glen in which Forbes and his daughter were sedulously nursing to health and strength the dear wife and mother whose nervous system had suffered far more than she permitted to become known under the stress and strain of the kidnaping experience.
Even when Evelyn herself wrote, seconding her father's most friendly note, Theydon pleaded the exigencies of his profession and filled a letter with an amusing account of Bates's chagrin because he had failed to "bag a Chinaman on his own account," having actually purchased a pistol and fixed it in position before he and his wife quitted the flat.
Three months passed. On August 9, a broiling morning, Theydon was dejectedly reading of preparations for the "Twelfth," when a telegram reached him. It read:
"Handyside has arrived here in his car. Come for the gathering of the clan. We take no refusal. Forbes."
Theydon traveled north that night. He reached the glen in time for dinner next evening and passed a few delightfully miserable days in Evelyn's company.
At last, feeling that he was losing grip and might act foolishly, he announced to Forbes, one night when a glorious moon was shining, and he knew that Evelyn was awaiting him in the garden, that he must leave for London next day.
"Why?" inquired his host. "Has something unforeseen happened? I thought you meant remaining here till the end of the month at the earliest."
"I'm sorry," said Theydon, chewing a cigar viciously as a means toward maintaining his self-control. "I'm sorry, but I must go."
There was a slight pause. Forbes looked at his young friend with those earnest, deep-seeing eyes of his.
"Is it a personal matter?" he went on.
"Yes."
Again there was a pause. Theydon was well aware that he risked a grave misunderstanding, but that could not be avoided. It might be even better so. And then his blood ran cold, because Forbes was saying:
"Are you leaving us because of anything Evelyn has said or done?"
"No, no!" came the frenzied answer. "Heaven help me, why do you ask that?"
"Heaven helps those who help themselves," said the older man. "That is a trite saying, but it meets the case. I think I diagnose your trouble, my boy. You are in love with Evelyn, and dare not tell her so, because I happen to be a rich man. Really I didn't think you had so poor an opinion of me as to believe that money or rank would count against my daughter's happiness."
He said other things—kindly, wise, appreciative—but Frank Theydon never knew what they were. He managed to stammer out some words of gratitude and then went to find Evelyn.
She had crossed a sloping lawn and was standing by the side of a little stream that gargled and bubbled in joyous career to the nearby loch. She had thrown a white shawl over her head and shoulders, and looked adorably sylphlike as she turned on hearing his footsteps; the moonlight shone on her face and was reflected in her eyes.
"Oh, you're here at last!" she cried gaily. "The next time I ask any cavalier to escort me he will come more quickly, I imagine."
He stood in front of her, and stretched out both hands.
"Evelyn," he said, "here is one cavalier, at any rate, who offers himself as an escort for life."
The merriment died out of her eyes, and the quip on her tongue failed her. Greatly daring, her lover took her in his arms. Through the open windows of the drawing room floated the tender refrain of a ballad. Mrs. Forbes was singing, and sweet words blended with sweet music in the still air.
Then their lips met, and the dark glen became an earthly Paradise.
The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley
CHAPTER II "Who Hath Done This Thing?"
CHAPTER VI Wherein Furneaux Seeks Inspiration From Literature and Art
CHAPTER IX Wherein an Artist Becomes a Man of Action
CHAPTER X Furneaux States Some Facts and Certain Fancies
CHAPTER XI Some Preliminary Skirmishing
CHAPTER XII Wherein Scotland Yard is Dined and Wined
CHAPTER XIV The Spreading of the Net
CHAPTER XVI The Close of a Tragedy
CHAPTER I
The Water Nymphs
Does an evil deed cast a shadow in advance? Does premeditated crime spread a baleful aura which affects certain highly-strung temperaments just as the sensation of a wave of cold air rising from the spine to the head may be a forewarning of epilepsy or hysteria? John Trenholme had cause to think so one bright June morning in 1912, and he has never ceased to believe it, though the events which made him an outstanding figure in the "Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley," as the murder of a prominent man in the City of London came to be known, have long since been swept into oblivion by nearly five years of war. Even the sun became a prime agent of the occult that morning. It found a chink in a blind and threw a bar of vivid light across the face of a young man lying asleep in the front bedroom of the "White Horse Inn" at Roxton. It crept onward from a firm, well-molded chin to lips now tight set, though not lacking signs that they would open readily in a smile and perhaps reveal two rows of strong, white, even teeth. Indeed, when that strip of sunshine touched and warmed them, the smile came; so the sleeper was dreaming, and pleasantly.
But the earth stays not for men, no matter what their dreams. In a few minutes the radiant line reached the sleeper's eyes, and he awoke. Naturally, he stared straight at the disturber of his slumbers; and being a mere man, who emulated not the ways of eagles, was routed at the first glance.
More than that, he was thoroughly aroused, and sprang out of bed with a celerity that would have given