proved that at once, and I dismissed our young friend Stanley out of the story. One ought never to complicate the case in one’s brain by admitting too many possibilities. I, from the start, limited it to two.”

“To two?” said Staines; “and one, I suppose, a woman?”

Armstrong glanced across at him. “So you, too spotted that?” he said. “Did you spot it while you were standing there beside that curtain?”

“No,” said Staines, “I haven’t exactly spotted anything. One or two points occurred to me, that’s all.”

“Humph!” Armstrong drank his coffee and turned back to a contemplation of the fire.

“When I heard you had been in the room,” he went on presently, “I linked up the feet with yours. That was all right—that accounted for their having got up there later than the other footmarks. In all probability,” he seemed now to be musing more than directly addressing his companion, “when Vernon stood outside cutting that mosquito wire preparatory to pushing his way in, he became aware of that other person, standing half concealed by the curtain, and that was why his share in the proceedings went no further.”

“You mean,” suggested Staines, “that he watched this other person” (somehow he was singularly unwilling to admit to the sex) “kill Bacon.”

“Something like that,” admitted Armstrong. “He may only have heard it.”

“But then why not have stayed and told what he knew,” Staines argued; “It is not likely that he had any . . .”

“Chivalrous interest,” suggested Armstrong. He cackled. “That, I presume, is what keeps you from telling what you know.”

“I . . . There is nothing that I could tell,” said Staines. “I suspect. . . I imagine . . . one doesn’t give anyone away on that much proof, does one?”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Armstrong, “and perhaps Vernon realised that the man Bacon had left too many written records of his fear for it to be quite safe for him to come forward with an even definite accusation of some one else. Women are good liars when they fight to save their skins.”

Again he had mentioned the woman. Staines stole a glance at him. It was not much use, he decided, attempting to put in a plea for the girl’s youth, her desperate plight. Those kind of things would not influence Armstrong in the least. He was as dry as his all-revealing dust in the matter of sympathy.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “Vernon should be able from your own showing to give you some very interesting information. So our journey won’t be wasted.”

“You may be right,” agreed Armstrong; “only I was just wondering whether you might not have saved us this climb. And yet I suppose not. Vernon’s got to be caught. One can’t play fast and loose with the law like that.”

He rose, stretching. “I’m for bed,” he said; “though whether any of us will get any sleep is open to doubt. Romantic people talk about the silence of an African night. I am damned if I know where they find it.”

“I know what they mean,” said Staines. He rose, too, and beyond the firelight his eyes searched out the intense darkness of the forest. “It’s just behind all these top noisy insects. It’s almost like a force pressing out at one from the earth.”

“But then you are romantic.” Armstrong was drily amused. “Personally, I don’t get beyond the insects. Good-night, and I hope the silence creeps about your ears—it’s your only chance of sleep; that’s certain.”

He disappeared in the direction of his tent and Staines settled down by the fire again and reached out his hand to pour himself out another whiskey. Whether Vernon was found or not, and he would be found—there was very little doubt of that; whether he knew anything or not; it was pretty evident that Esther Blain’s fate was sealed.

Armstrong knew. He was as sure of catching his rabbit as any ferret might be. There remained only the motive. What on earth had driven the girl to so desperate an act, and would Vernon know of the desperation, had he overheard anything that would in any way help?

Some foulness emanated from that wretched dead man? Staines had been conscious of it standing in the room, looking down on the sheeted figure; just as he was conscious of the silence pressing in on him from behind the noises of the insect world. And that, according to Armstrong, was only a romantic sense got out of hand. And how, since he was so palpably aware of the foulness, were his mind, his feelings, to let Helen emerge unscathed. Some of it must touch her, enfold her.

He hated the thought. He swallowed his whiskey brusquely and stood up.

Fazil Khan on the other side of the fire brought his hand to the salute, the glint of the firelight showing in his eyes.

“Huzoor,” he said, “there is word come through. The Bwana whom we look for is moving in the forest to the right of where we lie. They say a great madness has come down on him, that he runs shouting and jumping among the trees. It may happen, unless we go at once, that Death will catch him before we can.”

“Who’ve you heard this from?” asked Staines.

“Some Shenzies,” answered the policeman. “They carry rice through from Bwamba. They were camped for the night over there.” He waved his arm. “For through this forest run many tracks, Bwana. And the man Muzungu came on to them out of the woods like a spirit dancing and leaping ere yet it was dark. They were greatly afraid and kept running and hiding lest he see and pursue them. And as night fell they saw our fires and thought to meet with others of their kind that being many, they could, if need be, fight the white man. And then seeing me and knowing that I am of the Government they have told me their story as I tell it to you.”

Staines had waited in some impatience for the end of the wordy report. It never does to either hurry or interrupt a native. It is apt to make him lose truth for good and all.

“Very well,” he said sharply once Fazil Khan had done. “Call together the eskaries. Get lamps and some strong rope. It may be necessary to tie him. I’ll tell your Bwana.”

He stepped across to Armstrong’s tent and called through the opening.

“There is word of Vernon just come in,” he said. “He seems to have gone dancing mad somewhere in the near neighbourhood. I presume we hunt at once.”

“I’m damned glad to hear it,” Armstrong’s voice answered; his long ungainly shape emerged out into the light. “I’ve got a Senafu (travelling army) of ants, wandering across my tent, and was just meditating spending the night perched on top of my upturned tin bath. It is about the only thing they can’t climb up. How far off is Vernon?”

“Not far I gather,” Staines said.

“Well, we had better put on some garments, I suppose,” said Armstrong. “Incidentally, I’ll come and dress in your tent. Curse Africa and all her insects. I say that in perfect sincerity. And so, probably, does Vernon.”

Chapter Twelve

Vernon Dies

The forest had driven Vernon mad. Its shadows pressed round him, peering, watching, grimacing. He was not afraid of solitude—he had never been that—but never before had these great wastes of loneliness been so unfriendly to him, never had they seemed so peopled with malign and evil influences.

Perhaps his drink-sodden mind had come nearer to the truth than he realised when it had said that the meeting with Bacon had stirred things to life better left untouched. The filth and the soul rot. Perhaps those were the memories that gathered round him, that peered and grimaced at him from behind the trees.

Bacon! God! How he had hated Bacon! What good cause he had had to hate! That first evening after leaving the hotel, nay on the very night itself, for he had waked long before cockcrow and packed his kit bag, as he had said he would, and strapped it on his back and strode out into the night, the ghost of Bacon had joined him and gone with him. It had climbed the mountains with him, Bacon’s ghost and all the filthy memories which the dead man brought in his trail, and, still together, the forest had swallowed them up.

Oh, he knew every inch of the forest! He had been right in that. He and Bacon’s ghost could stay well hidden there. Not much chance of anyone finding them. But the trouble was that Bacon’s ghost was afraid. It would not leave Vernon alone. It pressed close up to him where the shadows were thickest and ran and scurried and clung to Vernon, when he tried to shake free. And all the time hate flamed in Vernon’s soul against this dead thing and the stench of it blew against his face, whichever way he turned.

He lit a fire as dawn broke. The smoke would mean nothing to any watcher from the hotel for all over the mountain there were dotted these lonely little camp fires, sending up their thin spirals of smoke into the still air. Sometimes, in the dry weather, when the natives living on the slopes set fire to their waste cultivation the spirals would spread and run together and become an almost impenetrable veil of smoke. Then the mountains would be completely hidden from the plain dwellers, and anyone arriving at the hotel for the first time would find it difficult to believe that there were any mountains there. But just now it was not the dry season and when the sun had risen in the morning, it had shown a clear cut range of splendour and a distant vision of the snow. So that Vernon’s small spiral of smoke rose with many others out of a carpet of thick green and trailed itself across a sky of clear blue.

Over the fire, Vernon had crouched and leant forward and argued with Bacon’s ghost. The beastly thing would sit there just opposite, its fat obtrusively evident, its face grinning as Bacon himself had lain grinning in his last frightened sleep. And the awful thing about the creature, slimy spirit, loathsome apparition—what in hell could one call it?—was that it made no answer to any of one’s remarks.

Vernon carried on a shouted monologue, and when his voice grew tired, he whispered his hate across the ashes of the dying fire.

“You know why I hated you,” he said. “Blast you, I had every right to. You ruined my life, didn’t you? You killed the thing I loved. Oh, I know I should probably have killed her myself with disgust of me and weariness of my ways, but you—you killed her, just to amuse yourself eh? Of course, I was going to kill you—don’t sit there grinning. You knew that I meant to kill from the first moment when you saw I had seen you. And you were afraid. God! How it tickled me—your fear!”

“Your soul is in Hell, eh Tom?” he went on, “that’s what’s the matter with you, isn’t it? That’s why you’re back here with me. Well, I can show you Hell too. Up here in the mountains. You wait till the loneliness gets you. Oh, you and I, we’ll be alone, we two.”

That for some strange reason, made him laugh. He sat there rocking with laughter, his great hairy fists clenching his knees and the pallid, unpleasant ghost of Bacon watching, grinning, but making no noise.

That was the worst of it. It made no noise. It’s silence became oppressive; joined forces, as it were, with all the silent, watching world; drove down on to Vernon’s mind, pressing it, squeezing it to madness.

He made in the first instance straight to the cave in the side of the hill which, months ago, he had scooped out and rendered into a habitation for himself and stocked with drink, whiskey and raw native beer and tinned foods of various descriptions. He had often before spent weeks in this retreat unguessed at, uninterfered with.

The natives might know of it, but they left it strictly alone. None of their little winding tracks passed close enough to it for them ever to peer in. The native of Africa has a very great respect for madness and they had long considered that this white man who lived almost like an animal, must be mad. They left him in aloof, godlike seclusion. Never before had Vernon felt the loneliness so awful.

At the end of the first fortnight’s muttering and turning and struggling against Bacon’s ghost, he had a clear, sharp moment of sanity.

“I am going mad,” he thought. “It’s this blasted drink. I ought to chuck it and get back to civilisation. Ghosts don’t walk. There’s nothing here.”

But even as he said it, the little sane spot in his brain shifted again, and he stood looking round him, listening, peering.

“Nothing here! Nothing here!” the trees seemed to chuckle.

It was on that day that he broke and smashed and tore everything his hands rested on and when he had done that he set fire to his store of provisions—-the whiskey at least burnt well—and turned and plunged further into the forest. And close behind him he would not turn to look, but he knew it was there, the ghost crept, scurried and touched.

He passed several natives during that day. They travelled in small gangs, men, women and children all laden with rice and other produce for the markets at the foot of the mountain. They carried their loads on their backs, bands of fibre supporting the burden round their foreheads and across their bare chests. It necessitated walking with bowed backs, eyes on the ground. They did not see much of what they passed. But they saw Vernon; their eyes glinted up at him in the second’s passing. They carried word of what they saw down into the plains. “A mad muzungu.” They could see that he was mad. But they could not see the thing that followed him.

For days he stumbled and roamed about, eating nothing, sitting down only to drink. He had packed in his knapsack four bottles of whiskey and four bottles of gin. He drank them neat; water had no attraction for him, though once during the course of the long day, he lay down fully dressed as he was and let the waters of the little stream lap over him.

“Wash and ye shall be clean,” he chanted, lying there on his back, his red, drink-flamed eyes staring up at the sky.

For the river cutting its way through the trees, though dappled with shadows, did get here and there a clear glimpse of the sky. “Wash and ye shall be clean.”

Perhaps he had some idea of getting rid of his haunting companion by this drastic immersion, but when he emerged again and stood shaking and shivering on the bank, the ghost of Bacon was still there, dodging when he hit out at it, slithering behind unfriendly tree trunks, following him as he started out once more on his desolate tramp.

It was strange, had he been able to pause and think, that his madness should have taken this form of Bacon’s attendant ghost. He had no regret for Bacon’s death. He had hated for twenty years. The desire to murder him had swarmed in his mind through all those years.

No, it was certainly not remorse that drove his thundering thoughts, that created this image of a jelly-like, clinging, tenacious enemy. But it may have been some residue of hate. Because he had so hated, because he had so brooded and schemed, now that drink drove his tottering mind to destruction he could not rid himself of the hated vision. Wherever he went, the ghost of Bacon went with him. By slow degrees all sense of reality left him. The drink and the madness took complete control. He grew friendly with the attendant spirit, threw an arm round its non-existent form; mouthed and gibbered his friendship close up against the dead face.

“You and I, we’re pals, old chappy,” he said; “and this is Hell. Come on then, let’s paint Hell red.”

The shadows of the trees grew closer; darkness crept up over the sky, behind the noises of the insect world the silence pressed and watched.

It is pitiful to see a man go mad. Death is far kinder.

At the end of the third week, a frenzy seized him and he tore off his clothes and ran leaping and bounding among the trees, hurting himself against thrust out branches, tearing great ragged lines of blood across his skin. Hunger took him by the throat. He grovelled on all fours in the damp soil and tore up roots and snails and grubs and crammed them into his mouth and munched and slobbered over them. And then for a little, he fell asleep and the silence and the darkness crept closer and closer and covered him like some animal lying there in his nakedness on the ground that his hands had raked up.

That was how finally Armstrong and Staines found him, coming upon him almost by chance, the circle of their light, the noise of their feet waking him to a sudden terrified realisation of danger and death. For it was as a wild animal faces its pursuers that the one-time man Vernon leapt to his feet and confronted these men whom he no longer recognised as fellows, with their paraphernalia of lights and weapons. And it was with no human noise in his throat that he leapt straight at the figure nearest him and tossed it aside as might some giant ape of these self-same forests, so making a pathway for himself out once more into the darkness.

There followed the most fantastic chase. It was like, Staines thought afterwards, some grim pantomime adventure of the nether worlds. But at the moment, he had not much time to think. The eskari whom Vernon had leapt at was injured. He lay moaning and twisting among the sodden leaves. Staines had to kneel and attend to him keeping a couple of men with their lamps to help him while Armstrong, cursing volubly, hurried in pursuit. And for a time, while Staines dealt as deftly as he could with the stricken man who had had a shoulder dislocated, he saw the lights of the search party dashing hither and thither among the trees; heard Armstrong’s voice shouting directions; the agitated yells of already slightly scared eskaries.

And once he caught a glimpse, hurried, grotesque, just outlined for a second by a passing light, of a white naked figure leaping, peering, its face too utterly inhuman to contemplate.

After that, for a time there came silence except for the breathing of the men who had stayed to help him, and the persistent groans of the injured eskari. The search, it would seem, had gone far afield. The lights had silenced the noises of the insect world.

Staines rose, his work completed and signified to the two eskaries that they could carry their companion back to camp, and as they stooped to lift him, all three were startled by the sound of firing.

“Armstrong catches his quarry, dead or alive,” thought Staines and started to run, a lamp swaying in his hand, in the direction of the shot.

It was an eskari who had fired, not waiting for orders, terrified by the figure that had come leaping out at him from the darkness. One could hardly blame the eskari, but he had winged Vernon through the heart, more, as Armstrong said, by ill-luck than good judgment.

The huge naked figure lay crumpled up, terribly still at last, surrounded by a circle of lamps, when Staines joined the crowd. Armstrong stood over it, peering down. He seemed dishevelled and agitated after his half-hour’s chase.

“He’s dead,” he said, glancing up for a brief second at Staines. “Damn it all, what infernal bad luck!”

“Would he have been much use alive?” asked Staines. It needed only a very brief examination to confirm Armstrong’s statement. “It may have been purely D.T., but I rather doubt it.”

“He won’t answer any questions now, anyway,” said Armstrong, morosely. He turned away and, rather peevishly, ordered Fazil Khan to arrange a carrying party and bring the white man’s body back to camp.

“Not that it really matters,” he added, glancing obliquely at Staines, as they found their own way back, led by the mountain natives who had brought in the news of Vernon’s presence. “I think I had got my facts all right.”

“You’re fixing it on the woman, aren’t you?” said Staines. He had a fleeting vision of Esther, her grey eyes like those of a frightened child. “My God, Armstrong, she must have been hard driven. I suppose the law takes that into consideration.”

“Depends what you call hard driven,” said Armstrong, cynically. “I have known murder done for pleasanter, or shall we say more urgent motives, and yet the murderer has been hung. We’ll have a funeral to-morrow, eh, and then get down the mountain again.” As he spoke he was picking his way among the branches and leaves that strewed the ground, much as a cat might walk over a wet patch. “If you take my advice, Staines, this is where you’ll melt into the background of this case. It’s not going to do your reputation any good to be mixed up in it.”

“I daresay you are right,” admitted Staines, “but I don’t know that it’s advice that I can take. You see I am more than just interested. I’m a friend.”

“Indeed,” said Armstrong, and he said it with all the dryness with which he could invest his voice, “then there’s no more to be argued, is there?”

Behind them, in the badly lit darkness, one of the eskaries, helping to carry the body of Vernon, stumbled and cried out and fell. The others dropped their share of the burden and huddled together staring round them, the glint of their white eyeballs looking fantastic in their black faces.

“What’s the matter?” asked Armstrong, none too tolerantly. “What the hell are they gibbering about, Fazil Khan? Is it a dead man that makes these cowards afraid?”

Fazil Khan was also inclined to be contemptuous, though his eyes, Staines noticed, searched the surrounding forest with equal intensity.

“The Bwana died mad, Huzoor,” he explained. “The foolish among us believe that for that reason his spirit is abroad. It left the body before death and cannot return.”

“Rot,” said Armstrong. “Tell them to get on with their job. The only man who need do any screaming is the one who fired without being told to, and him I shall settle to-morrow morning.”

Thus does the legal mind deal with ghosts, but the natives of the mountains still say that at night unless they keep very close huddled round their fires, they may see the giant shape of a white man leaping and bounding among the trees, and they add, oddly enough, that it runs as though pursued by something, but what follows it, what tries to catch it, that they have never seen. Nor do they want to; they have a perfectly just and rather childish terror of the Devil.

Chapter Thirteen

Moonshine

Staines got a letter down to Helen Dawson by a runner, who left very early in the morning, long before Armstrong was stirring.

The man had very strict instructions to travel as fast as he could and to get the letter delivered before noon. Staines reckoned that he and Armstrong would be late in starting down the mountain; there was the burying of Vernon to be seen to, and he did not suppose that Armstrong would travel very fast. Those long legs of his would be even more useless going downhill than they had been going up. He said very little in his letter; after all, warnings and advice would not be of much good.

“We have found Vernon,” he wrote, “and as a witness he is going to be of no use to Armstrong. In fact, he is dead, he died raving mad from all we can find out. But the point is this, as far as your party is concerned, my dear, Armstrong knows. He knew before ever we found Vernon, that it was not Vernon who killed Bacon. He names no names; he brings no definite accusation. Watching me, he says, “You and I, Staines, know that it was a woman.” And there he leaves it. I feel so sorry for the girl, speak to her, see what you can get out of her. We shall be down sometime this evening and Armstrong will act to-morrow.”

Helen stood reading the letter on the verandah of Stanley’s place. They had finished lunch and Dick had just gone to get the car. They were starting out this afternoon on their fortnight’s trip into the wilds. Helen had decided that that was what they must do. She had persuaded and arranged and cajoled. This morning the porters had started off; thirty of them, laden with tents and boxes and chairs and tables and baths. They were to go down along the foothills, stalk elephant, shoot buck, move from place to place as the fancy took them. A fortnight. She had asked that of life.

“Afterwards,” she had said. And her eyes had smiled at Dick’s eagerness. There could not be an afterwards for them, but there was no need to tell him that.

Esther had been a little difficult to persuade. Helen had had to do a lot of explaining to try to make Esther understand.

“He loves you,” Esther had argued stubbornly, rather flatly, keeping her eyes hidden. “What you are going to do will hurt his love.”

“And no,” Helen had answered. “Oh, my dear, won’t you see, won’t you understand, that I love him too. Quite a new kind of love for me. I won’t let him be hurt. Listen, Esther, if this was like all the other loves that have been in my life, don’t you see I could have taken it last night, out there in the moonlight after you had gone to bed and I could have dragged it down to the level of the other things in my life. Oh, I talk melodramatically, but, my dear, its true. He thinks he loves me—just for a little it would be so easy for me to make myself believe. But that is just it—he doesn’t love me. It’s sex stirring in his veins, warming his mind; because my body has always been a thing that men have loved, he thinks he loves it. And I love him,” she had ended softly. “It’s like a whisper in my soul, it’s like soft, quiet hands about my heart.”

“But then . . .” Esther had started to ask, and Helen had looked up quickly, silencing the question with her eyes that besought pretence.

“I want my fortnight, Esther. You see, I’m being very frank with you. I want you to come with us. I want us to forget, all three of us, these things which lie between us. It may seem a perfectly absurd wish, but for just a fortnight, I want, as it were, to plunge into a new life, where Helen Dawson has never, and never could have existed.”

“But he . . . is he going to be satisfied with that?” Esther had forced herself to ask. “And afterwards—what will you do afterwards, Helen?”

Helen had not answered that; there had seemed no answer to give, but at least Esther had offered no further opposition. And Dick had been able to get the porters easily enough, and fit up the safari. He had had to be persuaded too, cajoled. He could not understand the barrier, which it seemed, she wished to erect between them.

“Last night you said you loved me,” he argued. “If you’ll marry me, I’ll marry you to-morrow. But why should we wait a fortnight? Why should you keep me at arm’s length like this? I don’t understand. It’s not as though . . .”

“As though I had been inaccessible to others? “She ended his sentence for him. “But, Dick, that is just why. With you I want everything to be different.”

He hated her laughter, it seemed light and indifferent. He was jealous, thinking of all the men who had loved her, whose love she had been content to take.

“Don’t you love me?” he asked. “I don’t want to be treated as though I were a baby.”

Soft hands about her heart! “Oh, my dear,” Helen whispered, and she put out her hands and drew down his face against hers. “Afterwards,” she had whispered, “everything shall be as you like, but just let me have my fortnight of pretence.”

What could he argue, how could he fight against her? He was like wax in her hands. So this afternoon they were to start, driving out the first thirty miles, leaving the car where the road ended and walking on till they found water and a suitable place to camp.

And now this letter had come. Helen read it, standing there with the sun all warm about her feet. When she lifted her head from reading it, the glare on coffee trees and warm red dust hurt her eyes. Esther was sitting on the edge of the balustrade, silhouetted by that brilliant sunshine. She was all in khaki; she seemed rather drab, her face pale, her eyes lowered.

“Is it a letter from Major Staines?” she asked. “Does he say they’ve found the man Vernon?”

Helen stayed quite still a minute or two before she answered. Would Esther, she wondered, look up at her, and if she did look up and their eyes were to meet, would truth suddenly leap to life between them. Were they, each of them, equally frightened of truth?

From the end of the drive, they could hear Dick starting the motor car. If they looked at each other, there would not be much time for truth before he came.

Helen crumpled up the letter and let it fall. “No,” she said, “there’s no particular news in it. I think perhaps we ought to walk down and join Dick. He sounds as though he were ready.”

Esther stood up and now, for a second, her grey eyes looked into Helen’s brown ones.

“It’s funny about Vernon, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean . . .”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t say what you mean, Esther,” Helen interrupted. “The thing, as far as we are concerned, is in another world, for the time being. Come, let’s go.’

They camped that night on the far side of a swift running river that came hurrying down from the mountains, and here spread itself out in shallows, where innumerable great rocks reared themselves, like giant stepping stones from shore to shore.

They had left the motor car fourteen miles behind and they had come not by the main path, but by divers little native tracks to this spot. They were late getting into camp. There had been barely time to pitch the tents and light the bonfires before the dark swept down on them.

Fifteen miles, and to-morrow Armstrong would act. Helen was thinking of that as she sat on one of the chairs which the boys had put out near the fire for them, and watched Dick’s face, the shadow of his dark young head. It would not take Armstrong long to find them and that would mean that all the world crashed down upon her pretence, ended this poor stupid dream of hers.

A fortnight—that had been too much to ask. She should be content to snatch at the love offered her, as she had always been content to snatch before. What held her back, what queer impulse of loving swayed her now as she sat there watching Dick?

She herself hardly knew. It was as though her heart ached to keep him untouched among the other memories of her life; as though she realised how in possession, his reverence would grow less, until in time his vision of her faded only into something at which his heart laughed.

But if she withheld herself, what then? What chance would her memory have amidst the others, more glowing, more possessed, that must, in due course, claim his mind?

That is a question which passion must very often put in front of woman, but the true answer has never been recorded.

Esther had gone to bed, the walk had tired her. She was lying behind them there, in one of the tents, the flaps thrown back, watching them perhaps.

Esther loved Dick, too; Helen had sensed that. When she thought of Esther, she knew suddenly that she was afraid—that jealousy burnt like a flame in her thoughts. To hold back, to deny herself to Dick because of some stupid scruple—that was to hand him over to Esther.

Oh, if it wasn’t Esther, it would be some other girl in due course. Youth—peering at her out of the shadows of her thoughts—mocked at her. What weapons had her love with which to fight against youth?

It was Dick who spoke, moving suddenly, standing up, his hands deep in his pockets.

“The headman of the village nearest this has brought me word in of elephant that come and smash down their shambas nightly. I think I’ll go and have a pot at them,” he said. “There’s going to be a moon to-night.”

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked. She stirred a little to look up at him. “We seem to have walked hundreds of miles.”

“Fifteen, to be exact,” he answered, brusquely, and looked away from her over to where, under the deepness of the trees, the porters had built themselves miniature bonfires, and sat crouched over them. “I think I’ll live up to your idea of honour. We ought to behave better if I shoot elephant every night,” he added perversely.

She caught her breath on a little sigh. “Dick, my lamb,” whispered, “you find it awfully hard to understand me, don’t you?”

“I do and I don’t,” he admitted. “After all, you are perfectly within your rights to decide as you have done. I fancy it’s with some idea of testing my” (he hesitated a moment) “love, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know how afraid I am of your love.” Helen spoke quickly. “It is as though it sat in judgment on me and I . . .”

“That’s nonsense,” Dick interrupted, “Do you think I don’t—well, know pretty well all there is to know about you.”

“You know I’ve been—what do people call it—immoral, oh, heaps of times?” she asked.

“That I don’t believe,” he answered. She could see in the firelight that he was frowning, staring down into the fire. “I know they say you were Bacon’s mistress, that is how you came up here. I don’t understand it. It doesn’t seem to me you could ever have loved him. If you give yourself to someone whom you don’t love, I suppose that is immoral. I don’t understand. I’ve given up trying to. I love you, that’s all I know.”

She was suddenly so sorry for him that it was like a stab of pain in her heart. There was such bewildered youth in his words. It was as though she could vision his mind plunging through a strange fog of uncertainty, trying to find truth. She stood up quickly and put her two hands on his shoulders. They were very much of a height; his puzzled hurt eyes could look straight into hers.

“Go and shoot your elephant to-night, Dick, dear,” she whispered. “To-morrow I’ll try to explain. And, if my dear—remember always whatever happens, that I’ve loved you—that I would give my soul if only I could be like Faust and hop back twenty years.”

Always she seemed to elude him, to drag laughter in front of their love. It hurt him. He could not meet her flippancy with anything but sulky resentment.

“I had better go,” he said. “You are right in that.” He swung round quickly, shaking free of her hands. She saw him go striding away to his tent, heard him shout for his boy. They plunged away a little later into the darkness, escorted by several porters carrying lamps.

To-morrow, probably, Armstrong would be here. This was like the end.

Helen sat down again and leant back and closed her eyes. They were full of stupid hot tears and she did not want to cry. It was so much better to face life with a laugh.

“’Tis time to live if I grow old,
Of little life the best to make,
And manage wisely this last stake.”

Some gay old philosopher had written those words. She found that she was repeating them. As a girl she had been very fond of poetry; her mind was full of odd quaint verses that ran together, that fitted into her moods. It was typical of her that more often than not they were misquoted. She had always done that with things and people and words, taken them and used them to serve her own ends. Sometimes, in so serving they lost all their beauty, but that she did not notice. Only to-night it was as though in thought she was standing looking back the long roads her feet had travelled, and she was realising perhaps more clearly than any one would ever give her credit for, the things her hands had spoilt. Frank Langley and Charles Dawson and Tony Staines, and all the other men who had been in her life. One adventure after another, hands reaching out to catch hers, eyes catching fire from the flame in her eyes; kisses, ecstasies and regrets; nothing lovely in her share of it all.

“And yet I don’t know,” Helen’s thoughts whispered; it seemed to her as though she were pleading her case, before the tribunal of night and all the watching calm stars. “I’ve been happy. I’ve made others happy often. It has been fun . . .”

She gave a little shivering sigh and shut her eyes to those stars and looked into her own soul. Now she was facing Tom Bacon, men, for there had been others, like Tom Bacon. Where did the fun come into that?

One sold one’s body because it had come to be so mean a thing, even in one’s own eyes that it did not matter. The night suddenly seemed full of the evil pervading presence of Tom Bacon with his loathsome caresses, his fat podgy hands, his cream smeared face.

That was the barrier between herself and Dick. She had thought to play with the boy’s love as she had played with so many others, but here she could not play. It was as though, inadvertently, her pagan heart had strayed into some temple and grown suddenly quiet and abashed because of the holiness that had its presence there.

The river, chanting and chattering, hurling itself against the stones, joined its voice to her thoughts.

“Why not Death,” the river seemed to say, “the last, the greatest adventure of all? It’s easy. Come down to me now. Slip away from it all. Death is the kindest lover in the world and in Death all things are forgotten.”

Helen stirred and sat erect and leant forward and cupped her chin in her hands staring into the fire.

She could see pictures there. The camp waking to life; Dick and Esther looking for her, talking together. She could see fear growing in their faces. There was a boy running to them to tell what he had found. Consternation! Amazement! Regret! Dick would be sorry, she could be sure of that. And now they were down by the river and she was lying there, her garments all wet and draggled, her face set in some old stiff smile. People looked old when they were dead. Even babies seemed to gather round the dignity of age. Her imagination drew back shuddering from that picture of her dead self. She could not die—not yet. Something warm stirred and throbbed in her veins. There must be some other way out.

She dropped her hands and rose and stood looking round her. The moon that Dick had spoken of had risen during the last half hour. It hung just over the far line of trees, a round disc of dusky splendour, faint-tinged with red, solemn and immense. Its light plunged the sky into sudden blackness, showed the stars which a short time had seemed so splendid as only pinpricks of light, faint diamonds strung together by threads of dark.

Why had she let Dick go away like that, nay, almost sent him. This was so certainly a night for love. Afterwards, what did afterwards matter so long as one had the present?

She had perhaps some idea of following him, she turned to do so and, turning, faced Esther’s tent. The girl stood in the opening, her figure seeming intensely white and shadowy seen in the moonlight.

“Where are you going, Helen?” Esther said, “I’ve been watching you, it seems for hours. I don’t know why, but I feel restless, afraid.”

Her voice shattered the magic spell of the moon. Common sense descended upon Helen again. There was a little hard note of defiance in her voice when she answered.

“My child, I hate being watched,” she said, “and as a matter of fact, there is no need. Dick has gone to shoot elephant.”

“I did not mean that,” said Esther. She stood undecided for a second, then with light soft shod feet she slipped across the space that divided them and joined Helen.

“Helen,” she whispered, “what are we going to do? I mean . . .”

“We are going to do nothing,” Helen interrupted. “We have done that very successfully so far.”

The girl caught her breath on a shiver of fright. “I am afraid,” she said, “I have never been quite so afraid before. It is as though . . .”

It seemed as though Helen’s hand made an involuntary movement to cover that soft, hesitating voice.

“Go back to bed, Esther,” she ordered quietly. “Try not to be a fool. I, too, am going to bed. It must be late and probably Dick will want to make an early start to-morrow.”

“Another fifteen or twenty miles,” she thought; “another day between us. Oh, I haven’t given up yet. To-morrow night, Dick and I . . .”

Esther had moved a little away. “Very well,” she was saying, “I’ll go back to bed. Good night, Helen.”

Silence, absolute and complete, descended over the camp. Helen lay on her bed. The flaps of the tent were wide; she could see the moon’s dusky red turning to a splendour of silvery white as it mounted higher and higher in the sky. Now the earth lay spread out like a map under its light, the forest showed a deep black shadow, very far away the waters of the lake seemed like a streak of silver.

“To-morrow,” Helen’s heart whispered, “the beauty and the mystery will become a part of our love. To-morrow. Oh, why doesn’t the night hurry and bring tomorrow under my hand!”

Chapter Fourteen

The End of the Run

To-morrow, of course, brought time for reflection. That is the worst of to-morrow, almost inevitably it treads the thoughts and hopes of yesterday underfoot.

Dick announced at breakfast that he would like to stay another night in their present camp. He had seen the elephant last night—one was a real beauty, but he had not been able to get near enough to shoot. He would like to try again.

Lifting her head to look at him, Helen suddenly laughed. “That’s funny,” she said.

“Why ‘funny’?” asked Dick, a little ruffled. Last night he had done what he called steep thinking on his own. He had had time to, sitting out under that blinking restless moon. It had occurred to him during the course of his thinking to wonder whether Helen was not just playing with his love. Amusing herself. For, hang it all, it must rather amuse her to look down on his boyish devotion from her pinnacle of immense wisdom in affairs of the heart. And there is one thing which youth cannot tolerate, and that is being laughed at. He would not let his eyes meet Helen’s now; instead he looked at Esther and perhaps for the first time, he thought that Esther looked very attractive in the boy’s kit she affected for this safari. The plain white shirt open at the throat accentuated the youth and delicate colouring of her face; her khaki slacks suited the slim, girlish figure.

“Perhaps Esther would like to come out and have a look at the elephant this evening,” he added, and it was with some idea of hurting Helen that he said it. For it is typical of human nature that, hurt itself, it likes to retaliate, with a blow.

If it did hurt Helen, she made no sign. “I’m sure she would,” she answered, “and so would I. I wasn’t laughing at the idea of your shooting elephant.”

“What then?” he asked her, and this time he looked at her and his eyes were very blue and angry.

“Some stupid thought of my own,” said Helen. “Let us stay here then,” she added; common-sense had come so ruthlessly into power that she could reflect quite dispassionately on the uselessness of trying to put another fifteen miles between her and Fate. “It’s very pleasant here, and I’m sure we could not find a more beautiful spot.”

To face defeat with laughter. There is at least courage in that. And whatever other virtue Helen might be lacking, she had her full share of courage. All day she laughed, joked and flirted. It amounted to that. She tantalised Dick back to his old allegiance by the indifference of her gaiety. He was swept away from his doubts, and his thoughts, and his resolutions. Once more he knew only that he loved her and being laughed at sank into insignificance in comparison with the warmth of his desire.

They lazed about all day . . . the porters building a shade for them under the trees.

At mid-day, the boys brought word of a herd of elephant that was crossing through the forest behind them, and they went, all three of them, to have a look at them.

“Shame to shoot them, isn’t it?” said Helen. “Don’t you feel a murderer at heart cherishing your fond ambitions for to-night?”

“One forgets that when it comes to the point,” Dick explained, “there’s an almost inexplicable thrill in waiting for them, choosing out the one to blot out, realising if one misses, there’s going to be Hell to pay.”

“Yes, one forgets,” Helen admitted.

Esther, glancing at her, broke into hurried speech. All day in the midst of the other two’s laughter and flirtation Esther had been a discordant strained note. She was nervous and restless and utterly ill at ease. All her fine pose of quietness seemed to have deserted her.

“Why do you talk about murders and murderers,” she asked. “Oh, what is the use of pretending that we have forgotten—that nothing is going to happen. Why, any day now . . .”

She broke off and stood staring at them, twisting her hands, shivering almost as though she had fever.

“Poor old Esther,” whispered Helen, laying her gaiety aside for a moment, slipping her arm round the girl’s shoulders, “it frets you so, doesn’t it? To-morrow. My dear, one is so utterly wise to try to forget.”

Her outbreak, though, sobered the other two. They went back to the camp in silence. They could not find things to talk of. Yesterday’s grim doing stalked across their thoughts. Helen made Esther have a couple of aspirins and sat beside her, holding her hand, reciting stray bits of poetry till she fell asleep. Helen’s voice, when she liked to keep it soft and low, when she was whispering half forgotten bits of poems that she had once loved like that, had some mesmeric quality about it: it drugged you to sleep.

“What of the darkness? Is it very fair?
Are these great deeps, and find you silence there?”

She put Esther’s hand softly against the white of the sheet and tiptoed out of the tent to rejoin Dick.

“She’s sleeping,” she said. “We won’t wake her for tea.”

“It leaves you and me alone at last,” he answered, and stood up quickly beside her and took her hands. “All day I’ve been waiting. You promised you know to explain.”

Helen lifted her head a little. She seemed to be listening. “Do you hear anything?” she asked.

“What sort of thing?” he said. “The forest is full of noises of course. The porters are not exactly silent.”

“I thought,” she spoke slowly, “that I heard a safari coming. You know the way the porters sing.”

“A safari?” he laughed. “How could there be out here? We aren’t on the main road. There’s no traffic, not even native, goes along this way.”

“It might be someone coming,” she answered, “to . . . “ She hesitated. “Join us,” she added and laughed.

“You mean your friend Staines?” His hands tightened on hers. “Look here, Helen, for God’s sake, are you playing with me? Does it all mean just absolutely nothing to you, except something to laugh at.”

She drew herself very close to him, her face for a second touched against his face. “It’s the truest thing in my life, my love for you,” she whispered. “And now let us go down to the river and see who it is that is coming, for it is a safari, of that I am very sure.”

They went down to the river, hand swinging in hand. Now he was glad again, confident.

“You tease a fellow so,” he admitted. “You seem always to be laughing. Sometimes I lose the real you behind your laughter. I feel I don’t know what you are thinking about. Look—there’s no one coming.”

For from the river bank they could see some distance along the path on the other side, “You dreamt you heard that singing.”

“Yes, perhaps I dreamt it,” she admitted. “Dick, let’s sit down for a bit here. We seem so gloriously alone, don’t we?” They found a flat rock clear of the water, large enough for the two of them, and they sat down, her shoulder resting against his.

“Last night,” she tried to explain, “I stayed awake all night, I think and dreamt things. And some of the dreams,” she said, giving a little shiver, “were most unpleasant.”

“That was because you had been disagreeable to me, I expect,” he said boyishly, and stooped and picked up a small pebble and sent it skimming across the water.

“No,” Helen answered. In face of his gaiety, she grew perversely grave. “I don’t think that was quite it. I was looking back at all the perfectly horrible things I’ve done in the past and trying to find excuses. As though,” she said, turning her head a little to look at him, “I might find myself trying to explain them to you.”

“Well, don’t,” he answered. “I don’t want that side of you explained. Look at that kingfisher bird on the other bank, Helen, isn’t he a marvellous small chap for colours?”

“He’s wonderful,” Helen admitted. She leant a little forward. “I wonder if God when He comes to judge one,” she whispered, “takes into account the fact that some people have found one lovable and lovely despite one’s sins.”

He pulled her back against him and ruffled her hair with his cheek.

“What’s the matter with you to-day?” he asked. “You’re full of such odd thoughts.”

And then suddenly he let go of her hand and stood up.

“By Jove,” he said, “You were right after all. It is a safari. I can see the loads just showing above the grass there. Is it Staines? Did you know he was coming?”

Helen stood up too. She smoothed back her hair and touched her eyes with quick instinctive fingers.

“I don’t know if Staines is there too,” she answered, “I think it’s Armstrong.”

Dick turned to look at her. “Coming to trap Esther?” he asked. “Is that what you mean?”

She stood staring along the path. At the furthest bend that they could see a white man’s figure was advancing towards them. A tall, thin angular figure, followed by Fazil Khan resplendent in his uniform and red fez.

“Yes, it’s Mr. Armstrong,” Helen said again.

Dick put his hand over hers giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Let’s cut back to the camp,” he suggested. “Warn Esther. Poor kid, this is ghastly for her.”

“I don’t think we can go now,” said Helen. “He has seen us, and look, there’s Tony lagging behind.”

She lifted her hand and waved. “They look as though they had had a fight, don’t they?” she said softly.

Armstrong’s figure reached the opposite bank. He stood there hesitating, peering across at them. They could not hear what he and Staines, who had drawn level with him, were saying to each other. The river made too much noise. The voice of the river seemed to be shouting in Helen’s ears, “You were a fool, a fool, a fool,” said the river.

“I expect he does not like the idea of wading,” she turned to say to Dick.

“No, look, they are going to carry him,” snorted Dick. “Lord, that man makes me sick. He’s like some type of tabby cat.”

“Or like a ferret,” said Helen. “Isn’t that the animal you put into rabbit warrens to drive the rabbits out?”

Four porters depositing their loads on the bank, had waded into the stream in front of Armstrong. One to each leg, two supporting his shoulders, he looked ridiculous, prone like that, his back sagging just above the water.

Staines strode in and waded across. He came out of the water ahead of Armstrong and came straight to Helen. He seemed entirely to ignore Dick Stanley; his face for all its heat and sunburn was curiously white and set.

“Helen,” he said, and made no effort to hold out his hands to her, “you got my letter, didn’t you? Why not have waited?”

Armstrong had been deposited on the dry bank. He stood feeling himself all over with careful hands before he came across to join them. The water had misted his glasses; he took them off and wiped them as he spoke to Helen. For the first time, she saw his eyes. They were very pale light blue; there was the glint of steel about them.

“Ah, Mrs. Dawson,” he said, “I hope we are somewhere near your camp. We’ve walked, I think, fifteen miles already.”

“Exactly fifteen,” Dick thrust in. After all, why should these other two men completely ignore him. “The camp is just up in those trees.”

Armstrong replaced his glasses and turned to stare. “Ah,” he said again, “well, shall we all make our way there? I have something to say to Mrs. Dawson. She might, perhaps, prefer me to say it to her alone.”

“No,” said Helen quickly. The kingfisher bird, startled by the congress of porters on the further bank whizzed out, a flash of blue and scarlet, and sped off down the river. Her eyes, for a second, followed its beauty. “Please say it here and now, Mr. Armstrong. That makes it easier for us all.”

“Then,” he said, and in some way, his thin acrimonious voice assumed for the time being a certain courtesy, “much as I regret it, Mrs. Dawson, the fact remains, I am afraid, I have to arrest you for the murder of Thomas Bacon on the night of the fifteenth of July last.”

Part Two — Esther

Chapter Fifteen

How Armstrong Worked It Out

Worked out as Armstrong had worked it out, all the evidence pointed against Helen. Staines had had to admit it.

Not until the evening after the descent from the mountain did Armstrong really deign to explain things fully to to him. Before that, he had contented himself with hints and innuendoes, and it had been easy for Staines to think that he referred to the girl Esther Blain.

It would be like Armstrong, for instance, to persist in calling Esther a woman, because in admitting her youth, he might feel that he left open a loophole for pity. And Armstrong was very contemptuous of pity.

They had buried Vernon up there in the mountains. A lonely enough grave, typical of the loneliness of the man’s life, grim, with some of the grimness of his death. Staines said what he could remember of the burial service over him and Armstrong listened in slightly sardonic silence.

“You believe in all that, I gather,” he said, after Staines had finished and the eskaries, acting on Armstrong’s instructions, had stamped the earth flat over Vernon’s body.

“Believe—well, yes, I suppose I do,” admitted Staines, “though if you asked me to write down exactly what I feel about God and religion, I don’t believe I could.”

“Quite so.” Armstrong turned from the subject with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “It bothers me how men of your intellect, Staines, can stoop to half believe in things you can’t define.”

“To be credited with an intellect by you is, I suppose, a compliment,” Staines had retorted with sarcasm, and there he had left the matter.

Followed a long, hot march down the mountain and a late arrival at the hotel. As Staines had surmised, Armstrong had not found the descent easy, his temper was vile long before they reached the foot, and very little conversation was indulged in, either then or during the drive back.

There was no note from Helen at the hotel. Staines had felt a little surprised at her silence. Over tea, which he and Armstrong had together on the verandah of the hotel, he announced his intention of driving over to Stanley’s place.

“I gather that you have no objection to my warning them of what is in store for them?” he had asked.

Armstrong leant back in the long Bombay chair and joined the tips of his fingers together in an attitude of meditation.

“You won’t find them there,” he said. “The bird has, pro tem flown. It annoys me for my legs are going to stiffen up to-morrow and I’m in no mood for more marching.”

“Flown!” said Staines. “What on earth do you mean, and how have you heard?”

“My dear chap,” Armstrong grinned at him, “did you imagine I was going to leave the field unwatched. One of Fazil Khan’s minions has brought word in to the effect that Mrs. Dawson, Miss Blain and that young ass, Stanley, have gone on safari together. They started this afternoon; they are to camp forty-five miles away on a certain river called the Mambouri; thirty of the miles they did by car and about fifteen, I gather, will be walked.”

“But, good Lord . . .” said Staines . . .

Armstrong interrupted with a wave of his hands. “Odd, you think,” he said, “especially as she did not leave till after she had got your letter.”

“You knew that I wrote then?”

“I did,” admitted Armstrong. “There is very little goes on that I don’t know, and I advised you, didn’t I, Staines, to melt out of the case here. You do no good and only land yourself in a false position.”

“I am a friend of Mrs. Dawson’s,” Staines began, and the other nodded a “Quite so!” “And it is not unnatural that I should wish to help her through a very difficult time. She had a certain affection for Miss Blain, and anyway, it is painful to see a girl of that age trapped in such a situation.”

“The girl,” said Armstrong. Behind his glasses his eyes narrowed to thin strips of blue. “What has the girl got to do with it?”

“But I thought you knew,” said Staines. The verandah at this hour of the evening was deserted. They had it to themselves. Behind their chairs was the shut door of Bacon’s room. It had not been occupied since the murder. “Good God, what are you driving at?” asked Staines.

“The truth—that’s my job in life,” Armstrong roused himself to answer. “And sometimes when it concerns our friends it can be damned disagreeable.”

Staines sat back and forced his mind to a certain quiet facing of the situation. After all, he was no longer in love with Helen. He had proved that to himself more than once. It was ridiculous to feel this sudden sense of disaster.

“I’ve been on the wrong scent as far as your theories are concerned,” he admitted. “Will you tell me, exactly, how things do stand in your mind?”

“Well, your friend murdered him,” stated Armstrong calmly. “There were a variety of motives, but the strongest of them all was, I think, hate. I rather gather he had come to represent something thoroughly unclean in her life and she gives me the impression of being a woman scrupulously, if not fastidiously, clean about her person. I don’t know that I should say the same about her mind.”

He stretched himself back indolently. The tea had thawed out his bad temper; he had a pleasant sense of tired limbs resting and if there was one thing he really did enjoy in life, it was airing his theories to an attentive listener. And Staines was certainly attentive. He made no effort to interrupt except when Armstrong strayed too obviously away from the main point.

“You see, it’s like this,” Armstrong went on. “In Mrs. Dawson we have a typical woman adventuress. She has lived for at least fifteen years of her life—you knew her first twenty years ago, didn’t you say?—on her beauty, her sex attraction. Her object and interest in life has been amorous adventures which have at the same time had their pecuniary value. I take it that in telling you this, I am not putting before you a thing which you do not already know.”

“I don’t know it in quite that hardness of judgment,” said Staines slowly. “Mrs. Dawson is a very charming woman, and men have loved her.”

“I daresay,” admitted Armstrong. “Thank God, I’ve escaped the curious disease. Anyway, there you have her. A woman with a disreputable career and in the end a career of that sort nearly always ends by leading them to men, swine-men, as the man Bacon must have been. You see, my dear good Staines,” he said sitting up to emphasise his point, “marriage was invented or evolved, I don’t know how you prefer it put, by man in order to keep woman respectable. If woman breaks away from marriage, she ends in the dust bin, or in the dock. I take it that your Mrs. Dawson broke away from marriage twenty years ago.”

“She was married when I knew her twenty years ago,’ said Staines stiffly. “She was only a girl at the time and a very lovely girl. Her husband was a bit older than she was, and a good fellow, but. . .”

“Dull, I expect,” Armstrong intervened, “and she left him. Well, anyway, except for its interest in the character side of her, her past has really got nothing to do with my case. I start from the time when Bacon made a will in her favour, leaving her fifty thousand pounds in the event of his death. There was a signed document she had to give him in exchange for that will, but though I found reference to it among Bacon’s papers, the document itself had been abstracted on the night of the murder.”

“How do you know that?” asked Staines.

Armstrong was silent a moment, tapping his fingers together. “Such very, very little things give people away on these occasions,” he went on at last. “If you care to listen, I’ll reconstruct the murder for you.”

“It might not be murder,” argued Staines, “it might have been self defence—a sudden impulse. My God! It is inconceivable that she could have done it in cold blood.”

“And when you say that,” said Armstrong drily, “aren’t you thinking of the woman you knew twenty years ago—not the Mrs. Dawson of to-day. She was Bacon’s paid mistress. He had bought her—you see—the whole thing turns upon that. I suppose these last twelve months of her life have been nearer to degradation than she had ever dreamt of getting. And then—fifty thousand pounds, that offered her freedom—peace—a certain cleanliness again. Oh, one may take it, to use your expression, that she was hard driven when the party, Mr. Tom Bacon, Mrs. Dawson and Miss Esther Blain arrived up here. She was reaching the end of her endurance, and she had endured a great deal for the sake of the fifty thousand pounds. The culminating point must have been reached when she saw that Bacon’s favour—fancy a woman having to call it that—was veering round in the direction of that pretty little empty faced companion of hers. For, don’t you see if she once lost his favour, and he lived on to plant his fifty thousand pounds elsewhere, she lost everything and would be left with nothing to show for all her degradation.”

“How do you know that Esther came into it like that?” Staines asked; but he was thinking with a kind of dull resignation how Armstrong’s theory worked in with Esther’s presence in the room, the letter which had summoned her and which he had retrieved and given to Helen unread.

“The man Bacon left among other things a most unpleasant diary—a kind of written up record of his disgusting sins,” snorted Armstrong. “I found out all about Vernon in that. I think if only your friend had waited, Vernon would have done the trick for her. From the things I can piece together, Vernon was actually crouching just here when she had her final row with Bacon. But she did not know and she was desperate. You see, I figure it out like this. That evening you will remember, all the witnesses say that Mrs. Dawson after an early dinner went off to bed. She was tired, she says; they had that day motored the two hundred and seven miles from Kampala. Miss Blain also went to her room, but she was summoned back to dance with Mr. Bacon. They danced, or sat out, or strolled about the grounds till 12.30. Then, on her own showing, Miss Blain went to her room and undressed and got ready for bed. Mrs. Dawson, meanwhile, had waited till 12.30 for her interview with Bacon. She says that she left him at 3.30 a.m., and that when she left him, he was sitting at his dressing table rubbing cold cream on his face, but unfortunately, I happen to know that she is a little out in her statement of the time. The hotel runs to a night watchman—a not very intelligent native, whose duty it is periodically to make his rounds armed with stick and lantern. Now it was according to him as dawn broke—a native is always vague about time; he has three methods of reckoning it, dawn, mid-day by his shadow, and sunset. It was as dawn broke that he saw the memsahib come out of Bacon’s room on to the back verandah and go to her own room and immediately afterwards, he heard shouts and cries from the front verandah and thought that the leopard, whom he admitted being afraid of all night, must have killed a man.”

“It seems pretty conclusive,” said Staines slowly, “but if you knew all this, why chase Vernon . . . why . . .”

“That would have been her defence, once you with your evidences and the others with their surmises as to Vernon’s hate had put it into her mind,” Armstrong explained. “Unless Vernon could be found to disprove it, it was going to be a troublesome defence. It still is going to be. I was hoping to save my mind trouble at the expense of my legs by going after Vernon. Vernon could have clinched things for me. He was there”(he turned his head and nodded towards the window); “he knew.”

“But how do you know he was there?” argued Staines. “Did your precious watchman see him also? I suppose he wouldn’t do anything if he saw one white man trying to get into another white man’s room surreptitiously at night. He would not remark on it afterwards, if the occupant of the room happened to be found murdered.”

“He would remark on nothing,” agreed Armstrong, stressing the word “remark.” “He might, if he thought it perfectly safe, answer discreet questions. But, as a matter of fact, he did not see Vernon. He was confining himself, it seems, to the back verandah being a little not unnaturally scared of the leopard. No, Vernon knelt out here and cut that wire—that was easy enough to see and the woman stood behind that curtain listening to Bacon talking to the girl Esther, seeing her fifty thousand pounds and her chance of peace and cleanliness going west, and the revolver lay on the edge of the dressing table, just where her hand could reach it, while she listened.

“You see it was not a letter from Bacon that brought the girl out of her bedroom in a nightdress with just a mackintosh thrown over her shoulders. Why should Bacon have written? He had danced with her all night; he had had every opportunity of arranging an assignation with her, had he wished it, or had he thought it likely that she would acquiesce. Besides, had he hoped or arranged for any such contingency, is it likely that he would have been rubbing that filthy cold cream on his face?

“He was doing that you know when she came; he swung round in his chair surprised at the opening of the door. No, it was Mrs. Dawson who wrote the note, and she was concealed behind the curtain as the girl came in to answer it.”

“But why . . .?” Staines frowned his bewilderment. “Oh, heaven knows why!” said Armstrong; “and it is doubtful if Mrs. Dawson will ever tell us. Perhaps she wanted to disgust the girl, frighten her off the fifty thousand pounds for good and all; perhaps she wanted to show Bacon that his new idea would not work. I don’t think that she went to his room and waited for him behind that curtain meaning to kill him. I think something occurred during his scene with the girl which drove her to it, but I am as certain of it as I shall ever be of anything that she killed Bacon.”

“What are you going to do then?” asked Staines. Armstrong glanced up at him. “Follow them out to-morrow,” he said drily. “Motor thirty miles, walk the fifteen, or however much further may be necessary. Fazil Khan has scouts out. One of them will meet me with necessary instructions at the point where we leave the car. Are you coming with me?” he added, “or are you acting according to advice?”

“I’ll come with you,” said Staines, slowly. “I’ve got to stand by her. She hasn’t another friend in the country. And she’ll need a friend. I shall help her fight it, you know.” He looked straight at Armstrong. “I’ll engage Danton to defend her. If we can get her off we will. She did no harm to anyone killing a creature like Bacon.”

“A romantic way of looking at things.” Armstrong’s voice was sarcastic. “Fortunately the law does not admit of romance, either as defence or prosecution. I can rely on you, I suppose, not to assist the lady to escape me by foul means.”

“You mean suicide,” asked Staines. “No, I give you my word of honour about that. I’ll fight fair.”

“Right!” said Armstrong. He rose and stretched. “Well, then, we make an early start to-morrow. I am arranging to have her housed here till the case before the magistrate comes off. The Mission will spare me a nurse, I think, to act as wardress. The case up here will be purely nominal—transferred to the High Court. You need not engage Danton till then, and you’ll have a chance of seeing how things go here. Good-night, and don’t forget fair play. I hate being cheated over a case.”

All that had passed before Staines’ meeting with Helen. He had had his own thoughts, doubts and loyalties during the night that followed. In the end, the memory of her triumphed over the present. He made no attempt to judge her as he stood before her that next evening on the river’s bank.

“Why not have waited?” his lips asked, but his eyes, looking deep into hers, put their other question. Now he would fight for her because he had once loved her, but he felt almost sure that Armstrong had discovered the truth.

Chapter Sixteen

Where’s Truth?

Dick Stanley could not find the truth anywhere—certainly not in Helen’s eyes. They smiled at him out of the whiteness of her face when he turned to her in passionate protest of Armstrong’s words.

“That’s wrong,” he said. “You know it is not true—you know that Esther . . . Oh, my God, Staines, you know it is a damned lie to say she did it.”

Staines was sorry for the lad. Of all things which his mind had to forgive Helen, he found this, her flirtation he called it—the most difficult to condone. She should have left the boy and his young, eager devotion out of the ruin of her life.

“We can’t argue that out here and now,” he said quickly; “we serve no one by doing that, Stanley.”

“No,” said Helen softly; it was as though her hands made a little movement to touch Dick, but they did not reach him. “There is nothing to argue about. Mr. Armstrong must do what he considers right.” She was wonderfully self controlled, restrained. “Come,” she said, “shall we go back to the camp? I expect you two will be glad of a rest and a drink.”

She turned to lead the way and Armstrong fell into step behind her. His long, gaunt figure seemed to stoop over her, shadowing her going as it were. Staines and Dick walked together.

“It isn’t true.” Dick spoke again. “Of course you know that, sir. I’ve not told you all I know—what I do know clears her absolutely.”

“At the expense,” said Staines, “of the girl, Esther.”

“Well, even at her expense,” Dick flushed. “I haven’t spoken of it before to try and save her—but when it comes to this—a definite accusation. Oh, my God, Staines, something has got to be done.”

“Yes,” Staines admitted that. “Something has got to be done, but we must move slowly, lad.”

“You . . . you don’t believe she can have done it,” Dick stammered. “You—why, you’ve known her for years . . . you’ve loved her. I’m sorry . . .” He broke off sharply; he was at the moment most poignantly young. “I should not have said that.”

“Why not?” asked Staines. “It is true enough to face at this moment when we must above all else face truth.”

His gravity stayed the flow of words on Dick’s lips. They walked in silence for the rest of the way. Helen and Armstrong, walking in front, had nothing, it seemed, to say to each other. The camp reached, though, she turned to face all of them; a little colour had come back to her cheeks; her eyes were almost serene.

“Will you come with me to my tent, Mr. Armstrong?” she said. “You can explain to me just exactly what you want me to do, how to act. Do you know?” She smiled suddenly, swiftly, her eyes lingered on Dick’s face. “I am sorry. This must be a perfectly horrible job for all of you. I really will try to make it as easy as possible.”

“Thank you,” said Armstrong. He looked round him. He was, for him, oddly diffident. “Yes, I think that would be the best thing to do, if you will let me explain things to you in your tent, Mrs. Dawson.”

She said nothing to Dick. That was what amazed, nay, almost tortured him. With a little half caught-back sigh, she moved towards her tent, Armstrong following her.

Sitting up in her bed, Esther watched them pass, looked beyond and saw Major Staines and Dick Stanley standing together, not talking, just looking after Helen’s figure. Esther felt stupid from her drugged sleep, her thoughts fluttered against the truth, trying to escape from it. Staines and Armstrong here already; Helen walking like that with Armstrong. It had come then. She had been haunted by a fear of just this happening, and it had happened.

Helen! Oh, she had so many memories of Helen, laughing, gay tender memories. That first time when Helen had come to the convent. Her gracious beauty. She had thought Helen must be an angel, so beautiful she was. Somehow, when she thought of Helen, the beauty persisted, the ugliness (and jealousy is most terribly ugly), drew back defeated. Love stood, like a guardian at the gateway of her thoughts of Helen.

Just for a minute or two, she sat there after those two had passed, her face buried in her hands, and when she stood up and moved out to join Dick and Major Staines, her eyes were shining as if suddenly her mind had come to an almost glorious decision. Dick had sat down. He sat, leaning forward, staring at the ground. Major Staines had been talking to him, explaining something of all that had gone to make Armstrong come to this decision.

Staines was still standing; he turned to greet Esther. She thought how old he looked and how kindly and patient his brown eyes were.

“What is Helen doing?” she asked, and to herself her voice sounded quite excited. “Why has she gone to her tent with Mr. Armstrong?”

It was Dick who answered. He jumped to his feet to confront her. It was as though he swept Major Staines’ kindness aside.

“You know,” he said. “You’ve been frightened of this from the first. You know who killed Bacon. Are you going to let her go through with it for you?”

His blue eyes flamed down at her. It seemed he hated her. A sudden shiver shook Esther. The glory of her decision fell away from her, only the terror was left.

“Why do you say that?” she whispered. “Why are you so sure . . .?”

Major Staines tried to intervene. “We are none of us really sure, Miss Blain,” he said, “but Armstrong thinks he can make a strong case out against Mrs. Dawson. She may be able to convince him . . .” He broke off. “Anyway, of course, we’ll fight it for her,” he ended.

“But you . . . you know,” repeated Dick. He caught hold of Esther’s wrists; his hands were like fire. “You and I. You were there . . . you had the revolver in your hands. You’ve got to speak. It’s no use now—the lying and the terror. She won’t give you away . . . it’s you . . . you’ve got to speak.”

“Yes,” said Esther; her eyes fell before his. “I’ve got to speak,” she repeated.

“Well, then,” he asked imperiously. To Staines it seemed extraordinarily cruel that this young man could be so callous of the thing he did. The girl loved him, and he in his devotion to Helen had no thought for her at all. And because she loved him, love was such an immense, unaccountable force in some women, she was going to tell her stupendous lie and complicate Armstrong’s delicately worked out case very completely.

“I would not say anything unnecessary, Miss Blain,” he said. “The whole thing must be fought out in any case.”

He spoke though to ears which only heard one message. “He loves her as much as all that.” Esther’s mind was saying the words over and over again. It was like a shouting, roaring sound in her heart. She loosed her hands from Dick’s; a quiet dignity came to her voice.

“But what I have got to say must be said here and now,” she stated. “I killed Tom Bacon. Oh, I can tell Mr. Armstrong all about it. Make him believe. I . . .”

“Thank God!” said Dick. A revulsion of feeling came to him. He saw Esther again as the girl of the terrified grey eyes, the pale gold hair, whom he had wanted to protect and befriend. He moved beside her and put his arm round her. “We’ll stand by you,” he said, “all of us, Esther.”

She turned at the sound of her name and for a second, Major Staines was afraid that she was going to break down utterly and cling to the young man and cry out all the foolishness of her love, but it seemed that she had greater reserves of courage than he had credited her with.

“You’ll speak to Helen,” was what she said, “make her see . . . oh, but it will hurt her all this. She’ll not be content, I know, to let me . . .”

A little sound made them all look round. Helen and Armstrong were coming towards them. Helen was a little in front. And it was on her face that the drama of the moment was most plainly written. Never before had Staines known that Helen loved Dick; the truth leapt at him as he watched her coming towards them and realised that she was seeing that Esther stood within the circle of Dick’s arm.

There was anger in the wide eyes, anger and an agony of pain such as in very truth it hurt him to look at.

He moved quickly between her and the girl and put out his hand and laid it on Helen’s arm.

“Helen,” he said softly, and though he would not have laid claim to anything so melodramatic, yet undoubtedly subconsciously his love was pleading with her to stay true to what he had loved. “Helen, Esther has something she feels she must say to Armstrong.”

Helen did not look at him. She looked at none of them. She looked beyond them all and strange new lines had come into her face, making it seem hard and old.

“What about?” she asked. “Esther’s remarks are often rather hysterical.”

Esther stood away from Dick, or was it that he had drawn back staring in some sort of perplexity at Helen’s face.

“Mr. Armstrong,” the girl was speaking quickly, nervously. “It’s all a mistake about Helen. I mean she didn’t do what you think she did. She . . . she’s only trying to shield me. I . . .” She made a sort of desperate effort with her words. “I killed Tom Bacon that night.”

Armstrong said nothing. His mind perhaps registered an “Indeed!” but that was all. He stood, his eyes screwed up watching the girl and the woman through his glasses. Helen, too, said nothing, and still she did not look at Esther.

“You see,” the girl went on; her hands had ceased to fidget now; she stood very quietly as though no longer afraid of her words. “He had made a perfectly horrible suggestion to me that night, and I was alone in the room with him, and, oh, I don’t know, I think he frightened me, or else I was mad with horror and disgust. I saw the revolver lying there on the table, I picked it up and when he came near me, I . . . I fired.”

Now Armstrong did say “Indeed!” though he covered the word quickly with long fingers at his mouth as though half ashamed of it.

“And if the suggestion was so horrible,” he said, “why Miss Blain, did you go to his room?”

She stood, facing them all, with terror creeping back to her eyes.

“There was a letter,” she said. “I found it after I was undressed. There was something very important that I must know. Oh, I don’t know why I went. I did not like him; that evening he had frightened and horrified me.” A sudden courage came to her, she threw back her head. “I need not answer questions here, need I?” she asked. “Isn’t it enough to say I did it. Mr. Stanley knows I did. He and I, we lied before; he was helping me, hoping that I would not be found out. But it was not on the verandah that he found me. I was in Mr. Bacon’s room. I was still holding the revolver. He can tell you that what I have said is true.”

Very slowly, Armstrong turned the glare of his glasses on to young Stanley. He was feeling not a little annoyed, and rightly so, he thought. These two young idiots with their concerted cock-and-bull story trying to upset his theory. “You gave false evidence then, is that what I am to understand?” he asked Stanley coldly.

“You could call it that,” admitted Dick. He sounded arrogant, but he was really very bewildered, more than a little hurt. What was the matter with Helen? Why was she so angry? He sensed her anger as being directed against him. Was it because he was doing his utmost to save her? Was it because she realised that he had forced Esther to confess? But why, why? Loving her, knowing that he loved her, did she expect him to stand aside and do nothing, leaving her to be falsely accused? “In court, you may remember I was not asked directly where Miss Blain had been standing when she fainted. I admit I should have lied, had I so been asked. As a matter of fact, now that she has confessed, I can tell you . . .”

“Thank you,” Armstrong put in sarcastically.

“She was in Mr. Bacon’s room. While I was stooping over him outside, I heard something and a movement of the curtain in front of the door, and I jumped at it. Miss Blain was standing just inside. She held the revolver in her hands. I could see she was terrified, shaking all over.

“‘Is he dead?’ she asked me; and then fainted right on top of me.”

“And you, I suppose, dropped the revolver outside on the back verandah?” asked Armstrong.

“Yes, I did that,” said Dick and again he looked at Helen and tried the strength of his will to get her eyes to look at him.

Staines also was looking at Helen and when he spoke there was something like anger in his voice.

“I did not know all this, Armstrong,” he said. “I can only ask you to believe that. I thought that Miss Blain was in some way connected with the murder, but I was not let into the secret of her actual presence in the room just at that time.”

“I suppose you knew it, Mrs. Dawson?” Armstrong spoke to Helen. “There have been a good many lies told to me, it seems.”

And now for the first time Helen spoke, and, speaking, she looked straight at Esther.

“Yes,” she said softly and quietly. “I did know that Esther was there. I knew that Mr. Stanley had seen the revolver in her hands.”

Armstrong seemed to be studying his fingertips with severe preoccupation.

“As Miss Blain remarked just now,” he said presently, “this is really not the place for questions to be either asked or answered. I admit to having been rattled out of discretion for the moment. Mrs. Dawson,” he just glinted his glasses at her—“I am afraid I must still ask you to consider yourself under arrest. A confession (he almost smiled in Esther’s direction), even such a sweeping one as yours, Miss Blain, cannot be taken as altogether disproving my other evidence. Meanwhile the situation is painful and undeniably awkward for all of us. My suggestion is that we march back the fourteen miles this evening and go straight on to Ruanda. I have made all arrangements there for Mrs. Dawson’s accommodation. If the march is not too much for the ladies”—he looked round him—“there will be a moon to-night, which should make going easy.”

“Yes, there will be full moon to-night,” said Helen, “I am quite ready to go.”

“You agree, eh, Staines?” asked Armstrong. “Dinner will be ready for us where we left the car. I have arranged that with Fazil Khan.”

“It seems the best thing to do,” admitted Staines. “If Mr. Stanley likes,” suggested Armstrong, and there was more than a shade of animosity in his voice, “he can remain behind here and pack up the safari and bring it in to-morrow. He will be called on to account for his previous evidence when the case comes off, not before.”

“The elephants,” said Helen softly. For the first time in all this dreadful interview, her eyes looked at Dick again. “Why not stay Dick and have another shot?”

“Do you think I could?” said Dick. “Oh, damn . . .” He broke off and turned away. “I’d rather come in with you, sir, if I may.”

He spoke to Staines, and Staines nodded. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t, the boys can manage here.”

Chapter Seventeen

The Central Figure

It was perplexingly inconvenient—the whole of Ruanda realised that, having to deal with a white prisoner; and when this was a white woman it complicated matters still further.

Armstrong had made the best arrangements he could. There was a small three-roomed empty house in the station, it was placed at his disposal. It was very scantily furnished, the allowance for a three-roomed house being one bed, two tables and six chairs; it was entirely devoid of curtains or floor coverings. The cold cement floors were, Helen said, singularly suitable for a prison house. A certain hard gaiety had come to Helen; she refused to take her position seriously.

There, anyway, they were housed and provided with camp beds, Helen occupying the bedroom, while a gentle diffident little lady from the Mission Hospital slept in the adjoining bathroom, and kept her company through the long, monotonously still hours of the day and night. Armstrong took up his residence in what should have been the drawing-room of the house and the three of them met for meals in the centre room.

Esther was allowed to sleep that first night with Helen, other arrangements would have to be made for her afterwards. Staines had promised to look after her if she had to go to the hotel.

Looking out of their bedroom window which fronted on a long clear vista of banana covered foot-hills, reaching to the mountains, Helen and Esther could see the small brown tent occupied by the guard of native eskaries, two of whom were on sentry go day and night. But this vigilance, this watching silence, was as nothing to the guarded blankness of their own speech, the one to the other. One might have thought them complete strangers.

Confined in the small squareness of their room they moved and talked and Helen sometimes laughed without their eyes ever meeting, or their hands touching.

Nurse Thomson found them hard to understand. She was herself a bright, companionable little person, whose thoughts were apt to gush forth in unconsidered speech. She had no need to put a guard at the door of her mouth because all her thoughts were prattling and innocent and singularly innocuous. Babies and their methods of coming into the world, these were Nurse Thomson’s staple subjects for conversation. She thought it too terrible for words that either Mrs. Dawson, whom she considered very beautiful and very brave, or Miss Blain, who appeared so gentle and charming, should be credited with the foul sin of murder.

When first detailed for the task of wardress, the arrival of babies being for the time at a low ebb at the hospital, she had expressed herself as utterly horrified at the prospect, but a couple of hours with her charges brought her to her usual attitude of pity mingled with admiration. She admired almost whole heartedly everyone she met; looked at from the stance of her own humble estimation, they all appeared so wonderful and yet in some odd way, pitiful.

There was to Miss Thomson something pathetic about grown up humanity, perhaps instinctively she never got away from regarding them as babies.

She had heard very little of their story. Miss Thomson was not a person to whom one recounted unpleasant facts. In the Mission Hospital, which crowned the hill overlooking the station, she was, generally speaking, far too busy to listen to tittle-tattle, and even world-shaking events scarcely disturbed the even tenor of work and religion and doing kindly things for very humble people.

She had heard, of course, but even then only vaguely, of a murdered man at the hotel. Poor dead man, who had once been somebody’s baby. It is more than probable that in her prayers that morning Miss Thomson had, half hesitatingly, mentioned him. For in her religion, as in all her life, Miss Thomson was humble. She never really liked to bother God with odd petitions. And then the incident had slipped out of sight; and of the inquest and the subsequent hunt for the man Vernon, and of the conjectures and whispered suppositions that floated about, she had heard nothing. So that the news that she was to be enrolled as wardress of the lady who had been arrested on a charge of murdering the man had come upon Miss Thomson with almost a thunderclap of horror.

“But why me?” she had asked, standing back by the long ward of her beloved Hospital, her pale blue eyes blinking a little with the intensity of her emotion, “I . . . I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Mr. Armstrong and the Mission doctor between them had explained to her the situation was unprecedented and awkward. One could not have a white woman under the constant surveillance of black policemen; it was not a job which Mr. Armstrong, or any of the other officials could undertake with any semblance of comfort.

“If it was a man we were arresting,” Mr. Armstrong had said, “of course there would be no need to bother you, Miss Thomson, but a woman, well, damn it all, it’s very awkward.”

Miss Thomson’s nerves had twitched a little at the violence of his language, at the uncomfortable picture that his words called up.

“It is so . . . so dreadful,” she stammered. “A . . . a . . . murderess. I’ve never met . . .”

The Mission doctor, a kindly, elderly man to whom long years of service had brought an immense patience with the frailties of human kind, smiled at her.

“Forget the murderess,” he said softly. “Think of her as just a woman.”

“Oh, of course,” admitted Miss Thomson, her fingers twisting the edge of her apron into a thin line. “Of course, a woman.”

So she had come, dreading it, more than half afraid, nervous to the point of twittering inanities when the party arrived.

“Had they had a good drive? Wasn’t the moon wonderful? Would Mrs. Dawson like her to make her some tea or anything before they went to bed?”

Armstrong drew her aside and explained that the two women would have to be together for that night.

“The girl has made some kind of erratic confession,” he said, shrugging weary shoulders. He was really very tired and his long legs and back ached intolerably. “We’ll have to put them in together, Miss Thomson. Just keep an eye on them and see there is not too much private chatting.”

She was to be a spy then! All Miss Thomson’s gentle nature revolted against the thought. Now more than ever she hated her task. However, a well trained nurse learns early in life to do the things she hates and do them thoroughly. Miss Thomson for that first night slept not at all. Through her half-opened door she watched her charges.

It seemed to her that the younger one slept, but Mrs. Dawson who had the bed nearest the window sat up for the greater part of what was left of the night, and, huddled together, crouching forward, she stared out of the window. What was she watching? Of what was she thinking? Outside, the moon shone with an almost intolerable brilliancy. Miss Thomson wondered if that was what Mrs. Dawson looked at. Or was she watching the eskari on duty pacing solemnly up and down, up and down. Her crouching huddled figure was like some animal staring through its bars, Miss Thomson thought, and drew her thoughts back quickly, ashamed of their irreverence. It was a soul, a soul in prison that she watched.

Meanwhile the slow sorting out of evidence, the building up of Armstrong’s case went on. With this new complication on hand, he had to ask for a postponement of the magistrate’s enquiry; he had to re-sort his facts. It was put off for a week and Staines wired for Danton.

“He may as well watch the case from the start,” he explained to Dick Stanley.

Dick Stanley’s heart and mind and soul, if we can in reality include the soul in this kind of turmoil, were at this time struggling through a perfect quagmire of doubt and dismay and bewilderment. From the moment when Helen had come upon them with Armstrong and seen Esther in his arms a certain most horrible blankness seemed to have descended between them. Never once did their eyes meet with any understanding. His protestations, his sense of loyalty, his wild passionate disbelief of the thing that people seemed to believe, wasted themselves against this strong impassivity of her eyes. Speech and touch of hand was denied them, explanations seemed out of the question. He could not express himself in a letter. The fact between them had got beyond reach of written words, and, anyway, he had never been any good at letters. His very youth defeated him here, for youth stumbles to expression through acts and has no language with which to clothe its inexperience. He felt most utterly shut away from her, and all his love, hot, urgent and on fire to serve, was driven back and wrecked itself, turning and twisting in his heart, shattering his nerves, making him see things out of all proportion to their truth.

What had he done that she should so suddenly ignore him, turn from him? The memory of her face still touched against his; shutting his eyes he could see the warm flame in hers.

“It is the truest thing in my life—my love for you.” She had said that so short a time ago. And now? Was love finished, killed by fear? It had never come to anything. It had been only a dream and out of the dream her words mocked him. “Other nights! Other moons! Leave me my tears to-night, Dick.”

It was like some queer elusive thing that had only been in his imagination, this love of hers.

Had she, or had she not, murdered Bacon? That question dropped to insignificance beside this other one that burnt his heart.

Nevertheless, he fought with what energy he could bring to bear on it to clear her from Armstrong’s accusation. He went over bit by bit all that he had done, or seen, or thought on that night. It lived in his mind with surprising vividness. The ungainly, sprawling body on the floor, the quick instinctive thought of murder. The sound in the room, his hurried movement and then the girl’s face, her terrified eyes, the revolver clenched in those small desperate hands.

“I was sorry for her,” he admitted to Armstrong. Armstrong was taking his recital of events with remarkable patience, considering the shocking disregard of law and order that had been displayed therein. “I think anyone would have felt sorry for her. Of course, I realised at once, that she had probably shot the man, but I wanted somehow to help her. All that I said and did afterwards, I did to help her. The rest of my evidence was true. I carried her into Mrs. Dawson’s room and laid her on the bed. Mrs. Dawson was up, but she was not dressed. She had, I think, a dressing gown on. She was surprised, of course, to see me coming in like that, but there was nothing else at all abnormal about her. She even laughed at something I said. I am convinced that she did not know then what had happened next door. And then when I had left the girl there, she came out of her faint just before I left; she seemed terrified seeing me there; I expect she guessed I knew and thought I was going to give her away; I went on to the back verandah and took the revolver out of my pocket and wiped it. I thought her fingermarks might be on it, you see, and threw it away into the gutter outside.”

“Yes, I quite realised that someone had wiped the revolver,” snorted Armstrong.

He had not, it seemed, any more questions to ask Stanley. He dismissed him rather contemptuously from the case. He concentrated on Helen, on the evidence he had already brought to light against Helen. She defied him, he realised that. There was no fear or hurry in her attitude. She faced him, head thrown back. She did not even hide behind the girl’s confession, her attitude towards that was a little contemptuous.

“Do, by all means, prove what you can,” she seemed to say to Armstrong. “I really do not mind one way or the other.”

And yet she did mind. She did not come out into the open, she did not face him with truth.

“I think you know that the girl is lying in an endeavour to shield you,” he said once. “I wonder if you let her really go through with it.”

He was exasperated when he said that. He knew quite well it was a breach of etiquette. The accused must be considered innocent until he is proved guilty.

Danton, summoned by Staines’ wire, arrived on the scene of action. He was a small active man, with very keen eyes, a sharp cut mouth and restless hands that had always to move in concert with his speech. He used them expressively. Watching him talk, seeing his vivid brown eyes, his rather large nose brooding over the delicacy of his mouth, one realised, despite his singularly un-Jewish name that Danton must belong in some way or other to that outstanding race. He was reputed to make a lot of money out of his practice; he was much sought after by the Indians in the Protectorate; they would pay anything he asked to engage him in their defence.

He gathered all the threads of the story from Major Staines before he saw Helen at all. Sitting out on the verandah of the hotel Staines put everything in front of him, even down to his own share in it. And Danton interviewed Stanley and Esther and came back again to Stanley before ever he went to see Helen. The threads of the story, he realised, were hopelessly mixed up, entangled. It was as though he spotted everywhere the smudging, veiling process of love trying to shield love, love acting stupidly, blindly on behalf of love. You have got to understand your clients inside and out before you can fight for them. Take the central figure then, the woman he had been called in to defend. He had not even seen her yet, but his mind drew a vivid picture of her. Staines loved her, or had loved her, was still held by her memory. The lad Stanley loved her, the girl, Miss Esther Blain . . . Here, Danton’s thoughts, straying from the central figure, strayed for a little on the picture of Esther as his mind had drawn it. A queer, reserved, silent girl with her amazing confession held out in front of her like a shield behind which she concealed her real purpose. “A great affection for Mrs. Dawson—a sense of overpowering gratitude.” That was how Staines explained Esther’s confession; he did not believe in it himself; he believed, even though his memory was still so faithful, that Mrs. Dawson had committed the murder. He was relying on Danton’s brain getting her off through some legal quibble, but he believed that she had done it. But—“a great affection for some older woman, a sense of gratitude”—were these sufficiently strong motives to drive the girl, to hold her now in the queer obstinate silence to which she clung?

Danton was not quite satisfied with Major Staines’ explanation; he sought for something else and found it, he decided, in the girl’s love for the young man Stanley. Odd kettle of fish indeed, with love fairly ‘slopping,’ that was a favourite word of Danton’s, over everything.

The dead man and the two women, the thing that had happened that night lay between them anyway.

“The police have got a strong case, I expect,” Danton told Staines. “Armstrong doesn’t move as a rule until pretty sure of his facts.”

He saw Helen the next morning, interviewing her in the centre room of the small house where she was lodged, with Miss Thomson hovering in the background.

He waved his hands a great deal while he was talking to Helen; his brown eyes glinted all over her. She got the impression of shallow vivacity and took rather a dislike to him. And Danton, well Danton saw a woman of about forty years old, whose beauty was still a weapon, whose eyes held tragedy despite their laughter, and whose mouth was like a live bow of scarlet in the pallor of her face. Painted, of course it was painted, and her eye lashes were delicately touched up with some darkening colour that could add mystery to her eyes, but for all that she was very beautiful, and he could see now how it was almost inevitable that all the threads of this deplorable tangle should lead back at last into her hands.

She sat so still that his eyes were drawn again and again from the study of her face to a study of those quiet hands. Very often people give away secrets, despair, nervousness, hope, by the play of their fingers when all the rest of them has been tutored to a mask-like repose.

“The whole story over again,” she said in answer to questions. “I’m so tired of it. I’ve told everybody who has asked me all I know.”

He made her go through with it again though. All the events of that evening, her interview with Bacon, how and when she had left him, her sleep and sudden waking. Young Stanley bringing Esther into her room, the girl’s fright and horror, her refusal to tell anything.

“In your opinion, did she do it?” Danton asked and, for a moment, he veiled his inquisitive eyes, giving her time to answer.

“How can I know?” said Helen. Her voice seemed more bored than anything else. “If I had been asked beforehand, ‘Is Esther capable of doing a thing like that,’ I should have answered, ‘Of course not,’ and probably even the idea of it would have made me laugh. But now—how can I know?”

He glanced up at her slyly. “And can you think of any motive,” he asked, “other than her affection for you, which is understood, that would make her take a guilt like this upon her own head?”

“You mean supposing she had not done it and lied in order to save me,” asked Helen. “No, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything to explain that. The affection between us is not so very deep.”

She sat looking at her hands. “The young man, Mr. Dick Stanley,” Danton suggested slowly; “do you feel that he complicates things at all?”

Her hands clenched, he was quick to notice that, the knuckles stood out white. But it was only for a second; there was no alteration in her voice.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I am afraid I am stupid to-day. I can’t understand suggestions or innuendoes. Mr. Stanley is merely a chance acquaintance. How could he complicate things?”

“The two young people might have fallen in love with each other,” said Danton. “It does happen. It is just possible that she is endeavouring to shield him.”

But he did not really believe that, and her silence gave him no indication as to what she thought about it. He was, quite honestly, puzzled over her attitude. It was as though she did not care what happened. Her hands had let go of life and love and interest. But, had they? He remembered that sharp tightening of her knuckles and shrugged his shoulders. She was difficult to understand, but in the end he would understand her, that was his business in life.

Chapter Eighteen

Guilty

The magistrates’ enquiry was held at the Boma, a square white building, its Court Room not over-big and on this occasion overcrowded. All the planters in the district had flocked in to hear Stanley give his evidence, to see the woman who, so gossip had it, had engulfed the young Stanley in an amorous adventure.

The thing had about it an element of humour, to those at least who can get humour out of other people’s tragedies, and it was, at its least, interesting.

Life on a shamba, which, year in, year out, is spent in combating the weather, and the failure or success of crops, does not, as it were, hum with excitement.

The square in front of the Boma, a neat, official looking place with its well-brushed roads, its cut and rolled lawns, was stacked with motor cars of all descriptions. The crowd in the Court Room overflowed on to the verandah and stood about in groups, peering in at the various windows, commenting, chatting to each other in whispers. There were not any women present with the exception of the two already notorious women of the case itself. White women in Uganda do not go out much in the hot hours of the day, and in any case, there is a kind of odd etiquette which debars them from taking part in official events of such a nature.

It is almost as though, in these outposts of the Empire, women have returned to the sheltered neutral existence which was theirs before the days of the War and the vote. Troublesome things are, as much as possible, kept from them. They have their houses to see to, their babies to look after; they have their tea parties and their gossip, their scandals and their romances; but they are not asked to serve on juries or attend legislative councils or medical boards. So that none of the white women in Ruanda attended the Court House to see Mrs. Helen Dawson, or hear what sort of story she could make out in her defence, though doubtless they were all of them waiting on tiptoe with interest for the return of their respective lords and masters with the account of how the case had gone.

There were all types of men present, however. The kindly Mission doctor was there to give his evidence and he had brought one or two colleagues with him; there was Mason from the Hotel and several hotel tourist guests, but the vast majority of the crowd were planters. They were weirdly attired for the most part in khaki shorts and shirts that had for many years defied all types of weather, protected from the sun at every point, some of them with flaming red spine pads, all of them with enormous big slouching double terais. They swung yellow bags of springbok tobacco in their hands and smoked or sucked at pipes held the wrong way up in their mouths—another sign that they were used unendingly to wage war against the weather.

Danton had a seat in court just behind the chair in which Helen sat throughout all the proceedings. He did not take any part in what went on, but he kept his ears wide open and his eyes darted from person to person. He was waiting to spot the weak places in Armstrong’s case. He had been up against Armstrong once or twice before, and he knew it was no easy task to find chinks in the armour.

Staines and Stanley sat on either side of Esther Blain, in the row behind Danton. Helen sat by herself, a little in advance of the rest of them. To-day she had chosen to dress herself in a rather vivid coloured silk frock, scarlet lines on a white background. Her double terai hat was large, the brim floppy. It almost concealed her face. When she wanted to look at anyone, and once or twice she lifted her head to glance at Armstrong while he was detailing the case, she had to tilt her head right back and then one caught for a moment a glimpse of her dark watching eyes, her mouth with its faint smile. She never looked round towards where the others were sitting. She seemed content to stay alone through this ordeal of Armstrong’s calm, detailed statement of her guilt.

Was she guilty? Danton found himself turning the matter over and over in his mind. He was not much bothered by what other people thought or believed; it was his own convictions that interested him. Not that guilt, or non-guilt, would in reality influence his conduct. He was paid to defend her and all his keen brain would be brought to serve that end. Only it was rather satisfactory if, before starting the fight, one could convince one’s self.

The Magistrate, in this case it was the District Commissioner, kindly, fussy little Mr. Samson, sat in a large chair of state on the other side of the table facing Mrs. Dawson. The chair was a very ornamental affair; on occasions of state it was used as a throne by the native king, or the Governor, if he happened to be present. It had a long carved back, heavily ornamented with gold. Against this background Mr. Samson’s rather bald, very round, pink head looked almost absurd. He wore horn rimmed glasses and fussed over their adjustment on his nose a great deal. Obviously he was nervous, the woman’s figure opposite him, her face, when she tilted back her head to look at Armstrong, filled him with uneasy admiration. He would describe her afterwards in terse enough language to Mrs. Samson, who was a domesticated lady, very busily engaged in rearing three little Samsons, but for the moment the description evaded him. He was only aware of the fact that her present predicament embarrassed him. He wished he could wash his hands of the whole case.

Armstrong seemed quite unembarrassed. He stated his facts clearly and glibly, and if once or twice he took his glasses off and rubbed them, that was merely due to the heat of the room. It was almost unbearably hot; the atmosphere tense as though a thunderstorm or earthquake threatened.

Danton took several notes while Armstrong talked. He made a note as to Bacon’s diary and decided that he must be allowed to see it. He nodded his head as though keenly intrigued by Armstrong’s point of the letter which had summoned Esther Blain to Bacon’s room. He noticed that Armstrong had got that side of the evidence very carefully dovetailed, supported by native witnesses. The boy who had taken the note from Helen to Esther, who could swear that he had stood behind his mistress while she wrote it, said how his mistress had explained to him to put it on the Missy Sahib’s table so that she could not help seeing it when she went to undress.

Undoubtedly that was a point for Armstrong, for he could trip the girl up in her story there. And thinking this, Danton had glanced at Helen and caught her with her head tilted back, staring at Armstrong.

Then there was the evidence of the night watchman, who said that it was as dawn broke that he had seen the white woman come out of the murdered man’s room and go to her own, whereas Helen in all the times she had told the story had stuck to the fact that her interview with Bacon had ended at 3.30 a.m. and that she had left him then.

And it had been just as dawn broke that the boy Dick Stanley had stumbled over the body on the verandah, and, finding it dead, had pushed his way into the bedroom and discovered the girl Esther, half fainting, with the revolver in her hands.

And then, quietly and sarcastically, Armstrong came down to Esther Blain’s confession, refuting it at every turn, showing up the uselessness of this quixotic effort to shoulder guilt.

“Her presence in the room must be admitted,” he said. “She was there five minutes after the dying man had stumbled out, she had the revolver in her hand. But this is her story; she came to the room at the man’s invitation. His note reached her as she was undressing for bed. She retired to bed, her previous evidence states, at 12.30; the murder was committed at 4 a.m.

“Then again her statement is that Mr. Bacon made, during her presence in his room, some offensive suggestion to her, which so maddened her with anger or fear, that she snatched up the revolver which, according to her, was lying on the left of the dressing table, the side furthest from the window, and fired at him as he approached towards her.

“It is obvious from my examination of the room that the revolver never lay on the left side of the dressing table, and there is every evidence that it did lie on the right side, and the murdered man was not shot by someone standing in front of him, but by some person standing just behind him as he stooped to open the door and, presumably, go out. I suggest that the young lady’s confession must be set aside as an hysterical outburst; that it has no bearing on the case though, presumably, did she care to tell the truth, she could inform the Court of what happened in that room between the hours of 3.45 and 4 a.m.”

He sat down and everyone in the Court, except that principal very still figure of the woman, stirred and fidgeted and moved, waiting for the first witness to be called.

Mr. Samson fidgeted more than anyone else; he rustled his papers about and settled and re-settled his glasses. Danton leant across to say something to Staines, and with a little shivering sigh, Esther turned and looked at Dick Stanley.

He was not, of course, looking at her; he was staring morosely at the small space of floor in front of his feet. His face during the last few days had whitened under its tan; there were very dark shadows under his eyes. She could guess what he was thinking. She had failed so utterly in the thing he had expected her to do.

The Court adjourned half-way through the hot day for lunch. Several of the witnesses had been heard by then. Helen had been given her chance of asking them questions, of breaking down their testimony if she could.

“Do you wish to ask any questions? “Mr. Samson had repeated that formula every time, and on each occasion, smiling with a certain secretiveness, she had shaken her head.

At the end of Dick’s evidence she had looked up at him and smiled this time quite openly. It had caused a little flutter in the Court, it had brought the blood rushing to Dick’s face.

“No, I have nothing to ask,” she had answered Samson, and almost immediately veiling her eyes and smile again. “Nothing to say,” she had added.

They had adjourned for lunch almost immediately after Dick’s evidence. Armstrong had driven Helen back to the little house and the quiet, unobtrusive presence of Miss Thomson.

“My prison house,” said Helen as he gave her his hand to help her out of the car, “and you my gaoler. Do I make a satisfactory rabbit, Mr. Armstrong?”

He did not understand her allusion and said so, bluntly enough.

“I have got to put things as I see them,” he added. “Danton can be relied on, Mrs. Dawson, to see whatever other side there is.”

“Oh, of course,” she admitted. “Please don’t think that I cherish a grievance against you. I don’t. I think you are amazingly clever.”

Danton got permission to see her for a few minutes before the Court re-opened.

“You are following the only possible line, Mrs. Dawson,” he told her, “silence and an unmoved exterior. There is no use trying to defeat Armstrong’s evidence in this Court.”

“No,” she admitted, “he seems very certain, doesn’t he?”

She spoke idly as though the thing hardly interested her.

“I am beginning to work out my line of defence though,” said Danton. “We must not lose heart even though Samson feels that he is justified in committing you to the High Court. You must reserve your defence, and I will submit a list of witnesses for you to call.”

“Then it begins all over again, doesn’t it?” asked Helen. “What a funny man-invented thing law is.”

Staines and Dick and Esther lunched together up at the hotel. They hardly spoke at all. There seemed nothing for them to say to each other. After lunch Staines, rather abruptly, left the other two.

“I’d like to see Helen if it’s possible for a minute or so before she goes back,” he said. “Will you bring Esther down, Stanley?”

He did not wait for an answer and the silence seemed to grow even more oppressive after he left. The dining-room emptied of the crowd which had invaded it; outside, the storm which had been gathering its forces together all morning broke with a sudden roll of thunder, a splutter of hail stones on the dry ground. The thunder, the rain, the quick, vivid flashes of lightning out of a darkened sky, played disastrously on Esther’s already overstrained nerves. She felt that in another second she must burst into tears or throw herself on her knees at Dick’s feet and hide her face against his coat and force unwilling kindnesses from him because of her despair. And yet she knew quite well that any such action would, to Dick, be unforgivable.

His white face, his shadowed eyes, the way he lit and relit his pipe; showed how his nerves were as strained as hers, his heart fully as miserable. The desire to comfort ousted all other feelings, she slipped out her hand and laid it on his.

“Danton is awfully clever,” she whispered. “Perhaps . . .” He turned to look at her. His eyes were so very blue, the centres of them flecked with odd spots of brown. They seemed to look right down and into her heart. She shivered again and sat still under his gaze.

“If I could understand,” said Dick. He made a sort of sweeping movement with his hands. “Oh, God, where’s the truth in all this?” he asked.

“Does it hurt you so fearfully?” she said, and took her hand away from his and looked away from him and sat very straight and stiff. “Dick, I’ve done my best. I’ve tried to make them believe that I . . .” She broke off, a certain quick eagerness came to her, she leant across the table to him. They were alone now except for a couple of barefooted boy’s clearing away the remains of the lunch. “But I did not do it, Dick,” her voice hurried and stammered. “That wasn’t true. I know you think I did . . . it has hurt knowing that you thought I did . . .”

“But then . . .” he interrupted, “why did you lie to Armstrong—to me—to everyone? How were you there, where I found you with the revolver in your hand?”

“I would do more than that for Helen,” she spoke slowly, answering his first question, but her eyes were on his face. “I mean just dying—that would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

He stirred restlessly. “You talk such absolute rubbish,” he said. “Can’t you see that if I’ve got to believe that you didn’t do it. . . then . . . Oh, good Lord, do let us have the truth between you and me, at any rate.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” she nodded. “Not now, there isn’t time, but this evening, after . . . Oh, Dick.” Her voice was a little cry. “What will they do with her, do you think?”

“You love her as I love her, don’t you?” he asked. “These last few days have been hell to me. Have you noticed how she shuts us outside. She won’t speak to me, or look at me. I feel I’ve failed her in some way. It’s as though she hated me.”

“Not that,” said Esther quickly. “Oh, I know it isn’t that. But Helen has always fought things out alone. I expect she feels . . .”

She stood up quickly; how was she to tell Dick that Helen probably felt for the moment as old as she really was, and that age was the sudden barrier between them. “We ought to be getting back oughtn’t we?” she said. “Everyone else seems to have gone.”

Dick stood up, too, and almost instinctively his hand sought for and held hers. They wanted to console each other—there was that natural instinct between them.

“You’ve been an awful brick, Esther,” he said softly. “And in a way, I envy you. You’ve been able to show your love . . .”

She caught her breath on something like a sob. “Oh, even that isn’t all true,” she said hurriedly. “Don’t let’s stay and talk about it now, Dick.”

All the afternoon rain thundered and deluged against the tin roof of the Boma, making it difficult for any of the evidence to be properly heard, rousing people to a queer sense of the impotence of all this paraphernalia of justice. A really tropical thunderstorm acts strangely on people’s nerves. The mass hysteria of the crowd showed itself in constant movement, in fits of coughing, in laughter which guffawed out at the wrong places. One of the native interpreters fainted and had to be carried out; Mr. Samson obviously felt the heat very trying and showed signs of losing his temper. And then as effectively as it had come, the storm cleared off, sudden sunshine flickered out again. Now the Court-room became amazingly still and silent; everyone seemed to be listening, craning a little forward, staring at the woman, sitting by herself in the centre of them all. Helen had taken her hat off, it lay on her lap, concealing her hands, her head was high. She was facing Mr. Samson’s magisterial pomp with unafraid eyes, and Mr. Samson was slowly and carefully reading the charge against her:— “I, Herbert John Samson, First Class Magistrate of the District of Ruanda, charge you Helen Adaire Dawson . . .”

Such silly stifled language, thought Helen. How queer men were. Man’s justice, comic even in its trappings. What did it matter to anyone in the world, let alone in this Court, that Tom Bacon was dead.

Why should they pretend to be so interested in who had killed him. Justice—that was where they dragged that word in again.

The sunshine, glinting through one of the windows a little behind Mr. Samson’s chair, made a path of gold along the dusty floor of the Court. Thousands upon thousands of motes of dust danced in its light. Motes of dust! As a child she had been fond of trying to catch them. That was a long time ago, far further off for instance than her life with Tom Bacon that had ended in just this.

Mr. Samson’s voice a little dry, a little stuttering after its long pompous recital, was definitely addressing her now, forcing her mind back to the present.

“Have you anything to say in answer to the charge?”

What did one say? How did one answer that sort of charge?

“Not guilty, my lord.”

Silly words, she remembered hearing or reading somewhere. But even in a farce like this, she could not hear herself addressing Mr. Samson as “My lord.”

The silence in the Court seemed waiting for her to speak, her hands under her hat moved a little, touching against each other.

Dick was in the Court, too. She had a sudden, vivid memory of Dick, his blue eyes watching her. Odd that those blue eyes of his had always fluttered her heart, had seemed to search through and through her looking for her soul. And, of course, she had not got a soul. That was where the tragedy of her love came in. Again the waiting silence summoned her. She stirred, sighing a little.

“No, I have nothing to say.” Her voice sounded, even to her, delicate, calm and absurd. “I reserve my defence. I will submit a list of witnesses I wish called.”

Chapter Nineteen

Youth Calls to Youth

“Youth calls to Youth . . .” Quite without his meaning it Dick’s thoughts had turned towards Esther during that long afternoon of storm and rain in the Court.

She sat beside him and when he glanced sideways at her he could see the white shadow of her face under her hat, the very long lashes that concealed those grey blue eyes of hers. He thought of her confession whenever he looked at her; he was secretly rather amazed at her courage. He had never credited her with being brave; from the first she had seemed nervous, a timid, slight creature whom he had had some idea of protecting. And, thinking of her like that, he remembered how he had been stirred to tenderness by the feel of her pale gold head against his arm that time he had carried her into Helen’s room.

Helen! The name caught him back into his bewildered sense of frustration.

Why had Helen pretended to love him and then drawn away? Was it his youth she laughed at? And for the first time, perhaps, in his love for Helen he thought of her age. Twenty years! Why twenty years was almost a lifetime. He looked across the Court at her, thinking of those twenty years. She concealed, he felt suddenly, so much behind her silences, her light laughter. He had said that other things did not matter because he loved her, but now he was not even sure of love. It evaded him, tantalised him and with it all . . . Great God, how miserable he was.

Misery engulfed him. He sat with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his eyes on the floor.

“I, Herbert John Samson, First Class Magistrate of the District of Ruanda, charge you Helen Adaire Dawson . . .”

The words beat against his misery. He dared not lift his eyes to look at Helen. Her own voice, clear, delicate, faintly amused as he had so often heard it brought memory sweeping down on him. That evening on the verandah of his house; the fragrance of dead rose leaves; Helen smiling at him from the door of her room.

He did not look up at her, even as she passed out of the Court in front of them all. He looked at no one.

“What are you doing, Stanley?” Staines’ voice speaking with extraordinary calm. “Can I give you a lift back to the hotel?”

“No, thanks,” he answered curtly, “I’ll push on back to my own place, I think. It’s finished here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Staines answered, “I expect they’ll move her down to Kampala as soon as possible.”

“Oh, don’t go,” said Esther. She seemed to speak on impulse. “Helen will want to see you. And I . . . have you forgotten?”

She was going to tell him what she knew. He had forgotten as a matter of fact.

“Oh, all right,” he said ungraciously enough. They turned towards the car. “I’ll come back with you then. But the hotel is pretty hateful, isn’t it? All this crowd will be there, staring, chattering. Why not come back to my place, you two, just for to-night.”

Staines looked at Esther. “Would you like to?” he asked. “The hotel will be full to-night.”

“Yes, I think I would,” Esther admitted. She hesitated. “It isn’t—it isn’t like deserting Helen, is it?”

Major Staines smiled. “Hardly,” he answered. “I don’t think any of us would be allowed to see her to-night, and we can come in first thing to-morrow.”

Dick turned away, his shoulders twitched in their instinctive shrug.

“Come on then,” he said, “for God’s sake, let’s clear out of this.”

The lad was feeling raw, Major Staines realised. Did he believe Helen guilty because of all that had come out, and was young love dying under the strain?

“Not dying,” thought Staines with an odd twist to his lips, “only turning and groping to find a way out.”

And, instinctively, he glanced at Esther. The girl had been in love from the start—if Helen had not intervened. . . .

Ah well, very nearly always, in the end, Nature can be relied on to shake the balance back to all square.

They packed into the car anyway, a silent trio and drove up to the hotel to collect their suit cases.

“I’ll ask Danton out to dinner to-night, if I may,” Staines said to Dick. “He and I can talk things over while you young people console each other. I don’t think we need be too despondent,” he added, “there’s nothing definite about this committing to the High Court and Danton has still got his case to put forward.”

He dived into the hotel to find Danton, and Esther who had been sitting in the front seat beside him turned to Dick.

“To-night after dinner,” she said, “we’ll slip away and leave them talking. There’s so much I want to say to you.”

“All right.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “There’s my office. They’ll sit out on the front verandah, I expect.”

Danton was very loquacious and cheerful through dinner. He had apparently come to some very reassuring decision of his own.

“We’ll get her off,” he announced, rubbing his thin eloquent hands, “I haven’t a doubt. A most wonderful woman,” he added, nodding at Esther, as though he knew she would be glad to hear this praise; “her courage has amazed me once or twice, and it takes a lot to amaze me. Did you notice her voice . . . the fine ring of it as she answered Mr. Samson. Oh certainly a wonderful woman, worth fighting for!”

“Helen has never lacked courage,” Major Staines admitted, “nor a sense of humour. They carry one far.”

Esther and Dick did not join in the discussion at all. They sat opposite each other and every now and then, looking up, their eyes would meet across the candle light. Grey eyes looking at blue. And once his eyes brought the colour to her face, but more often they made her want to cry, so hurt they seemed, and angry and perplexed.

They escaped, the two of them together, very soon after dinner. It was not difficult. Danton and Staines had settled down to a technical discussion of legal subjects and hardly seemed to notice them, though they might have been a little surprised had they heard Danton’s immediate remark on their departure.

“Young love,” said Danton and sighed. “It makes one remember, eh what, Staines?”

Yes, it made one remember. Helen, for instance. That long ago Helen that one had loved and in some way failed. Major Staines sat silent for a little watching the smoke of his cigarette. “Why didn’t your love save me from that. . . Tony?”

Helen herself had asked him that question. He voiced it differently after a moment or two, to Danton.

“You think that we shall be able to save Mrs. Dawson from this thing that she has done?” he asked.

“Well, to begin with, do I admit that she has done it?” asked Danton. He waved his hands. “You word your question wrong, my friend. If you ask me: ‘Shall I get her off against the accusation the Crown proposes to bring against her,’ that is different. To that I can answer ‘Yes.’”

“And on what grounds,” asked Staines, slowly, “do we get her off? Is that a question I am allowed to ask?”

“You are her friend. I could, if I liked, point out to you the flaws, here, there, back again to here, which I have detected in Armstrong’s case. But I do not think it wise to put them into words yet. Wait, Staines, have patience. Let us talk of other things. Tell me what you can of the man Vernon. He is dead, eh, so Armstrong cannot trip him up on his evidence. To me, Vernon’s presence in that room on that night is very important. I would find out what I can about him.”

In Dick’s office there was very little light. He did not, as a rule, work there at night. He showed Esther in with a surly ungraciousness and balanced the hurricane lamp they had brought with them on a hastily cleared space on the table. It was an untidy office, littered with odds and ends, but to Esther it spoke most poignantly of Dick’s presence. She sat on the edge of the chair he had pushed forward for her and Dick balanced himself on the table. He sat between her and the lamp so that her face was in darkness as she talked. She was glad of that, because she had made up her mind to tell him something and she did not want to see his eyes watching her, when she told it him.

“I think it was about a week before we came up here,” she started, speaking slowly, “that I first began to hate Mr. Bacon. You see before that he had always been very good to me; he had heaps of money and he could buy one a good time and I—well, I thought Helen liked him. I even imagined that one day they would get engaged and then well, then married.”

She saw him make a little movement and she leant forward quickly, her hands clasped.

“Oh, Dick,” she said, “I’m not going to say anything against Helen. It isn’t up to me to do that. I only want you to try to understand that I myself was an obstinate fool. Those weeks before this awful thing happened, I was just beginning to wake up and understand and learn.” She gave a little realistic shiver. “Some knowledge is so horribly ugly,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved Helen. When I was quite a kid, I used to think she was as near to being angelic as anyone could be. It hurt me—well, fearfully—the things I had to find out. Still,” She sat straight again, a little hardness came into her voice. “All that’s got nothing to do with what happened that night, and that is what I have got to tell you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he agreed curtly, “and as to the rest, well, I don’t really see how you could expect to understand. I could see at once that you were an utter kid. I think that is what made me so sorry for you from the start.”

“You were sorry, were you?” she asked; and on a little sigh. “I’m only three years younger than you, after all.”

“Girls, most girls,” said Dick, with a shade of contempt in his voice, “hide or get put behind blinkers as far as life is concerned. Knowledge ought not to be ugly, it ought to be just interesting.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” admitted Esther; “I daresay I was an idiot, but I did not know, for days I did not know, that Mr. Bacon”(she flushed painfully and was glad of the darkness that covered her colour) “was making love to me. And then that night while we were dancing,” she hurried on, “he said something, oh, I could not mistake it any more, and I felt kind of ill with fear and horror and disgust.”

“Well?” said Dick, and now he certainly spoke grimly, “was that what persuaded you to go to his room in your nightgown with a waterproof thrown over your shoulder?”

“Oh no, oh no,” she said quickly, “I did not do that. You see when I had got away from him into my own room and shut and locked the door, I found Helen’s letter. Mr. Armstrong is quite right about that—it was Helen who wrote me. Such a funnily worded note, I can’t remember it word for word, but I know that she asked me, if I had any love for her, to come to her room that night. So, of course, I went.”

“You had not undressed?”asked Dick.

“No,” she answered again, “I had not had time.”

“But then . . .” he began . . .

“Oh wait,” she interrupted. “There is such a lot really to explain, and I’m sure to make it dreadfully muddly. I went just as I was—it must have been a little after one. There was a light in Helen’s room and her door was ajar. You know Mr. Bacon’s room was just next door. There was a man standing by the window of his room. It gave me rather a fright because it seemed to me that the man was trying to peer in. He had his face pushed up against the wire netting.

“Then I think he must have heard me or something for he kind of swept round and I saw his face quite clearly for a second or two. A big, lean face, very red and fierce.”

“Vernon!” said Dick. “So he was there!”

“Would it be Vernon?” she asked. “I had not seen him before. I haven’t seen him since. Yes, I suppose it might have been. Well, anyhow, he scurried away and I went into Helen’s room. She was undressed, all ready for bed, she had got that wrapper round her—the one she was wearing next morning. She looked so lovely. I remember thinking that. And, of course, as usual, she laughed at me. Helen always laughed at me, and until that night her laughter had never hurt.

“‘What are you looking so afraid of, white rabbit?’ she asked.

“So I told her about the man and she went quickly to the door and looked out.

“‘He isn’t there now,’ she said; and then ever so queerly as if the words were forced out of her, ‘Oh God, I wish it were he! I wish he’d kill Tom!’

She came back to me after that and took my hands and looked right into my eyes.

“‘Has he been making love to you to-night, Esther?’ she whispered, and I suppose I nodded a ‘Yes,’ or she saw it in my face, for she began talking softly, quickly, explaining things to me, telling me about herself and Mr. Bacon, about her life before she had met him, of what lay in front of her—and of me, too, if I . . . if I . . .”

She gave a little sob and sat forward, her hands hiding her face. “Oh, Dick,” she whispered, “you say knowledge shouldn’t be ugliness, but it was hideous—hideous. I felt as if I had stepped suddenly into a great dark pool and the waters were touching right against my lips.”

She looked up at him again. She could not see his face, only the sharp outline of his head, the shadow of his boyish limbs. She loved him so, it was like a pain in her heart.

“I have felt a little like that ever since,” she went on; “it has been like horror mounting upon horror. That night; Helen’s voice (I’ve always so loved her voice); his terrible room; people asking questions, peering into everything, trying to find out—oh, Dick, there has only been you amongst it all—not awful.”

He ignored, it seemed, the poignancy of that small cry.

“We haven’t yet got down to how you came to be in his room,” he said.

“No, I know,” she acknowledged, “I’ve got to explain that. I suppose I must have left Helen’s room about 3.30. I don’t think either of us noticed the time. She let me out the back way because she said one did not want to be seen prowling about the hotel at that hour of the night. It was very still and quiet outside and the moonlight was very bright. I felt like the ghost of my old self as I slipped along to my room. And I undressed awfully slowly, I know that; why, I must have sat for nearly a quarter of an hour looking at myself in the glass, thinking . . . thinking. Remembering what she had said, hearing her voice.

“And then, oh, I don’t know why, Helen would say it was one of my impulses, but just as I was getting into bed, it came over me in a rush, that thing that Helen had whispered standing by the door, ‘I wish he’d kill Tom.’

“And suddenly it seemed to me as though I realised what all her words that night had been leading up to, her despair, her disgust, her . . . Oh, I can’t really explain, but I seemed to know quite clearly that unless I . . . I could do something to stop it, Helen would . . .”

She broke off quickly, her hands clenched, her voice went on, but it was a changed voice now, stiff and queer.

“No, I don’t know that,” she said. “Just as I got to the door I heard a sound like a shot. Helen wasn’t in the room when I went in. Bacon was there, he seemed to be leaning against the door, fumbling with the handle. His back was towards me. The back of his head was a great red smear; there was blood oozing down his pyjamas. It was as though lurching against the door, he burst it open and fell out.”

“That might have happened,” said Dick, drily. “The door opens outwards.”

“You don’t believe me,” she whispered. “I can hear the disbelief in your voice and yet it is true. I can’t explain why I felt I must go just like that. I don’t even know what made me go to Bacon’s room instead of Helen’s. I only know I went. I had thrown the mackintosh round me; it slipped off my shoulders as I stooped to pick up the revolver that my feet had touched against. And then . . . you came. I don’t remember much more. I fainted, didn’t I? You caught me.”

“Yes,” he admitted, “you fainted all right.”

She sat silent for a little; her fingers traced a name on the dust of the table where he was sitting.

“Dick,” she wrote, but he did not look down at it, or notice it.

“You fell in love with Helen from the start, didn’t you?” she asked. “I saw that you had. Helen is wonderful. I have never grudged Helen anything before. I’ve always loved her. But you, oh, I did grudge her you.”

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked, and turned a little sideways to stare at her.

“Do you remember this morning up in the hotel,” she answered, “asking me why I had confessed to murdering Tom Bacon?”

“Did I? “He dismissed it with one of his faint shrugs. “It was a jolly decent thing to do, anyway, because you loved her.”

“Oh, Dick,” she said, “how blind you are! How stupid!”

She stood up, close beside him, her young fragrant grace glowed in the dim room.

“Let’s go back and join the others,” she said. “Shall I tell Mr. Danton what I have told you? Do you think it would help?”

“I guess he ought to know,” admitted Dick. He stood up, too; he was gauche and uncomfortable. Her very nearness seemed in some way to challenge him.

And yet—and yet he loved Helen. He had loved Helen till the ugliness bf knowledge—that was Esther’s name for it—had slid in between.

“Why call me blind and stupid?” he asked. “After all . . .”

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” she interrupted quickly, “it was nothing to do with your finding me there in that room, with your thinking that I . . .”

“Well, what then, if not that?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she prevaricated, “at least nothing, if you are still in love with Helen.”

It was rather a bold move and man-like, he instantaneously disapproved of it.

“I can’t see what that has got to do with it,” he said and moved aside and opened the door for her and waited for her to go through in front of him.

None the less, the question persisted. Was he still in love—a horribly banal expression at the best of times—with Helen?

Chapter Twenty

A Love Letter

The sunlight came like a messenger into Helen’s room. She had lain for so long, all the night practically, watching the grey shadows of her room through half closed eyes, thinking and remembering a hundred and one things, and now this small narrow ray of the dawn seemed to scatter all the shadows and her memories into fine air. It was like, she thought suddenly, Dick’s love for her. It had just the same clear brightness after the shadows that had gathered so thick about her life. Feeling its warmth, her limbs relaxed and with a little sigh of pleasure, she snuggled down close into her pillows. Dick loved her. That feeling that Esther would take him from her had been stupid, and she had been horrid to him for days because of the stupidity of her thoughts. She remembered the hurt bewilderment of his eyes watching her, looking for some sign of forgiveness for a crime he had never committed. Poor loyal Dick, who through it all would insist upon believing (she felt quite certain of that) in her innocence.

Her innocence! The unspoken word made her sit up and open her arms as it were to the sun and gather it close to her. Danton had said yesterday in parting, “Have no fear, Mrs. Dawson, I feel certain I shall be able to establish your innocence.” And behind Danton there was Dick, waiting for her to smile at him again, and dear old Tony, and . . . Esther. Esther had been very loyal too; she really did owe Esther some gratitude, instead of being absurdly jealous of her.

Sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms round them, the sunlight warming all her body, she called out to grave little Miss Thomson dressing in the next room. “Sister,” she said, quite inconsequently after her recent thoughts, “if they find me guilty, do you think they’ll hang me out here?”

She could hear the little scurried flutter of fear Miss Thomson made in coming to her. She looked, on arrival, so prim, for Miss Thomson wore very prim, very old fashioned corsets and the kind of petticoat that bunched itself off round the waist; and with it all, so agitated, that Helen nearly laughed.

“Oh, don’t, Mrs. Dawson,” twittered Miss Thomson, “please don’t talk like that.”

“It just occurred to me,” said Helen, “how I should hate to be hung out here on one of these clear bright mornings. The sun makes one so amazingly glad to be alive, doesn’t it? In England, it would not matter so much. A grey morning—all misty.” She gave a little shiver. “Ugh!” she said. “Do you ever think about dying?”

“Never about being hanged,” Miss Thomson could in all justice have twittered back. Instead she gulped bravely and attempted consolation.

“Whether we die or live does not matter, so long as we know that God is there,” she essayed.

Helen took her eyes away from the sunlight and studied Miss Thomson’s absurd figure, her plain, yet wistful face, her very kindly, timid eyes.

“God!” said Helen slowly, “Do you know I don’t think I believe a thing about Him.”

“Ah, don’t say that,” implored Miss Thomson. She came a little nearer and stood by the edge of the bed. “If only I could tell you—show you—help you. But I’m so stupid. Oh, dear Mrs. Dawson, God is everywhere watching us, helping us, consoling us. Sorrowing when we sorrow, glad of our little joys.”

“And that,” said Helen, slowly, “is what you believe. Almost you make me wonder . . .” She laughed a little and uncurled her legs and slipped out of bed. “You are a dear, anyway, wherever you get it from. But to-day I feel a most glorious pagan. I don’t know why, but I think it’s because the sun came creeping in at that window and laid such warm fingers upon my aching eyes. I didn’t sleep much last night. . . it was just glorious to see the sun come into life once more.”

Miss Thomson sighed, she felt that her little homily had failed and yet it was so true if only one could make people realise.

“God’s love is like that in the world,” she said softly, “to us, who believe.”

It was rather startling that Miss Thomson should say just that. It made Helen remember the story that she had made up to tell Dick about her love for him. The story of the woman who, looking at the boy who loved, saw standing behind him the giant angel shape, whose name was Death.

It was as though Miss Thomson suddenly robbed the sunlight of its pagan joy and filled it with something grave, and mysterious and austere.

God’s love, which would enfold one after Death, which would wait for one patiently and be there when man’s justice had finished with one! Oh, no, no! She did not want that. She wanted Dick, and Dick’s eager young worship; she wanted the soft, swift touch of hands, and lips that kissed and eyes that flamed desire.

She felt angry against Miss Thomson—impatient. “I wonder what joy that God of yours has given you in all your life,” she said swiftly, “that you should be so grateful to Him. Has any man ever loved you, or wanted you, or been content to die because you would not smile at him. Have your pulses ever throbbed with anything but fright, or. . .?”

She relented quickly, perhaps the hurt amazement in the gentle eyes made her ashamed. “Oh, what a beast I am,” she confessed; “of course your joy has lain in serving others—in giving and helping as you have helped me. Because, do you know, without you, I should have gone mad these last few days?”

“Have I helped really?” stammered Miss Thomson.

She felt flushed all over from the violence of Mrs. Dawson’s contempt. And she knew that in part it was well earned. She was so essentially a spinster—man’s love had passed by her. Was that why—oh surely it could not be why—she had turned to God?

“I ought to go and dress, oughtn’t I?” she added. “It’s very odd of me to stand about like this.”

She moved to the door between the rooms. “You . . . you always look so lovely in anything.” There was only a faint tinge of envy in the glance she cast at Helen’s slight pyjama-clad figure. “But I . . . well, I always seem indecent unless I’m quite dressed.”

Indecent! Little prim Miss Thomson! Helen nearly laughed again, but she turned to her own dressing with more sombre eyes. She would not see Dick, she decided, before she left for Kampala. Indeed she had hardly time to, for Armstrong had announced that they would leave immediately after breakfast; but she would write to him. The first love letter she had ever written him. She sat down as she was on the edge of the bed with the sunlight dappling her bare feet and balanced her writing block on her knees and wrote:

Dear Beautiful One,

How can I make you understand the torment that my heart has been in for the last few days, not wondering whether or not you believe that I killed Tom Bacon. Somehow that does not seem to matter. I am so sure that he deserved to die, and between you and me that just can’t count, but wondering whether you loved me.

Oh dear, dear Dick, that wonder in my heart! Because you see I love you most amazingly—the world will say absurdly—I wonder if it is absurd to love. Listen, my dear, when all this is finished and Mr. Danton is very confident that he will what he calls establish my innocence, I shall come to you. Not asking you to marry me. Dick, that really would be absurd, but just to be with you for a little and then to go back to my world, which can never, alas, be yours in reality, walking softly, because I shall carry in my heart such a treasure of dreams. Oh, my dear, I shall walk softly, gladly until the end of life because of you. This morning, Miss Thomson, she is in a way my gaoler, you know, spoke to me about God and God’s love, and I—well, I had been filling my heart with thoughts of you, such warm, soft thoughts after the bitterness of these few days of doubt. She made me angry. Somehow I can’t quite explain, but it seemed as though her funny old fashioned words robbed the sunshine of all its gold. God strikes me as bleak, and austere, and stiff and I . . . I want you. The whole of me aches, wanting you. Don’t let us see each other until this business is all finished. But write me if you can. Not a stupid letter like this, I know you would hate to have to do that, but somewhere, sandwiched in between remarks about the weather, find room to put “I love you.” It will mean so much to me. I can’t even hope to explain how much.

She sat for a little, the letter finished, the pen laid away, the ink drying on the paper. Would he understand? She had written of the different worlds in which they lived, and with a dull ache at her heart she realised how true that was. “But if he loved me for a little and then I died,” her thoughts whispered, “there would be no ugliness in that.” Staines and Esther drove in with the dawn to see her.

She had to fold her letter away quickly and slip it into its envelope and address it, “R. Stanley, Esq.” She laid her lips for a second on his name. Then she stood up and hurried on with her dressing and went out to them.

It was a different Helen from the one whom they had met the last few days. Some of her radiance had come back to her.

“You two dears,” she whispered, a little laughter in her voice. “How loyal you’ve been! What friends I’ve got!”

She put her arms round Esther and hugged her. “Esther, I understand you were prepared to do your damnedest for me, weren’t you?”

Esther, remembering one or two things, felt a slight twinge of compunction.

“I knew you could not have done it,” she answered. “Helen, you weren’t in the room when I came back to it.”

“What made you come, you funny kid?” asked Helen. They sat down while she had her breakfast, unobtrusive Miss Thomson joined them. “That has puzzled me from the first.”

“It was one of my impulses,” Esther had to explain.

“I felt . . . I felt that I could help you.”

“You dear,” said Helen again and smiled at her and put out her hand and laid it on Esther’s.

“And what are you all going to do?” she asked. “I just hate to think of your having to go all through this again.”

“Afraid we’ve got to,” said Staines. “Esther and I are going down in Danton’s car. We shall be about an hour behind you on the road.”

“And Dick?” asked Helen.

“He’ll come when he’s sent for,” Staines explained.

“He’s staying out on his place till then, isn’t he, Esther?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Will you stop on your way past?” asked Helen.

“Give him this letter.”

She put the envelope her lips had kissed into Esther’s hand. “Poor Dick, he must be awfully fed up with all this turmoil of events that knowing us has dragged him into.”

“He did not know whether you would care to see him,” said Esther. She kept her eyes lowered as she spoke. “He sent a message. He said if he had done anything to offend you, would you let him know. I think he hoped that perhaps you would write him.”

“Well, I have written,” smiled Helen, “and if I have seemed some kind of frozen beast to all of you these last few days, you must try to forgive me.”

“My dear, there is nothing to forgive,” said Staines softly, “I guess we’ve all been through hell.”

They waited to see her drive off with Armstrong. She leant out to wave to them when the car started. She seemed quite happy and cheerful, a wonderfully brave woman, as Staines had said.

Esther sat in the back of Danton’s car, holding Helen’s letter till they came to Dick’s place. He was waiting for them at the end of the drive.

“I saw the other car go past,” he told them. “She’s gone then.”

He felt oddly, as though he had come to the end of some book. He was going to close its pages, never open them again. Esther held out the letter.

“She has written to you,” she said. “I was to give this to you.”

He took it almost unwillingly, his eyes lingered on hers. He had been thinking a great deal of what she had said last night, trying to puzzle out its meaning.

“Where are you going to stay in Kampala?” he asked.

“At the hotel?”

“With me, I hope,” said Staines. He turned round to look at the two of them. “We won’t be unchaperoned. I’ve got a lady sister. There’ll be room for you, too, if you care to come, Stanley,” he added.

“Thanks, sir,” said Dick, “I’d much rather that than the hotel.” He looked back at Esther. “Then we’ll meet again,” he said.

The story was not ended, it seemed. He would have to go on reading. He stood back, his hand raised to his hat to watch the car go. He had never realised before how pretty Esther was. He liked the way the lashes swept up from her eyes.

He opened Helen’s letter on his way back to the house and read it slowly. He did not understand. There is no love letter ever written that is understood by the person who reads it. He felt suddenly a little nervous of her love, as though it might engulf him. “I mustn’t make a damned fool of myself,” was what he thought. “Lord! How people might laugh. She’s nearly old enough . . .”

His thoughts broke off there; perhaps he sensed their utter disloyalty.

Instead, he thought of his own mother. What on earth would she have to say to this affair in which he had all but landed himself? He saw her beautiful quizzical eyes, her immaculate gold hair.

“Dear boy . . . an adventuress! You get your loves so dreadfully mixed up, Dick.”

He could almost hear her speaking.

And what did Helen mean by saying that it did not matter between them whether or not she had killed Tom Bacon! Of course it mattered. Things that Esther had told him, worse things that her words had only hinted at, simmered in his mind. What kind of life had Helen led? What did she mean when she said she would walk gladly to the end of her life because of him, and how many times had she written that to other men?

The whole letter, read from that point of view, seemed false and unreal. It was as though she suddenly appeared to him as a siren, willing to drag him to destruction as she had dragged others.

He went into his house and flung himself down on a chair and opened the letter again and stared down at it. It was on this verandah that he had first said to her, “I love you,” and he remembered her sudden tears, her clinging hands.

“I am so afraid—afraid of Death,” she had said.

God! Even then she must have known that Death was stalking her, because . . . because she had killed Bacon.

What kind of woman must she be to play at love within a few short hours of killing a man who had once been her lover. He must have been mad. It must have been some madness of this African moon, of which he had always been half unwillingly afraid, that had made him think himself in love. And yet. . . and yet. . . The scent of roses stirred against his mind. He felt her face against his face. There had been something very soul shaking in her love.

But since he could not with any justice, either to himself, or to her, put the “I love you” which she had asked for into a letter, he did not write at all.

She must think what she liked, let her heart find what excuses it could. He would come in the end unwillingly to his meeting with her and then, perhaps, she would understand. Meanwhile there was Esther. He would see Esther again when he went to Kampala.

Chapter Twenty-One

In Gaol

The new Kampala gaol, with its share of accommodation for European prisoners, stands high on a hill some distance out of the township and overlooking the lake Victoria Nyanza. It is a grey looking building, designed rather like a fort, with an imposing entrance of pillared gates.

The hillside round has been swept bare of trees and grass; large stretches of it have been put under sweet potatoes. A portion is devoted to the housing of the gaol officials, trim, neat looking houses, with orderly gardens and tennis courts. Below them again lie the huts of the prison warders and eskaries, so that the hill represents a township in itself, overlooked—overawed as it were by the grim grey stone building that fronts the wide free lake and sky with its countless small, well-barred windows.

Helen had a cell nearest the great gates. It was austerely furnished with a bed, complete with mosquito net, a table and a chair. Everyone was very nice to her; the wives of the officials taking a great interest in her comfort, outside visitors of whom the most frequent were Major Staines and Major Staines’ efficient, sympathetic, rather elderly sister, keeping her well supplied with books, papers and flowers.

She had, of course—it was a thing from which she would very willingly have escaped—unlimited time to think. Long hours when visitors were debarred in which the shadow of the iron bars that closed her window seemed in very truth to shut out all the world, leaving her alone with her memories, her burnt out fires, as she had once called them. Sometimes she felt at the end of those hours of solitude almost unbearably old. But most of all she hated these times because they came to be associated with memories of Tom Bacon. Here, in this prison house, with her heart caught in some cage of regret, it seemed as though his spirit could predominate. She felt again the creeping horror of his presence. He had been so unclean, and despite all her queer muddled existence, she had always hated things that were unclean. At times, forcing herself to face thought, she would try to work out her memories of Tom Bacon. Her first meeting with him at that rather resplendent partly shoddy hotel in Cairo to which she and Esther had drifted. It had been a bad year, financially, that year with Helen. She had never managed money well, she had always been extravagantly generous, but she had never before been in such low water. Every mail day brought her a pile of bills, all unpayable as far as she was concerned. She went to bed at night and woke in the morning with a queer hunted feeling in her mind. She was like (she remembered now the day she had first thought that), a squirrel in a cage. She went round, and round, and round, and her cage moved with her. That was the day before she met Bacon, before Bacon had smiled slyly in her direction, and come across and joined them at their table.

Of course, there was Esther. Esther was quite an unnecessary expense, had been from the start one of her stupid, generous impulses. Generous was a kind word to apply to it—one should not borrow money from Peter to pay Paul —and that was what Helen had always done. Esther had been the daughter of a friend of her’s. The only woman friend she had ever had, who had come to a horrible death because of her love for some man. It had been a sordid enough, ugly enough story, but through all its ugliness friendship had persisted, and when the first Esther Blain lay dying, she had sent for Helen.

“The baby, Helen,” Esther had whispered through cracked lips that all night had striven to force back the screams, “is it alive?”

“Yes,” Helen had answered. Sick and shaken, she had stood by her friend’s bed and endeavoured to give what comfort she could. “It’s a girl, Esther. They say it’s quite healthy—it will live.”

“Then you . . .” the stiff tired lips had spoken again, “you’ll look after her for me, Helen. Call her what you like. Oh, God,” her voice broke with despair, “why another woman?”

The first Esther had died on that last most bitter cry and Helen had taken care of baby Esther. She had always looked upon that as a sacred promise and she, who was well able to break promises and took but small thought of vows, had stayed very true to the memory of her friend. So there had always been Esther. Grown up, she complicated things, financially as well as otherwise. Helen had had some vague idea of keeping Esther untarnished; it seemed to her that her promise involved that. It had been very difficult to keep Esther in complete ignorance of—well, Tom Bacon, for instance. For from that first day, because of his money, Tom Bacon had taken possession. Yet till that last night, she had more or less succeeded. It was the loathsomeness of Tom Bacon spreading his net to catch young, unwary feet that had unnerved Helen, made all the whole affair suddenly impossible. Not all her own gain involved in that, Armstrong’s deductions had gone astray there. That Bacon should take another mistress would have brought Helen scant distress. She loathed him by then too utterly to like his money even, but that he should choose Esther, stretch out his podgy hands towards her, waylay her with his well oiled bait, that had been too much.

He had deserved his death and Helen had earned the money which she gained thereby. She felt like throwing back her head and shouting that defiance to the silence. But she never did shout it and the presence of Bacon seemed to gloat over her.

“I’ve got you still afraid, my fine lady,” his ghost flitting close against her in the silence, would whisper.

Staines, who saw a great deal of her in these days of waiting, for the High Court did not sit for three weeks after their arrival, came quickly to a realisation of this fear that had come into her life. He sensed it as wearing down her courage in which he took such pride.

“Why are you afraid now?” he asked her one day, coming to see her by himself. “You’ve never shown the least sign of fear before.”

“And am I afraid now?” she asked lightly. “Tony, don’t credit me with ridiculous fancies. If you had to live in this place,” she said raising her eyebrows, looking round her, “wouldn’t you get depressed?”

“Depressed—yes,” he admitted. “Though even that you need not be. Danton is amazingly strong on his side of the case. But you’re more than depressed, my dear. When I came in just now, you looked up with a start; it isn’t any exaggeration to say that your eyes were terrified.”

“Were they?” she answered. She looked away from him quickly. “From twelve, when I am fed on an extremely good lunch until now, when you, or some other kind person comes to see me,” she explained, “I’m shut in here by myself. Shut in—oh, you outside free people don’t know what that means. The door is locked—the window. . . well, you can see the window . . . it’s as though all sorts of things got locked up in here with me and I . . . I can’t get away from them.” She laughed and stood up. “Ghosts, Tony,” she whispered, half dramatically. He thought he could hear tears behind the words. “Ghosts of my most horrible past. You wouldn’t like it if you were I.”

“Don’t,” he said gently, “it’s a waste of time trying to paint yourself all black to me, my dear. I take your horribleness with a grain of salt.”

“You wouldn’t if you knew it all,” she answered. She stood for a minute or two looking out of the barred window. “Esther doesn’t often come to see me these days, does she?” she said presently.

He could have told her that Esther was very much employed otherwise. Young Stanley had arrived ten days ago and the two were seeing a lot of each other. He fancied himself that it was a certain sign of guilt that kept Miss Esther away. But he felt also that Helen had probably quite as much to bear as she could stand for the moment.

“Esther is young,” he answered indifferently. “The pomp and chilliness of this place awe her. I think she can’t bear to think of you here and youth always stays away from unpleasant thoughts as much as possible.”

She turned to look at him. “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she admitted. “The next generation isn’t awfully interested in our troubles or our tears, are they?”

“One can hardly expect them to be,” he argued. “They’ll have their own—all in good time.”

How sane and kindly and wise he seemed. If she had wanted to find love a solace and a friend at the end, why could she not have been content to find love here? And behind Tony with his iron grey hair, his steadfast chin and eyes, she caught a sudden remembered vision of Dick’s young dark head, half turned away in the firelight. Dick! Oh, love was not a solace or a friend, it was like a flame that leapt and burned in her heart.

She came back to the table, sat down and clasped her hands.

“Tell me again,” she said, “what Mr. Danton thinks he is going to prove?”

“That Vernon did it,” Staines answered slowly. “At least, that Vernon is just as likely to have done it as you. With the evidence as it stands, Vernon had his reasons for wishing to kill Bacon, he was obviously prowling about on that night with that intent, he did not wait to be examined, he decamped; I can’t see how anyone is going to bring it in against you.”

“And you,” said Helen slowly, “I wonder what you think about it, Tony?”

He was silent for a moment or two, his grave eyes studying her. He was remembering the fear he had seen in her face when he had come in that afternoon. And he was remembering, too, that he loved her, that love had persisted through all the years because he was a man not much given to change. It was not any longer a fierce, wild passion in his heart, but it was a very steady, sober affection that wanted to help and comfort.

“When this is all finished,” he said at last, slowly, using all unwittingly the very words which she had used to Dick, “will you marry me, Helen?”

She looked up, surprised, startled to sudden tears.

“Oh, Tony,” she whispered, “dear, dear Tony, how like you to answer my question with those words!”

“I think it is the best answer I can make,” he said gravely; “and you can give me your answer now, or afterwards, just as you like.”

She put out her hands quickly and laid them on his. “Then don’t ask it me, Tony,” she said, “I . . . I haven’t any answer. Oh, no, that isn’t true, isn’t honest—and oh, just for this last bit of my life, I do want to be true and honest.”

She took her hands away and sat straight and looked at him with flushed face and wide eyes.

“I love someone else,” she said, “that’s the real answer.”

“You mean Dick Stanley,” he asked, and took his answer from her eyes. “My dear, that’s foolishness, you are taking hold of something that will only hurt your pride.”

“I haven’t any pride left,” she answered, head still very high. “I love him. I’m to snatch just one more joy from life and afterwards . . .”

“Yes, afterwards,” he agreed, gravely—not unkindly, “there will be quite a long afterwards, Helen.”

“Ah, don’t ask me!” She stood up impetuously; she moved away; the barred window made a background for her figure again. “Don’t prod my poor small joy, Tony. It will die quickly enough without that.”

Yes, it would die all right, he thought! Dick and Esther, they were playing golf at this moment, he had watched them during tea. He stood up. “No, I’ll do no prodding,” he admitted. “and my question remains unanswered. It still stands.” He moved to the door. “Goodbye, my dear,” he said softly, “and whatever else we have, don’t let’s have any more fear.”

He shut the door behind him. She could hear them lock it and hear his footsteps going along the stone corridor. She was alone again with her thoughts and her memories. Why had not Dick written? Oh, he hated letters, she knew that; he was dumb when it came to expressing himself. But just this once he might have written. She could have taken his letter out now and held it like a shield between herself and memory, between herself and fear!

Chapter Twenty-Two

I Love You

Esther and Dick played golf indifferently well. They were both thinking of far different things, and the golf links in Kampala are apt to be crowded; if you play badly and thus hold up some other more skilful couples, you are certain to be extremely unpopular.

At the fifth hole Dick thrust his putter into the bag with an air of finality and waved the caddy off in the direction of the Club house.

“Let’s chuck it,” he said to Esther, “it’s a rotten game on the best of days, and to-day I can’t hit a ball.”

“I was just about to beat you,” said Esther perversely; “it seems a pity.”

“You are playing, if anything, worse than I,” said Dick. “I’ve got the car here. Let’s go for a drive.”

She acquiesced. If it meant going for a drive, that was all to the good. She had been afraid that if they stopped playing he would go off somewhere by himself. And then, perhaps a twinge of conscience came to her as they walked towards the car.

“Will you drive me out to see Helen?” she asked. “I haven’t been for days and I think to-day only Major Staines is going.”

“Then he won’t want you,” said Dick curtly. “We’ll go along the Entebbe road. There’s a pretty bit out there.”

They drove quite a long way in silence, she, with her eyes on his hands holding the wheel. What strong, firm hands he had! She was quite sure that he was angry, annoyed about something. If she stole a glance at his face, she knew she would find his lips tight set, his eyes looking straight in front of him.

They had grown to know each other fairly well during this last week; they had talked of everything in the world that interested them; but mostly, and almost entirely, they had talked of themselves and, very purposely, they had excluded any reference to recent events or to Helen.

Esther felt treacherous when she thought of Helen. That was what had made her say “will you drive me out to see Helen.”

That was why she was so glad when he refused. Treacherous! It was as though she knew she was stealing something from Helen, and yet how could she not steal?

“You belong to Helen.” She could not say that to Dick, there was neither sense nor justice in the statement. And there was a little whisper of life in her own heart which said over and over again, “Dick belongs to you. Wait and see. He will belong to you.”

She knew him so well. Because she loved him, she knew him. That is woman’s way, even the youngest of them get this knowledge through love. Man never understands woman, the more he loves her, the less he understands. She stands before him veiled in mysteries of his own making.

But woman loves a man and knows him, his weaknesses are very dear to her, his strength a thing to envy. His obstinacies, his fears, his self consciousness, all these things, bit by bit, love shows her. The only thing she is never quite sure of is his love. That seems to her a frail, weak thing compared to her own, she is never absolutely certain that it is there, or that it will survive.

Dick had loved Helen. Esther knew that, just as she now knew that something in that love of his was making him angry with himself. Did he, too, feel treacherous? Poor, loyal-hearted Dick—the very essence of whose nature was loyalty.

“It is awfully strange to think,” she said, presently, Apropos, apparently, of nothing, “that two months ago, you and I did not even know each other.”

“Damnably strange,” he agreed. He was angry, she could hear it in his voice. “Where were you two months ago?”

“We were staying in this hotel here,” she answered. “Mr. Bacon was getting things ready for our trip to Ruanda. Supposing we hadn’t gone. Oh, I wonder if none of this would have happened if we hadn’t gone.”

“You might have married Bacon,” he said, a trifle hardly. “That would have been nice, wouldn’t it?”

She caught her breath. “It’s horrid of you to say that,” she replied. “Dick, why are you so cross? What’s happened?”

“Am I cross?” he retorted. “It’s liver, I expect. I hate hanging about down here—doing nothing.”

“I thought perhaps it was because . . .” She hesitated. She knew so well that what she planned to say was treacherous and yet she had to say it; “you hated not being able to see Helen.”

She glanced at him, the thing said, but he did not look at her.

“Oh, you think so, do you?” he remarked. A favourite phrase of his, behind which he used to barricade himself against questions.

“Why aren’t you seeing her?” she went on. “I mean don’t you think she’ll be hurt?”

He turned to look at her this time. The look in his eyes made her conscious of a swift flutter of excitement.

“As a matter of fact,” he said very deliberately, “I keep away at her own special request.” He looked back at the road. “Is there anything more you want to know?” he asked.

So very much, and yet none of it could be put into words.

“What have I done to make you so angry with me?” she persisted. “You might tell me that.”

He ran the car down to the side of the road and stopped it. He had chosen a spot where a forest grew on either side, giant trees cast their shadows across the road, enveloped the car in a mantle of shade. Dick turned in the seat beside her, took out his cigarette case and lit himself a cigarette before he answered.

“Have one?” he said, and held the case out to her, and again their eyes met for a moment, blue eyes looking at grey. “I am not angry with you,” he said stiffly, “but with myself.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, that I’m not quite ready to tell you,” he answered. “It doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“To—to someone who isn’t here,” she whispered. “Oh, I know—it’s Helen . . . it’s because . . .”

“I think I’ve been mad,” he interrupted, “or a damned fool. Are the two things the same?”

And again he looked at her and again the flutter ran all through her and she veiled her eyes from his.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Esther, “Helen is so wonderful. It wasn’t very strange that you should think yourself . . .”

They were both suddenly absurdly shy of the word “love.” It was as though they spoke in hushed whispers in the presence of a deity of whom whey were aware, yet whom they could not see. “She made you think you loved her,” she faltered.

“And all the time,” asked Dick, her hand laying on the seat between them, his own closed over it, “was it you Esther, waiting just out of sight?”

“Oh,” she said and lifted her eyes to his. “You don’t really love me, Dick—that’s just kindness because you know that I . . . that I . . .”

The touch of his hand on hers, his nearness, for he had thrown away his unsmoked cigarette and was leaning close to her, was shattering common sense. Tears stung in the eyes that were lifted to his, her lips trembled.

“That you . . . what?” asked Dick.

“I’ve loved you always,” she said—the words came in a little rush; “that was what I was trying to tell you that night at your place. It was because I loved you that I thought I would pretend that I had killed Tom Bacon, so that Helen, whom you loved, might go free. I hated your loving her, but. . .”

He stopped her words, one arm thrown round her shoulders. He drew her closer to him, closer still, he touched her cheeks, his lips found her mouth.

“Esther,” he said her name stupidly, clumsily, and suddenly he had buried his face against her shoulder and she knew that he was crying . . . the hot difficult tears of a boy.

“Oh, don’t,” said Esther. “Dick, please, please don’t. It wasn’t anything. It didn’t really hurt. I think my heart always knew that one day you’d come to me. I felt, oh, I felt most absurdly that you had to be mine. Dick, I feel dreadful when you cry, I shall howl too.”

They were like children talking to each other. He rubbed his eyes against her sleeve and sat up and turned away.

“What a beastly fool I’ve made of myself,” he said.

But she could have laughed her joy aloud, loving him, loving him all the more for his dear delightful unexpected weakness.

“You haven’t,” she said gravely. “I think it was the very nicest thing you could do. I don’t think I could have believed it, if you’d said ‘Miss Blain, may I call you Esther, I love you.’ . . . But this . . . oh” (her voice suddenly grew grave), “till the end of time I shall remember,” she said, “and know that for now anyway, whatever comes afterwards, you’ve loved me.”

“Why on earth?” he asked and turned to stare at her.

“You must not ask me to explain,” she answered, “It isn’t explainable. But you do love me, don’t you?”

He kissed her again with more assurance this time. He was quite, quite sure that he loved her. Her delicate gold hair, her grey eyes with their long lashes, the soft curves of her mouth. No perfume of crushed roses came to disturb this love; it was cool like the cool shadows lying across the road, and sweet like the fragrance of her hair. Man can very easily forget the last love in the new. And yet he did not altogether forget Helen.

“There’s Helen,” he said presently, and loosed her and sat away. “My God, what am I to do?”

Esther was inclined to think that nothing mattered if he loved her, but he could not see that. The memory of Helen’s last letter was disturbing.

“We’ll tell her we are engaged,” said Esther. “She’ll understand. After all, Dick, she couldn’t really think that you . . .”

“No,” he said, and said it fiercely because the saying hurt him, “we can’t do that, Esther. We can’t be engaged. I hadn’t any right just now to let you say you loved me . . . to . . . to kiss you. I must have it out with Helen first.”

“You don’t belong to her,” argued Esther. She slid a nervous hand into his. “You can’t. Oh, Dick, you won’t let her take you from me, will you?”

“Not that,” he consoled, “but I must see her, speak to her, try to make her understand.” He turned to look at her, his blue eyes were hot and troubled. “I ought to have done all that before speaking to you, Esther. I’ve been a bit of a cad,” he confessed.

“Oh, no, no,” she answered, “I wanted you to. I made you. I’ve wanted you to kiss me for days. I wanted to know you loved me.”.

“And I do,” he answered, but at the same time he took his hand away from hers, and opened the door of the car and stepped out. “Let’s go back now, Esther,” he said. “I’ll see Helen as soon as I can and get things fixed up.”

“And if she won’t let you go,” whispered Esther, and felt as if her whole world was crumbling about her heart, waiting for him to answer.

“I don’t think we need consider that kind of thing,” he answered, a little stiffly, and cranked up the car, got in and turned it round, and started back for Kampala.

Major Staines was on the verandah of his house when they got back. Miss Staines had gone over to the Club for a rubber of Bridge. Bridge was the elderly Miss Staine’s one relaxation; she was cross if she did not get a game every night.

“Hullo, you two!” said Staines. He rose to greet them. “Where have you been? The case is to come on unexpectedly to-morrow. I have just heard from Danton. “

“Have you seen Helen to-day?” Esther asked. There was a sound of tears in her voice. Of course she loved Dick all the more for his strength, but she was feeling utterly miserable. “Was she all right?”

“Not too cheerful,” said Staines. “A little hurt, I think, because you, young lady,” he smiled at Esther, “have not been to see her lately. She needs all we can give her of courage at the moment,” he added.

“Is there any chance of seeing her to-morrow before the case opens?” Dick asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Staines. “Danton will want all the attention she can give him. It’s to open at 9.30.”

He straightened himself as he stood there and he did not look at either of the young people. Their faces, on coming in, had told him their own story. Youth had turned to youth, which was only natural and right, but what of Helen? Helen, with her poor pitiful dream.

“She’ll want all our courage and help,” he said again slowly, almost under his breath.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The High Court

There was more pomp and formality about the High Court than there had been about the hearing of the case in Ruanda.

There was the judge, for one thing, a resplendent, rather overpowering looking figure in his scarlet robes, his white wig, his set apart dignity. There was the Attorney General in black, also white wigged, a thin long, austere looking man that put one in mind, Helen thought vaguely, of some official of the Holy Inquisition. There was the dock that she herself had to sit in, a thing not unlike a cage, but with low bars and a ledge on which to rest her hands, and there was the witness box exactly opposite, in which the people were to stand telling their different stories—different stories all to one end—all attempting to prove that she had killed Tom Bacon.

The Court House was not very big, but it was quiet and sedate and there hung over it all a certain brooding sense of dignity which emanated perhaps from the Judge.

His was a very dignified personality, kindly withal, tolerant and just. Helen, looking at him, felt that there must after all be some meaning in the word justice.

“If I told him my whole story,” she thought, “I believe he would understand.”

She had a great deal of time for thought. The little cage in which she sat seemed to hold her singularly aloof from the rest of the Court and from what was going on there.

Danton had explained to her that the greater part of the first day would be taken up by the Prosecution going over their case.

“All old ground, Mrs. Dawson,” he had said. “I advise you not to concentrate on it. I want you to keep your mind as fresh as possible for my side of the attack.”

Danton spoke of the coming contest most cheerfully, rubbing his hands, his shrewd eyes gleaming. He was very pleased with the way he was working things out.

So, dutifully enough, Helen attempted not to concentrate. She let other thoughts flood her mind while the Attorney General spoke in his precise voice. The two men sitting on either side of the Judge attempting to share with him, as it were, his mantle of dignity, must be the Assessors she supposed. Danton had explained that in Uganda, under the Indian Penal Code, one did not have a jury. Twelve good men and true, was not that what they were called in England? One had assessors. Europeans, chosen as a rule, from the non-official community. One, a business man; the other, a planter. She had heard their names, but only vaguely. The one on the right of the Judge had a stupid, pompous face, he would not understand anything, but the one on the left looked humorous. As if his face wanted to wrinkle up into smiles all the time, and he had to keep pulling it back to a memory of the gravity of his position.

Odd to think that these two men, when it came to the end of this dry talking and arguing, would have it in their power to say “Guilty “or “Not Guilty.”

Would the stern majestic figure in the centre be influenced at all by what they said. Was God, for instance, influenced by human assessors in His verdict on the soul? The Judge, Helen thought, with sudden ridiculous laughter in her mind, was very like her childhood’s conception of God. She had, in those days, been able to picture God as sitting like that, arrayed from top to toe in scarlet, while trembling, naked souls were prodded in front of him by attendant devils.

One’s soul was naked, she supposed, when it faced God stripped of its loves and its kindlinesses and its courage and its laughter. Nothing left but its sins. Would God listen to human assessors, who would plead for her because they had loved her? Or, if he were a God like what gentle Miss Thomson had pictured Him to be, there would be no need to plead. He would understand . . . and forgive.

Ye praise His justice; even such
His pitying love I deem.
Ye seek a Judge; I fain would touch
The coat without a seam.

Quaint, stilted words that she had learnt long ago, written down in her mind. She had learnt so much poetry as a girl.

She had been able to laugh and say “I haven’t got religion, but I’ve got poetry. It’s just as beautiful.”

Tags of quotations ran through all her thoughts, but they meant very little to her in these days. It was her body that she had always loved, taken an interest in, not her soul. And immediately she thought:

What of soul was left, I wonder
When the kissing had to stop.

She had seen Dick as she had come in from the motor car, escorted by two police officers. He had been standing with Tony and Esther. She had tried to catch his eye and smile at him. But though he had looked at her, Dick had not smiled. His face had seemed very white with dark shadows under the eyes, and she had been struck with a sudden sense of his youth. Danton had on a black gown and a wig too. He sat on a chair, just below her box. He kept making copious notes, nodding his head and smiling. He was a strange little enthusiastic man, Danton.

At first she had not liked him at all. His opulent gestures, his inquisitive eyes, had annoyed her. But she had come to realise how kindly his interest was. He really did enjoy fighting for her and you had only to talk to him once or twice to know how clever he was. Tony was quite convinced that Danton would get her off. Dear, kindly Tony, with his chivalrous offer of marriage. “Because he is sorry for me,” thought Helen.

She could not credit love through all those years. She had never known love as a thing that lasted, as a faith that could be steadfast unto Death and beyond. To her it had always been a flame that warmed and burnt and then died out.

What was Dick thinking about as he sat behind her in the Court? Did it worry him very much this legal aspect of her guilt? Did it hurt him to think that perhaps she might have killed Tom Bacon?

Murderess! Was that a word that must appal his youth!

“Afterwards,” she thought, “I’ll be able to explain to him. We’ll go away somewhere. It does not matter about Esther; Tony can look after Esther for a little for me.”

Dick’s eyes had looked miserable. She had a sudden, swift desire to comfort him.

“We’ll forget all this hatefulness afterwards,” she thought.

All through the day, and to not a few people in the Court it seemed endless, she sat there, moving very little, hardly lifting her eyes. She kept her hat on, it shaded her face.

Several people had come to the Court just to see her; they went away disappointed.

“A rather dull, quiet looking woman,” one man told his wife. “I can’t think what all the scandal has been about.”

“Well, you can’t be very dull or quiet,” argued his wife not unjustly, “if you live with a man without marrying him, and end up by murdering him.”

“It’s beginning to look doubtful whether she did murder him,” he answered. “For once in a way, Armstrong seems to have got a thin case.” That became the general verdict. By the end of the second day, people were beginning to think as Danton wished them to think.

How on earth had Armstrong, a man who did not generally make mistakes, ignored the likelihood of the man Vernon having committed this murder?

Vernon was known to have been in the hotel; he had been heard threatening murder against some unknown enemy. After the murder he had practically admitted that the murdered man was the person against whom he had nourished his grudge. Vernon had been outside the room on the night of the murder—the girl, Blain, testified to that. Armstrong himself had to admit to the cut mosquito wire. Who else could have cut it?

Esther’s story caused quite a sensation in the Court. She gave it on the afternoon of the second day when Danton was calling his witnesses for the defence. Her conversation with Mrs. Dawson, both of them looking out and seeing the man, her hurried return on some impulse.

“I don’t know why,” she admitted. She looked very pretty, dressed in palest green, a faint flush in her cheeks; her hat off because that afternoon the Court had been so hot. “But I felt that Helen was in some kind of danger. I had to go back. And when I got outside the rooms, there was no light under Helen’s door, but there was one in Mr. Bacon’s. And I heard something. It frightened me. It was like a revolver shot, only very soft, sort of muffled. There was no one in the room except Mr. Bacon. I am quite, quite sure of that. I was frightened. You know how when one is frightened, one looks all round. The curtains were drawn over the window. I could see that. But there was no one in the room, only Mr. Bacon. He had his back to me. I could see there was something wrong . . . there.” She shuddered a little. “There was blood on his head. He seemed to open the door and fall out as I came in.”

“The door into the bedroom opens inward,” the Attorney General pointed out. He had had a whispered conversation with Armstrong. “I would like your Honour to bear that in mind. It is possible that the opening of the door by the young lady might have concealed someone.”

Possible, but not very probable. The assessor on the left smiled broadly and made haste to conceal his smile.

And then at Danton’s request, the night watchman from the hotel had to be recalled, was cross-examined through the interpreter. “Could he swear as to which memsahib it was he had seen coming out of the dead man’s room?”

The man could not swear, was obviously perturbed. Naturally, their clothes had been entirely different, but to a native there would not be dissimilarity between a green silk mackintosh and a blue silk wrapper.

Was he absolutely certain that the memsahib when he saw her was coming out of the room, not going into it?

No, even that he could not remember. It was long ago. He had been sleeping. There had been a memsahib at the door, that was all he knew. He had thought that she had gone in at the next door, but now he could not be sure.

Danton waved triumphant hands and Esther was told she might go. The case was drawing to its conclusion now. There was very little doubt as to how it would go.

And even then Danton had still one more trump card to play. He produced it the next morning. An elderly gentleman, who hurrying round to the scene of action on the morning of the murder when Stanley had called out his warning “Murder—there’s been murder done there!” had run into the man Vernon hurrying away.

“God, damn you!” the man Vernon had said—a large fierce, red chested man in an obvious hurry, the old gentleman described him to have been—“get out of my way!” He had not mentioned it before. He had really not felt it was any business of his. If the man was guilty of murder, the police would catch him in due course. He did not believe in interfering with, or helping the police. They knew their own business best. He lived up in Ruanda. He grew tobacco there. He had been in at the hotel for the week end. But no one had thought of questioning him, so he had not volunteered his information. He was a long-winded old gentleman, and once started, he talked a lot, but the main gist of his story was meeting Vernon. Danton had ferreted that out of him, hearing by chance of something that he had said to one of the other hotel visitors.

There then was Danton’s case. He filled it in for the benefit of the Court. He described the murder graphically. So much of his description fitted in with what Armstrong had already deducted that even Armstrong himself had to admit that it was clever. It did not alter Armstrong’s private opinion. He was quite certain that Mrs. Helen Dawson was guilty. But Danton—well, he made it sound different.

The man Vernon had sworn to kill Bacon when they next met. Bacon knew this and he was afraid. The two men saw each other that night at the dance. Without doubt they recognised each other, though they gave no sign. When Bacon retired to rest, he was obviously uneasy in his mind. He got out his revolver; it was lying on his dressing table during his interview with Mrs. Dawson. She may have stood either to the right or the left of the dressing table, that was really quite immaterial. She testified anyway to the revolver being there. But Vernon crouched outside, waiting for the interview to end. It was quite obvious that he had been there—who else would have cut the mosquito wire? Who would have had any object in cutting it? To Danton’s mind, it was quite plain what happened.

There was the discrepancy in time to be accounted for, because Mrs. Dawson said that she left the room at 3.30, and the murder was not committed till 4 a.m., but on occasions like this time was neither easy nor difficult to account for. In all probability, Vernon had stayed crouching for a little, gloating over his victim. All the accounts of him pointed to his being that type of man. He would be planning, brooding. And then, Mr. Danton imagined, this was how it must have been. Vernon had put in his hand and taken the revolver; if his Lordship and the Assessors would look at the drawing of the plan of the room, they would see how such an action was quite feasible. Bacon had leapt to his feet. He had not cried out. Men in deadly peril, especially if they are afraid, do not cry out. His one thought had been escape. He had made for the door and it was while he was fumbling to open it that the man Vernon had stepped in through the verandah and fired the fatal shot. It could be the movement of a second to step back behind the curtains in front of the window, which accounted for Miss Blain’s seeing nothing but the murdered man and the revolver as she came into the room. And then let them consider for a moment, the man’s subsequent actions.

Did they not all point to his guilt? His drunken boasting, his flight, his death, stricken down by madness, up in the solitudes of the mountains.

“Remorse doubtless dogged his footsteps,” said Danton, dramatically; he had been very dramatic through most of his speech. “But is there any doubt that could the dead speak, his evidence would remove the last trace of guilt from this unfortunate woman’s head?”

There was a stir of movement and noise in the Court when he had finished speaking.

The Judge rose solemnly and announced that he would require ten minutes in which to read over his notes. The Court was adjourned for that space of time. They took Helen into a room adjoining the Court and one of the police officers sent to the hotel and got some tea brought over for her.

But now that it came to the point, though her mouth was dry, her throat parched, she could not drink. She did not like to put out her hand to the teapot to pour it out, she knew that it would tremble and give away her desperate fear. How horribly afraid she was! All these hours in her lonely cell had been as nothing to these minutes of waiting.

The two police officers were sorry for her. They stood away from her by the door, talking in whispers.

“Try to drink a little tea, Mrs. Dawson,” one of them said to her. “It will do you good.”

But when she shook her head and they saw the trembling of her hands, which she tried so desperately to keep still, they left her alone. It would soon be over now, they did not think there was going to be any doubt about the verdict.

Whether it was ten minutes, or ten half hours that she sat there, Helen never knew. Presently someone came to the door and said something and the officer, who had first spoken to her, came back and stood beside her.

“They are ready, Mrs. Dawson,” he said. “Will you come? “When she had to move, her terror fell away. She followed them back into the Court outwardly, at least, quite composed.

And almost immediately on her return, the Judge came back and took his seat and began to address the Assessors. His voice was calm and grave; there was a note of reassurance in it.

He pointed out that the case against Mrs. Dawson, as presented by the prosecution, had been strong enough to warrant a Magistrate’s Court committing her for trial to the High Court. They had proved motive. She had lived with the murdered man, and during this time, he had made a will, leaving her a large sum of money on his death.

There was the question of the girl Esther Blain and the entries in the dead man’s diaries. She had access to the room; she did not in fact deny that she had been there. And then slowly and weightily, he got down to the points put forward for the defence.

The Counsel for the defence had put in front of them several interesting facts that had been omitted by the prosecution. He would ask them to consider these very carefully. It was very dangerous to convict on circumstantial evidence. Two people had desired this man’s death. They had both been present on that fateful evening. Which of them had done the deed? That was the question they had to decide.

The Judge’s voice went on and on; it seemed to beat against Helen’s brain. She tried to counter it with little whispered words.

“I must not make a scene,” she said that over and over again to herself.

She kept her eyes on his face. It was a kindly face, a little overweighted for the time being with dignity. Very red, because in the heat of the Court, the huge wig he had to wear was very trying. It had been designed for a much cooler climate. From time to time, he had to mop his brow with a large silk handkerchief.

And now he had finished speaking and there was a tense silence all round her.

The two Assessors were leaning towards each other whispering, conferring, weighing in the balance of their minds whether she was guilty or not.

Now the one with the humorous face had drawn back; he was sitting erect looking at the Judge, and the other, the dull pompous one, was staring at Helen as though she were some riddle he was trying to understand.

“Have you considered your verdict?”

The Judge’s voice broke across the silence of the Court. It had rather the effect of a stone dropped into water.

“Yes, your Honour.” The answer came very swiftly and was followed by an instinctive stir of movement in the Court.

The Judge was speaking again, courteously, very gravely, to Mrs. Helen Adaire Dawson.

“I agree with the verdict,” he was saying. “You have been here under a grave charge, Mrs. Dawson. You have borne yourself through your ordeal with commendable strength and patience. I congratulate you on the result. You are acquitted of the crime of which you have been accused, and you are at liberty to leave the Court.”

A hush of silence, a surge of movement. The Judge followed by the Assessors was leaving the Court; the general public was pushing its way out through the wide open doors into the hot sunshine.

Danton excited, elated, reached up his hands to Helen; behind him she could see Tony, Esther and Dick making their way towards her.

“Dick! I . . .” Helen whispered. She stood swaying, tired nerves gave out. “I . . .” she sobbed, and sinking down on to the chair behind her, burst into merciful tears.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Dream

Love that comes lightly, lightly goes, and if in his passing he treads underfoot all that our hearts hold most dear, that is our own fault. Because love is in reality a god and if we play at worship he has fires that will most surely burn.

Helen and Dick came to their last interview in one of the rooms of the Kampala Hotel. It was a drab enough setting to the end of their romance. Staines had wanted Helen to go back to his house with him after the case was over, but she had insisted upon going to the hotel. She wanted, and this was odd because, of late, she had so dreaded loneliness, to be alone. She did not even want Esther to come with her. Let everyone stay where they were for the time being, and let her have one or two days at the hotel by herself.

“Just to get normal again, Tony,” she had explained. “Just to lie in bed as late as I like in the morning and say over and over again to myself, ‘Free! ‘“

But to Dick she wrote a letter, giving it to Tony to give him, because after that breakdown in Court she had seen no one but Danton and Tony. They had hurried her into the little room at the back of the Court and let her have her cry out, not fussing her overmuch, just waiting till she was calm enough to discuss plans. And that had been her plan, the hotel for a few days . . . and Dick.

So she had written her note and given it to Tony. “Come to dinner to-night,” she had written, “I shall be sensible and normal by then. And they’ll give us dinner to ourselves on the verandah of my room.”

She lay all afternoon in her room with the curtains drawn and a wet handkerchief over her eyes to obliterate all traces of tears. She wanted to look lovely when he came. Her shallow, intensely vivid personality was able to turn its back very quickly on things that were past. She was not afraid any longer, or tired, or humble. She was happy. Happiness glowed all through her. Life could still be made to be lovely, and though she said “A fortnight,” in reality her mind claimed much more than that. She was going to be happy for ever, with everything nasty and mean swept out of her life, with love once more triumphant.

A gay, stupid hope; the words which she had remembered in Court applied to it very well:

What of soul was left, I wonder
When the kissing has to stop.

She was radiant when he came, in the dress that she had worn on that evening when he had first said “I love you.”

“Let’s pretend it’s the Carlton again, Dick,” she said, and slipped her hand into his, and laughed. “Do you remember?”

Yes, he remembered, and the memory made him sullen. There is nothing in this life so unpleasant as someone who remembers the things you wish to forget. And love grown stale tastes very bitter in the mouth.

She did not notice his sullenness, she thought he was shy. Her gaiety tried to combat his shyness. All through the dinner, and it was a pleasant enough meal, served at a table for two, on the loneliness of the verandah she laughed and talked and teased him with memories, but at last it was as though his silence, his moody eyes which looked away from hers, beat down into her gaiety, forced her to take notice.

“Have you hated it all most dreadfully, Dick?” she asked, leaning across the table towards him, inviting him to light her cigarette.

The silent footed boys cleared the table and put coffee down before them.

“Has it worried you to think that . . . that perhaps I might have done it.”

“No,” he said sombrely, “I’ve never thought that.” He looked down at his hands, holding the match with which he had lit his cigarette. “I think it is myself that I hate,” he said slowly.

As though the little wind that blew towards them off the golf course had suddenly grown chilly, Helen shivered. “Oh, but why?” she asked, and tried to laugh. “What have you done, most beautiful one, to earn hate!”

He sat there saying nothing, not looking at her, moving the salt cellars and things about on the table.

She wanted to cry out and beat with her hands against his silence. It was as though all her joy was shuddering and shrinking to death because he would not look at her. She pushed back her chair quickly and stood up. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s getting cold out here. Besides, I hate a finished feast, don’t you?”

She pushed open the door of the bedroom and looking back at him, over her shoulder, inviting him to follow her, she went in. The stage, she realised that herself, was not very artistically set. There is as a rule something bleak and undignified about the furniture of hotel bedrooms. The bed draped with its mosquito nets stood squarely in the centre of the room; there was a heavy looking cupboard, a dressing table with its upright chair, a looking glass cracked across the top. By the side windows there was a low couch. She made for that and curled herself up in one corner of it and patted the cushions for him to come and sit beside her, forcing laughter into her eyes.

“I don’t like it,” she admitted. “It isn’t nice. I’d rather have your verandah, or the camp fire and the moonlight on safari, wouldn’t you, Dick?”

He stood looking down at her. His eyes were very dark, no longer like blue flames, warming her heart.

“One makes mistakes, doesn’t one?” he said. “You know that is possible.”

“Mistakes?” she answered, “why, of course.” It was strange how cold she felt, for the night was hot and the room stuffy. “What has happened, Dick?” she said. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said, and looked away from her round the room. “It’s all . . . Oh, I think I’ve been mad. You did something to me to make me mad, and now it has left me . . . the madness. I . . .”

He stopped for want of words, he could not bring himself to say, “I don’t love you. I never have.”

Out of the pain that, for the time being, deadened all her thoughts, Helen’s mind found one of her favourite quotations.

“‘A trifle makes a dream,’ “she said softly. “‘A trifle breaks it.’ Sit down, Dick, don’t be afraid. I shan’t make a scene. In all my life, I’ve never done that. Now tell me, it is Esther, isn’t it?”

How did she know? Perhaps it was fear that leapt to sudden knowledge. She had always been afraid of Esther. One could call it jealousy if one liked, but it was not jealousy, it was cold, stabbing fear.

He sat down beside her, his hands thrust into his pockets, hunched forward a little.

“Why jump to conclusions?” he asked, “Why must it be someone else?”

He turned to look at her. “It was only a game to you, wasn’t it?” he pointed out.

“A game . . .” she answered, “which you are tired of playing. . . . Oh, my dear!”

He flushed. “That was beastly of me,” he acknowledged, “and not quite true. I want to be honest about things. I do love Esther. I don’t know when I started loving her. I think it must have been from the first—only I was blind . . .”

“Moon blindness,” she said, and stood up quickly and moved away. “I’ve got to laugh,” she thought, desperately. “I must help him out of this with laughter. It isn’t his fault.”

She put her hand to her mouth, her teeth caught at the soft white skin, she bit in deep, deep. Physical pain must bring laughter to hide the pain in her heart.

When she turned to face him, she was laughing, her quizzical, friendly laughter that had in the days of his love so hurt him.

“Poor Dick,” she teased, “how horribly awkward for you. To fall in love with the new love and find the old one arranging a supper, a dance and an elopement.”

She came back to him and putting her hands on his shoulders, stooped for a second and laid her face against his hair. “It doesn’t matter, Dick,” she consoled. “It was, as you say, a game and” (she stood up straight and her hands fell away). “It’s finished,” she added, quietly.

“You are hurt,” he said stupidly, “annoyed. . .” He could never find words with which to express his thoughts. The pressing need in his mind for the moment was to get away. He moved to the door. “I expect you’d like me to go away, wouldn’t you?” he said.

“Yes, perhaps that is best,” she nodded. “And you and Esther, are you going to get married?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. Bitterness swept over him. “I shouldn’t think so. I should think the best thing I can do is to blow my brains out.”

“But why?” she asked. “Dear beautiful one, don’t be absurd, that isn’t how one ends a game.”

He lifted miserable eyes and looked at her. “If you take it like that,” he said slowly. He found the handle of the door, he pulled it open. “I’ve never understood you,” he acknowledged, “least of all now.”

No, he had not understood. She might thank whatever gods she had for that. Long after he had gone, she was still standing there, looking at the door which he had closed behind him. She did not understand herself. All her life she had played at love, never being really hurt herself and now suddenly, life in love’s name held a cup of exceeding bitterness to her lips and bade her drink. There was knowledge in the cup and pain and hopelessness. Stripped bare at last of all pretence, she knew herself a thing that love rejected.

And had she, without love, anything in the world worth living for? Eternity seemed a waste of blankness to her trembling soul. Past days and nights, and dear delights and vain, came tumbling about her heart. Was there nothing left but dust and ashes, no poor small spark of fire at which to warm her hands? “Because I am old,” she whispered, “he could not love me. What a stupid dream I dreamt!”

She undressed at last, with cold, weary fingers fumbling at the fastenings of her dress, and slipped on her nightgown and crept into bed. But she did not sleep. She lay till the morning came, looking at her thoughts.

Major Staines, calling at the hotel the next day very early, was greeted with the information that Mrs. Dawson had been still earlier astir. She had asked for a car to drive her through to Entebbe, eaten a very hurried breakfast and departed. No, she had not said anything about coming back, but she had given up her room, that much the management could tell Major Staines. He felt it to be odd and he was uneasy in his mind. Last night, Esther had chosen to confide in him.

“We can’t help it,” she said, standing in front of him, her hands tight clasped rather in the attitude of a schoolgirl who knows she is going to get a lecture, “we know that you, anyway, will think that it is disloyal, but we love each other, Dick and I.”

They were in opposing camps; there is no common ground on which youth and age can meet and discuss each other’s scars. If age is wise, it hides its wounds from youth.

“Why disloyal?” he asked. “And to whom?”

“To Helen,” Esther answered. “You know that Helen loves him.”

“My dear, I most certainly don’t.” He smiled at her frankness. “And aren’t you yourself rather jumping at conclusions? Helen enjoys—she always has enjoyed—a flirtation with anyone.”

“It hasn’t been a flirtation,” Esther said, but she had, none the less, looked a little taken aback. “She . . .”

“Well, then, the disloyalty would lie in talking of it, wouldn’t it?” he interrupted, not unkindly. “You and the young man are in love. There is no more to be said, is there? When is the wedding to be?”

“Oh, we haven’t arranged anything,” Esther explained.

He rather suspected that tears were at hand. “You see there is Helen. Dick has gone to see her this evening.”

“To ask her blessing, eh?” He attempted to tease her back to cheerfulness. “Well, I don’t suppose Helen will refuse it. She has always been very fond of you, hasn’t she?”

“She has always been a perfect dear,” Esther confessed. The stiffness went out of her attitude; she sat down on the sofa and laid her head on the arm of it and burst into tears.

“That is why I feel a perfect beast,” she sobbed, “taking . . . taking Dick away from her.”

Major Staines consoled as best he could. “But, really, my dear infant,” he said, “I do think you worry yourself needlessly. Helen isn’t going to break her heart over a young puppy—no disrespect intended—that is how he strikes an old fogey like myself—and Helen and I, please remember, are contemporaries.”

“I know,” Esther admitted. She rolled her handkerchief into a ball and rubbed her eyes. “I have known that all along. She is much too old for him, but he did, you know, he did think himself in love, and Helen . . .”

“Well, she may have thought herself, too,” he pacified her. “It is quite easy to cure one’s self of thoughts.”

But he did not feel happy in his mind. It was damned selfish of these young people to have butted in just now, when Helen had been through so much, he could not but help feeling that.

Hence his early arrival at the hotel. He went away defeated and perplexed. Where had Helen gone and would she, in due course, send for him? After all his faithfulness must offer some consolation, and if she was hurt, he wanted to help her through the hurt.

She might, if she must run somewhere, have run to him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A Just Judge

Judge Garth was a methodical and essentially punctilious person. He lived his life by rule. Circumstances, for instance, however unpleasant or urgent, had very hard work to make him veer from breakfast at 8 a.m., and a copy of The Times to read during breakfast. The paper, since circumstances chose to plant him in an outpost of the Empire, had perforce to be a month, if not six weeks old, the news therefore a bit stale. That did not prevent Judge Garth from reading it most solemnly to the accompaniment of fried eggs and bacon and hot coffee.

He had breakfast on the verandah of his house. It overlooked a pleasant, well-kept garden and the spread out waters of the lake. Every morning when he emerged from his bedroom punctually at five minutes to eight, Judge Garth would stand on the top of the steps, expand his chest and admire the view. He did that for five minutes, while the boys brought in breakfast. After that, he would dismiss beauty from his mind and read The Times, and when he had finished that and reached his office, he would dismiss everything, except the particular piece of work with which he happened to be dealing. He had an exceedingly well-ordered mind. It was like a house, with neat, well-kept rooms, through which he passed from one to the other, and he always kept the doors shut in between. Nothing got out of place, or mislaid, or lost in Sir Robert Garth’s brain.

He was not married. He had, as a matter of fact, rather a horror of women. They were such muddly creatures with the most disordered minds. You never knew of what women might not be thinking. They were deceptive and illusive and lacking in frankness. They were all attributes of which Sir Robert most firmly disapproved. So he had never even wanted to marry and he was not lonely as a bachelor.

A woman would almost certainly have been late for breakfast now and again, and she would have made a fuss about his wanting to read The Times. He had on occasions stayed in other people’s houses and he had seen these things happening.

One may imagine then, that on the morning after the Dawson case, Sir Robert viewed, with some consternation, the arrival of a motor car at his front door step, while he was still indulging in his five minutes’ appreciation of the view. Breakfast and The Times still awaited him and who on earth, his likes and dislikes were well enough known by now, could be breaking in on his privacy like this.

Consternation turned to a slight flicker of anger when the occupant of the car got out and proved to be a female! This kind of unexpectedness was so confoundedly like a woman. Then, as she turned to look up at him, he was conscious of a kind of hurried opening of some door in his mind. A door which he imagined he had most firmly closed only yesterday.

It was Mrs. Helen Adaire Dawson who stood gazing up at him, and, most punctiliously, Sir Robert’s thoughts stepped back into the room of her case and he shut his mind to his annoyance and a receding view of The Times.

“Can I see you?” said Helen, “please! It’s very important.” She came up the steps to him. “Is there any place where my chauffeur could go and get breakfast,” she added.

“Now was not that exactly like a woman?”

“I have not had breakfast myself yet,” replied Sir Robert, with somewhat chilly politeness. “Perhaps you will join me and the boys will see to the driver.”

“Oh, I don’t want breakfast, I’ve had it,” said Helen. She stood on the top step beside him, looking round her. “How beautiful it is here. I used to hate that lake from the prison.”

Being no mean reader of people’s faces, Judge Garth gathered that the lady beside him was strung up to some high pitch of nerves. Probably she had not slept all night; the shadows under her eyes testified to tears.

“If you don’t want breakfast,” he said, quietly, “perhaps you will wait in my office while I have mine. Breakfast is not a long meal with me.” He had shut his mind to The Times; he did not even glance at it. “I shall not keep you more than a quarter of an hour.”

“Yes, you must have your breakfast, of course,” admitted Helen. She turned to look at him. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have come to you. Is it. . . is it dreadfully out of order? Yesterday . . . Oh, I don’t know, you look quite different, don’t you, all in red with a wig. You . . . you made me think of God!”

Judge Garth blinked his eyes quickly. The woman, he realised, was not so much madly irreverent, as she was terribly overstrung.

“If I can be of any use to you,” he said gravely, “I am at your service, but it must be after breakfast. I am afraid I am not godlike enough” (his lips relaxed into a smile) “to do without my breakfast.”

Helen waited for him, sitting in the room he had designated as his office. It was a very peaceful room. Perhaps he had been fully aware of that; peaceful, because it was so orderly.

There were in it more books than anything else; a couple of very comfortable chairs; a large, scrupulously tidy writing table, and only one picture on the soft coloured walls. Helen sat and looked at the picture. It drew her eyes, held them with its peace and quiet. It was a picture of tall waiting pine trees and a long blank road looking into a most perfectly subdued sunset. Not a picture that she had ever seen before, nor did she ever see it again, but most curiously, it remained with her.

She looked from it to Sir Robert Garth as he came into the room, his quarter of an hour exactly finished. He was relieved to notice that the quiet of the room had had its effect; the woman looked much less hysterical, not so inclined to sudden, unexpected irreverences.

“Well,” he said and came forward gravely and sat down opposite her, “what is the trouble, Mrs. Dawson? How can I help?”

“I wanted to tell you my story.” said Helen. She too spoke gravely. “At least I wanted to do so this morning, but now it seems rather an hysterical and stupid thing to do. After all, it can’t interest you very much. There is only one thing in it all that really concerns you. I was going to have told it you at the end” (she flashed a smile at him), “thinking that you’d understand. But now . . . oh, well it seems better to come to the point right away. I did kill Tom Bacon. Yesterday, I wanted to be let off—but to-day I don’t. That’s all.”

Judge Garth made no immediate reply. His mind was very busy back in that department of his brain which contained the Dawson case. He had all the evidence most neatly stacked there. The prosecution and the defence, his own deductions, what the assessors had thought, Armstrong’s certainties, Danton’s doubt. And back in this room, he found his interest suddenly roused again. The woman’s confession, from the point of view of the law, meant nothing. She had been acquitted; she could not be tried again. He would have to explain that to her presently. Lay people always found that aspect of the law had to be.

But had she really done it? That, psychologically, did interest him. And why “yesterday, I did want to be let off—to-day, I don’t.” That too, was interesting, though in a minor degree. Women had such perfectly useless reasons as a rule.

Apparently, his silence irked her for with a little abrupt movement, she rose and moved to the door.

“I can show you how it happened,” she said quickly. “This room is a little like that one at the hotel. There’s this door and that facing each other, the window over there.”

She turned to look at him, her hands were clasped in front of her, her head a little thrown back.

“I hated Tom Bacon,” she explained. “I had good cause to hate him. Oh, I know, I’m what’s called an immoral woman. I lived with him. I let him pay for my body. I’ve lived with other men before. I don’t know if you’ll understand? I don’t think men ever do understand women; they sum them up into two classes, good and bad. That’s all. I’d be among the bad ones, wouldn’t I? But, till I met Tom Bacon” (she looked away from him to the picture on the wall again), “I . . . well, I had never thought of myself as bad. It was fun . . . having a good time . . . loving . . .” (her voice dropped a little), “and being loved. And then he came and I wanted his money, and I . . . I sold myself for that.”

She gave her shoulders a little shake and came back and sat down. “I’m telling you after all,” she said a little wistfully, “all the things which can’t really interest you.”

“I would not say that,” said Sir Robert, “I am not uninterested and believe me I realise that it is imperative for you to tell all this to someone. Why not to me then, who am a complete outsider, whose opinion will at least be unbiassed.”

“And you are a judge, aren’t you?” she asked, “A just judge.”

“I am sure I hope so,” he admitted. “I thought I judged justly yesterday.”

“But I killed him,” said Helen. “That was what I’ve come to tell you. There did not seem to be any other way out. I . . . I couldn’t face going back to the poverty . . . the sort of scrambling for life that had begun before I met him. I went to his room that night, after my talk with Esther, meaning to kill him. You see he had practically told me earlier on in the day that he was tired of me; that he meant to tear up that will. Oh, perhaps he was joking, he had a funny idea of humour, but I . . . I was desperate. When I opened the door, he turned round in his chair to look at me and I hated him. It was like a hot wave, that hatred, it rose in my throat almost choking me. But I did not say anything. I went across the room to his dressing table. He said something rather offensive about not wanting to be bothered and I picked up the revolver. He saw it in my hands and he looked up and saw my face. He was always such an utter, sickening coward. He was frightened then, but he did not make a sound. He just pushed back the chair and stood up, and groped . . . it was like groping because all the time he kept his head screwed round, staring at me . . . his way to the door. I could not fire while he looked at me like that, but at the last, just for a second, he stooped to find the handle I suppose; he turned away and then . . .” She said it very slowly and deliberately, “I fired.”

It was possible, of course, even quite probable. He studied her gravely.

“Then you were behind the door when Miss Blain threw it open?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted. Her voice sounded eager. “I saw Esther come in. She stood just inside the door for a minute, then she ran forward, stooped to pick up the revolver that I had dropped, and I . . . I slipped out and the door shut behind me. That was when the night watchman saw me. He was quite right. I felt it was rather a shame the way in which he was bullied into thinking he was wrong.”

“I don’t think ‘bullied’ is a word which can be applied to any procedure in the High Court,” said Sir Robert judicially. He rose and moved over to his table and sat down on the chair there and pulled a piece of paper towards him and commenced to write or draw on it with his pencil.

“He is committing me back to prison,” thought Helen. “Oh, I’m glad, I’m glad. I shall be shut away. I shan’t have to see Esther and Dick getting married. No one will see me growing old. Perhaps they’ll hang me. I’m not brave enough to kill myself, but I do want to die.”

She did not dare interrupt; she sat on the edge of her chair staring at him, holding her breath, waiting for him to finish. And presently he looked across at her.

“Mrs. Dawson,” he said, “you’ll probably find this very difficult to understand, but it is a perfectly just and wise law. You have been tried and you have been acquitted of the crime of murder. You cannot be tried again for that same murder.”

“I can’t be tried!” whispered Helen. “But if you know . . . if I tell even you . . .”

“You can write it and send it to The Daily Mail,” he answered. “It makes no difference. And I do not think you will do it.”

He stood up and came back again slowly and stood in front of her. “What was it you called me just now, Mrs. Dawson?” he asked.

“A just judge,” she answered. She looked up at him a little unwillingly. He did not, it must be remembered, like women, but he was oddly stirred to compassion, looking into her troubled eyes.

“Well,” he began slowly, “that makes my position a little difficult, and yet . . . yes, I think I am right.” He drew up a chair and sat down in front of her. “Mrs. Dawson,” he said, “you face me with a truth which I am loath to believe. You have called yourself an immoral woman, and for all my position, I do not claim to be a judge of morals. But I do flatter myself that I am no mean judge of human nature. I do not know what has made you say ‘Yesterday, I wanted to be let off; to-day I do not.’ Only it seems to me that something within the last twenty-four hours has hurt you most intolerably.” He leant forward a little and put his hand over hers. “Is it not possible for you to look upon that hurt as the just punishment of your crime, if crime it were?” he asked softly.

Helen looked away from him. The colour swept over her face and died away again, leaving her very pale.

“You mean . . .” she whispered.

“Let the world think,” said Judge Garth. He sat erect again. Once he had made a decision, he rarely wavered from it, and he was convinced that his present decision was a just one. “Let the world think that the man Vernon murdered Bacon. There are no relatives or friends to be hurt by the thought, and there is little doubt that Vernon intended to murder when he cut that wire. Danton was perfectly correct in that supposition.”

Helen stood up slowly and he rose to face her. He had never felt so sorry for anyone in his life before. Her hands were making little aimless movements, smoothing out the silk of her dress, her lips quivered. He had watched her through the case and thought of her as a shallow woman with one great gift of courage. He hoped the courage would come to the surface now. Helen was thinking of Dick and her silly, useless love for Dick.

Was this how God punished, choosing his weapon with most deliberate care?

“You see,” Judge Garth began again, when he was interrupted by the appearance of a native servant in the doorway. The servant bowed towards Helen.

“The Doctor Staines sahib is here in a car,” he said. “He asks for the Memsahib.”

“For you,” said Sir Robert. He held out his hand. “Through all this you have had one very firm friend, Mrs. Dawson. I believe that he has earned your silence.”

She turned to him, her lips smiled, her eyes almost smiled.

“You have been so good to me,” she said. “So patient.” Her hand held his for a moment, she turned to the door. “I’ll never forget,” she whispered.

But whether she meant that she would never forget his kindness, or his wisdom, or his advice, that he did not know.

Chapter Twenty-Six (And Last)

Reality

In the car going back to Kampala, Tony proposed to Helen for the second time. Of course, first of all, he wanted to know why she had driven in to see Judge Garth.

“Because . . . Oh, well, I don’t exactly know,” Helen prevaricated. She was, alas, singularly used to prevarication. “I think it was because my dream ended last night, Tony. You knew it was going to do that, didn’t you? And I wanted to talk to someone.”

“Well, why not have talked to me?” he asked, his eyes studied her face. “You know that I have had one particular dream for twenty years, and it still persists. Have you found the answer to my question yet, Helen?”

“Dick is going to marry Esther,” she replied. “Isn’t it because you know that, that you are asking me again?”

“That is one reason,” he acknowledged, “but there are many others.”

“You are very good to me,” Helen said softly. “Why should you be so good?”

“Because I love you,” he answered. He drew her a little closer. “Twenty years ago I loved you,” he explained. “Have you forgotten?”

“No,” she looked at him. “But in those days you were very honourable, Tony. You went away and left me when you found I was ready to be loved.”

“Because you were someone else’s wife.” He spoke quickly, a little grimly. “Heaven knows, perhaps I was a fool, but then it seemed the only thing to do. And now for those twenty years that lie between us, you must take my apologies, dear.”

“You—to apologise!” Helen said and sighed and for a second lifted his hands against her face.

“Well, who can tell?” he answered. “I might have kept you in order. At least, I would have had a damned good try.”

The houses of Kampala swung into sight—row upon row of houses scattered up the hillsides of which the township is composed, the two highest hills crowned by the native cathedrals of rivals sects.

“Well,” said Tony, “we are just there. Are you going to marry me . . . Helen?”

“I can’t,” whispered Helen. If he had earned silence as Judge Garth had said, he had also what there was of truth in her; she could not take his love on a lie. “There is such a lot, Tony, that you don’t know about—that I can’t tell you.”

He straightened himself sitting beside her, his hand tightened on hers.

“I know that you killed Tom Bacon, Helen,” he said. “Is that what you are afraid of? I have known it ever since that day on the river bank when Armstrong faced you with the truth and Esther put forward her pitiful effort to save you. Knowing hasn’t made any difference.”

“Oh, Tony,” sighed Helen. If there came to her a sudden vision of a young dark head and the flame of blue eyes, she shut her heart to it. Here was reality, the other was only a dream. “I’m not worth love like that. I never have been. But if you want me . . . then . . . it’s yes.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

“You see,” said Esther, walking round the links with Dick that afternoon playing their favourite, rather dilatory (since they had so much to talk about) game of golf. “I told you you need not worry, didn’t I? All her life, Helen has played at love. I think it is very wonderful and rather rash of Major Staines to want to marry her.”

Dick made no immediate reply. He also had had a few dreams and memories to contend with. He had left Helen that evening of their last interview, not over pleased with himself, feeling, indeed, that to blow his brains out was probably the best solution of his life. He had been miserable, and contrite, and angry, and sore. And the next morning he had got up and gone on to Major Staines’ verandah rather late, for he had not fallen asleep until the early morning and he had overslept himself in consequence, to find Helen and Tony and Esther and Miss Staines all sitting there, indulging in the most amusing, apparently, and amiable conversation. Esther had been sitting close to Helen, her hand slipped into the older woman’s, and it had been Helen’s eyes that had looked up to laugh a greeting at Dick.

“Beautiful one,” she had said. Somehow, he had not thought that she would ever call him that again. “How disgracefully late you are for breakfast! Esther, go and give him his bacon and eggs.”

He had not wanted breakfast, but Esther had risen at once and gone into the dining room and he had had, rather ungraciously, to follow her. And in the dining room, Esther had drawn very close to him and put her hand into his and given it a quick reassuring pressure.

“Dick,” she had whispered, “guess what has happened. “Helen and Major Staines are engaged to be married!”

He had just stared at her, he had said nothing at all.

And sudden fear had flickered across her face; her lips had trembled.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she had asked. “Oh, Dick, does it matter like that to you?”

Of course it did not matter. He had had to reassure her. And it did not matter, only . . . hang it all . . what could one believe!

His engagement to Esther had been announced as a matter of fact after that, and Helen still called him Beautiful One; sometimes when her eyes met his, she laughed at him. She seemed to have got back to her safe pinnacle of laughter. Perhaps what Esther said was true. Helen had always played at love. “The truest thing in her life” (she had called her love for him that), had been only a game.

He felt hurt and perplexed, remembering, and yet he was grateful to her. It is one very sure way of earning man’s gratitude to let go gracefully. She had let go, and there had been no fuss and no tears. But though he was grateful, he did not understand.

Helen and Staines were married in Kampala, and went off at once to Major Staines’ new house. For he had applied for a change on the head of his engagement—it would be easier for Helen to start a completely new life, where none of her story was known. And Esther went home with Miss Staines. Dick was to follow in six months’ time. They were to be married at home. There was no hurry about their marriage; they had all their lives in front of them.

Dick went back to his shamba and his coffee trees and building a house for Esther. He wrote to his mother telling her about his engagement, asking her to be very nice to Esther in England. He had to stand a certain amount of chaff from his fellow planters, but in time they forgot. Memories do not last for long in Africa.

Bacon lies in the mission churchyard that fronts the Government hill. He has a very nice, well-kept grave. Miss Thomson sees to it. Whatever his faults, he was at one time some woman’s baby, and that is enough for her. And Vernon presumably sleeps in his grave on the top of the mountain weighed down by the pile of stones which the eskaries heaped on to him. One says, presumably, “Sleeps,” for the natives will have it that he still runs abroad, a leaping, grinning ghost, followed by a Thing that no man sees.

Has Helen forgotten? Her sin and her dream, her hate and her love? Perhaps! She was always able to forget her tears easily, remember only her laughter. At least she knows that in the end she has found reality. She can afford to let the dreams go. She is middle aged, philosophical and at peace.

Not even the most righteous amongst us can ask for more when we come to the end of life.

The End