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THE

BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

HUMRT WALES

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NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.
1914

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THE CENTURY CO.

Published, November, IQ14

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• • ■ » •

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•• •"•••••

CONTENTS :

I. — ^A Party of Three

II. — ^The Way of All Flesh
III. — ^The Casket ....
IV. — The Impossible Fact

V. — ^The Voice of the Dead
VI. — A Glimmer from the Lost Days
^ VII. — ^The One Welcome

VTII.— "Till Death Us do Part"
IX. — ^The Nightmare on the Links

X. — Dr. Hegiras

XI. — ^The Doctor's Reconstruction of
Events ....

173
XII. — The First Word from Mrs. Stuart 191

XIII. — ^A New Mystery .

!^^ i XIV. — ^Across the Abyss .

^1- V

PAGB

3
16

47
68

103

119

140

158

208
227

vi CONTENTS

PAGB

XV. — ^The Meeting . . . . 243

XVI. — Black Magic .... 265

XVII. — The Recollections . . . 282

XVIII. — The Stranded Women . . . 297

XIX. — The Little Room at Illingham . 312

THE
BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

CHAPTER I

A PARTY OF THREE

IT is desirable, for two reasons, that the plain
facts concerning William Broddebank should
be laid before the world. In the first place,
the vague rumors which have obtained currency,
passed with a smile and a shrug from lip to lip,
tend to envelop the matter with an atmosphere of
quackery and charlatanism, and to bring upon
his relatives and friends undeserved opprobritim
as cranks and tale-bearers. In the second place,
the public can legitimately claim a moral right to
a disclosure of the facts : for they do undoubtedly
provide knowledge — definite proof, available to
the normal senses — ^upon a subject of vital impor-
tance to human beings, which hitherto has resisted
all attempts at investigation. Upon my mind,

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

at least, when I think of the amazing events
which I watched at close range, now that the
nerve- and brain-strain, the awes and fears and
tense emotions of the time, have passed or are
passing, I find that there is left the indelible im-
press of one tremendous fact: the reality, as a
separable entity, of the essential intangible being,
of that sum of mind, character, and consciousness
that we call the human ego.

The knowledge, indeed, has not been attained
as the result and reward of careful, patient re-
search: it has been reached through what we must
call accident; and by a singular irony — ^though
an irony which is very explicable when the facts
are understood — ^the accident was brought about
through the agency of one who not only depre-
cated inqtnry upon these subjects, not only
sneered at those who took part in inquiry, but
denied that there was anything to inquire about.

I confess that I approach my task with diffi-
dence. I know that, however careful I may be
to confine myself to a simple statement of what
occurred, however scrupulously I may guard
against any temptation to exaggerate or to color,
however moderately, plainly, and straightfor-

A PARTY OF THREE

waxdly I may write — I know that, despite every
effort I can use in those directions, I shall have
difficulty in obtaining credence. That is not said
by way of complaint. I recognize that I am the
victim not of men, but of circumstances, which
must bring me in contact with the skepticism
lying at the base of human character. It is within
our daily experience that individuals are credtdous
to the last degree, but the race as a whole is
skeptical. Anything new is approached invari-
ably, indeed, inevitably and no doubt wisely,
with suspicion. Most of those living to-day can
remember the dubious shake of the head, the air
of superior wisdom, of practical common sense,
with which the first stories of human flight were
received. It is that attitude of mind that I must
be prepared to meet. For I have to tell of things
that have not happened before within the knowl-
edge of man.

It is, as I have indicated, a curious, but a
comprehensible, irony, that the central figure
in these events, and the agent immediately re-
sponsible for them, shotdd have been a man who
embodied in the absolute this characteristic of
skepticism. I suppose you wotdd search the

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

world in vain for a more thorough-paced material-
ist than William Brocklebank. He believed in
nothing whatever but what he could see or touch
or reach through the medium of Science; and he
regarded physical life, life on this planet, as the
be-all and end-all of personal existence. Indeed,
he objected to the very word skeptic, as applied
to himself : he said that he did not doubt ; that he
knew, that he was certain.

Had such a man been a pessimist, he would
have resented the fact of his own birth. But he
was not a pessimist. On the contrary, he was
genial and happy, bubbling always with an
irrepressible sense of himior. I have never, I
think, known anyone who combined so hard a
philosophic standpoint with such innate cheerful-
ness of disposition. He had had his full share of
troubles, but he regarded life as highly desirable;
he was thankful for it, he clung to it ; it represented,
as I have heard him put it, "our one chance."
Accordingly, he resented, not birth, but death.
Particularly he felt that anyone who died yotmg,
or in the amplitude of physical powers and capa-
cities for enjoyment, had been defrauded of a
birthright. He could not be moved in argument :

A PARTY OP THREE

he might admit isolated points, but you would
find him, at the end of it all, imbedded like a con-
crete wall in his original position. I have some-
times felt irritated by his profound belief in his
own infallibility, and by its implied relegation of
all who differed from him to the category of fools,
or of sheep following fools. That faith in con-
tintiity which informs mankind as a whole, whether
it be the fruit of religion or of reason or of simple
inttiition, he brushed aside as the idle specu-
lation of people who "think what they want to
think."

Among this class — ^though he never said so — I
knew that he included me. He listened patiently
and politely to any views I might express; but he
regarded me, I felt sure, as a reasonably intelligent
being weakly engulfed in the vortex of conventional
beliefs. I am a busy man ; my life has been occu-
pied in the main with the aflEairs of the world in
which I find myself; but such thought as I have
given to deeper problems has not led me to agree
with Brocklebank. The human personality, it
appears to me, is relatively so big a fact, that it
cannot have evolved to endure only for a space
of time immeasurably short in the infinite. One's

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

sense of proportion is outraged by such a sup-
position.

At the time of the occurrences which I am about
to narrate, Brocklebank's age was forty or forty-
one; I was a year or two younger. Pqjj over a
decade we had been in partnership as com mer-
chants. Starting with slender resources, we had
passed through anxious times; which had left
their mark upon us both, but we had slowly built
up a prosperous and lucrative business. To-day,
any of our friends in Mark Lane, as well as our
correspondents in Buenos Ayres and Odessa, will
testify, I think, to the substantial position and the
sound repute of the firm of Brocklebank & Reece.

My partner was a man of medium height,
strongly built, with heavy rugged features.
Though I was the taller of the two he could give
me two stones and still turn the scale against me.
His somewhat small eyes appeared, even in his
serious moments, to have a smile at the back of
them, and there were little creases radiating from
their comers, and a deep perpendicular groove
on each side of his mouth, produced by muscles
continually relaxed in laughter.

Brocklebank had married some five years before

A PARTY OF THREE

the time of which I write, and from that hour had
regarded the fact of my continuing bachelorhood
as open to humorous treatment. His wife, whom
I knew well, was a small person, though by no
means diminutive, with a pretty face and form and
a pair of the most attractive, semi-serious, gray-
green eyes that I have ever seen. She had no
lack of individuality, yet she was essentially a
dependent woman. Nothing could have made
her a suffragist. She needed someone to lean
upon, and Brocklebank's substantial form and
concrete character suited her admirably. She
had an aboimding belief in him and accepted him
wholly. Any course which William Broddebank
proposed, any view which he held, was to her mind
necessarily sotmd. He had gained his ascendancy,
so far as I could see, by the simplest means. He
never opposed her or contradicted her: if she
got angry with him, or made some suggestion
obviously impracticable, he even appeared to
agree with her, to regard her annoyance as
the just resentment of a sensible woman bur-
dened with a pitifully brainless and incompetent
husband. His belief that she would subsequently
come to see her mistake for herself was always

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

justified, but he never called upon her to ac-
knowledge it. Strongly contrasted as were their
two characters, I have never known a happier
marriage.

So we come to the events of last August. In
that month, for the first time during our connection
in business, my partner and I decided to take a
holiday together. In previous years the question
as to which of us should remain at his post over
the dog days had always been a delicate one; and,
for my part, whenever I had consigned Brockle-
bank to that duty, particularly since his marriage,
I had started on my travels with a feeling that
I was behaving shabbily. This year, however,
circumstances had conspired to obviate the annual
difficulty: the aflfairs of the firm were jogging
along a straight road, there were no important
outstanding matters likely to need attention in
the immediate future, business was exceptionally
slack, and we had a capable manager to leave in
charge. Accordingly it came about that, when the
afternoon boat train drew out of Charing Cross
station, on the 3d of the month, it carried among
its passengers a party of three, consisting of the
Brocklebanks and myself. We were on our way

A PARTY OF THREE

to catch the night train at Paris for Aix» and so
on to Chamonix.

During the long journey Mrs. Broddebank and
I realized a certain comradeship, as fellow-victims
of my partner's irrepressible sense of humor.
He made each of us the butt of his jokes in ttun,
with perfect impartiality, and always expected
the other to take sides with him.

It is among my misf orttmes to possess a set of
vocal organs peculiarly incapable of accommo-
dating themselves to the French accent ; and this
Broddebank knew.

"One of the main reasbns why I brought you
on this trip, Chicken, " he said to his wife at one
point, "was to hear Reece speak French. It's a
privilege not to be missed."

Later on, Mrs. Broddebank curled herself up
on the seat of the railway carriage, in the
hope of getting scone sleep, and inddentally
revealed considerably more stocking than she
knew.

"Judging from Rachd's interesting attitude at
the present moment, Reece," said Broddebank,
survejring her, "you wouldn't think she was
twenty-six years of age."

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

She dragged her skirt over the limb. "You're
a beast, Billy, " she said.

We were none of us experienced mountaineers,
but we were all fond of climbing. By the time
we had been a fortnight at Chamonix we had
accomplished all the minor mountain walks, and
had made two or three excursions over snow from
Pierre-Pointue and Montanvert. Our ambitions
grew, and ultimately the question of attempt-
ing the ascent of Mont Blanc itself was
broached.

"I don't see why we shouldn't do it," said
Brocklebank, at dinner one night. "Scores of
people get up every year, and they can't all be
experts."

"Of course it's not what alpinists call a climb, "
I said: "it's a long, heavy pull."

Brocklebank finished his soup.

"The snow looks soft, doesn't it?" he said,
"like great pillows. It would be a restful place
to end our days on."

"The main thing to guard against is the
weather."

"Baedeker," Brocklebank contradicted, "says
it's the guide's charges."

A PARTY OF THREE

I ignored this, and added after a pause: "We
are in pretty good training by now."

"And even if you did slip over a precipice,"
said Brocklebank, "you would fall fairly light,
Reece."

I was too habituated to remarks of this kind to
take any notice of them.

"I am qtiite willing to make the attempt, if you
are," I said, at length. * "I suppose it would cost
us ten or twelve pounds each."

"How do you make that out?"

"The guides and the bill at the hut. Perhaps
two of us could do it for a little less."

"There's a reduction on taking a quantity.
Who runs this mountain? Could we get up a
syndicate to put a screen round it and charge for
a view of it by the minute, like a trunk call on the
telephone? A funicular railway is sure to come,
but I wouldn't underwrite the shares. We want
something new."

Mrs. Brocklebank had said nothing since the
conversation ttuned upon the subject of Mont
Blanc. Now she suddenly intervened. " I simply
won't sit and listen to it any longer," she cried
out.

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

It is rather cheap/' I agreed.

"Oh, I don't mean Billy's nonsense. Every-
body knows he can never talk anj^hing else."

The little lady was evidently slightly ruffled.

"What, then?" I asked.

" I mean this talk about you two going up Mont
Blanc."

Brocklebank said nothing.

"I don't think there would really be any cause
to be anxious," I said, as gently as I could. "We
wouldn't go unless the weather was good, and you
would be able to watch us nearly all the way,
through the telescope on the veranda."

"It's not that. How idiotic you are!" she
snapped out. "But I've been thinking about it,
and hoping to get up, ever since I came to Chamo-
nix. And now you are calmly talking as if I were
to be left behind. ... To watch you through a
telescope!" she concluded, in a withering tone.

Brocklebank was smiling over his fish. I
thought he intended to leave me to get my foot
out of the sticky patch in which I had planted it.
However, he came to my assistance. "I never
suggested it, " he said.

"Well, somebody did — Mr. Reece did."

A PARTY OF THREE

Reece, your turn."

"Oh, my foolish and irrelevant remarks," I
said, "don't aflfect the question at all."

He looked at me, for a moment, almost seriously.
"Don't you think she could manage it?" he asked.

"It's a grind," I said.

"I'm quite sure I can climb as well as either of
you," said the lady herself, still glowing with an
outraged sense of justice, but somewhat mollified,
it seemed, by a tardy disposition to acknowledge
her claims, "I've proved it again and again."

"I believe you can, " said her husband, and then
rettimed to his fish. "Anyhow," he added, after
consuming a mouthful, "if the Chicken gets tired,
Reece, you can carry her. There's not much of
her."

CHAPTER II

THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

THAT, apparently, settled it. I do not re-
member any further question arising either
as to whether we should attempt the climb,
or as to whether Mrs. Brocklebank should come
with us. We made our preparations; and three
days later, accompanied by two guides and a
porter, we struck upward among the wooded
slopes on the farther side of the river. It was
difficult to realize, as we followed, fifty yards in
the wake of the guides, along a wide, well-wom
track, occasionally crossing shallow streams, oc-
casionally making our way among the recum-
bent fonns of lazy, ruminating cows, who had
strayed tmder the shadow of the trees to escape
from the fierce heat, that we were indeed already
started upon the ascent of the highest motmtain

THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

in Europe. Prom time to time, as we went up,
we met parties returning from short morning
walks, and on each occasion felt a childish, but no
doubt inevitable, glow of satisfaction from the
consciousness of the superior hazard and arduous-
ness of the enterprise upon which we were set.
Our guides and ropes and ice axes, and the hour
at which we were starting, must evidently have
declared our purpose to these various people; but
only once did we hear it remarked upon. That
was when a girl turned, just after she had passed
us, and said to a male companion: "She's going
up Mont Blanc!"

"Evidently you and I are going for an afternoon
stroll, " said Brocklebank to me.

About three o'clock we reached the edge of the
Glacier des Bossons, and here for the first time the
ropes which the guides were carrying came into
use. We picked our way among the fissures,
using natural snow bridges where the clefts were
too wide to step across. Here and there we had
to dimb heavy, dislocated ice blocks with the help
of our axes, and at one point were driven by the
barriers confronting us to make a considerable
detour. It took us over two hours to cross the

• 17

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

glacier, though it is barely a mile and a half in
width; but ultimately we reached the solid rock
on the farther bank.

"If you feel equal to it, Rachel," said Brockle-
bank, turning to survey the valley of Chamonix
far below, the line of Aiguilles to the right, and
the distant block of mountains over Argenti6re,
"Reece will now repeat the French names of the
various points of interest that can be seen from
here."

A little farther on we came to the hut on the
Grands Mulcts. It is built upon a small island of
jutting black rock, surroimded by reaches of snow
and ice, which stretch above it and on either hand
apparently interminably. This was our refuge
for the night. We retired early to the rooms
which were allotted to us, and endeavored — for
my part, at least, with scant success — ^to obtain
sleep in our novel environment.

In the morning, it appeared from the guides'
statements, that the sky had overclouded after
stmset and a few flakes of snow had fallen. It was
again clear, but they made some objection to
proceeding on the score of the change in the
weather during the night. This attitude Brockle-

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

bank rightly diagnosed as one likely to prove
amenable to some additional pecuniary treatment.

"They know we are keen to get to the top,"
he said, "and that we can't go without them,
Htiman nature could hardly be expected not to
try to strike a bargain on such favorable groimd
as that. They'll probably stop us several times
on the way up to say that it's too risky to go on
under another twenty francs."

He went to speak to the men, who were talking
in another room, and presently returned.

"They say we have got oflf with fewer guides
than we are supposed to take by their regulations,
and they estimate the extra work at twenty francs
each and ten for the porter. We must also take
an additional bottle of wine. That's for the men
who ought to have come but haven't, to be con-
sumed by proxy. It's crude, I admit," he said,
putting his hand into his pocket with a look on his
face that was very characteristic, as if he were try-
ing to prevent himself laughing too much: "this
gross coin business eats into the glamour."

" One can't blame them for goingfor the money,"
he said cheerfully, when this matter had been
satisfactorily disposed of: "it's all they get. If

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

there is any honor and glory to be distributed,
they stand in the shade. You hear of an alpinist
making a first ascent of some mountain: they put
his photograph in the papers and a short biog-
raphy of his career, and you picture him standing
alone on the giddy simimit. When you look into
the details, you find that he was tied to a man on
each side of him all the way up. But those are
only mentioned incidentally, they are part of the
mountaineering appliances."

His wife cast a whimsical look at me. "Think
of a man who can make jokes at this hour and in
these circumstances!" she said.

I was entirely of her mind. I knew no one but
Brocklebank whose sense of humor could have
triuftiphed over the external conditions of the
moment: for we were eating a rough repast and
drinking indiflferent coffee, by the light of a smelly
oil lamp, in the shivering half hour preceding
daybreak.

"Why not?" he asked. "The world doesn't
stop revolving because we are going up Mont
Blanc."

By 4.30 we had started on the second and final
stage of the ascent. We were now roped together

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

and walked in single file, one of the guides leading,
followed by Brocklebank, with his wife behind
him;. I came next, and the porter and the remain-
ing guide brought up the rear. For a time our
course was intersected at intervals by crevasses,
which obliged us to follow a serpentine path.

"If you slipped down one of those, Rachel,"
said Brocklebank, once, when we had halted for
a few moments, while the leading guide cut some
steps, "you wotild emerge in forty years in the
valley below, looking just as you do now, and an
aged man of the name of William Brocklebank
wotild come to identify you."

The ascent for some distance was gradual, but
the heavy snow made walking diffictilt. Four
hours after leaving the Grands Mulcts we* had
reached the edge of the Grand Plateau, which
meant that we had covered about half the distance
to the summit from our starting point of the
morning. But it became evident that the guides
were not satisfied with our progress. They kept
exhorting us to proceed, if possible, more quickly.
As we went on, I noticed, with some surprise,
that the member of the party who was delaying
us was not Mrs. Brocklebank, but her husband.

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

The rope between the f onner and me, and between
her and Brocklebank, was always slack, but
between the latter and the leading guide it was
often taut. Sometimes the guide seemed actually
to be pulling him.

We were now surrounded by snowfields. On
every hand the interminable white swept away
in great smooth bosses and hollows, save here
and there where jagged shoulders of black rock
protruded from their mantle. We were bearing,
during this part of the climb, to the right, away
from the direct line to the summit, and presently
began the steep ascent of the Col du D6me. For
some time I had experienced a difficulty in breath-
ing comfortably, and as we went up the Col, the
difficulty grew rapidly worse. We had reached
an altitude of 14,000 feet, and the rarified at-
mosphere at that height proved far more trying
to lungs tinaccustomed to breathe it than I had
anticipated would be the case. My mouth be-
came almost intolerably dry and parched; and
I can remember with what joy I welcomed even
q, grimy Itimp of sugar which the guide behind
passed to me. Mrs. Brocklebank, just in front
of me, was walking wonderfully ; but I was growing

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

more and more dubious about her husband. He
stumbled once or twice and picked himself up,
apparently with an effort. And then, a few
minutes later, when we had climbed perhaps half
the distance of the Col, I saw him spread out his
hands, drop his ice-axe, and fall on his face in the
snow, jerking the leading guide backward.

We went up to him quickly and turned him
over. He was gasping for breath.

"I'm Sony," he said, with diffictilty — "I can^
do it — Go without me — ^Pick me up — coming
down,"

His wife dropped beside him, and put her arm
under his head.

''Of course not, Billy; of course not, dear," she
said. "We must get you down. We ought
never to have come. Give me some brandy."

I saw that she was right, that all thought
of reaching the summit must be relinquished.
Brocklebank's grit, I suspected, had carried him,
as it was, far higher than he was in a physical
condition to go. I knew that men apparently
robust often discover constitutional weakness in
circtunstances of stress. The effort of breathing
at a high altitude had evidently strained some

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

vital organ, probably his heart. I have little
medical knowledge, but I did not like the look
of his face : neither, I cotild see, did the guides.

Mrs. Brocklebank poured some stimulant be-
tween his lips. It revived him temporarily. We
raised him to his feet, and managed, with diffi-
culty, to get him some distance lower, perhaps
two hundred feet. Then he collapsed. He cotild
not stand even with our support. Indeed, he
was manifestly and alarmingly very ill.

It was clear that we could not carry a man of
his bulk down the mountain. Had there been no
snow and no glaciers, it would have been an im-
possible feat. It was decided, therefore, that one
of the guides and the porter shotild descend to the
Grands Mulcts to obtain help and a stretcher,
while the remaining three of us stayed beside
him. I tried to persuade Mrs. Brocklebank to go
down with the guide and wait for us at the hut,
but she would not leave her husband. It was then
ten o'clock. The men told us that, if everything
went favorably, they might make the double
journey in six hours. That meant, of course, that
in the best of circumstances, we could not hope
for their return tmtil foiu* in the afternoon.

THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

They slipped down the slope at a speed which
appeared to me to be dangerously fast even for
experienced mountaineers, and were soon lost
from our view.

Then began an exacting vigil such as I trust
I may never again be called upon to endure. A
shoulder of the mountain blocked out the view over
Chamonix. All rotmd, save for the few protruding
black rocks, tmbroken snow closed us in — a party of
three with a sick comrade, shut off by that white
barrier from sight and sound and touch of the
world below us. I shall never be able, I think,
to feel again that snow is beautif til : it must always
appear to me cruel, inexorable. It was bitterly
cold, and we had to keep constantly on the move,
for fear of frostbite; but the torture of our position
came from the sense of our helplessness, from the
inertia that was forced upon us in face of a need
for action becoming every moment more urgent.
We felt — we knew — ^that if Brocklebank could be
got quickly to a lower level he would have a chance
to recover, but that, minute by minute, while
he remained at this high altitude, the chance was
diminishing.

We scooped out the side of a hummock of snow

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

and laid him in the hollow, placing the softest
of our bundles under his head and covering him
with the little spare clothing we had with us.
That was literally all we cotild do. Once or twice
he muttered a few tmintelligible words, and then
gradually lost consciousness. Mrs. Brocklebank
kept chafing his hands, imploring him to speak to
her, to give some sign that he tmderstood that
help was coming, wotild soon be at hand, and that
he would be taken down to the valley. At one
time she raised him, with my assistance, into a
sitting posture, propping his back upon the wall
of snow we had made, because she thought he
might breathe with less distress in that position;
but soon she decided that it was too cramping,
and once again we laid him at full length. Every
now and then she put her cheek to his lips, an
agony of apprehension in her face. I walked
away — I could not bear to see her and to listen to
her — ^and went so far that the guide called me, in a
warning voice, to return.

We had plenty of provisions, but it was difl5cult
to induce Mrs. Brocklebank to take any suste-
nance. I forced her eventually to choke down
some wine and a few scraps of food.

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

"If I need it," she said, almost fiercely, "how
much more does he? We are doing nothing for
him."

I made no reply. For some time a cold fear had
pressed on my heart. I maintained outwardly
a sanguine attitude, and from the expression on
Mrs. Brocklebank's face, every time she withdrew
her cheek from his lips, I knew that he still
breathed ; but I began more and more to question
if it were possible that his vitality could withstand
this long-drawn-out ordeal. As I looked at him,
lying perfectly still, I recalled, with that gulp in
the throat, that sudden consciousness of the ca-
pacity to weep, which assail a man in emotional
crises, that he had said, only a few days before,
that the snow looked soft, a restftd bed for one's
final sleep.

After hours of fruitless effort to make him re-
spond to her words of entreaty and endearment,
Mrs. Brocklebank sat up and took his head on
her lap. One foot was curled under her. It
emerged from her short skirt and lay sideways on
the snow. Shod in a heavy boot studded with
nails, it still looked pathetically small. Then,
very quietly, she began to sob. Sitting so, amid

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

the waste of snow, bending over the stricken
husband upon whom she had been wont to lean
confidently and confidingly, her shotilders moving
with her silent weeping, she made, I think, the
most touching little figure I have ever seen.

I dropped down beside her and tried to take her
hand. She snatched it away. "A baby or an
old woman cotild hold my hand, " she cried fiercely.
*'A tnan would do something."

I knew she was distraught, yet the tatmt struck
home. I asked the guide, for the fifth or sixth
time, if it wotild not be possible, between us, to
get Brocklebank a little lower. He shook his head
stolidly, as before. We could not move him far
enough to benefit him, was his argument, always
repeated in the same tone, and if we changed our
position the ascending party might have difficulty
in finding us.

I had tried to put away from myself the hope
that the rescuers would arrive at the earliest
possible moment; but when four o'clock passed
and there was no sign of them, the disappointment
was none the less keen. A few minutes later,
however, the guide, who had descended a little
way and was standing on a knoll, gave a shout

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

and pointed downward. I joined him and saw,
far below, a thin line of men. They were creeping
up — ^very slowly, it seemed. Presently we could
see little clouds of snow rising about them, as
they dug their axes into the mass to drag them-
selves up the steep slope. Never, I think, has a
sight given me so much joy as did that serpentine
coil of human forms, drawing nearer. They were
carrying, we saw, among other articles, not one
stretcher but two — a precaution, no doubt, to
meet the chance that another of our party might
have succumbed during the long interval of
waiting.

In half an hour from the time we first sighted
them they were swarming about us. I did not
count their numbers, but there seemed to be a
great many of them; and not all, I perceived,
were Chamonards. Our messengers, it seemed,
arriving about midday, had found the hut full;
and everyone there, staff and visitors, mountain
parties setting out upon or returning from excur-
sions, had volunteered his assistance. I had felt,
I confess, before that time, no particular admira-
tion for mountaineers. I had looked upon them
as a class of men bent upon risking their lives in

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

enterprises of no conceivable utiKty to mankind.
But I shall always remember with deep gratitude
that experience of their instant readiness to come
to the assistance of any of their comrades in
diffictilty or distress.

A Frenchman I noticed in i)articular. I did
not know his name, but he was evidently a capable
alpinist, to whom the ascent of Mont Blanc would
hardly suggest a climb at all. He undertook the
direction of the measures for canying Brocklebank
down; and it was largely due to his organization
that the descent was made both safely and quickly.
Darkness had begun to fall, however, before we
reached the Grands Mtilets, and the oblique
crossing of the Glacier de Tacconaz which com-
pleted the journey was made by the light of
lanterns.

A spectacle somewhat eerily picturesque we
made, no doubt, as we crossed — a. long line of
black objects, each canying a lantern casting an
oval of yellow light upon the snow. A single
guide was leading, careftilly choosing the way and
occasionally stopping to cut steps for the stretcher
party immediately following. Then came the
rest in single file. Save for two guides, Mrs.

THE WAY OP ALL FLESH

Broddebank and I were last. I had walked be-
hind my companion for the most part of the
descent, but just towards the end I unroped my-
self and went beside her. Her wonderftil strength
and courage were at last yielding to the mental
and physical rigors of that long day. The strain
of our terrible vigil, it was now evident, had
told upon her heavily. She leaned upon me
more and more; it was necessary practically
to lift her up the rocks on the farther side of
the glacier; and when at last we reached the hut
she was in a state of exhaustion bordering on
collapse.

A doctor who had been summoned from Cha-
monix was waiting for us. His examination of
Brocklebank was very brief.

I was not tmprepared for what he wotild say.
A strong intuition had told me that, during the
latter part of the descent at least, if not during
the whole journey, the bearers were carrying a
lifeless burden. When I saw the doctor's bearing
and expression, as he carried out his few tests, my
arm closed roimd Mrs. Brocklebank.

"I can do nothing," was his pronoimcement.

He turned away, shaking his head slowly. " He

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

should have come to me before he attempted the
ascent, " he added.

''I think your assistance is needed here," I said
to him. For Mrs. Brocklebank had fainted, and
lay inert in my arms.

CHAPTER III

THE CASKET

rOUGH stiinned by the shock and over-
whehned with grief, Mrs. Brocklebank did
not break down or become hysterical. In
the days following the tragedy there was much
to be done, and her assistance, when I needed it,
was to be relied upon. She stated her wishes and
gave me necessary information simply and quietly.
"He must be cremated, " she said, as soon as we
had returned to Chamonix. "He wished it; and
I promised him that, if I outlived him, it should
be done. And his ashes must be strewn in the
garden at home, to help to nourish the flowers
that he loved."

These were just such instructions as I should
have supposed Brocklebank would leave, if he
left any at all, but her words came as a relief to
3 33

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

me. I had feared that she might wish to remove
the body to England — ^an onerous and costly im-
dertaking, and one springing, in my sense, from
a somewhat morbid sentiment.

Four days after the tragedy Mrs. Brocklebank
and I saw the coffin placed in a train for Geneva,
and took our seats — ^the only mourners — ^in one of
the carriages. I had little fear that my compan-
ion's self-control would prove tmequal to meet
the strain of the ordeal in front of us. The last
few days had brought home to me, with personal
force, the essential dependence of her nature; but
they had also impressed me with a sense of the
fine grit and courage enclosed within that small
frame of hers.

The tmdertakers met us at Geneva, and we
drove to the Crematorium. It was a long drive,
but I do not remember that we exchanged a single
word during the course of it. Mrs. Brocklebank
sat with her hands tightly clasped on her lap,
gazing for the most part straight in front of her.
My heart ached for her. A few days earlier she
had been tossing aside with indifference or with
partly simulated vexation her husband's cheerful
banter, happily entrenched in the knowledge of his

THE CASKET

tenderness of heart, as perfectly content with her
lot as mortal could be; now, with such suddenness
that the change was difficult of steady realization,
she was following his lifeless body, her heart
gripped by the consciousness that, in a few minutes,
even that would be reduced to a little heap of ashes.

We turned in, at last, through a pair of tall, iron
gates, and presently drew up before a plain, new
building of somewhat ecclesiastical design. While
the coffin was being carried in, Mrs. Brocklebank
clutched my arm, and there was sudden fear in
her face.

"Won't you stay here and wait for me?" I said
to her. "It won't be long."

"No," she answered; "let me come."

We followed the coffin into a small chapel, en-
tering by a door facing down the middle. It was
almost square in shape. Along the right side were
a few rows of chairs, with high windows above
them. The floor on the other side was unoccupied,
and the windowless wall carried a niunber of urns
on tiers of ledges. Facing us, at the opposite end
of the chapel, were double doors of some dark
wood, fitted with handles and bars of polished
brass.

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

The bearers waited in front of these. They were
opened, and then the coflBn was carried through
and placed upon trestles on the farther side. I
had a momentary glimpse, beyond, of what bore
the appearance of a heavy iron shield, covered with
bolts and clamps, built into a wall. Then the
doors were again closed.

We turned into one of the files of chairs and sat
down. From this position we could not see
through the doors when they were open. Pres-
ently certain soimds reached us from the chamber
into which the coffin had been taken — sounds of
tapping and of hammering.

"What are they doing?" asked Mrs. Brockle-
bank. Her face was very pale and her voice low
and tense.

" I don't know, " I answered. But I knew.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour elapsed while we
waited. Then the doors were opened a little
way, and one of the attendants came into the
chapel and approached us. He asked if we wished
to see the cremation.

Mrs. Brocklebank dropped upon her knees.
She did not speak, and the man waited.

"No," I said hastily.

THE CASKET

He was turning away, when Mrs. Brocklebank
stopped him with a quick gesture.

Still kneeling, her face bowed in her hands, she
spoke to me in so low a tone that I had to bend
close to her to hear. ' ' You go, " she said. ' * They
are all foreigners — strangers — ^none who knew him
— ^none who cared. You go."

It was an office I would gladly have escaped;
but I imderstood her feeling, and I thought my
nerves were fairly steady. So I rose and followed
the man through the doors.

The coffin and the trestles had disappeared.
I stood in an open space. And immediately I
was aware of the glare of the furnace. Where
had been the iron shield, that I had seen for a
moment, was now a mouth of fire. One looked,
as it seemed, through an opening of the wall,
into a lurid infinity of wreathing blaze. Himgry
yellow flames, coming apparently from every
direction, darted and lapped; and the sound of
them was like a distant wind roaring in a forest, or
like innumerable bird-wings fluttering.

In front, upon a metal slide, the feet pointing
to the flames, lay the body. Whether it were the
effect of contrast, or whether it were a fact, one

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

had the impression that the rest of the chamber
was only dimly lighted. I was conscious that
several men were standing in it, waiting; but they
seemed to be shadows, scarcely discernible in an
outlying gloom. My vision was caught and held
by the central glare, and by the recumbent form,
in its white clothing, thrown by the issuing radi-
ance into clear relief.

I took a few steps forward, to look, for the last
time, upon the features of my friend. Hushed
and immobile — ^the striving personality, with its
needs and passions and fierce energies withdrawn
— ^they lay peaceful, as if molded in wax.

I returned to my former place without speaking.
The outljmig shadows moved, came into the glare
in front of me; I was sensible, for a few moments,
of two or three men stooping; then the metal
slide, carrjring the body, moved forward, easily,
silently, into the furnace.

There were some moments following which
made an exacting demand upon strength of nerve.
Through a small talc window, one had an impres-
sion, amidst the blaze, of knees drawing up, of
Umbs turning, of a whole frame in contortion.
The suggestion of a Uving thing writhing in agony

THE CASKET

was terribly vivid. It was necessary to summcm
to one's aid, by the force of will, the simple knowl-
edge that a leaf, even a sheet of paper, when
thrown into a fire, will curl and twist before it
is consumed. Presently the movements ceased:
very quietly, as something that had reached a pro-
foimd inviolable peace, the body sank upon the floor
of the furnace and was hidden by the flames, still
wreathing, still darting and lapping, still hungry.

I turned back into the chapel, and the doors
were closed. It was the most awful spectacle
I had ever beheld: yet it was satisfying, even
comforting. It filled me with a sense of comple-
tion. Physical life, whether one regarded it as
whole in itself or part of a chain of progressive
existence, was over, and there were no ragged tails
remaining.

An hour or two later we were given a casket
containing the ashes. It weighed only a few
pounds. Mrs. Brocklebank took it in her hands.
There was a sad irony in the reflection that the
body of a man, whose life had been lost because
four meii could not carry him down a mountain,
was now easily supported by the little hands of one
slight woman.

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

While we were driving back to Geneva, I felt a
light touch on my arm. "I can't think what I
could have done without you these last dreadful
days," Mrs. Brocklebank said. "I want you to
forgive me for something I said on the mountain.
You know what I mean. It was unjust. Nothing
could have been done by anyone. I didn't know
what I was saying."

"Of course I knew that," I replied, laying my
hand for a moment on hers. "There is nothing
to forgive. It was simply that we made a terrible
mistake in attempting such a climb without finding
out that we were all soimd."

"But he seemed so strong. I never knew his
heart was weak."

"That's the trap. It is often the most seem-
ingly robust people who prove, under a strain,
to have vulnerable points in their constitutional
armor."

We were driving down a hill. In the distance,
across the blue lake, we could discern quite clearly
the cold white mountain which held for us such
tragic memories.

"Sleek and cruel — ^beast!" Mrs. Brocklebank
burst out with sudden fierceness. "It looks so

THE CASKET

gentle, just like a great white cat, curled up and
hiding its daws. I shall always hate Mont Blanc,
I shall always hate Switzerland, I shall always
hate snow."

"We will go back to England to-morrow/* I
said.

Our departure had to be postponed for yet an-
other day, however, in order that a leather case
might be made to hold the casket.

During these stressful days, passed in her com-
pany, I came to realize more and more how serious
a permanent loss Mrs. Brocklebank had sustained,
quite apart from the inmiediate grief, which time
no doubt would assuage. The natural dependence
of her character was brought home to me per-
sonally. She relied upon me, and upon every-
thing I did — ^as she had relied upon Brocklebank
— ^with the simple trust of a child. How she
would fare, now that she was called upon to face
the world alone, was a question which imparted
a deeper appeal to the sudden sadness of her lot.

It presented itself to my mind with especial
force as I looked across at her, sitting on the oppo-
site seat of a railway carriage, during the long
night journey 'to Paris — a. small figure, with a

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

softly pretty face and quiet, unhappy eyes, holding
on her knees the leather case containing the casket.
It occurred to me that, in all probability, she had
never opened a Bradshaw in her life, and that,
if she had, she would certainly have been scared
by the mass of figures. Throughout the whole
journey she did practically nothing on her own
initiative. "We get out here," I would say, and
out she would get; or "We will have dinner now, "
and to dinner she would come; or "We shall not
break the journey in Paris, but go straight to the
Gare du Nord by the Ceinture Railway, " and she
accepted it as information. I might have been
taking her to Kamchatka, for all she knew de-
finitely to the contrary.

"You must try to get some sleep, " I said to her,
at one time. "I will take charge of the case."

She allowed me to put a pillow under her head,
in a comer of the compartment, and obediently
made some attempt to do as I asked, but it proved
to be useless. It was, indeed, all but impossible
to compose one's mind in the tragic circumstances
of the journey. The contrast with that of a few
weeks earlier gripped our thoughts with painful
and terrible insistence. Then we had been a

THE CASKET

party of three, setting forth hopefully and happily
upon a long anticipated holiday; now there were
but two of us, and the casket we carried contained
all the earthly remains of the member of the trio
whose unconquerable good humor had broken the
teditun of the way.

When we arrived in London, on the afternoon
of the following day, Mrs. Brocklebank was very
tired. I took her home to Bj^eet, returning
subsequently to my flat in Paddington. Brockle-
bank had built the Bj^eet house a year or two
previously. It was of a good size and well situ-
ated, the trees about it providing a suggestion of
seclusion. Besides the main building, the grounds
contained a garage and a gardener's cottage.
Prom the front windows there was a delightful
view over the weald of Surrey. It seemed rather
a roomy abode for its present small owner. The
thought passed through my mind, as I walked
back to the station, that, unless the estate should
work out unexpectedly favorably, she might be
obliged to let it ; and I felt that she would possibly
be happier removed from its crowding associations.

Brocklebank's death had delayed my return
to business by nearly a week. The Mont Blanc

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

ascent had been essayed as a culminating adven-
ture to crown our various smaller climbs, and we
had intended to leave Chamonix on the following
day. As events had turned out, by the time I
again set foot in Mark Lane, eight days had
elapsed since that disastrous morning. A second
night had been spent in the hut on the Grands
Mulcts, three more in Chamonix, two in Geneva,
one in the train, and one in London. This calcula-
tion was rapidly evolved by my brain, as I worked
my way among the crowd of hurrying anxious-
faced men on the pavement^ all bent, as I was, to
their places of business.

I was much preoccupied — ^for Brocklebank's
death would necessitate a re-shuffling of the
affairs of the firm, besides the ordinary routine
work that needed to be caught up after an absence
— but as I passed through the outer office, it
struck me that the clerks looked at me rather
queerly. Their eyes expressed an odd mixture
of fear and concern, such as one might have
expected to see on the faces of people who ques-
tioned one's sanity. I paid little attention to the
circumstance, putting it down to the exaggerated
awe, mingled with a sense of personal importance

THE CASKET

which takes hold of a certain class when it is
brought in contact with death, bade them "good-
moming," without stopping, and went up the
stairs to my own room.

As I entered my private office, I felt — ^as I
always did, when I returned to it after an absence
— some parental pride in the happy combination,
which its appearance suggested, of practical up-to-
date utility with reasonable comfort. It was a
fair sized room, nearly square, with a large window
in it and two doors, one of the latter leading to the
landing, the other — a. swing door covered with
baize — communicating with the office formerly
occupied by Brocklebank. The chief article of
furniture was a large double, flat-topped desk
under the window, bearing in orderly arrange-
ment various receptacles for papers and those con-
trivances which the inventor's brain has made
indispensable to the modem man of business: a
table installation of the telephone, an electric
plug lamp, and a news transmitter, ticking out
coils of tape into a basket on the floor. The hard
utilitarian effect of this was softened, however,
by a good Axminster carpet, chairs upholstered
in dark green leather, a bright brass fender and

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

fire-irons, and by wall-paper and paint which toned
in with the general color scheme.

I sat down at the desk and looked through some
memoranda which I found there. My hand was
on a speaking-tube, for the purpose of summoning
the manager, when I heard footsteps in the adjoin-
ing room. I stopped to listen, thinking that if the
manager were there, as was probable, I should
be saved the trouble of using the tube.

The steps approached. I put down the mouth-
piece and turned to face the incomer. The com-
mtmicating door was pushed open, and William
Brocklebank walked into my oflSce.

CHAPTER IV

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

FOR a Space of time, measurable, probably,
only as some fraction of a second, I felt
no surprise. Something had happened
which had been a daily, and more than daily,
experience for the last ten years of my life; and,
for that fraction of time, I accepted it without
emotion. It is possible that this momentary
interlude of simple acquiescence only served to
increase the severity of the shock when the real
and appalling nature of what had occurred broke
upon my mind. For it was followed, before
Brocklebank had taken two steps within the room,
not by amazement merely, not by stupefaction,
but by fear, fear in a measure beyond my power
to express— cold, debiUtating terror. It was as
if all my knowledge and sense of things were torn
from me, as if the very ground which supported

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

my feet were swept away, and I were suddenly
naked and helpless in a universe of trembling
mystery and awe.

Among all the instincts common to humanity
the fear of the sight, of the voice, of any indication
of the presence of one dead is alone inexplicable.
There is no manifest reason for its existence. Such
instincts, for example, as those which bid us cling
to life and protect the young have an object which
is immediately accessible to the mind. The whole
scheme of progressive being rests upon the sound
working of those and similar intuitive forces. But
why this universal fear of the dead? What would
be the eflFect, supposing it were removed? Should
we discover truths which would unfit us for the
practical, steady conduct of the affairs of the
world? Is this fear the guardian of the veil?
Whatever be the answer, some answer there must
surely be, for there is nothing purposeless in
nature. I can testify, at least, — from the eflFect
produced in me when Brocklebank walked quietly
into my oflfice, — ^both to the reality and the force
of this instinct of fear. Had it been possible to
escape, I would have run from him, run till I
dropped from exhaustion.

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

He was speaking as he came in. "I thought
I heard your step — " he said, and then broke oflF.
"What on earth is the matter?" he called out.
"Everybody looks at me to-day as if I were
some new species of prehistoric beast. Why, good
heavens, man, you are going to faint!"

He went to a cupboard, took out a bottle of
brandy and poured some into a gla^. He put
it to my lips. His hand felt warm, it was solid:
and that evidence of his materiality, so far from
reassuring me, only added to my horror, by its
inexpressible outrage to the facts of my experience.

I closed my eyes for some minutes. The room
was silent; I could hear, from some other part of
the office, the clicking of a typewriter, and from
the world without the muffled but insistent roar
of London. I hoped that, when I looked again,
the figure of Brocklebank would have vanished,
that it would prove to have been a delusiqi of
the senses, some nightmare, some phantasmagoric
production of my own mind.

But when I opened my eyes, he was still st^d-
irig in front of me, the bottle and glass in his
hands, an expression of some anxiety on his face.
He seemed to have lost weight, his features were

4 49

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

paler and less rugged; he had, as one says, fined
down. Even his hands struck me as whiter and
more deUcate, more sharply chiseled. His hair
had become distinctly less gray, and seemed
smoother. It was as if he had passed through
some refining fire.

"Do you feel better?" he asked.

I nodded.

He put away the bottle and glass, and sat down.
"Well, now," he said, "it seems to me — I don't
know whether you may be of the same opinion —
that the existing situation lends itself to some
explanation."

I found that, by closing my mind against the
mad impossibility of the man's presence, and
fixing it rigidly upon the simple, present fact of
it, I could talk to him.

"I quite agree," I said.

"A man doesn't nearly faint at the sight of
another man without some reason."

"Of course not."

"You will admit that it is a little painful to
the feelings of the other man?"

"Tell your story first," I said. "I don't feel
up to talking at present. And I want to think."

THE IMPOSSIBLE PACT

"What do you want to think about? Whether
you'll tell the truth or not?"

He had come, as he generally did, in such quick,
half humorous hits, very close to the fact.

'*At any rate," I answered, "I shall not tell
you any lies."

"We agree to eliminate lies. So we can get
along. The last time, before to-day, that you and
I had the pleasure of exchanging salutations, if
my memory serves me, was near the summit of
Mont Blanc?"

"Perfectly right — ^if mine serves me."

"You are not sure?"

"I don't feel sure of anything to-day."

"Well, let us begin at the beginning and check
our impressions. We went to Chamonix — ^you
and I and Rachel? "

"Yes."

"We did some small climbs?"

"Yes."

"We took reasonable refreshment, from time to
time, at various small motmtain hostelries?"

"We took meals."

"Finally we started up Mont Blanc?"

"Yes."

iff

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"We had two gtiides with us and a porter?"

"Yes."

"The porter's business was to carry the extra
wine for the guides?"

"So you said."

"We didn't reach the top, did we? I'm hazy
about that."

"No; you developed a heart and broke down."

" I remember falling. And you helped me some
way down?

"Yes, amongst us.'

"And then I gradually lost consciousness?"

"Yes."

"Did I become delirious?"

"Yes,sUghtly."

"I was feeling pretty bad, I remember, but
I didn't intend to die if I could help it. I knew
I had years of life in me, and I wasn't going to
throw them up."

My fear of him, though always in some degree
present, was slowly jdelding to interest in his
story. He paused; and I fotmd that I was waiting
intently to hear what he would say next. Was
I to learn, when he spoke again, the answer to the
great riddle? Was he about to lift the veil that

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

had never been lifted or penetrated by man?
Certainly there was nothing in his manner to
suggest that his narrative was hovering over the
pltmge into immense mysteries. But I could
hardly imagine that Brocklebank would be
serious even if he had to tell of the crack of
doom.

'* You gradually lost consciousness," I reminded
him. ' * What happened then ? ' '

" I saw white all about me when I came round, "
he answered, ''and I thought I was still on the
snow. Then I found that the white was ceiling
and wall-paper and bedclothes. In fact, I was in
bed."

My mind was still projected upon other planes
of existence. "I don't understand," I said.
"Tell me what it was like."

" I can't speak any more plainly, " he answered:
" I say I was in bed. If you want a description of
the handsome and interesting figure I make when
I'm tucked in, you had better ask Rachel. And
I never felt more relieved than when I found you
had got me down: I'd had enough snow. What
a fool's trick it was, " he suddenly interjected, "to
go gratuitously up into territory of that kind,

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

when there's as good an earth down below as
anybody cotild want!"

I brought my mind back to earth. I still had to
deal, it was evident, with the materialist of old ; and
that very fact made the mystery of his reappear-
ance only the more bewildering and unnerving.

''For a time," he proceeded, "I lay peacefully,
and thought of champagne and oysters and the
new piece at the Gaiety and getting the sixth at
Longfleet in two. But presently I looked rotmd,
and then I fotmd that I didn't recognize the room.
That in itself didn't surprise me much, because
I knew Rachel wouldn't want her room turned
into a hospital for the sick and incapable, and
that you would naturally put me into another.
What did surprise me was that there were no
bottles and medical stuff about, and no good-
looking hospital nurse to come and soothe my
brow with a soft white hand. Except for my
clothes on a chair, the room was as neat and tidy
as a new pin. Not only was I the only occupant,
but there were no signs whatever of those thought-
ful attentions, that waiting on you hand and foot,
to which a man recovering from a grievous sick-
ness feels entitled."

THE IMPOSSIBLE PACT

He was obviously telling what he at least sup-
posed to be the truth, and I fotmd myself following
his statement with deepening interest, grotesquely
impossible though it was to reconcile it in any
way whatever with the facts of my experience.
I could receive his story only as a simple account
of what had recently befallen him, isolated from
anything and everjrthing that had gone before.

"After a time," he went on, "I thought the
best thing to do was to ring the belL A chamber-
maid came and tapped at the door, and appeared
to be either deaf or stupid, for I had to tell her to
'entrez' three or four times before she *entrezed/

"'S*il vous plait,* I said, *caf6 complet, im-
mediatement.' That was a practice sprint. *Et
prie Madame Brocklebank to come ici k moi
bientdt. Voil^!' I always drop in a *voil^' — ^it
helps them.

"She just stared at me — ^very mudi as you
stared at me when I came in just now. So I put
my request even more carefully and politely,
and with an extra * voili.' Then she said, * I don*t
understand.'

" I was surprised — I admit, I was a little hurt —
for, as you know, I have a certain grasp of the

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

French language. However, it didn't matter, as
she appeared to be able to speak English. That
astonished me. I had come across plenty of
foreign waiters who could speak English, but
never a chambermaid.

"It simplified matters considerably. I asked
her in English if she would kindly request Mrs.
Brocklebank to come and see me as soon as
possible, and tell her that I was feeling much
better.

'* * What name did you say, sir?' she asked.

"'Mrs. Brocklebank,' I answered.

"She went away. About ten minutes later she
came back and said that there was no lady of the
name I had given staying in the hotel.

"It was evident that my reckonings had got
seriously astray somewhere. But I kept my
head; I did nothing silly. I apologized to the
chambermaid for giving her so much trouble and
asked her to go and inquire for you. She did so,
and returned, as before, after a similar interval,
with a similar piece of information."

There was something in Brocklebank's expres-
sion, as he said this, that, in spite of my excrucia-
ting sense of horrible incongruity, touched me

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

with an inclination to smile. "What did you
think?" I asked.

"I won't put my thoughts into words," he
replied. "It was a scurvy trick that I hadn't
looked for on the part of the wife of my bosom
and my respected partner. It also occurred to
me that I might be the sole survivor, and that
they were breaking it gently. I thought the idea
might be, in my precarious state of health, to make
me believe that I had never had a wife or a partner.

"While I was thinking this out," he continued,
"the chambermaid went to the window and pulled
up the blind. I asked her if she could oblige me
with the time.

"'It's half -past eight, sir,' she said.
Night or morning?' I asked.
Morning, sir,' she answered. She was well
trained.

"I was Ijring facing the window, and when the
blind had been drawn up, I was troubled by
the view. There were no snow peaks visible to the
unaided eye, but a great many chimney-pots. I
sat up in bed, but still there were only chimney-
pots to be seen, interminably.

"'I'm sorry to be a nuisance/ I said to the

ill

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

chambermaid, 'but would you mind telling me
where I am?*

"'You are in the Great Northern Hotel, Lon-
don/ she answered, just as calmly and politely
as when I asked her the time.

"'Thank you,' I said. 'Do you mind saying
that again?'

" 'You are in the Great Northern Hotel, Londdn,'
she said.

"I lay back in bed. I saw no reason why I
shouldn't have been brought back to London.
But why the Great Northern Hotel? And why
was I alone? What had become of the people who
had deposited me? Where was Rachel? Where
were you?

"If my mind had become affected as a result
of the Mont Blanc experience, that was a good
reason for not putting a strain upon it. So I
decided to leave the questions for later considera-
tion. The chambermaid, at any rate, was treat-
ing me as an intelligent human being, if one,
perhaps, a trifle lax in his habits. She asked me
if I would like my hot water.

" ' Do I really look to you to be well enough to
get up?' I asked her.

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

Oh, yes, sir,' she said, very brightly, and
without the hint of a smile, ' you look quite well
this morning/

"'YouVe had them worse?' I suggested.

"*0h, much worse,' she said.

"She was going out; but I intended to make
her laugh. 'Just one moment,' I called to her.
'Was I very bad last night?'

"The training jdelded: she made a plucky
struggle, but the smile got through. 'I don't
know,' she said, with some diflSculty; *I wasn't
up ; but I think you must have been.'

"She brought the water, and then I got up.
I felt quite sound in wind and limb, but I was
surprised when I looked at my clothes. By some
means, whether nefarious or otherwise, I had
come by a very new looking tweed suit and
other articles of wearing apparel that I had
no recollection of buying and paying for.
However, there was nothing missing, they fitted
satisfactorily, and they were such as a gentle-
man could be seen in. Moreover, it was those or
nothing; and since the law doesn't permit you
to appear naked in public places, I put them
on.

it I

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Then I went downstairs and interviewed an
obliging clerk in the office.

*'*It must seem a curious question to you,' I
said to him, 'but would you kindly tell me how
long I have been staying in the hotel?'
You came in last night,' he answered.
Quite sober?' I said.

A little tired,' he replied, 'but we saw no
reason to refuse you a room.'

" ' What name did I register? ' I asked next.

''He pushed over the book and pointed to the
entry. I read it: 'William Brocklebank^ Byfleet^*
in my own handwriting.

"Then I sat down and thought."

If it were possible for a state of affairs, initially
inexplicable beyond all human experience, to be-
come more mystifying and more terrifying, this
statement, which my partner made with the bub-
bling sense of fun inseparable from his nature,
produced that result.

"When did all this happen?" I asked.

"Yesterday morning."

"That was the 29th. You lost consciousness
near the summit of Mont Blanc on the 226, ; you
recovered it in the Great Northern Hotel, London,

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

on the 29th. There axe, therefore, seven dear
days for which you cannot account/*

''You state the position," he said, "with the
accuracy that I should expect of a business man.
There are seven clear days for which I cannot
account. And it is precisely those seven clear
days for which I ask you to accotmt."
lean t.

"You can't!" he exclaimed. "But, good gra-
cious, man, you got me down the mountain — ^you
must know what you did with me."

"I tell you," I reiterated, "as solemnly as I
can speak, that I can't account for those seven
days."

"You don't know how I came to be at the Great
Northern Hotel?"

"I don't."

"Does Rachel?"

"She doesn't."

"Does anyone you know?"

"No one."

"Shades of Cook and Gaze!" he said. "This
secret is worth money. I can't have flown. I
wasn't well enough. Besides, I haven't got my
pilot's certificate."

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

''Have you no recollection whatever," I asked,
"of anything that happened in that interval?"

*'It hardly amotmts to a recollection," he an-
swered, "but I have some sort of dim sense of
being in a train."

"A boat as well?"

"No, I only have the feeling of a train."

"But you must have been in a boat."

"My own impression, for what it is worth," he
said, "is that I must have been insensible till I
reached Dover, and after that have gradually
recovered consciousness, but very slowly at first."

I was conning this, when suddenly I realized
that all such speculations were utterly idle, beside
the inexplicable, the appalling fact that he was
alive. How could the man whom I had seen
dead, whom I had seen cremated, be sitting oppo-
site me, talking, joking? As the full sense of the
monstrous, inscrutable riddle flooded my brain,
I grew dizzy and dropped my head into my hands
on the desk.

I felt his fingers on my shoulder. "Cheer up,
Reece," he said: "there's some more brandy.
I started up as if he had struck me.

"What did you do yesterday?" I asked.

t»

THE IMPOSSIBLE PACT

" In the morning I went out to Byfleet/*

"You found the house shut up?"

V Locked, barred, and bolted."

"Your wife didn't return until the evening,"
I explained, "and the servants only a few hours
before. What about the afternoon?"

"I came to the oflBce."

"Came to the office!"

"Did you expect me to retire from business
because I'd had an accident in the Alps? " he asked.
"Or did you think I shouldn't be able to resist
a Picture Palace? You mustn't get an idea that
I'm an invalid, Reece," he added, with an air of
relieving my concern. "I'm perfectly well. It
was lucky that I did come," he went on. "I got
an offer over the telephone of a cargo of maize
in the steamship Draitda^ due into London in about
a week, and I thought it best to close with it.
The market's rising pretty fast: it's up a full
point this morning."

" Did the clerks say anjrthing to you when you
came in?" I asked.

"Not in words. They looked foolish — ^not
quite so foolish as you did, but sufficiently so.
Still they avoided personal remarks. Not that

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

there wotildn*t have been some excuse for them.
Doesn't it strike you that my personal appearance
has improved? This iUness has done me good.
Rather a violent remedy, but an effective one! I
was getting heavy. Now you would call me
a handsome fellow to-day. The classic Greek
lines !'* he added, standing up.

The telephone bell in his room rang. He went
to attend to it. Two or three minutes later he
returned.

"I don't believe that man Johnson is any good
at all," he said. ''He keeps ringing me up and
ringing me up, but the business he does isn't
worth the cost of the calls. Well, you have had
my story," he proceeded, sitting down again.
"Now for yours."

I felt that I could not tell him yet. I could
conceive that he would support the shock of hear-
ing of his own death as well as any man in Europe;
but even in his case, one could not, without
giving time for thought and becoming convinced
of the necessity, impart such information. I was
so tmstrung that I dared not, at that moment,
trust any of my impressions. I must first, I felt,
see Mrs. Brocklebaok and obtain her confirmation

THE IMPOSSIBLE FACT

of my recollection of the events at Chamonix and
Geneva.

*' I want you to give me another day, " I said.

''Why? To concoct the lie?"

''No; to make sure that I shall tell you no lie."

"What shall you do in the meantime?"

" I shall go out to Byfleet and talk to your wife."

"Why shouldn't I go out to Byfleet and talk to
my wife?

You might kill her, if you did.^

"You can't expect me to believe that," he said.
"Perhaps I shall have leamt all you can tell me
before to-morrow. But as you are evidently in a
delicate state of health, you can have your day of
grace."

Once more his telephone bell rang. "If that's
Johnson again," he said, as he pushed open tha^
communicating door, "I shall tell him to go to
the devil."

I waited while he conducted a long conversa-
tion, evidently not with Johnson. I waited and
still waited, until at last I heard him leave his
office and go down the stairs. Then I sent for
the manager.

"The clerks and you," I said to him, "were
s 65

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

stirprised when you saw Mr. Broddebank come
into the office yesterday."

" It gave us a bit of a turn, " said the manager,
"just at first."

"Yes, of course. My telegram, as you can see,
was sent under a misapprehension. Please apolo-
gize to the staff, on my behalf, for any shock I
may have caused them."

"Certainly," said the manager. "There are
one or two matters," he began, looking at a slip
of paper in his hand, "which I didn't think it
necessary to trouble you with on holiday. Simp-
son's account is badly overdue, and I don't hear
very favorable "

"I'll attend to them later," I said. "Just do
what I asked."

For ^ moment he looked at me curiously. I
inferred that my face told him more than my
words. Then he left the room on his errand.

When he had gone, I sat down at my desk. As
yet the power to think would not come to me: I
was merely stupefied, stunned, more shaken in
nerve than I had conceived I had it in me to be.
Though Broddebank had left not only my office
but the building, I could still see his face, always

THE IMPOSSIBLE PACT

smiling, I could still hear his voice, always break-
ing with spontaneous, irrepressible amusement.
The ghastly jokes shivered like strident chords
through the fibers of my being. It was as if a
coffin had lifted its Ud and laughed.

CHAPTER V

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

AFTER dictating a few letters, more for the
sake of keeping up appearances before
the staff than for any care of business, I
left the office. I did not intend to return that
day. Moreover, as my steps took me farther
from the building, I became more and more imbued
with a horror of returning. Nevertheless, before
I reached my flat I realized that I must go back,
at whatever cost, and go back at once. Certain
words which Brocklebank had used recurred to
my mind, and their obvious interpretation made
me shiver with apprehension of the possible effect
of my own thoughtlessness.

When this perception flashed upon me and I
came to take my bearings, I found that, in the
turmoil of my thoughts, I had strayed to a point

THE VOICE OP THE DEAD

miles away both from my fiat and from Mark
Lane. I hailed the first empty taxi-cab I saw aad
jumped into it before it had stopped, shouting the
direction to the driver. My aaxiety to get back
was now so great that the horror of re-entering
the building which had been the scene of my
appalling experience of the morning was, for the
time, beaten down and forgotten.

I found, to my inexpressible relief, when at
length I reached the office, that Brocklebank,
so far from having taken the precipitate step I
had dreaded, had been passing his time in the
regular and systematic conduct of the firm's
business. Indeed, he had done much of my
neglected work as well as his own. He had had
a long interview with the manager, dictated
letters, seen callers, been on 'Change, finally
lunched and returned to headquarters in the mood
of a man well satisfied with his morning's work.

My anxiety relieved, the horror of him returned.
Only with the utmost difficulty could I force my-
self to open the door of his room and go in. He
was seated on a comer of his desk, smoking a
cigarette and making calculations in a small note-
book.

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"We ought to come out of the Drdiula deal
very well," he announced. "Unless my arith-
metic is astray, we should see what Mason calls
* a gratifying profit.' "

I closed the door. "You said something this
morning," I reminded him, "about learning all
I could tell you before to-morrow. Did that
mean that you are thinking of going out to Byfleet
to-night?"

"Your penetration is tmcanny, Reece," he an-
swered. " It's not a bit of good trying to deceive
you.

"You arc going?"

"Of course. I've sent a derk to the hotel to
pay the bill and get my things."

"Just now?"

"Just gone."

I pointed to the telephone. "Countermand
the instructions for one day," I asked.

"But why? Think of poor Rachel, cruelly
parted all this time from the apple of her
eye."

"You saw the effect that your sudden appear-
ance had upon me," I said. "I am a maa, and
not usually nervy. If you go down to Byfleet

THE VOICE OP THE DEAD

without warning, you will subject your wife to
precisely the same kind of shock."

''Your idea, then," said Brocklebank, after a
moment's reflection, ''is to go down yourself first
and prepare the ground for the star turn?"

"If you like to put it that way."

Brocklebank pondered. " It's a queer business,"
he said, at length. Then he sat down at his desk,
unhitched the telephone receiver and placed it to
his ear. "Three, five, four, three, North," he
said.

I made no ftuther attempt that afternoon to
reach my flat. It was necessary, before every-
thing, to see Mrs. Brocklebank. When I left the
office, I proceeded quickly, again on foot, direct
to Waterloo. On my way there, I was invaded,
not for the first time, but with greater force and
insistence than heretofore, by a sudden, vivid,
and alarming doubt of my own sanity. My mind
repictured, in minute and graphic detail, the
scene in the Crematoriimi at Geneva, imprinted
indelibly upon my memory for its awe and for
its terrifii: beauty. I saw the glare of the furnace,
the fluttering, wreathing flames, the body amidst
them, for a time wrestling and contorted, finally

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

sinking, as in calm and conscious triumph, to a
peace that could not be broken. Yet, if I was to
accept the apparent evidence of my senses, those
limbs were now moving, those lips were now
laughing, in the worid of men. For a moment I
faced the awful thought of a living man, a man in
a trance, introduced by mistake into the incinerat-
ing chamber. It was true that I had not seen the
body finally consumed; I could not swear of my
own knowledge that the ashes we had brought
home were the ashes of Brocklebank. The sup-
position that a solution could be found in that
sUght break in the chain of identification swept
off my mind almost as soon as it had touched it.
Even if so appalling a mistake had been made,
the possibility of escape was beyond thought. It
was inconceivable that anything bom on this
planet could live for a minute, shut down, closed
within a chamber heated on all its sides to a fierce
glow of Uvid red.

I returned to the consideration of the plain
apparent fact. It could not be true. The man
whom I had seen dead, whom I had seen cremated,
could not now be alive. The explanation of these
conflicting circumstances must, therrfore, be

THE VOICE OP THE DEAD

sought subjectively: it must have its seat in my
brain. Either I had not seen Brocklebank dead,
or else I had not just been talking to him. So
the matter came to present itself to me, with
increasing force, as I jostled my way among the
crowds of people all hurrying in the direction I
was following, as I pressed among them through
a platform barrier at Waterioo and took my place
in a train for Bjrfleet.

I perceived that, when a man loses his reason,
he does not himself become aware of the fact.
He is not suddenly able to say, "I am mad."
Others know he is mad, but he does not know
it himself. He conceives himself to be acting
perfectly rationally. The fact, therefore, that I
did not think I was insane, that I was prepared
to trust my senses, was of no necessary value.
Casting back through the course of the day,
I could fancy that people were humoring me.
Some, certainly, had looked at me strangely —
the manager, the clerks, Brocklebank himself,
one or two men whom I had met outside. I
glanced at the other occupants of the railway
carriage. Two were reading newspapers; a third
— a thin man with a sparse gray beard — ^was

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

scanning me, I thought, with some suspicion. He
immediately turned his face away when he caught
my eye. I wondered in what way I should receive
the first intimation that I was not regarded as
a responsible being, how much longer the body-
politic would permit me to walk the streets, a free
man. As the train was slipping out of the station,
I hastily bought an evening paper and pretended
to become engrossed in it. Then I fotmd that
it was open at an advertisement sheet and that
I was holding it upside down. When I looked up,
the thin man was again watching me.

I know not to what state of distress I might
have been carried by this line of thought, had not
a shaft of the saving grace of humor come to my
help. There is a beneficent dispensation which
enables the human mind, faced by something
beyond its compass and intolerably strained, to
find refuge in trifles. I had personally undertaken
all the expenses of the bearer patty and the crema-
tion and other incidental charges in Switzefland,
telling Mrs. Brocklebank that I would repay
myself out of the estate. I knew, at least, that
those out-of-pocket disbursements were no halluci-
nation. But how, it now occurred to me, could

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

I ask Brocklebank to pay for his own cremation,
or what Court of Law would support my claim?

I was still nursing the feeling of resentment
which possesses the breast of the Briton who is
deprived of his rights, though against whom I was
unable to determine, and had forgotten the thin
man with the streaky beard, when the train reached
Bjrfleet. I got out and walked up to the house,
which was only a mile or so distant. Mrs.
Brocklebank was expecting me, for I had sent her
a telegram earlier in the day. I found her seated
at an escritoire in the drawing-room, writing re-
plies to letters of condolence. She looked pale
and pathetic in her black dress and very small and
solitary in the large room.

She got up quickly and came to meet me. "It
is good of you to come, " she said. " I feel so, so
miserable here alone. People come and see me.
They are very kind. But they don't know and
they don't really feel. You know, you were
there, and you understand."

"I am afraid you mustn't put it down just to
kindness on my part," I said, looking down at
her flower-like face as I held her hand, ''though
I hope I would often have managed to get out to

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

see you in any case. But to-night I have come for
a purpose."

''About Billy's affairs?" she asked.

"No, not even that."

''What, then?" She looked up at me, some
new fear, some vague alarm dawning in her big
gray-green eyes, already unhappy and fearful.
I noticed for the first time — again realizing that
disposition of an overstrained mind to concentrate
with exceptional intensity upon small things —
that there were wonderful little yellow dots in the
irises.

I could not tell her yet. "I've passed the
strangest, maddest day of my life," I said, "and
I feel shaken to pieces. Will you give me some
dinner first? Afterwards we will talk about it all."

' ' Of course. I'm so sorry. You're looking "

"What? Worried, scared?"

" Yes — somehow."

"At any rate, you^re a fact," I said suddenly,
half smiling.

"A fact? Why, how could I be anything but
a fact?"

"I mean you're real; I see you; you exist; you
are not a figment of my mind."

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

"I don't understand."

I saw that I was beginning to frighten her
tinnecessarily. *'Sit down," I said, and pushed
her gently into one of her own chairs. "Now,
will you just tell me, " I asked, taking a seat be-
side her, ''quite shortly and simply, exactly what
happened at Chamonix?"

"Why you know as well as I do, " she exclaimed,
astonished.

"Yes, but I want you to tell me — to confirm or
correct my impressions."

"All the time from the beginning?"

"No, just the last few days."

"From the day we went up Mont Blanc?"

"We did go up Mont Blanc?"

She looked at me incredulously, almost with
alarm. "You can't have forgotten."

" No, I have not, but tell me as if I had. What
happened?"

"We got nearly to the top — at least I think we
were not very far from the top — ^when Billy broke
down. He couldn't breathe. We had to wait
hours in the snow before help came. He lost
consciousness, and, before he could be got down,
he— he "

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"He died?''

"Yes.** Her voice was breaking and her eyes
had filled with tears.

" I'm so sorry, " I said gently. " I'm not asking
you to rake up all this out of mere wantonness. I
have a reason for it — sl very good reason indeed —
as you will understand presently."

She blinked away her tears.

I felt heartless, but I was obliged to press her
still. ' ' What happened afterwards ? ' '

"We took him to Geneva," she answered; "he
was cremated; and we brought his ashes home."

"Where is the casket now?" I asked.

"I put it on the table in his dressing-room."

" Will you take me to see it ? "

"Yes."

Quite simply, without question, she led the way
upstairs and opened the door of a small room on
the first floor. The casement windows were wide
open, letting in the soft air of the August evening.
A pair of thin green curtains fluttered a little in
a light breeze. On the dressing-table, where for-
merly Brocklebank's brushes had rested, stood
the beautiful little chased bronze and silver cas-
ket which his wife had chosen to hold his earthly

THE VOICE OP THE DEAD

remains. Some vases of flowers had been placed
about it.

''I hardly think," I said, standing in front of
the table, *'from the views I have heard him
express, that he would have wanted his ashes to
be treated like sacred relics." Involuntarily I
used the past tense.

"I know," she answered; "but I can't help it;
I can't scatter them yet."

I held out my hand and asked her for the key.

She hesitated.

"You can trust me," I said. "I am not going
to scatter them for you. I want to see them —
that's all."

She gave me the key, and I tmlocked the casket.
I had the feeling, as I lifted the lid, that nothing I
might see would surprise me. Were there to be
disclosed the interior of a jewel case glittering
with gems, such a sight would at least be far less
amazing, far less inexplicable than the terrifying
mystery which that day had brought forth. Were
a newborn babe, curied in a bed of cotton-wool,
to meet my view, I should be able, I felt, to accept
it unemotionally. There was about me a sense
of an unreal worid, where the ordinary bases of

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

reason and experience which govern expectation
had no value.

What in fact I saw, when I looked into the
casket, was some pounds of white ash, a little of
it fallen to powder, but most in small fragments
of delicate and beautiful honeycomb structure.

I closed the case and returned the key to its
owner. However I might be disposed to doubt
the worth of my own impressions, it was impossible,
in the face of this concrete evidence and of Mrs.
Brocklebank's confirmation, to regard the events
at Chamonix and Geneva as illusory. It was ne-
cessary, therefore, if the riddle was susceptible
to a subjective explanation, to suppose that I had
been Uving in a dream all day.

''Do I strike you as behaving normally?" I
asked my companion suddenly, when we had
returned to the drawing-room.

*'You have been asking questions that seem
tmnecessary, " she replied; ''but you say there is
a reason. Otherwise you do."

" Do you mind hitting me?"

"But why?" Her pretty face expressed sud-
denly a charming combination of surprise and
amusement.

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

'Never mind why. Just do it."

She clenched her little fist. "Oh, I can't," she
demurred.

"Yes, yes. See how much I can stand."

She struck me two or three hearty blows on the
chest, and tlie game made her laugh.

"Why did you want me to dp it?" she asked
again.

"Wasn't it a happy thought to make you
laugh?"

"Why really?"

"To see if I should wake up, " I answered.

After dinner, when we were once again seated
in the drawing-room, I decided to break my
incredible news. We had had coffee, and the
maid had retired with the empty cups. The room
was bathed in soft light shed from electric stand-
ards under pink shades. Through the open win-
dow came from time to time the low hoot of an
owl in the distance, but the house itself was silent.

"I am going to give you a very great shock,"
I said. "I don't know whether it will be a shock
of joy or of amazement or of alarm, but it will be
a shock."

"Yes?" she asked, her quiet eyes, holding as
6 8i

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

always a mysterious^ indefinable chami, fixed on
me with vague apprehension.

''Your husband is alive. I have seen him
to-day."

I was watching her closely while I spoke. The
first emotion that showed in her face was joy,
sudden and ineffable; then it was blank incre-
dulity; then, as with me, it was fear.

A moment or two later she brushed all
these emotions aside and gave a little forced
laugh. "But of course it's impossible," she
said.

"I have talked to him," I said, quietly; "he
has been at the office." Though I spoke with all
the cogency and gravity I could command, I
realized suddenly that she could not believe me.
One is obliged to believe one's own eyes and ears,
but the word of another, however trusted, cannot
be accepted as sufficient authority for the occur-
rence of something outside human experience.

I waited some time for some further remark
from her, but she made none. There was no
longer any fear in her face: she was thinking,
puzzling.

"You don't believe me, of course," I said.

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

"I think you have been deceived by some re-
semblance."

"It is not a question of resemblance," I said.
"In fact, he has changed a good deal. But he
has been at the office to-day, working as usual.
Among other things, he has made an important
purchase of maize, and I think the transaction,
in the present trend of markets, ought to show a
fair margin of profit."

She drew a little back in her chair, and the fear
again began to show in her face; but now it was
fear, I felt, not of my news, but of me.

"You think I am mad?" I said.

"No," she answered; "no, not that."

"Well, you think I have been suffering from
hallucinations to-day? "

"Yes," she said.

"I don't wonder," she added, a moment later:
"it has been such a strain. What has had to be
done has all fallen on you. And it has happened
so suddenly that we can't believe it, now we have
got back to the places where he used to be. I
have had the same feeling: it seems he must be
here. Again and again to-day I have thought
I have heard him, almost seen him."

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

I perceived that she must necessarily think
this; that nothing I could say could convince her
to the contrary. Yet it was of the first importance
that she should be made to understand. Brockle-
bank could not be kept away indefinitely; and his
appearance, in the present state of her mind, would
be almost as great a shock to her as if I had made
no attempt to prepare her.

I rose from my seat and walked to and fro in the
room. I knew that she was watching me with
anxiety, that she was shrinking from me, that, in
spite of her disclaimer of doubts of my sanity, she
did not feel utterly sure.

I stopped abruptly. "Where is the telephone?'*
I asked.

"In the morning-room.

"Will you show me?

"Yes."

Still regarding me, I could see, with misgiving,
she got up and took me across the hall to a room
used partly as a library and partly as a work-room.
In a comer by the T^indow was a Sheraton bureau,
• the flap lowered and covered with papers and
writing materials. A telephone standard stood
on the ledge.

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

I rang up the local exchange and asked for the
Great Northern Hotel, London. It was a trunk
call, and some minutes would elapse before the
connection could be made. I hitched up the
receiver and closed the door of the room. Mrs.
Brocklebank was standing by the bureau. She
watched me curiously and in silence, the vague
fear still in her face, but changing in quality,
mingling with mystification and with a certain
strained, chill apprehension. I had some idea in
my mind that she would ask me why I had given
the Great Northern Hotel, but she said nothing.

In about a quarter of an hour the bell tinkled.
I sat down at the desk and took the receiver.

"Is that the Great Northern Hotel?" I asked.

"Yes," came the reply.

"Is Mr. Brocklebank in the hotel?"

"I'll see, sir. What name, please?"

"Reece."

There was a further interval of waiting. I
could hear steps coming and going, snatches of
talk on cross currents, a continual buzz of the
wires. Then came the voice I knew: "Hello?"

"Is that you, Brocklebank?"

"Yes."

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"About that cargo of maize you bought. I
ran into Bracebridge as I was leaving the office.
It seems you forestalled him. If you would like
to unload at a small profit, he's your man."

" I'm not so keen. Did he mention any figure?"

"No, but he'll leave you a margin. What did
you give? I can't remember."

"I bought at various prices. It's a mixed lot.
I'll get the note I made. Hang* on a minute."

He went away.

I turned to Mrs. Brocklebank. She was now
very pale, her breath was coming quickly and
audibly, and her hands were clasped tight on her
breast. I motioned her to a chair beside me.
She shrank and hesitated. My heart went out
to her; I knew that the words she had heard me
speaking must have filled and shaken her with
a gathering sense of something beyond human
imderstanding. But I could not, for her own
sake, release her from the ordeal.

"Come," I said, imperatively.

She took the chair beside me. I gave her the
second receiver. Her hand shook as she put it
to her ear. Her eyes were indrawn and tense,
filled exqtdsitely with dread of the unknown.

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

The time of waiting seemed interminable. I
could feel each separate beat of my heart. The
wires buzzed and buzzed and somebody shouted,
"Not much, my dear." Out of the hum and
confusion, certain sounds detached themselves
by degrees, became definite, coherent: footsteps
approaching quickly, little clicks from the move-
ment of the telephone instruments at the other
end. Then, like a shot out of chaos, clear and
certain, came Brocklebank's hearty voice: "Still
there, Reece?"

I managed to make an affirmative reply, but
my eyes were on the woman beside me.

" I can't find the note, " the voice went on. " I
must have left it at the office. But there's no
hurry. The market's with us, and no fear of a
slump just yet. I'll see Brace "

I heard no more. Mrs. Brocklebank had flimg
the receiver from her as if it had bitten her. She
sprang from her seat. She was white as death and
trembling from head to foot.

"What does it mean?" she cried.

I took both her hands in mine and held them
tight. "I absolutely don't know," I said.

With her, as with me, I could see, the appalling

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

mystery of the thing was intensified by the com-
monplace manner of it. This voice, coming
over the telephone, talking business jargon, was
more terrif3mig by far than if it had reached
us through some supematiu*al agency out of the
vault of space.

She took her hands from mine and put them
over her eyes. For some moments she stood mo-
tionless, except for her lips, which were moving,
moving quickly : she was praying.

When the human mind comes to a blank wall,
when it is faced by an apparently unanswerable
interrogative, when it faints and fails before it,
there is an instinctive appeal to the knowledge
which it Is obvious must lie behind and beyond.
Every mystery, however inscrutable to us, how-
ever distracting, must have its solution, every rid-
dle its answer; and that answer must be known
to the cosmic intellect. Mrs. Brocklebank, out
of the chaos into which she had been thrown, out
of the helplessness of the pigmy wisdom of men,
was struggling to grasp and to link herself to that
supreme intelligence.

In those exacting moments, she was far from
accomplishing her purpose. She could not con-

THE VOICE OP THE DEAD

centrate, could not think: she was distraught,
incoherent, dazed, and lost, like a child crying
frantically amid thickets and shadows. Her
hands dropped from her face; her lips ceased to
move. For a few moments her eyes rested on the
telephone, were caught and held to it by a spell
of terror. Then, with a little cry that cut through
me, very low, as of some diunb, helpless creature
in pain, she turned and fled from the room.

I followed her to the drawing-room. She had
thrown herself upon the sofa, and was lying there,
face downwards, moaning and shaking, her hands
pressed over her ears.

CHAPTER VI

A GLIMMER FROM THE LOST DAYS

1HAD intended to return to London by the '
ten o'clock train; but Mrs. Brocklebank was
evidently in no condition to be left, so I made
shift for night clothes and stayed at Byfleet until
the following morning. During breaJdast, I told [

her exactly what had occurred on the previous
day and related Brocklebank's own story of his i

experiences.

"You will have to face it/' I said, at the end. ^

''He will have to come. I can't stop him. Be-
Bides, " I added, '* there is the question of ways and
means. We can't wind up the estate of a man
who is signing his own cheques."

She had not slept much, I felt sure, but she had
regained her outward calm and looked dainty and
charming behind the silver tea-pot and breakfast

A GLIMMER PROM THE LOST DAYS

service. I noticed that she was again wearing a
black dress, so little had the scene of the previous
evening, in spite of its terror, impressed its reality
upon her mind. As I spoke, she was pouring out a
cup of tea, doing it in a peculiarly graceful way
which drew one's glance instinctively to the small
white hand holding the tea-pot, all its muscles
and tendons temporarily strained by the weight.

She filled her cup steadily, then put down the
tea-pot and met my eyes with a look in her own
of utter abhorrence, mingled with appeal: "But
I can't live with a man who is dead."

"I don't think you can," I answered. "But
you must see him. He is not stupid. He will
realize that the thing is impossible."

She was silent for some seconds. " K he comes
alone, " she said presently, " I shall run out of the
house — ^I couldn't help it — even if I had to sleep
in the woods."

"I will come too," I said.
. " Will you promise never to leave me alone with
him, never for a moment?"

" So far as it rests with me, " I answered.

Suddenly she dropped her knife and fork and
stared at me wildly. "Oh, but he canH come!

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

What are we talking about? We're mad. He's
dead."

"I wonder if that is it?" I said. "I wonder if
we are mad?"

She continued to stare steadily at me, but with-
out seeing me, her expression slowly changing.
She was facing, I knew, as I had done on the
previous day, and probably for the first time in
her life, a serious doubt of her own sanity.

At last she dropped her eyes and got up, leaving
her breakfast imfinished. "I can't think," she
said, "I daren't."

A few minutes later, when I went out to get my
hat and coat, I found her in the hall. She was
standing at an oak table, looking through the
morning's post — evidently an exceptionally heavy
one.

"But what about all these letters of condo-
lence?" she asked. "What can I do?"

I was at the door, smoothing my hat on the
sleeve of my coat. ' ' Do nothing yet, ' ' I answered,
and then put on my hat and walked away down
the drive.

Indeed, I could not help cherishing the desperate
hope, in spite of the confirmation of the telephone

A GLIMMER FROM THE LOST DAYS

call to the Great Northern Hotel, that the whole
bewildering and unnerving business of the day
before might prove to have been hallucination.
When I reached the office, I entered my own room
and closed the door very quietly; then crept
stealthily and fearfully to the baize-covered swing
door and listened. For some time I heard nothing,
and my heart leapt with the strengthening hope
that he might not be there. I pictured myself
entering the room and finding it empty — empty
with that still and solemn emptiness which indi-
cates that the owner will never return — opening
the drawers and going through the papers, calling
the manager and explaining away, in a terse,
incidental sentence, my remarks of the previous
day. As the hope gathered power, I realized
how tmutterable would be the relief should it
indeed prove that my brain had been playing
phantasmagoric tricks with me.

Presently my ear caught the sound of a shuf-
fling of papers; and then, following this slight
soimd almost immediately, I heard Brocklebank's
voice.

Quite clear and indubitable, it came through the
panels of the door: "Dear Sir, Replying to your

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

favor of yesterday's date, we can only repeat that,
anxious as we are to meet you, we are working on
the finest possible margin "

I left my place by the door and went and sat
down at my desk. He was dictating his letters.
All my absurdly gathering hopes had fallen to the
ground like a house of cards. I knew now pre-
cisely what had been the position of aflEairs in
the adjoining room during the interval of silence.
Brocklebank had been seated on one side of the
desk, reading a letter, a shorthand clerk on the
other, his notebook in front of him, his stylo in
his haad, waiting.

I remained in my own office till I heard the
clerk leave Brocklebank's room. Then I pushed
open the swing door and joined him.

*' Hello!" he said, without turning his head.
*'How did you get on at Byfleet? And are you
still bent on keeping up the mystery?"

I found that my fear of the previous day had
been replaced by — or rather, was temporarily
submerged beneath — a feeling of sharp irritation.
Knowing what Mrs. Brocklebank had imdergone,
knowing what I had undergone myself, I felt some
sort of quick insensate annoyance against the

A GLIMMER PROM THE LOST DAYS

man whose incredible presence was responsible for
this pain and stress.

I took a chair by his desk. "Look here,
Brocklebank, " I said, "whatever shock it may be
to you, you've got to be told the truth, and youVe
got to help. The shock to us has been appalling."

"I ask nothing better," he answered, with the
utmost good hiunor. "It's what I have been
waiting for."

I paused, wondering how I should approach
what I had to say. Then I decided to make
no approaches at all, but to state the fact
baldly.

"You have no right to be here, " I said. " You
are dead."

He received the information, as I expected, with
perfect equanimity. For a few moments he made
no rejoinder, thinking evidently that I should add
something to my statement.

"You are very laconic," he said, at length.
"Am I to hear nothing of the dromistances of
my regrettable demise? "

"It is my impression," I replied, "that you died
in the snow; on the Col du D6me before help came.
If not, you died on the way down. You were

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

certainly dead by the time we reached the Grands
Mulcts."

"Who said so?"

"A doctor from Chamonix who had come up
on purpose to attend to you."

"And you buried me?"

"We cremated you."

"It has evidently done me good," he com-
mented. " I feel better than I have done for some
time. That indigestion I used to get has taken
a very welcome departure. I can eat anything

now."

"You don't believe me?"

"I have never been noted," he said, "so far as
I know, for imdue credulity. But even a credu-
lous individual might draw the line at believing
he was dead, when he was sitting in his oflBce."

" Then how do you accoimt for what I have told
you?"

" If you suppose yourself to be talking seriously,
there's only one possible explanation."

"You mean you think I am out of my
mind?"

"Temporarily touched. Your memory can't
be trusted out alone. Try a tonic."

96'

A GLIMMER FROM THE LOST DAYS

"That is very much what your wife said when
I saw her last night.'*

" If you talked to her as you have been talking
to me, being a sensible woman, it is what she would
naturally say."

"But her reason for sa3nng it was not the same
as yours."

"Well, at any rate, you can't have said anything
to her much madder than that I'm dead."

"In her view, I did."

"What?"

"That I had seen you and been talking to you."

This answer evidently surprised him. He re-
mained silent for some seconds. He was mani-
festly puzzled.

"Then you deliberately offer that as your reason
for leaving me," he said presently: "that you
thought I was dead?"

"I. do."

"And Rachel thought the same?"

"Yes."

"She went into mourning and that sort of
thing?"

"I found her last night replying to letters of
condolence."

7 97

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"And that is the reason why the clerks looked
at me foolishly the other day, and why you nearly
fainted?"

"It is."

Again, for a few seconds, he was silent. A
smile crossed his features. The humorous pos-
sibilities of the situation evidently appealed to him.
Then he appeared to toss the whole matter aside.

"It's a mad world, my masters," he said, and
drew towards him the firm's letter-book, which
was l3nng open on the desk before him.

He turned over the thin crimp pages quickly,
without apparently discovering what he wanted.
Then he put his mouth to a speaking-tube and
called up a clerk.

"Why don't you keep this book properly in-
dexed?" he said to the young man, when he
appeared. "Find me the last letter to Malcolm-
sons."

The clerk did as he was ordered. Brocklebank
read through the letter.

"Yes, that's all right," he said. "You had
better tell Bates to write to them in the usual form,
saying we shall be glad of a reply to ours of the
twentieth."

A GLIMMER FROM THE LOST DAYS

He closed the book and handed it to the young
man, who retired, carrying it with him. Brockle-
bank picked up a newspaper and ran his finger
down a list of prices; then he called up someone
on the telephone and made an appointment.

I felt as I watched him — ^as I had felt almost
from the moment of his reappearance — ^that the
most bewildering and distracting factor in the
situation was the perfect normality of his be-
havior. It was that which imported to it so
peculiarly vivid a sense of the imcanny. Had he
been wild or extravagant in his manner, deviated
even a little from his customary habits and trend
of thought, one would have found his presence
somehow less horribly and grotesquely incongruous.
For my own part, so far from being able to emulate
his behavior, I fotmd it utterly impossible, in an
atmosphere so deeply charged with mystery and
awe, in a position surely imique in the history of
man, to carry out anything beyond the merest
routine of oflBce work.

Having concluded his conversation on the
telephone, Brocklebank turned again to me. He
appeared to be surprised to find that I was still
sitting by his desk.

596839/S^

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"LcK)k here, Reece," he said, "you axe getting
moony, t grant that the thing wants explaining.
I daresay the Society for Psychical Research wotild
find it interesting. But business is business, and
this is an oflBce."

It occurred to me suddenly to put his apparently
unaltered consciousness to a stringent test.

"Just one question," I said.

"Let it be a short one."

"What do you believe in?"

"I believe," he answered, "that to-morrow is
Stmday, and that if you keep on talking to me,
I shan't be able to get cleared up to-night and have
a rotmd of golf with a sotmd conscience."

Tm going in a minute, but I want to know your
views.'

"On what?"

"On life and death, existence generally.'

"That won't take long," he said. "I believe,
as IVe often told you, in four things, and four
things only: the infinity of space, the eternity of
time, the indestructibility of matter and "

"And?"

"And that the ace of trumps will always take
a trick."

100

A GLIMMER PROM THE LOST DAYS

I got up. "And when we die? What happens
then?"

"That's the end of you, Make the most of
what youVe got."

I returned to my own room. More than ever
I was confounded. Brocklebank's final remark

appeared to overthrow the last conceivable ex-
planation, however much one was prepared to
postulate. Even admitting the miraculous, even
granting that he had risen from the dead, the
riddle remained a riddle. Here was a man who
had died, who, to my knowledge, had passed
beyond the veil. Yet he still said that death was
the end of all things. He could contribute nothing
better than that to the discovery of the great
secret.

Later in the day he came into my room.

"You asked me this morning," he said, "to
state my religious convictions. I don't know
whether you thought that I might be able to tell
you something about heaven, in advance of your
admired entry into the celestial sphere. At any
rate, since I saw you yesterday another shadowy
recollection has come back to me of something
that happened during the time I was imconscious.

lOI

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Perhaps it may serve your turn. I have a hazy
feeling of being in a shop. It was a good sized
one: one of those with several departments. And
I have a dim impression that somebody said, either
then or at some other time, * It's only sixteen,' and
that the remark surprised me. Make what you
like of it."

102

CHAPTER VII

THE ONE WELCOME

IT need scarcely be said that I took my seat that
evening, opposite William Brocklebank, in a
train for Byfleet, with a mind strained and
anxious and profotmdly distrustftil of the upshot.
Mrs. Brocklebank's distress and terror on the
previous evening had been too real and too deep
to allow one to think that it could be possible for
her, in existing circumstances, to live under the
same roof as the man she had married. The
feeling imbuing her appeared, from my angle of
view, not only comprehensible, but inevitable.
I should have been surprised had she shown any
other. I knew, of my own experience, that it
struck to the core of one's being and that it was
certainly enduring. For thoughfl had schooled
myself to talk to Brocklebank and to pass time

103

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

in his society, the fear of him which had gripped
me at his first appearance never left me. More-
over, it was slowly assuming a new quality, or
perhaps slowly discovering its essential quality.
It possessed me now, less as terror, than as repug-
nance. Unjust to him though I felt it to be, I
fotmd that I was becoming more and more dis-
posed to shrink from him with distaste and distress,
as from something tmclean and imholy, something
physically or morally tmsound. I was sensible,
too, that this feeling was growing and that, unless
I could check and control it, it would ultimately
amotmt to absolute loathing, such as would make
his presence intolerable.

Yet, as he was fond of pointing out, his personal
appearance had tmdoubtedly and very consider-
ably improved. His features were sharper and
clearer, less heavy; his skin was smoother. His
bulk had decreased; his proportions were more
sjrmmetrical. Indeed, the thought which had
struck into my mind at his first appearance
persistently recurred to me: it was as if he had
passed through some refining fire. Some refining
fire!

I looked across at him. He was reading the

104

THE ONE WELCOME

Westminster Gazette and smiling at something
he had found there. He did not read the West-
minster Gazette because it went far enough for
him, but because he could not find any news-
paper that did. For his politics were as hard
and uncompromising as his philosophy. I may do
him an injustice, but I have sometimes thought
that it would have aflForded him no little gratifica-
tion to see all those who live on an tmeamed in-
come, who, as he phrased it, "consume without
producing," delivered to the public hangman.
He had not had an easy path himself, he had had
to fight his way through; and it is possible that
at the bottom of his mind, though he would not
have admitted it, there was some resentment.

He was reading and he was smiling, his eyes
twinkling, their comers and the comers of his
mouth creased about with lines of laughter; yet
changed to a strange degree, chiseled to a finer
finish, wonderfully rejuvenated.

Once again my mind went back to the awful
scene in the Crematoritun at Geneva. He had,
in very fact, before my eyes, passed the ordeal of
fire. But if this were the result — ^if we could
assume the miraculous, and this were the result —

105

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

what then were those fragments that I had seen
in the casket, those fragments of honeycomb
structtare, pure white and infinitely delicate,
ready to crumble at a touch? I could not face
the problem without a swimming and reeling
sensation in my brain. I believed that I was
still sanCi but I knew that when a man begins to
lose faith in the evidence of his senses, his reason
is poising on a precarious balance.

Broddebank, for his part, though I warned him
of the reception he must expect, appeared to have
no misgivings that his domestic affairs could fail
quickly to settle themselves upon a comfortable
basis. He had complete faith in his ability to
restore his old ascendency, to re-win from his wife
the old confidence and trust.

"Rachel, " he said, as we were walking up from
the station, "is one of the small problems in this
world that I understand. I have been led to
believe that you are not a married man, Reece;
but against the time when you decide to see the
error of your ways, I will give you a trifle of
advice: You can do anything you like with a
woman, so long as you don't contradict her."

"But there are some things," I pointed out,

1 06

THE ONE WELCOME

"that axe contradictions in themselves. I have
told you, your wife thinks that you are dead, that
you have no present existence."

"If she expresses that opinion," he replied,
"it will appear to me to be a very sensible remark.
But I shall take means, as we jog along, to con-
vince her to the contrary."

We had entered the grounds of his house while
he spoke. As we walked down the drive, a black
spaniel emerged from a shrubbery and stood in
our path, giving tmquaUfied signs of the strongest
disapproval and animosity. Brocklebank called
to him. The dog immediately dropped on his
stomach and came crawling towards us, wagging
his stirnip of tail in the dust and giving vent to
sounds of groveling apology. We walked on,
and the spaniel drifted behind our legs. Presently
we again heard an immistakable growl. Brockle-
bank turned upon the animal angrily.

"Coster, you damned fool," he cried, "what is
the matter?"

Once more there was the fawning and cringing,
a black shape squirming in the gravel. Then the
dog jumped up at my companion, in happy recogni-
tion, and ran off ahead of us, barking and leaping.

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THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Brocklebank had no latch-key, so we rang the
bell. He had, in strict truth, a latch-key, but it
was of no use to us. He balanced a small bunch
of keys in his palm, while we stood waiting.

"When we find the owner of those keys," he
said, "we shall probably find someone who can
tmravel the mystery. I found them on the
dressing-table in my room at the Great Northern.
All I can tell you about them is that one of the
keys fits a small kit-bag which I also found in the
room, and that the kit-bag was labeled with my
name and address in a very elegant handwriting
which I don't recognize."

A thought shot into my mind. "Were there
any printed labels on the bag," I asked, "as well
as the written one?"

"Not a sign of one. It was brand new. I
must have had it in the carriage with me."

"I wonder," I said, reflectively, "if we could
trace the cabman who drove you to the hotel from
Charing Cross, or wherever it was you came from?"

"What would be the good?" said Brocklebank.
*'He would be pretty sure to tell you, like every-
body else, that I behaved like an ordinary Chris-
tian : hailed his cab, told him to drive to the hotel,

io8

THE ONE WELCOME

paid his fare, and gave him an iinsatisfactory tip.
It's no use, Reece," he added, with his chuckle,
"you can interview every cabman in London, but
you won't get any information about the next
world."

As he spoke, the door was opened by a maid.
She stood, for a few seconds, staring at him, open-
mouthed ; then, without any warning, she shrieked
and fled, with a swish and flutter of skirts, across
the hall and out of sight.

"First sight of the ghost," said Brocklebank;
* * rather tmnerving ! ' '

We entered the empty hall and himg up our
hats. In a comer, partly hidden behind an
oak chest, a portmanteau and a suit case were
resting. I had noticed them on the previous
day.

Brocklebank stood in front of these with an
affected air of rapture. "My long lost luggage!"
he exclaimed. "How grateful and comforting
to the sight of a man is the luggage from which
he has been sundered!"

"Mary," he called out, "Mary." He had to
shout several times, and I had to second his efforts,
before the maid who had admitted us at last

109

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

emerged, with extreme reluctance, from the
servants' quarters.

"Glad to see you again," said Brocklebank,
cheerfully. "Shake hands. . . . No ghost, you
see. Now, just take those bags up to my room,
will you? Go easy — they are rather heavy —
one at a time, and get someone to help you. We
have the greatest difficulty here, Reece," he said
solemnly, "in preventing our servants from over-
working themselves."

The girl was content as soon as she realized that
he was n^aterial — ^not only was she content, but
he had even succeeded in making her smile. The
very fact which, to us who had been with him at
Chamonix, invested his presence with such terrify-
ing mystery, appeased her.

I turned, and noticed that Mrs. Brocklebank
had crept out of the drawing-room. She was
visibly and distressingly very frightened, but was
controlling herself rigidly. Brocklebank followed
the direction of my glance and saw his wife. He
greeted her with a shout of welcome.

"The return of the fatted calf!" he called out,
breaking into his running laugh. "I mean, the
return of the prodigal husband, who can't give

THE ONE WELCOME

a satisfactory accotint of his time! Have you
killed the fatted calf?"

He took a step or two towards her. I don't
know whether he intended to attempt to kiss her
or merely to take her hand. Before he could
reach her she started back, shrank from his touch,
farther and farther, quite slowly but steadily,
keeping her eyes on him, to a comer of the hall.

"I can't believe it's you, Billy," she said from
her distance.

He took no umbrage. "Neither can I," he
said. "When you go to sleep on a mptmtain in
the Alps and wake up in a bedroom in London,
your ideas get a trifle mixed."

*' Supposing, " he went on, the next second, look-
ing across the space dividing them in a way I knew
very well — a, way which suggested that he had
been brought to review his previous opinion by
a remark of hers — "supposing it isn't I? Sup-
posing I'm making a mistake? Supposing it's
somebody else? I never thought of it. Suppos-
ing I'm only imagining that I live here and have
a wife with little brown curls in front of her ears?
Reece says I've changed."

She forced herself, with evident difficulty, to

III

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

look straight into his face. "Yes, you have
changed," she said slowly. "I think you have
improved."

"That's the worst blow of all," said Brock-
lebaok, with an immense affectation of dolor.
"She used to say — she used to say," he re-
peated, turning to me, "that I was perfect. But
that was when we were honeymooning. You
may find in the course of time, Reece, that a
honejrmoon produces more lies to the square
minute than any other period of a person's life."

Recognizing, evidently, that he could not im-
mediately break down the barrier of fear that
had arisen between them, and that it would be a
mistake to persist in his attempts, he turned into
the drawing-room.

"Don't go," Mrs. Brocklebank whispered to
me, in intense agitation, as we followed him.
"Don't leave me. Remember your promise."

Brocklebank walked to the window and stood
for a few minutes looking out. Then he looked
rotmd.

"WeR, tell me how things have gone on?" he
asked. "How's the garden? How are the roses?
Have my buds taken?"

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THE ONE WELCOME

A shadow of more poignant fear, of sudden,
intense awe, came into his wife's eyes. I knew
what thought had given it birth: I remembered
her words about the ashes. " I have n't looked, "
she said.

' ' Have n't looked ! Good heavens, ' ' said Brockle-
bank, "I must go at once."

He was on his way to the door, when a little
girl of four, escaping from a nurse, came nmning
and tumbling into the room.

She threw herself at Brocklebank. "Oh,
Daddy," she cried, breathlessly, "naughty
Mummy said you were n't coming back."

He sat down, picked her up, and laid her face
to his shaven cheek. "So naughty Mummy said
I was n't coming back?"

"Yes, never any more, " said the child, winding
a small arm round his neck, "never, never any
more." She looked across at her mother with
some resentment and a great deal of triumph.

"At last," said Brocklebank, raising his head,
"I've found someone who seems glad to see me.
Reece nearly fainted, Rachel gracefully backed
out of my presence, Mary had hysterics, even
Coster thought about it. But here is someone

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

who is glad I've come home. Isa't there?" he
said to the child.

She hugged his shirt collar as hard as she could
with both her arms and gradually insinuated her
lips to the neighborhood of his ear. "What did
you bring me?" she whispered.

Brocklebank burst out laughing. "It's no
good, Reece," he said: "there's only one
way to the female heart. You must make up
your mind to it. You've got to buy your
passage."

During this scene, Mrs. Brocklebank's face
expressed a medley of changing, contradictory
emotions. The fear was there all the time; it
never left her. But over it, about it, there was
something else: a trembling, struggling, evanes-
cent joy, a wild, fluttering desire to believe the
incredible. Her soft, pale cheeks were faintly
touched, as with dawning hope, by a tinge of
palpitating color. It was a conflict between her
reason and her heart, between her sense of the
unearthly and the claimant call of the things of
earth.

It lasted only for so long as the child was pres-
ent. When the latter had been carried away

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THE ONE WELCOME

in the arms of a scared, white-faced nurse, in-
duced with great difl&culty to enter the room, pale
horror again settled in her face.

Brocklebank was once more on his way to the
door, when she stopped him with a remark made
with an evident effort.

"I have put you in the comer room, Billy,"
she said.

"Thank you," said Brocklebank, formally.
"I hoi)e I shall be comfortable. Isn't she a
charming hostess?" he said to me, in a stage
aside. "But why not my old quarters?"

"Oh, I can't!"

He accepted her point of view quite easily and
cheerfully, as it had always been his habit to do.
"Of course — ^very reasonable. Who could be ex-
pected to sleep with a ghost? I wonder I have
courage to sleep with myself."

He went out, still laughing, and Mrs. Brockle-
bank walked to a window-seat, sat down, and
gazed into the garden. As I looked at her sitting
there, her pretty form outlined against the evening
light, so graceful, so young, so simply charming
and modem, I felt that there was something almost
diabolic in the force that had caught and hurled

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

her into this veritable maelstrom of swirling,
terrifying mystery.

" It is so terrible because he is so real, " she said,
speaking at last, as much, it seemed, to herself as
to me. "If he did something strange, if he came
through doors without opening them, I don't
think I should mind so much. But he just walks
and talks and laughs as he always did, and now he
has gone to look at his roses."

I said nothing; and presently she broke out
again: ''He must be dead. I saw him dead. I
saw him in his coffin."

"I saw more than that," I reminded her.

"Yes," she said slowly, as if absorbing the full
sense of the words.

Suddenly she sprang up and came over to me,
her big, deep eyes aflame with appeal. "Mr.
Reece, what can it, can it possibly mean?"

My utter helplessness numbed me. Even more

than I had craved to pierce the mystery on my
own account, I longed to be able to satisfy the
urgent, instinctive claim for enlightenment in her
eyes and in her voice.

"He says," I replied, hopelessly enough, for I
knew the information was of the smallest value

Ii6

THE ONE WELCOME

while the vital central problem remained tan-
answered, unapproached, "he says he thinks he
remembers being in a train and in a shop, and that
somebody said 'It's only sixteen,' and that the
remark surprised him."

''But he can't," she said, a sudden hush in
her voice, her eyes looking deeply into mine, "he
can't have been in a train alive:'

I could merely answer: "He can*t be here.
Yet he is."

She appeared to put aside, as I had had to do,
the unanswerable interrogative, and to turn her
thoughts to work backwards from the present.
She sat down at a little table, rested her face
between her open hands, and stared straight in
front of her. " ' It's only sixteen, ' " she repeated.
"What could that have meant?"

Brocklebank passed the open door of the room,
calling in that he was going to dress for dinner.

" Don't hurry, Reece, " he said. "There's only
leg of mutton."

I went to the window and stood for a few min-
utes looking out. It was a quiet evening and very
clear. For miles I could see in front of me ridges
of pine and heather and flaming gorse and bracken

117

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

turning to gold. I could fancy that it was smil-
ing, that the whole face of nature, hiding her se-
crets, was softly laughing, because she had fliing
at us, out of herself, somehow, somewhere, this
monstrous riddle.

I turned back into the room. Mrs. Brodde-
bank was still sitting at the little table. '"It's
only sixteen,'" she said again. "What could be
only sixteen?"

"A child?" I suggested. "No, you wouldn't
speak of a child of sixteen as * it' : you would say
'he' or 'she.' A distance perhaps? It was only
sixteen miles and he thought it was "

The sentence was broken by a roar of laughter
from the floor above. Mrs. Brocklebank started
up.

"Rachel," came Brocklebank's voice, "what,
in the name of forttme, is this ?"

We went out into the hall. William Brockle-
bank was coming down the stairs, carrying in his
hands the casket containing the ashes of William
Brocklebank.

ii8

CHAPTER VIII

"till death us do part"

ET a fork, Reece/' said Brocklebank,
" — ^you'll find one in the tool shed — and
fork in the stuff as I throw it. I don't
suppose it will do the roses any harm."

He was holding the open casket within the
crook of his left arm and dipping his right hand
among the contents. "That looks like a bit of
the skull," he said, taking out a fragment and
crushing it lightly to pulp between his fingers.

He had obtained Mrs. Brocklebank's consent
to his purpose only with great difficulty. It
seemed to her, I could see, almost a sacrilege that
this man who had come back should touch the
dust of the man she had loved. Had he proposed
to deal with it in any other way but as he himself
had directed before his death, she would certainly

119

THE BROCKLEBAXK RIDDLE

have withheld her pennissicm and woakl have
fought him with all her strength had he refused
to give way.

For my part, this experience, in the waning
fight of an August day, was so appalling, so
ghastly, so unearthly, that I fear my share of the
work was carried out in no very efficioit way.
It was made all the more horrible by Brodde-
bank's incessant crackle of laughter. He crumbled
the light substance to powder and threw it in
handfuls over the soil, much in the way that an
agriculturalist throws seed, talking all the time.

'' This is probably the first time in your experi-
ence, Reece, '' he said, '' that a man has scattered
his own ashes. Where is the brain? Is the brain
scattering or is it scattered? A nice metaphysical
problem!'*

Suddenly I ceased to prick and turn the earth,
and looked across at him. ''What do you make
of it, Brocklebank? " I asked.

"Manifestly we are burying someone,'* he
answered without the smallest change in his de-
meanor, still strewing the ash. "This is a funeral,
Reece. Try and look solemn."

At last the nightmare of a task was finished.

120

"TILL DEATH US DO PART"

Broddebank took the fork back to the tool-shed
and I returned into the house with the empty
casket. Mrs. Brocklebank met me in the hall.
She caught my burden from me and gathered it to
her breast with an exquisite and pitiful feminine
movement — this last relic that remained for her
of the dead past. I saw tears collect in her eyes
and fall on the polished lid. Then she ran up-
stairs, still clutching it to her heart.

I could gauge her feelings exactly by my own.
The peace and happiness of the past had become
a memory to be kept green with all the more
sanctity, it stood out in clearer and deeper colors,
by its contrast with the terror of the present.
Loss had seemed a supreme disaster, but loss was
what now she craved beyond anything on earth.
Death, which awhile ago had seized her mind^as
a cold and cruel force, revealed its beauty, its
beneficent mystery, in the Uvid Kght of this horri-
ble, unnatural return, this hideously real return.

I kept my promise to Mrs. Brocklebank. All
through the evening I did not leave her once alone
with the man who had returned. It was an eve-
ning that I shall not easily forget. We both had
the feeling that we were sitting with a dead man —

121

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

a dead man who made jokes. The sense grew
upon me that he had no right to be there, that he
was something monstrous, that we, living our nor-
mal lives, were outraged by his presence. Not
only had we to sit and talk with him, but we
had to face the prospect of the long hours of the
night beneath the same roof with a vitalized
corpse. Mrs. Brocklebank made an early excuse
to go to bed. Her hand felt cold when she put
it into mine and there was mute appeal in her
eyes. She was evidently terrified by the prospect
of the solitude of her own room, but she faced it to
escape from the dreadful constraint of a situation
to the last degree false and unnerving. I quickly
followed her example. I could manage to put up
with Brocklebank dtuing the day, but I had no
fancy for his company at night. As I looked at
him, in the subdued rosy light, seated in a low
chair, enveloped in a mist from cigarettes which
he smoked incessantly, I became possessed by the
feeling that he might disintegrate before my eyes,
that he might burst into dissolving fire, that I
might see him again, as I had seen him before,
slowly contorted amid wreathing, lapping yellow
flames.

122

t€

TILL DEATH US DO PART"

I think he remained downstairs an hour or two
after I left him. I lay awake for some time,
listening for the sound of his footstep passing my
door, but I did not hear it. My mind was so dis-
turbed that I had little expectation of being able
to pass a normal night, but eventually I fell into
an tineasy sleep.

Almost immediately, as it seemed, I was
awakened — a shriek of terror ringing in my ears.
As I started up in bed, I heard it again, even
louder and more penetrating than before, more
agonized. I was hurriedly feeling for the electric
light switch, when I became aware of a much
smaller sotmd, much smaller and much nearer —
a slight shuffle outside my door, a faint scraping,
as of fingers passing over the wood. I heard the
click of the latch; and then I knew that, in the
darkness, someone had come into the room, some-
one who was breathing quickly, panting.

I switched on the light. Mrs. Brocklebank,
with bare feet, clad only in her nightdress, was
standing at the foot of the bed. She was in a state
of very great agitation, trembling and sobbing.

"This is awful," she panted. "I couldn't help
it. I heard him in his dressing-room. I bore it

123

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

as long as I could — but he came near the door —
I thought he was coming into my room, and I
screamed. Then he did come in. I screamed and
screamed and ran here. I'm so terrified — so ter-
rified," she kept repeating, between sobs that
shook her whole frame.

Through the chink of the open door I saw a
shadow in the corridor. It was stationary, just
on the threshold.

"Rachel!" called a deep voice. It struck me
curiously that the voice was deeper than Brodde-
bank's.

Mrs. Brocklebank's agitation became inde-
scribably distressing. She cried and cried, and
flung herself about the room, seeking frantically
for some outlet, some place of concealment. It
was just as I have sometimes seen a bird sweep
blindly about a lighted room, in its frenzied ef-
forts to make its escape. Indeed, she was like
some white sea-bird, wildly fluttering and skirling.
Ultimately she disappeared, somehow, somewhere
— chidden, I supposed, behind a piece of furniture,
her little frame quivering and panting, her heart
throbbing.

I waited, listening, hoping that the cause of her

124

"TILL DEATH US DO PART

distress would have gone. But I still saw the
shadow, motionless, and again I heard the deep
voice. This time it called, "Reece!"

I sprang out of bed and went to the door,
stringing myself up to a hot pitch of anger, partly
real, but in major degree assumed to enable
me to cover and control my own enervating
fear.

Brocklebank, in his pyjamas, was standing in
the doorway.

"For God's sake, go to your room!'* I shouted.

He was smiling broadly. To my distraught
imagination it was not a smile that I saw, but a
grotesque, diaboKc grin.

"Are you aware," he asked solemnly, "that
my wife is in your room?"

"Yes," I replied, again in a loud voice; "and
I am aware that she will stay there tmtil you go
to yours.'

"But you don't understand the position," he
said, still grinning, as it seemed, a long row of
white teeth catching the light from the room
behind. "By the unwritten law, in the existing
situation I am entitled to shoot you. I stand
at the present moment on the most favorable

125

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

ground in the world. If you kill me, you swing;
if, on the other hand, I kill you, I receive — I hope
with becoming modesty — ^the acclamations of the
crowd.

Thereupon he proceeded to go through a series
of antics — ^indescribably strident in the strained
atmosphere of mystery and terror — ^imitating the
gestures of a man bowing right and left to cheering
people.

"Go back to yotu: room,'* I shouted again.
" Leave her to me. You are making things worse
every moment you stand buflfooning here. Don't
you see," I yelled, "that you are driving her
demented? I am not quite sture that I am sane
myself."

"Neither am I," he returned with a chuckle of
laughter.

Then, to my unutterable relief, still croaking
at his joke, he walked away down the corridor.
Presently I heard his door closed.

I went back into the room. "Come out," I
said. "He has gone."

Mrs. Brocklebank, shivering with fear and cold,
great tresses of bright brown hair hanging loose
over her shoulders, emerged from her hiding-

126

" TILL DEATH US DO PART

»»

place. She looked pitifully small and young and
poignantly distressftd.

"Go to your room/* I said, "and put on a
dressing-gown. Then go down to the drawing-
room. I will come too.'*

She obeyed me without speaking. I put on a
few clothes, and then, taking the eider-down from
my bed, went out into the corridor and switched
on a light. Mrs. Broddebank joined me in a few
minutes. She was now wearing shoes and stock-
ings and was wrapped in a soft silk dressing-gown
which reached almost to her feet. There were
strained restless lights in her eyes, and she glanced
tmeasily into the shadows of the corridor, but she
had regained her outward calm.

" I*m so, so sorry, " she said in a quick undertone,
clutching my arm. "You must think me a goose
to make such a fuss.'*

"No, I don't," I answered. "Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. To tell you the truth, I fed
almost as unnerved myself. The position is
impossible."

The drawing-room, at that hour of the night,
appeared cold and uninviting. Fortunately the
material for a fire was laid in the hearth. I

127

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

lighted it, and it was soon burning cheerfully.
Then I pushed a Chesterfield couch close to it,
made Mrs. Brocklebank lie down, and covered her
with the eider-down. She let her head fall on the
cushions and closed her eyes, but every now and
again she shivered spasmodically. As I looked
at her and saw her frame shaken from time to time
by these convulsive tremors, like sudden squalls
passing over a still lake, I realized, I think, even
more forcibly than I had hitherto done, how terri-
bly she had been frightened.

I drew an easy chair before the jfire and sat down
in it. I don't know whether I expected to be
able to get to sleep, but certainly for some hours
I did not succeed in doing so. Instead, my mind
struggled ceaselessly in search of theories to ex-
plain the appalling problem that had fallen upon
us like a bombshell. Consider the situation: a
man and a woman thrown together by circum-
stances of imparalleled mystery, and driven, for
the support of each other's company, to spend a
night in the modem drawing-room of a modem
house, with all the electric lights blazing. The
house about was absolutely still, but within the
stillness there lay tmdemeath terror for my com-

128

"TILL DEATH US DO PART'*

panion, and, in a minor degree, for me. A silver
clock on the mantelpiece ticked quietly, the fire
fluttered and fell, occasionally a coal settled in the
hearth. So environed, I was confronted, be it
remembered, by a phenomenon tmique, so far as
I knew, in human experience, and inexplicable
by any available human knowledge. Perhaps
for half an hour I had been straining after some
solution of the riddle, when a strange, sudden fancy
flared upon my mind.

Was it possible — and the thought, as it took
shape, trembled through me in long vibrations, a
thin, cold stream of queerly repressed excitement
— ^was it possible that, not Brocklebank alone, but
all three of us, had died upon Mont Blanc? Had
each one of us in turn been overcome, either by the
altitude or by the exaction of the long hours of
waiting in the snow? Was it possible, in fact,
that, though still surroimded by the same apparent
conditions as on earth, we were in reality on an-
other plane of existence, and that everyone who
died had to pass through this bewildering experi-
ence, this distracting struggle to reconcile incredi-
bly conflicting occurrences, before realizing the
fact of his own death?

129

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

To be sure we did not think we were dead. But
neither did he. On the contrary, he insisted that
he was alive.

Presently, somewhat to my surprise, I realized
that I was smiling. If this — ^this environment
indistinguishable from that surrounding physical
consciousness — ^were indeed the secret of the veil,
if this were the answer to the great riddle, it
wotdd be a very gentle irony, a very appropriate
and complete retort to the rash speculations of
men.

I looked round at my companion. Her eyes
were closed, but I knew she was not asleep.

"Mrs. Brocklebank?'* I said.

"Yes?" she answered.

" Do you mind if I ask you a strange question?*'

"No."

"Are you sure that we are alive?"

She did not reply with an instant and amazed
affirmative, as she wotdd naturally have done in
ordinary circumstances. She thought about it.

"I remember losing consciousness," she said,
after the lapse of a few seconds.

"Yes?"

^'But I thought I came round."

130

" TILL DEATH US DO PART

»>

^ "So does he. That's what he thinks. He
thinks he came round."

'* But didn't you think so. Do you mean, " she
asked, starting suddenly to a sitting posture, "do
you mean that you saw me die?"

"Lie down again," I said. "No, I don't mean
that. I, too, thought you came round. But
perhaps, in the meantime, I had died myself. If
we are dead, we must have died about the same
time, for neither has any recollection of the other's
death. It had been an exhausting day ; I re-
member I felt very much done up ; and I am almost
sure that, towards the end, one of the gtiides was
helping me, just as I was helping you."

Mrs. Brocklebank again pondered for a while.
Then she slipped a small, shapely forearm from
the sleeve of her dressing-gown and encircled the
wrist with her hand.

" But, " she objected, " I'm— I'm soHd."

"So is he, as it appears to us. And if you
touched yourself in a dream, you wotdd think the
same and say the same. It is our own mind
which makes things solid or not solid."

Again she did not immediately speak. Prom
the expression of her face, it was evident that

131

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

this strange possibility — ^which was curiously un-
alarming, which, on the contrary, was curiously
satisfjring, carrying, as it did, the sense that the
gate which had loomed ahead, coming constantly
nearer, was passed, that one was safely through —
was taking hold of her mind as it had taken hold
of mine.

"We could write to Chamonix," she said, at
last, "and find out exactly what happened.'*

"But if this is death," I replied, "we have to
asstmae an environment where every condition of
earth life is exactly duplicated. The Chamonix
we shotdd write to would not be the Chamonix of
our physical consciousness : it would be its counter-
part in another state of existence. No one could
tell us of our own death but witnesses of it who had
since died themselves ; and it is tmlikely that there
would be any such in so short a time."

"Oh, but I can't believe it," she exclaimed
suddenly. "I must be alive."

"I know it has always been said," I remarked,
"by those who go in for the study of occult science
and profess to know about these things, that most
people find the greatest difficulty in realizing the
fact of their own death."

132

" TILL DEATH US DO PART "

"But where can we be," she asked, "if we are
not on earth? We must be somewhere."

"Of course we must. I have heard," I said,
meditatively, "of dual existence, but I have not
known quite what it meant. Supposing we have
been transferred to some sister planet attached
to some sister solar system in some other part of
the imiverse — a sister planet which has developed
on identical lines, and reached precisely the same
stage in its history, as the planet Earth?"

Mrs. Brocklebank was frankly muddled. "I
don't understand it somehow, " she said.

"Oh, I don't understand it," I answered: "I
am merely oflfering wild theories to meet a wild
and incredible event. If it is a fine night, we can
test that last hypothesis by looking at the stars,
to see if they form the constellations we have been
accustomed to."

I went to the window, drew the curtains, and
threw open the lattice. The air was clear and
somewhat cold. Over a thicket of low, dimly
outlined shrubs in the garden, innumerable points
of silver light sparkled on a sable background.
The window I had opened faced south. The
stars appeared to be sprinkled over the sky in

133

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

random profusion: I could see none of the big
familiar constellations, neither Orion nor the
Great Bear nor any that I could recognize. I felt
my heart thumping. Had I indeed, with a blind
shaft, struck the truth?

I stretched head and shotdders out of the
window and craned my neck backwards. Then
I saw, a little to the right of the zenith, a small
sloping quadrilateral, accompanied by a single
brilliant star — ^unmistakably Lyra — ^and, away to
the left of it, also close to the zenith, a rough
W composed of three bright and two dull studs of
light — equally indubitably Cassiopeia. Looking
again to the south, I distinguished on the ecliptic
a great yellow star, much larger and clearer than
any other above the horizon.

I drew back the curtains across the window.
"Unquestionably," I said, "we are in the solar
system, and somewhere within the orbit of the
planet Jupiter. Unless, " I added, as I returned
to my seat, "we can assume the duplication of
the whole universe as we have known it."

I marvel to remember — ^now I come to look back
upon that time — ^how long this trend of thought,
this asstunption of the possibility of our own

134

TILL DEATH US DO PART*'

deaths, seriously held us. That it did so hold us
there is no doubt whatever. I have the clearest
recollection that, when I went to the window, it
was not in any Ught or perfunctory spirit, but
with a curious and excited mind : I shotdd not have
been surprised to find the stars arranged in utteriy
unfa.mi1iar formations. I can only offer again —
in explanation of a mental condition apparently
worthy of Bedlamites — ^the stupefjring event
which was prejnng upon our minds and the ab-
normal and eerie circumstances of our nocturnal
vigil.

I sat for some time looking into the fire before
I again broke the silence.

''No," I said, at length, "it won't do. If we
were dead, it would mean that every single person
whom we had known before and have since seen,
was dead too. It would also mean that we had
managed to escape seeing everybody previously
dead except him. We are not dead : we are alive.
That is to say, we are still passing through the
stage of existence which began when we were bom
on this planet : there has been no change. He
remains" — (in our snatches of conversation during
that night we both of us avoided giving Brockle-

133

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

bank a name) — ^^he remains the inexplicable,
the misplaced, the impossible factor."

I put more coals on the fire; and, for a while, I
think we both dozed fitfully. For my part, it
seemed that I never quite lost consciousness, yet
I dreamt. I reached, at least, that strange, vague
country on the borderland between imagination
and dreams.

Towards morning I turned my thoughts from
'the apparently insoluble mystery engulfing us to
the Brocklebanks' domestic problem. The events
of the night had made it plain to me that the old
conditions could not be renewed. Mrs. Brockle-
bank*s feeling was not, I was convinced, transitory.
Time might soften it a little, might wear down its
sharper edges, but in essence it was ineradicable.
I had often heard spoken the words, "till death
us do part, " but it had not occurred to me before
how deep a significance they cotdd bear. Mrs.
Brocklebank had fulfilled her compact, and it
was not in her power to go beyond it.

It was obvious that the subject would have to
be faced, that an arrangement would have to be
made, and I imagined that it would fall to me to
act as intermediary. I waited quietly until some

. 136

"TILL DEATH US DO PART

sign that she was completely awake shotild come
from my companion. All of a sudden she gave a
little yawn. It was the most delightful sound,
because of its simple naturalness, that had reached
my ears since I came to Bjrfleet. I got up,
switched oflf the electric lights, drew the curtains,
and opened all the windows. Never in my life
had I been so thankful to see the day.

"We can't explain it, " I said. ** We only know
he is alive and here. Can you get used to the
idea, do you think, gradually?'*

She sprang up to a sitting posture and threw
aside the eider-down. "How can I?" she cried.
* ' How can I ? I saw him dead. I canH be married
to a man whojpff I know is dead."

It was the answer I expected. Indeed, I had
only put my question for form's sake.

"It seems awful," she went on, "but it's true:
I don't only fear him, I hate him."

The words did not shock me; they did not even
surprise me. The feeling she expressed fitted ex-
actly with that sense of repugnance which was
gradually and surely growing in my own soul.

"Then what is to be done?" I asked.

"If he stays, I shall go. I don't know where I

137

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

shall go — ^I suppose I can earn my own Kving — I
can return to my people for a time — but I shall

go-

"I don't think he will drive you to that," I

said. I paused. ''There will have to be some
talk."

She raised a face wan in the new daylight, and
her big, appealing olive eyes looked up into mine,
but she did not speak.

"You can't talk to him?"

She shuddered. "No."

"Then I must."

"You have done so much," she said. "Why
should you be bothered any more with my
affairs?"

"It's my affair too," I answered. "I can't
escape from it. Whatever it is, whatever it
means, I'm marked down to see it through."

I looked at the clock. It was half-past five.

"Well, then," I said, "I think you had better
go back to your room. You don't mind now, do
you, now it is light?"

"Not so much," she replied.

I opened the door for her and followed her up
the stairs. When we reached her room, I took her

138

" TILL DEATH US DO PART "

hand. "Don't be afraid," I said. *'He won't
come again. He is not like that."

She gave me a look of assurance. Then she
went into the bedroom and closed the door.

139

CHAPTER IX

THE NIGHTBiARE ON THE LINKS

WHEN I came down to breaMast, Brockle-
bank was aJready in the dining-room.
He was in his usual good spirits.
"HeUo, Reece!" he said. "StiU aUve! I
thought I shot you."

He was dabbing a small cut on his chin with a
pocket-handkerchief. "There's no excuse for it,'*
he said. *'I grow a lighter beard than I used.
That's one of the advantages of cremation treat-
ment. The trouble is, you didn't keep my razors
stropped while I was away."

I picked up the Observer. "Don't read that
leading article," he said: "it's poisonous."
"Have you read it?"
"No."

He went to the breakfast table. "The Chicken

140

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

doesn't seem to be coming," he said. "We had
better pour out for ourselves."

"I don't fancy she intends to come," I said.

He took the coffee-pot in his hand and looked
across at me. "Where did you two pass the
night?" he asked.

" In the drawing-room."

"Why?"

"Because we were afraid."

"What were you afraid of?"

"You."

He poured out two cups of coffee. " Look here,
Reece," he said, "this was funny yesterday, but
it's getting silly."

"It's getting worse than silly," I said.

"Whatever the pair of you, " he went on, "may
have dreamed you saw in Switzerland, it's a pres-
ent fact that I'm here and, by the blessing of
Providence, in the enjojnnent of excellent health.
That ought to be good enough for people with the
regulation equipment of eyes and ears."

I sat down to the table. " It's just because it's
good enough," I said, "that it's so intolerably
uncanny."

"Well, then, what's going to happen?

141

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Frankly," I said, "she can't stand you yet."

He burst out laughing. "After last night," he
said, "that statement may be considered a trifle
superfluous."

"Put yourself in her place," I asked. "Call
it hallucination or what you will, put yourself
in her place. She saw you dead in your coffin."

He cut himself a large slice of ham. "It looks
as if I should have to stay on at the Great Northern
for the present," he said. "Some men would
pay good money for such a chance to go on the
loose; but I'm a home-loving bird and too old for
skylarking."

I felt that I ought to offer him the hospitality
of my flat. A month before, if a similar domestic
situation could have been conceived, I should have
done so without hesitation. In existing circum-
stances, his persistent presence at night was more
than I could face. So, though with some feeling
of shame, I remained silent.

"At any rate," he said, presently, "I*m not go-
ing to be done out of my day's golf. IVe ordered
the car for ten."

Before we started, I saw him stop at the door
of his wife's room.

142

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

"Rachel!" he called out. After an interval
he apparently received an answer. " I'm going to
play golf. After that I'm going back to London.
You won't see me again for the present. There's
a letter for you on your desk."

It was a considerate, in the circumstances it
was even a fine speech. It puzzled me, almost as
much as anjrthing puzzled me, that, while he re-
mained the kind-hearted man he had always been,
the feeling of repulsion which he begot in me at
his reappearance grew steadily in force.

As soon as we had taken our places in the car,
there happened the first of a series of mystifying
incidents which crowded that day. Brocklebank
was at the wheel, and I was seated beside him.
A chauffeur started the engine and moved out of
the way. With some apparent difficulty, Brockle-
bank got the gear out of neutral, and then the
car shot ahead — shot straight into a flower bed.
It swung rotmd and swept'with equal precipitancy
upon the bed on the other side of the drive. The
engine was racing, but Brocklebank made no
attempt to close down his throttle. I looked at
him. To my amazement, he was clutching and
straining at the wheel like a neophyte. I had

143

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

been particularly distressed, I remembered, on the
previous day, by the normality of his behavior.
I could now have wished, for the sake of my
personal safety and comfort, that he would con-
trive to show something approaching his normal
management of the car. We lurched from side
to side like a drunken man, finally bringing up
with a crash upon one of the gate-posts at the
entrance of the drive.

I got out with considerable alacrity. Brockle-
bank followed me. "Something seems to have
gone wrong with the car while I've been away,'*
he said. "I can't make out what it is."

The chauffeur, with a startled face, came run-
ning up.

"Has she been doing this long?" Brocklebank
asked him.

" She was running all right yesterday, " the man
replied.

The damage, fortimately, appeared to be con-
fined to a twisted mudguard. The chauffeur re-
started the engine and backed the car out upon
the drive.

"Does she seem to move all right?" asked

Brocklebank.

144

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

"I don't notice anything wrong, sir," said the
man*

"You had better drive us, then. Mr. Reece
looks nervous."

We got into the back seat. Under the chauf-
feur's control, the car slid out of the drive and
ran smoothly and easily along the road.

"That gives you something to think about,"
said Brocklebank, with an enigmatical smile.

"IVe got plenty to think about," said I.

Evidently he fotmd that it gave himself also
something to think about, for we neither of us
spoke again during the short drive.

As it chanced, when we walked into the smoke-
room at the GolE Club, there was only one man
there, a man whom we both knew well. He was
standing before a table, looking perfunctorily
through an illustrated paper, evidently waiting
for the arrival of an opponent.

"Good-morning, Reece," he said, when he saw
me. "Do you think the weather is going to hold
up?"

Brocklebank had come in behind me. The man
looked at him at first casually, then more closely;
then his face slowly blanched. His hand shook
10 145

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

as he put down the paper upon the table. I have
never, I think, seen the gradual birth upon
anyone's countenance of an expression of such
complete mystification and stupefaction. And,
mingling with it, permeating it, one saw, as al-
ways, cold fear.

"Is — ^is that Brocklebank? " he asked, in a
queer hushed voice.

"At your service, " said Brocklebank.

"But — " The unforttmate man evidently
fotmd it difficult to speak at all, to keep his bear-
ings, to control himself — "but we heard you were
— ^veryill."

"No, you didn't," said Brocklebank. "You
heard I was dead. Why not speak the truth?"

"Yes, we did hear that," the man admitted.
"I'm glad it was only an absurd rumor."

"Neither dead nor ill," said Brocklebank,
cheerfully; "particularly fit this morning, and just
about to give Reece the biggest dressing he has
ever had in his life."

He went through to the dressing-rooms. The
man, still with a very white face, came across to
me.

"I don't understand it in the least," he said, in

146

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

the same hushed voice. "Can you explain?
Only yesterday my wife had a reply from
Mrs. Brocklebank, acknowledging a letter of
condolence."

"I can't explain it," I replied. "There has
been a mistake, as you can see for yourself."

"But his wife herself evidently thought he was
dead."

"Yes, she did."

"And I imderstood you were with him at the
time."

"Yes, I was. I thought he was dead. Every-
body present did. The doctor* did. You must
take my word for it, Carrington, that I can't
explain it. That's the simple truth."

"Coma? Trance?"

I let it go at that, though I knew it could not
satisfy him when he came to closer reflection.

" It's lucky you didn't get him buried, " he said,
turning away. "I've dreaded that all my life.'-

Two or three times before we could start our
game we had to pass through a similar experience.
In the lobbies and dressing-rooms we were met
by the same looks of stupefaction and fear, by the
same questions. Brocklebank himself, it was evi-

147

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

dent, fully enjoyed the power which his position
gave him to frighten and mystify people. His
supreme opportimity came while he was changing
his boots. He was seated with his back to a high
wooden partition. Upon the other side of it,
apparently engaged in a similar occupation, two
men were talking.

"Terribly sad about poor old Broddebank, "
said one.

"I can hardly believe it," said the other.

Brocklebank immediately jtunped on the seat
and put his head over the partition.

"That's nothing," he called down to them:
"I can hardly believe it myself."

I think that even my partner's sense of the
comic must have been satisfied by the consterna-
tion of those two men.

By the time we reached the first tee, the report
that a supposed dead man was about to play golf
had run through the entire Club House and its
offices. We were watched by a ring of caddie
boys, workshop assistants, and kitchen hands,
standing at a respectful distance; and at several
of the windows I could see strained, bewildered
faces of members looking out at us.

148

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

"Do you still demand six strokes?" asked
Brocklebank, rubbing the grip of his driver with
a lump of pitch.

"Two, four, seven, eleven, fourteen, seventeen,"
I answered.

He was a good player, and I never started
arotmd against him with any great confidence of
scoring a victory, even with my allowance of
strokes. To-day he began with an amazing
stroke — one common enough to beginners, but
utteriy outside my experience of Brocklebank's
golf. He missed the ball entirely, did not move it
from its place.

"Even the gods nap occasionally," I said,
tapping a spot on the turf with my driver-head
for the consideration of my caddie.

I drove oflf a ball, and then Brocklebank es-
sayed a second time to deal with his. The result
was scarcely an improvement on the first. The
ball trickled a few yards from the tee and came to
rest in a patch of heather. He made as btmgling
an attempt to extricate it as I have ever seen,
forced it into an even worse place, and, after two
or three ineffectual efforts to move it, picked it up.

We went to the second tee. To my amazement

149

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Brocklebank repeated, with some variation of
detail, his display from the first. Indeed, as we
proceeded, the perception was gradually forced
upon my mind that my partner could not play,
could not play at all. Every golfer, however good,
will occasionally fall from grace, will prove tmable
on a particular day to produce his best, or even
his average game; but Brocklebank's failure, on
this occasion, was so complete, so abject, as to
remove it entirely from the category of the ordi-
nary ups and downs of a player's form. At first
I had regarded his mis-hits with the slight, legiti-
mate satisfaction of an opponent; but as the
wretched series of hacks, taps, scrapes, hooks, and
cuts continued monotonously from hole to hole,
I became perplexed and alarmed. It was too
evidently in some way involved in the horrible
mystery surroimding him.

Ultimately we reached a hole in the neighbor-
hood of the Club House. Up to this point Brockle-
bank had accepted his troubles, according to his
wont, with perfect geniality. Now he appeared
to take stock of them. We were searching, some-
what hopelessly, for his ball.

"How does the match stand?" he asked.

150

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

"IVe won the match," I said, "by ten and
eight. This is the bye."

"I'll present it to you. Let's go back to the
Club House: lunch may pull me together. I can't
imderstand it, and that's the truth, " he said, in
a tone that, for him, was almost serious. "It's
the most mysterious thing that has happened
since I came rotmd — ^this and the trouble with the
car. It looks as if that accident had upset me
more than I thought. After all," he added, re-
verting inevitably to a htmiorous point of view,
"a fatal illness generally leaves some after
eflfects."

I was struggling to extract from these odd
circumstances of the morning something which
might lead towards a solution of the riddle, when
a man made a remark to me which threw my
speculations into a new channel. It was while
I was in the dressing-room, washing my hands
before Itmch.

"Who was it you were playing with this morn-
ing, Reece?" he asked.

"Brocklebank."

" Brocklebank ! " he exclaimed, "I shouldn't
have recognized him. He must have changed

151

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

very much. I heard he had had an accident or
something."

"Yes," I said.

My reply was terse, because a sudden and flam-
ing thought had been started in my mind. I
marveled that for two days no hint or shadow of
it had come to me, that I had accepted without
hesitation an apparent miracle, when a common-
place explanation was perhaps staring me in the
face.

I went in to limch, sat down opposite my '

partner of the morning, and looked at him closely.
Undoubtedly he was changed — changed to a
degree that could scarcely be attributable to ,

ordinary fluctuation of health. Was it possible
that it was not Brocklebank at all, that I had been
the victim of a gross impersonation? Was this
merely some clever rogue who, possessing some
general facial resemblance, had learnt Brockle-
bank*s history and studied his traits of character,
and who had invented a story in order to slip into
his shoes? I remembered how the claimant in the
Tichbome case had deceived even the real man's
mother.

The steward came and asked me what I would

152

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

have for Itrnch. I replied vaguely, and was sur-
prised, a few moments later, when a plate con-
taining some edible substance was placed in front
of me.

The conjecture held me, as others had done. It
held me, indeed, longer than its merits warranted,
because I wished to find it true. Ultimately, I
was obliged to relinquish it. Presuming the
cleverest impersonator, he could not have ac-
quired, in flawless, unhesitatiilg perfection, every
one of Brocklebank's characteristics and manner-
isms, he could not have become imbued with his
minute personal memory, he could not possess
his exact knowledge of every detail of the Mark
Lane business. The inability to drive a car and
to play golf had appeared, when the idea sprang
hot in my mind, to tell strongly in favor of the
theory of personation. But even that, I perceived
on closer reflection, told, on the contrary, against
it. For an impostor, it was clear, would not,
voluntarily and -unnecessarily, have placed him-
self in a position of having to attempt to do things
which he would have known he could not do.

Beyond and above all such considerations, more-
over, I was sure of my instinct. I knew that this

153

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

man was Brocklebank— this man sitting opposite
me, eating and chatting — as well and as certainly
as I knew that I was myself.

In the smoke-room, after Itmch I was faced by
yet another puzzle. Brocklebank's talk became
loud and boisterous and in inferior taste. There
were a dozen or so men sitting and standing in the
room, when another entered — one who possessed
something of my partner's own cheerful and genial
disposition. He knew the latter slightly, and
had heard, apparently, only vague rumors of his
death.

He came straight across to him. "Hello,
Brocklebank!" he said. "Heard you were dead."

"Sorry to disappoint you," said Brocklebank.
"You behold," he added, getting up and stand-
ing with his back to the empty grate, "a brand
snatched from the burning."

I walked away to the window. The last phrase,
coming on a laugh from Brocklebank's lips, re-
called, in violent contrast, the hushed form, the
waxen features, the lurid and solemn scene in the
Crematoritmi.

"My name is Shadrach the Second," he went
on, raising his voice so that it could be heard by

154

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

all in the room. '* I Ve walked in the midst of the
bximing fiery furnace. I've listened to the soimd
of the sackbuts and psalteries. The fact that I
am now addressing you must be ascribed to
the holiness of my life. I was too good to
die."

Though by no means given to excess, my
partner had been accustomed, ever since I had
known him, to constune alcohol frankly. To-day
he had had two glasses of whisky and soda at
Itmch and a liqueur with his coffee. It seemed
ridiculous to suppose that so small an amotmt
could have affected his head. Yet his present
demeanor and talk were attributable, charitably,
only to a state of mild inebriation.

"Have you ever been cremated, Marriot?" he
called out across the room to a man of ample
contour. ''You should try it. It fines you down
wonderfully."

The room gradually thinned. "I never saw
Brocklebank drunk before," I heard one man
say. .

My partner was still standing with his back to
the fireplace. "Not going, Lightbody?" he said
reproachfully, as the last man moved to the door.

155

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Wait a minute. What will you have? Noth-
ing? What will you have with it — soda or
water?"

We were left alone. Brocklebank came across to
me. " You are not popular to-day , Reece. You've
cleared the room effectively; and now we can
have a dance. Did you ever see me do a two-
step?'* He proceeded to scrape and shuffle about
the floor, humming a time. "'Come and trip it
as you go, on the light fantastic toe.' If you'll
give me the reference, I'll stand you a drink, " he
concluded, plopping into a chair.

We gave up the idea of playing an afternoon
roimd. There was a train for London about three
o'clock which we decided to catch. When I
reached the door of the Club House, after changing,
I saw Brocklebank sitting alone in his car just out-
side the shelter. I was about to go over to join
him, when I remembered that .1 had not paid for
my caddie and turned in the direction of the caddie
master's shed.

"Brocklebank!" I shouted.

He did not hear me. A man passed me, on his
way to the garage.

" Do you mind telling Brocklebank that I have

156

THE NIGHTMARE ON THE LINKS

to pay for my caddie?" I asked him. "Say I
won't be a minute."

"Brocklebank?"hesaid. "Where is he?"

I nodded towards the car.

"That man in the car! " he exclaimed. " That's
not Broddebank. You are going mad."

157

CHAPTER X

DR. HEGIRAS

"ILy^OU are going mad." The casually uttered
J remark of the man at the Golf Club re-
curred to me that night, as I stared at the
picture above the mantelpiece in my study, and
revicT^^fed the incredible incidents of the three days
which had elapsed since last I sat there. I heard
it insistently: "You are going mad." It seemed,
indeed, that those days had been passed in no real
world, but in a phantasmagoria, amid flimsy,
wavering, changing figures, amid such stuflf as
dreams are made of. I could extract from them
nothing that held, nothing that was certain, noth-
ing that was constant, nothing that I could clutch
and fasten to: everything was doubtful, shifting,
evanescent. I saw myself, at one time, cold with
horror because a dead man stood before me; at

158

DR. HEGIRAS

another time, stupefied and doubting my reason
because someone told me it was not the dead man,
I saw Mrs. Brocklebank, at one moment, shrieking
and flying in an agony of terror from her husband;
at another moment, weeping imconsolably over
his ashes. I saw the man himself, one day, sit-
ting in the oflBce in Mark Lane, conducting the
firm's business, quietly, methodically, and ably;
and I saw him, another day, driving a car like
a Itmatic and playing golf like a baboon.

The sense of the imcanny imreality of it all
came back to me with intense force. I was en-
veloped, as it seemed, in a slightly swaying haze
— a, mist that moved slowly back and forth, pro-
ducing an effect of things appearing and vanishing
and again appearing. I hardly knew from moment
to moment whether my mind was distracted by
the fear that Brocklebank was Brocklebank, or
by the fear that he was not. Two members of
the Golf Club had told me that the man I had
played with was not Brocklebank. Yet, to my
sense, he was Brocklebank beyond question. K
they were right, then I was mad. If they were
wrong, then still I was mad ; for Brocklebank was
dead.

159

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Steadily and irresistibly, as I sat and thought,
the fear that had assailed me in the first hours and
that had never wholly left me — ^the doubt of my
own sanity — settled upon me. I saw that all this
chaos of mystifjring, changing impressions was
susceptible to a subjective explanation, could be
cleared away by the assumption of some disorder,
some false focusing in my own brain. Moreover,
I could not see how otherwise it could possibly be
susceptible to explanation, how every one of its
shifting and conflicting elements could be fitted
to an objective solution, whatever miracle was
supposed.

I did not think that I was mad in the sense that
I had become permanently irresponsible for my
actions. I did not imagine, as I had done at first,
that people might look askance at me, might show
a disposition to avoid me. But I could conceive
that I had been subject to some hallucination, and
might be so again. At some point, during the
cotirse of recent happenings, I could suppose that
my senses had failed to supply me with correct
information, had substituted other incorrect in-
formation. Had Brocklebank not fallen ill on
Mont Blanc? Or had he fallen ill and not died?

i6o

(

DR. HEGIRAS

Or had he died and not been cremated. Or had
he been cremated and not reappeared? Finally,
assuming my mind to have received a true im-
print of the events at Chamonix and Geneva, had
I seen all the incidents of the last three days in
accurate focus?

It became clear to me, as I paced about my
room, that imless I could obtain relief from these
preying doubts, the very condition of mind which
now beset me as a fear would be in a fair way to
be realized as a fact. The suspicion that one's
brain was acting erratically was intolerable: it
would be better, I felt, to know the worst, whatever
it might be. Suddenly I sat down at my desk and
snatched a sheet of paper. I wrote a letter to a
yoimg medical friend whom I could trust, asking
him to give me the name of a recognized authority
on cerebral disorders, and immediately went out
and posted it.

His reply came the next day. It was char-
acteristically terse and dry :

"Hegiras of Wimpole Street is your man. He
can't make a mistake. If he says you are mad,
you can take a ticket for Colney Hatch."

I had not told him, it needs scarcely to be said,

XX i6i

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

that I wished personally to consult a brain special-
ist. That was a small asstimption he had made
on his own accoimt.

I knew Dr. Hegiras by reputation. There
was no doubt of his ability : if any man in Europe
could answer the question that I needed to be
answered, he was the man. But I was obsessed
by the idea that I should be humored, that I
should not get his true opinion. The very sub-
tlety wherewith, on that accoimt, I went about the
business of making an appointment with him, I
took to be an unfavorable symptom. I wrote
from the office in my own name. But I stated
that I wished for a consultation at the desire of
my father, to whom I asked him to make his
report. For that purpose, I gave him another
set of initials and the address of my flat.

As soon as I had posted the letter I was struck
hot by the thought that he would be clever enough
to see through this piece of deceit, and that he
would attribute it to the peculiar cunning char-
acteristic of the mentally imsoimd. His reply
afforded no hint of any such perception. It was
a formal note, three fourths printed, giving me
an appointment for four days later.

162

DR. HEGIRAS

I remember that, on the day named, when I
stocxi at his doorstep and had already tapped with
the polished brass knocker, I stiflfered a sudden
revulsion of feeling. Here was I, a sane man,
come to consult a specialist in diseases of the
brain! What was I to do? What was I to say?
The position, it struck me, was supremely foolish.

I had little time to think about it. The door
was opened, and I was ushered into a dark hall,
and thence into a waiting-room, also dark and
heavily furnished. Even the illustrated papers
on the table seemed somber. They were neatly
arranged, as if no one had turned them all day.
For my part, I felt as little inclination to read
Punch as to study a treatise on logarithms.
Fortunately I was alone; so I walked about the
room, treading with almost imcanny softness
on the heavy carpet, listening to a ponderous
marble clock on the mantelpiece ticking. It
ticked to ten minutes past the time of my appoint-
ment. Then the ddor was opened, and a soft-
voiced man-servant spoke my name.

I followed him along the hall. He noiselessly
opened another door. I passed over the threshold,
and the door was closed behind me.

163

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

The rcx)m I had entered, in cxmtrast with the
other, was well lighted. To my surprise, it
appeared to be unoccupied. Then, from out a
large chair, placed with its back to me, there
jumped up a small, spare man with dark hair and a
dark, close moustache, nipping off a pair of glasses
and closing a book as he rose.

"Good day, Mr. Reece," he said. "Pray sit
down. I am afraid I have got the best chair, but
if you feel aggrieved we can change. Would it
appear to you to be possible," he continued, re-
stuning his seat, after I had taken the chair he had
indicated, "if I may venture to ask your opinion,'
for a man who has once died to come to life again?"

I stared at him.

"You are quite right," he interjected. "Your
impressions are perfectly correct. The position
is as you suppose. You are consulting me as to
your state of health: I am not consulting you
as to mine. I was reading, " he explained, "when
you came in, a book on the subject of reincarna-
tion — a small Indian work." He tapped the little
volume in his hand with an outstretched fore-
finger. "The opinion of Oriental savants on
such a subject is not lightly to be set aside. The

164

DR. HEGIRAS

people of the East are inferior to us in inventive
genius, but the best of them are scholars and
thinkers, who have studied metaphysics far more
deeply than Europeans, and who, if one may coin
a phrase, have the genius for the occult."

Bewildered as I was, I was suddenly, strangely,
intently interested. "Are you offering that as a
solution?" I asked.

"I am offering that as a solution," said Dr.
Hegiras.

I took a few moments to think. " It won't hold
water," I said. "Even if you accept the princi-
ple of reincarnation, a man does not return full
blown to the world : he is bom in the ordinary way
and grows up gradually. Besides, he retains no
recollection of his previous existence. Brockle-
bank — " I stopped, suddenly surprised to find
that I had been asstuning in my interlocutor a
knowledge of the circtunstances that had brought
me to his consulting room.

" ' Brocklebank' — ^you were saying?" he sug-
gested, with an expression of detached interest on
his face, handling his glasses.

"Would you mind telling me," I asked, "what
put this subject of a second life into your mind? "

165

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Presently, Mr. Reece, presently," he said,
smiling courteously. "In the meantime," he
insisted, " ' Brocklebank' — ^you were saying?"

I had a sense of helplessness before his vivid,
forceful personality. I was nearly twice his size,
but I felt that he would quietly impose his will
upon me, that he would conduct this interview
upon lines of his choosing and not of mine, and
that I should waste time and gain nothing by
declining to accept his guidance.

"Brocklebank," I said, "can remember per-
fectly everything that happened before he died."

Dr. Hegiras laid his little book upon a desk with
an air of finality. "You have quite convinced
me," he said. "Your reasoning is perfectly
sound. We may dismiss the theory of reincar-
nation."

I knew then, as clearly as if he had informed me
of the fact in plain words, that the sole object of
his original question had been to study my reply.

He sat for a few moments slightly oscillating the
glasses, which he held between his forefinger and
thumb, his lips pursed as if to whistle. Then he
turned again to me. " Now will you tell me, " he
said, "quite briefly, but without omitting any

i66 i

DR. HEGIRAS

relevant detail, this story about your friend Mn
Brocklebank?"

I had thought, before I came, that it would be
unnecessary to take him completely into my
confidence, that I should be able to get on with
vague, general references to strange and imlikely,
happenings, leading me to become suspicious
about my mental equipoise. It was very obvious,
now, that such veiled truths would not do for
Dr. Hegiras. I told him, therefore, frankly and
as shortly as I could, all the circumstances con-
nected with Brocklebank's death and return.

"A man, " he said, when I finished, "whom you
know to be dead walks into your oflBce ; and so you
assume that you must be out of your mind. Is
that the point?"

"That is the point exactly."

"I may say at once," he said, gently tapping
the palm of his left hand with his pince-nez, "that
because one takes a temporary impression of non-
existent things, it is not necessary to postulate
a disordered brain, or even a serious lapse of fimc-
tion. A man in a hypnotic trance, for example,
sees things which do not exist, talks with people
who are not present. The so-called Christian

167

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Scientists can make a man think that he has no
pain, when, to medical knowledge, conditions of
agonizing pain are present. Or, in other ways,
you may suffer some temporary aberration at-
tributable to some temporary cause. Let me
examine you."

He put me through a series of tests, beginning
with a minute inspection of my eyes, afterwards
proceeding to strange and less pleasant experi-
ments, such as thtunping my knees, and otherwise
pursuing his investigations to quarters of my anat-
omy which I had not previously suspected to be
even remotely connected with my cerebral system.

He made no comment at the conclusion, but
quietly put away the instnmnients he had been
using. "And now," he said, "with your per-
mission, we will resume our very interesting
conversation."

We seated ourselves again in the easy chairs,
and Dr. Hegiras brought the finger tips of his two
hands together.

"No doubt, I may assume," he said, "that it is
obvious to you that the man whom you saw cre-
mated at Geneva is not now alive. Dead men
don't walk about the world."

i68

DR. HEGIRAS

"It should be obvious," I said.

"You hesitate. You are not sure of that?"
He looked at me keenly.

"How can I be sure of it, when my senses ap-
pear to tell me to the contrary?"

"' Appear ' to tell you. Quite so. Now, what
was your object in coming to consult me?"

"I came because I thought I might have been
suffering from hallucinations."

"Precisely," he said, with satisfaction. "That
is what I wanted to get from you. You have a
very vivid imagination, Mr. Reece."

"I didn't know it before," I answered.

"You should be pleased to discover it, even
though it has played you a trick. A man is only
half equipped who has no imagination."

"Do you mean," I asked, "that I have dreamt
all this?"

"Not all of it. But undoubtedly there has
been a period, between the time when you started
to ascend Mont Blanc and the present, when your
mind has failed to take a correct impression of
the objects presented to your vision. In other
words, your imagination has provided illusory
objects,"

169

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"But when?" I asked. "And how long would
the condition last? It is going on still?'* I de-
manded on a sudden, alarming afterthought.

The alienist smiled. "What do you see in this
room?" he asked. "And what did I do just now
when I examined you?"

I told him.

"That is my impression too," he said. "So
I think we may asstune it to be correct."

I returned to my previous question. "When do
you think that this happened to me?"

"As to that," he replied, "I can oflfer only the
roughest guess. Your own impressions of what
occurred are all the data I possess, and it is pre-
cisely your impressions that are in question."

"Well, even a rough guess?" I pressed.

"There are several considerations that may
guide us, " said the specialist: "first, your probable
state of health at any given moment; second, the
extent to which particular observations of yours
have been confirmed by other witnesses; and,
third, the fact that the imagination of a generally
balanced and responsible person does not readily
create the freakish, the outrS, the wild or extrava-
gant, but, on the contrary, steps in to supply the

170

DR. HEGIRAS

expected and normal, when some event unexpected
and abnormal has actually taken place/*

Dr. Hegiras paused to adjust his glasses and to
glance at a slip of paper — ^apparently a list of
appointments — ^which lay upon his desk.

"For these various reasons,'* he proceeded, "I
should eliminate the whole period while you were
on Mont Blanc. I think that what you saw at
that time was, in all probability, substantially
what occurred. On like grounds, I should exclude
the period that has elapsed since you returned to
this country. It is evident that your partner is,
in fact, alive and engaged in his usual occupa-
tions; for that does not rest on your testimony
alone, but upon that of many others. What
remains?

"The time in Switzerland and in Prance," I
answered, "after we descended Mont Blanc."

"A very trying time, was it not?"

"Very,"IrepUed.
^"And during that trying time, what was the
most trjring experience of all?"

I reflected for a few moments, and then replied:
" The cremation."

To be sure. Let me ask you one further

171

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

question. When you entered the incinerating
chamber, what did you expect to see?"

"I expected, of course," I answered, "to see
Brocklebank's body cremated."

"You not only expected to see that, but you
were as certain as you could be of anything in
advance that it was what you would see?"

"Yes."

Dr. Hegiras closed his glasses, put them in his
pocket, and looked at me sharply. "Now, I sug-
gest," he said, "that you did not see that body
cremated."

I returned his look without speaking, endeavor-
ing, with a mystified sense, to throw my mind
back to the time.

"I suggest," he added, "that you saw nothing
whatever but a bundle of grave clothes and odd-
ments."

172

CHAPTER XI

THE doctor's reconstruction OF EVENTS

IT is one matter to be able to accept the idea of
personal delusions in the abstract; it is quite
another to regard as possible a concrete
instance. I could not bring myself to suppose
that what I had seen in the Crematorium at
Geneva was a mere figment of my imagination.
Moreover, in addition to the difficulty of believing
that a patch of dream had been sandwiched into
my waking life, objections to the doctor's theory
on other grounds crowded upon my mind. I was
so occupied in following the bewildering streams
of thought which his words had set in motion,
that for a few seconds I partially lost sense of his
presence.

"I astonish you?'* I heard him say.
I pulled myself together. " It seems incredible,
I said.

173

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Wherever we place the period of aberration,
it will strike you in that light, " he replied. " You
have no need to emphasize unduly in your mind
the particular suggestion I have made. At the
best, as I have warned you, it is a shot at a venture.
Nevertheless, so far as it is possible for me to form
an opinion from your own impressions of fact, I
am inclined to think that the time when, on all
grounds, it is most probable that you became
subject to hallucination, was the moment when you
entered the incinerating chamber, and that the
condition lasted at least until you left the Crema-
torium.

"Let us examine the position,'* he went on.
"You had recently suflFered a great shock, you had
been placed unexpectedly in a position of responsi-
bility and trial, and you had passed through a
period which had made exacting claims upon yotu*
energies, both physical and mental. In that
condition of mind, you were introduced to cir-
cumstances entirely new to you and peculiarly
beset with awe and distress. Would it be sur-
prising, when those considerations are kept in
view, if your mind had failed to take an accurate
impression of what you saw? You say that there

174

••

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

was no coffin. Up to that point, perhaps, you
continued to be normally responsive to your visual
sense. Your preconceived ideas were not, by that
alone, too severely outraged: you could accept it.
You said to yourself that the body had been taken
out. Let us suppose that there was no body as
well as no coffin, remembering always the
antecedent circumstances affecting your health,
that might have put a strain upon you sufficient
to cause the receiving and recording instruments
in your brain to part company. You would
receive an impression of one thing and record
another. You expected to see a body, and so your
mind would create one. And the rest you would
construct from what you had heard or read about
the process of cremation."

He put his proposition so cogently that, in spite
of my strong instinctive repugnance, I could
almost believe it to be true. Even if I could
and did accept it, however, it appeared to 'me
that the major mystery would still remain un-
solved: insuperable difficulties would still con-
front us.

"But the attendant came and asked me to see
the cremation, " I objected. " He would not have

175

THE BROCKLBBANK RmDLE

done that if they had discovered that the coSn
contained no body."

''Are you sure/' asked Dr. Hegiras, "that he
put his question in that way? Are you sure that
he did not ask you to come into the cremating
chamber?''

"No, I am not sure/' I replied, after reflection.
''But there was Mrs. Brocklebank. She was
there too. She also thinks the body was cre-
mated."

"Because you told her so: she did not see
it."

" But the ashes? " I insisted. " The casket? "

"In a Crematorium," replied Dr. Hegiras,
"there are many caskets containing ashes: you
were often unobserved by any of the ofl&cials; and
your cab was waiting outside. K our theory is
correct, you were not at that time responsible for
your actions; and who can say what perverse
necessity you may have felt,. when in such a state
of mind, to provide evidence that a cremation had
taken place?"

"But," I said, bewildered, "I saw the casket
placed in Mrs. Brocklebank's hands."

"We are assuming a period," he replied, with a

176

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

shade of impatience, "when your impressions were
not to be trusted/*

"But if Mrs. Brocklebank confirms me on that
point? '•

"If," said Dr. Hegiras.

I took another Kne. I felt that I was fighting
for my sanity. "In my case," I said, "such a
theory would only get rid of the cremation, not
the death. Whether or not there was a cremation
is of relatively little importance while the death
remains."

"I agree," said Dr. Hegiras. "When I said
just now that I thought your impressions taken
on Mont Blanc were substantially accurate, I
meant that they were probably as accurate as those
of anyone present. But your partner is alive: it
is therefore obvious that he cannot have died, as
you supposed he did. I can only guess at what
actually occurred. It is possible that the physi-
cian who examined your friend at the Grands
Mulets hut, in awkward circumstances and in a
poor light, may have mistaken a condition of
catalepsy for death. Unfortunately, it cannot be
denied that such mistakes have occasionally
occurred, and that people have been buried alive

12 177

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

in consequence. Subsequent examinations, in
more favorable conditions, would be conducted
by men whose minds were involuntarily biased
in favor of the earlier opinion and would probably
be perfunctory. A medical man, who is called
upon to examine a body which has been pro-
nounced dead, always approaches the task with
the feeling that his work is unnecessary."

"But if that were so," I said, "what became of
him ? How did he come to disappear so completely
and to turn up later in London?"

"You are asking me now," said the doctor,
smiling, "not only to wander quite outside my
province, but to take a very big plunge into con-
jecture. It is manifest that we cannot account
for these things by the assimiption of any ordinary
flow of events: we must draw heavily upon the
unusual, the extravagant, and the bizarre. Does
no possible explanation occur to you?"

I pondered the matter for a few moments. " If
he had come round when the coffin was opened,"
I said, "and for some unimaginable reason had
gone away in a borrowed suit of clothes, the
oflBdals would have told me."

"Again I must remind you," said Dr. Hegiras,

178

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

this time with something of an air of smiling
resignation, "that no conclusion can be based
upon your impressions at that time. It is possible
that the officials may have told you something
of that kind, and that you may have appeared to
imderstand all they said to you. That is a possible
explanation, but, for obvious reasons, an improba-
ble one. I would be inclined, Mr. Reece, were I a
betting man, to put my money on another horse.
To account for his disappearance, I would stake
on a certain trait in your friend's character. You
tell me that he is fond of his joke; that he is so
fond of his joke, that he can find scope for its
exercise in circumstances that would appear the
reverse of amusing to people whose sense of
htunor was less developed. Is that so?**

"Yes," I answered.

"Very well. Now, let us suppose that he re-
covered from his trance after he had been placed
in the coffin, and after the coflfin had been closed.
A man of his physique, or even one of ordinary
physique, would find it quite possible to force
off the lid of a light shell such as is used for
crematory purposes. I assume that it was a shell
of that description?"

179

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Yes," I replied again.

Having extricated himself, " Dr. Hegiras pro-
ceeded, **what can we suppose he did? An
ordinary person, in such a position, would have
been extremely frightened. Shall we be straining
probabilities too far, if we suggest that Mr.
Brocklebank may have seen in the circumstances
a unique opportunity for scoring a laugh oflE his
friends?"

" It would have been very like him, " I admitted.

"That being so, and granting that our premises
are correct, it should not be difficult to reconstruct
roughly his course of procedure. Where was the
coffin lying? Not, I presume, in his own room."

''Oh, no," I replied: "Mrs. Brocklebank was
occupying that. It was in a sitting-room on the
first floor — the floor below us."

"And there was nothing belonging to him in that
room?"

"Nothing, so far as I remember."

"So that, if he was to get away from the hotel
without disclosing the fact that he was alive, his
first necessity would be to obtain some clothes. I
can conceive some moments when, if a passing
chambermaid had chanced to look round, she might

1 80

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

have been considerably startled by the sight of the
dead man peering through a chink of his door,
waiting until the coast was clear. He would have
to take chances, but we must assume that they
favored him, and that he managed to snatch some
clothes and other necessaries from a neighboring
room and to get back to his own without being
seen. Subsequently we must suppose him filling
the coflfin with an equivalent weight, redosing
it, and concealing himself until an opportunity
of escape presented itself. That, no doubt, could
easily be accomplished after dark, by means of the
balcony supported on pillars, which is an invari-
able feature of the first floor rooms of Swiss
hotels."

I was so interested in this unfolding of the
possible course of events, as the doctor's mind
reconstructed them, that it did not occur to me,
at the time, that there was anything peculiar in
the fact that I was listening to it in the consulting
room of a great specialist, whose professional ad-
vice I had sought.

"Do you follow me?" he asked.

"Very well," I replied.

"We have reached a point, then, when your

i8i

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

friend Mr. Brocklebank is outside the hotel, and
a closed and heavy coffin is still within it. Hi#
object, of course, in taking the trouble we have
supposed him to take, would be to make a dramatic
reappearance at some effective time, to enjoy the
bewilderment of his friends, and to tramp upon
the wreaths and mourning cards and notes of
condolence — ^all of which, in fact, he has done, but
with an impaired memory. That latter fact must
be accounted for by the supposition that, at some
point in the course of his journey home, his illness
recurred. It would be almost surprising if it
had not done so, when we remember the ordeal he
had passed through and the unusual strain he had
immediately put upon himself. To explain his
subsequent reappearance in London, we must
assume that, at the time of his breakdown, he
had the good fortune to fall into the hands of
kindly people, who took charge of him for the rest
of the way. It need not be supposed that he was
again reduced to a state of stupor. More prob-
ably, he relapsed into a condition, very well
known to medical science, when the sense of
personality is imperfectly poised. His own hazy
recollections indicate that he was at least partially

182

-YL^

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

conscious during a portion of the journey. By
the time he reached London, he had evidently so
far recovered that his unknown friends felt justified
in leaving him. It was not, however, as we know,
until the following morning that he found himself
permanently restored to his normal state of health.**

"But his recollection of being in a shop?" I
asked.

"He had no clothes but those he was wearing.
What would be your own first proceeding in a
similar predicament?

"And the bunch of keys?

"Pound in the pocket of the trousers he an-
nexed."

"And the 'only sixteen'?"

"Oh, you mustn't push me too hard," said the
doctor, rising; "particularly since my next patient
has been waiting nearly twenty minutes. The
boat train arrives in London in the afternoon, but
he didn't reach his hotel until night. He could
have done many things in the meantime. Perhaps
he had himself weighed? Perhaps he was sur-
prised to find that he was only sixteen stone?"
He glanced at his own spare figure with a certain
air of dry humor.

183

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

I had risen also. " May I remind you, '* I said,
"if you will not think me too inquisitive, that you
have not yet told me how you came to know any-
thing at all of the circumstances?"

"Ah, well, Mr. Reece," he replied, "you will
understand that, in my branch of the medical
profession, it is necessary to approach the business
of diagnosis by a route different from that which
serves in any other. Ordinary pathological tests
are only of relative and subordinate value to me.
I must get my patients to talk, and for that
purpose I must find out what subjects they are
interested in, particularly if there is anything
weighing on their minds. When I received your
letter, I put inquiries on foot, and soon heard
the story of Mr. Brocklebank — ^not quite as you
have told it me, but substantially so. It has evi-
dently supplied the gossip of Mark Lane for days.
Had your brain been seriously affected, you would
not have been surprised to find that I knew all
about it. A man with a mania takes it for
granted that everyone he meets will open his
subject. He supposes that it is what all the
world is thinking about. It was a favorable sign
when you asked me to explain. You postponed

184

// .

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

the question for a sentence or two, but you asked
it. On the other hand, had I failed to take
measures in advance, I might have been faced
with trouble of the reverse kind: you might have
proved to belong to another class entirely, the class
which is secretive, the peculiar class which asks
me to diagnose and at the same time does its best
to balk me."

"I am afraid," I admitted, "that that is what
I had in my mind to do."

"lUogical, isn't it?" he asked, swinging his
glasses and looking at me with a quizzical smile.
"I wiU take you a little further into my secrets,"
he went on; "and you may regard the fact as the
best report I can give you. When a patient
enters my consulting room for the first time, his
mind is predisposed to see a grave man sitting at
a desk. All the arrangements outside this room
are purposely made to set up such an expectation.
I take care that he shall see nothing of the kind.
He may see, as you did, a small man sitting in an
easy chair, reading a book or a newspaper. At
any rate, he will see something quite different from
what he expects; and the instant call upon him to
re-order his ideas is an important aid to diagnosis.

185

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"How did I come through it?" I asted.

He smiled. "Without discredit."

"So may I take it that you give me a dean bill i

of health?"

"You are all right," he said, kindly. "But i

don't let this matter prey upon you. Whether
or not I have hit the right nail on the head, I hope
that our conversation may relieve your mind to
the extent of showing that the problem is at least
open to solution/'

He held out his hand. I gave him mine. He
burst out laughing.

"There is a type of monomaniac," he said,
''exceedingly common in my practice: the man
who is sane on all subjects but one — ^that of sup-
posing that a doctor of medicine is a public
philanthropist."

With hasty apology, I presented his fee. Still
smiling, he pressed a bell. The soft-voiced man-
servant made his appearance, foimd my hat and
umbrella, showed me through the hall to the street,
and closed the door softly in my wake.

I had walked perhaps fifty yards, when I foimd
that I was going in the wrong direction. I turned
and retraced my steps. I was in no particular

i86

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

hurry, but I walked very fast, and continued on
foot until I reached the comer of Tottenham
Court Road. There I entered the Tube station
and took a train for the city.

For a long time my mind was occupied in revolv-
ing the doctor's h3rpothesis. It was strung on a
very exiguous line of possibilities, but I could
perceive no actual flaw in it. It offered, it was
true, no explanation of the reverse problem that
was curiously presenting itself: the fact that
people who had known him could be found to
deny that the man who had returned was my
partner; it did not accoimt for the extraordinary
aversion to this man that had taken possession
both of Mrs. Brocklebank and me ; and it made no
provision for the circumstances that he could not
play golf and could not drive a car. Those might
in part be fancies, and in part the effect of real
changes attributable in some way to the experi-
ences through which he had passed, perhaps to the
psychological condition to which Dr. Hegiras had
alluded, the weakening of the sense of personaKty.

It was clear, however, that the doctor's recon-
struction rested absolutely upon the presumption
that I had suffered a mental lapse in the Crema-

187

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

torium. That was the base upon which it had
been raised. If it could be proved that what I had
appeared to see had in fact taken place, the whole
carefully and ingeniously erected structure would
fall to pieces like a house of cards. I did not
think that my eyes had deceived me: on the
contrary, I still felt confident that I had taken a
correct impression of an actual occurrence. The
doubt, at any rate, could easily be set at rest by
writing to the Crematorium authorities. I would
write, I decided, that very night.

I had reached this conclusion, and had thrown
back to the room in the Chamonix hotel where
Brocklebank's coffin had lain, trying to weigh the
possibility that he could have forced off the lid —
I had a vision, I remember, of a gruesome picture
in the Wiertz Museum at Brussels — ^when my
thoughts were violently turned: indeed, the very
base and fabric of them were swept away. Steadily,
insistently, and with a far stronger force of con-
viction than at any time before, the sense grew
upon me that I was out of my mind. These
thoughts, these ideas that were turning in my
brain, were the thoughts of a madman. It was
preposterous to suppose that a great alienist,

1 88

THE DOCTOR'S HYPOTHESIS

the first authority on his subject in England, had
really been chatting with me, as I imagined he had,
while we sat in a pair of easy chairs by the fire,
that he had been spinning ghastly yams and
thumping my knees. Beyond doubt, I was losing
hold of my reason. If he had indeed behaved
in any such way as I conceived he had, it could
only have been to humor me, to keep me quiet,
because my brain had got stuck on a horrible
fancy and wallowed in it interminably.

I flushed with sudden, burning heat, and as
suddenly ran ice in my veins, as the awful sense
took possession of me. It did not slowly dissipate
and evaporate, as it had done before: it gathered
strength, conviction, certainty. Dr. Hegiras had
not talked to me of a dead man in his grave clothes
peering through the chink of a door. I was
appalled and sickened: all my physical being
seemed to withdraw into itself, to shrink in
shuddering repulsion from alliance with a dis-
ordered mind.

I do not know how I got through that afternoon.
It remains only a blur in my memory. But I
have a sense of hurrying through the streets in the
evening, of pushing frantically among crowding

189

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

pedestrians, of crossing roads under the noses of
motor-buses. And I have quite a clear recollec-
tion that, when I reached home and entered the
flat, my housekeeper met me in the passage, that
she looked startled and said something. But I
passed her without speaking and entered my study.

On the table I saw a letter. It was a small,
square letter, addressed in a small, neat hand.
The name was mine, but the initials were different.
Someone had made a mistake, I thought vaguely.
Then I remembered. It was Dr. Hegiras's letter
to my supposed father.

I sat down at the table and took it in my hands.
Its contents would decide an issue more terrible
than that of life and death.

I tried to break the flap, but could not. The
opening at the comer was small, and my fingers
seemed all thumbs. Since running up the stairs
I had felt giddy; and now the room began to sway
about me and to spin roimd. Then it turned
suddenly dark. I thought the lights had be^a
switched off. In the midst of the chaos, I heard
a thud. It conveyed nothing to me at the time,
but I have since realized that it was made by my
head striking the table.

190

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

I SHOULD not have been surprised to find my-
self, when I recovered from the vertigo, in some
new and strange environment. My attitude
to things had become so distorted, that I expected
the imlikely and was surprised by the expected.
I do not know how long I remained in a state of
unconsciousness, but when I recovered I was still
seated at the table in my study, the unopened
letter was still lying before me. I managed some-
how to slit the fold with a penknife and to take out
the enclosed sheet. But the writing swam before
me: it was all a wavering, blurred confusion of
words. I could tell only that the letter was
short, and I drew some encouragement from that
circumstance. A report wholly and definitely
bad, I thought, would not have been communi-

191

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

cated in a few lines: the shock would have been
broken, the deadly truth would have been allowed
to emerge gradually.

After waiting for a few minutes, I could read the
letter. Its contents were these:

it
it

Dear Mr. Reece,
I have been consulted by your son, Mr.
Lovell Reece, with reference to his state of health.
I find him free from disease, either organic or
functional, but he has evidently suffered some
nervous shock. If he permits this to prey upon
him, it may lead to more serious trouble. I
recommend complete change of scene and occupa-
tion.

" Yours very truly,

"Armitage Hegiras."

No one, probably, who has not actually known
the torture which I had been enduring for hours,
can realize the intensity of the relief which the
reading of this letter brought me. / was sane,
I kept repeating, again and again, ''I am sane,"
till I could have shouted the words. The deepest
and most satisfjring pleasure that any human
being can experience is, I believe, imquestionably

192

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS, STUART

the relief of pain — whether it be the abatement
of some excruciating paroxysm of physical agony,
or the removal of intense mental stress, as by the
recovery of a friend from a desperate illness.
One can take it, literally, in deep draughts, fill
one's lungs with it.

I did not trouble myself to consider whether
Dr. Hegiras had in reality been deceived by my
device to obtain his true opinion, or whether he
had suspected that he was addressing me direct :
his letter bore on its face the stamp of sincerity.
It followed that my impression of the interview
with him was correct; that he had, in fact, put
forward a series of suggestions, consecutive and
interwoven, which might supply the missing pages
of Brocklebank's personal history and account for
his present existence in the worid of men. As
I sat and smoked that evening, I drew more and
more to the view that, however its detail might
vary from the fact, the explanation of recent
events must lie in some such theory as the doctor
had propounded. It was true, as he had said,
that it was based upon a set of suppositions wild,
strange, and bizarre; but we were dealing with
circumstances in themselves wild, strange, and

13 193

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

bizarre, aad we could not reject a solution merely
because it required the assumption of occurrences
that lay outside the ordinary experience of man-
kind. Moreover, by a system of exclusion one
was driven irresistibly into line with Dr. Hegiras.
It is evident that when otherwise you have ex-
hausted the resources of conjecture to explain
a given set of circumstances and have failed to do
so, any residuary field for supposition — though
it appear utterly improbable — ^must contain the
truth. I was not mad; I was not dead; Brockle-
bank was not an impostor. All those ideas cotdd
be thrown on the scrap heap. What remained
that could make the existing position intelligible?
Dr. Hegiras's suggestion that my partner had not
died.

There was the cremation difficulty — ^the one
relevant matter in the sequence of events follow-
ing Brocklebank's collapse on Mont Blanc, as
the alienist's keen mind had instantly perceived,
which rested as yet upon my imsupported testi-
mony. I went to my desk and wrote to the
Crematorium authorities at Geneva. I gave them
the date when I supposed the cremation had been
carried out, and asked them to tell me what had

194

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

taken place on that occasion. Four or five days
would have to elapse before I could receive a
reply. Keeping before me the warning of Dr.
Hegiras, supplemented as it was by the remem-
brance of the horrible state of mind, unquestion-
ably bordering on insanity, to which I had been
reduced during the afternoon, I determined to
banish, during that interval, so far as possible,
Brocklebank and his affairs from my thoughts.

I was not able, however, as things happened,
to carry out that design; and the reason for my
failure was the intervention of Brocklebank him-
self. I think it was two days after my visit to
Wimpole Street, certainly it was while I was
waiting for a reply from Geneva, that he walked
into my office, carrying an open letter in his hand
and smiling broadly.

" Did you ever get a mysterious commxmication,
Reece?" he asked.

" It depends on what you mean by mysterious, "
I answered!

"Well, something from somebody youVe never
heard of, and that you can't make head or tail of.**
He looked through the letter in his hand, laughing
silently. "Listen to this. No, read it yotirself."

195

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

He passed me the letter. It was written on a
large square sheet of note-paper with an embossed
heading, giving an address in Hampshire and other
items of information relative to telegrams and a
railway station. It ran as follows :

'* Dear Sir,

** If you are alive, and if this letter reaches you,
I entreat you to commimicate with me. How
important this is to me you will understand when
I say that, if you will make an appointment to
meet me anywhere in Europe, I will keep it.

"Yours truly,

" Muriel Stuart. (Mrs.)'*

In any circumstances, I should probably have
regarded such a letter as this, written in an edu-
cated hand and apparently quite genuine, with a
good deal of curiosity. But when I considered
Brocklebank's recent inexplicable history, it ex-
cited in me something more than that. He
seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of obscurity
and suspicion that extended indefinitely, to
radiate distrust. We who were closest to him
had been mystified and tortured, these latter days,
by the apparent fact of his living presence, had

196

THE FIRST WORD FROM. MRS. STUART

questioned the evidence of our senses. Now, out
of the void, from some unknown hand, this same
doubt was shot at him: " If you are alive."

I looked up and repeated the phrase aloud:
"If you are alive?"

"You can't pretend to think that I'm not," he
replied, with his laugh.

"Have you ever been to the Wiertz Museum
in Brussels?" I asked, irrelevantly.

"That place full of mad pictures? v I believe I
have."

"Throw your mind back to it and see if any-
thing emerges."

"What has this to do with the letter?" he asked.

"Something put it into my head when you
asked if I doubted that you were alive."

"The connection isn't obvious."

"Tell me," I persisted, "if any picture struck
you particularly, or has recurred to you since?"

"Undoubtedly," he answered: "a picture of a
female, reading a small book in bed and displaying
considerably more of her person than is custom-
ary. It's no place for a bachelor, I may re-
mark."

"Nothing else?"

197

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Oh, there were scores."

It appeared evident that the painting of a man
forcing his way out of a coffin was not especially
or prominently imprinted on his brain. I tried
another line.

"Going back to the time about which your
memory is almost a blank," I said. "You told
me you could remember vaguely being in a train
and in a shop. Can't you resuscitate an3rthing
else? Have you no recollection, for instance, of
climbing down a balcony?"

"None whatever," he replied. "I'm not that
sort of Romeo: I go in and out by the front
door."

"Well, then — ^take another thing — ^you said you
had a bunch of keys that wasn't your own. Have
you anything else that doesn't belong to you?"

"An3rthing!" he exclaimed. "I've everything
— everjrthing I stood up in, that first day — every
rag, every stitch."

"But any pocket things?"

"Odds and ends," he replied: "a useful nail
file, a gold pencil-case, a little sovereign purse
with sovereigns in it, and a Russian leather case
with banknotes in it."

198

THE FIRST WORD PROM MRS. STUART

"You seem to have made a fairly clean sweep, "
I said.

"What do you suppose?"
" WeU, you must have stolen them."
"That worries me a good deal," he said, "I
can't imderstand how a man in my position came
to omit to take a watch and chain."

These disclosures cleared the path of one ob-
stacle that had appeared to me to stand in the
way of Dr. Hegiras's h3rpothesis: the necessity
that Brocklebank should have means for a journey
in his possession. I could understand that a
careless man might leave small valuables and
money in his room, when he was absent from it,
but that he would almost certainly be wearing his
watch. It occurred to me that — ^presuming the
theory to be correct — ^we could easily discover his
name through the proprietor of the hotel, who
must have been informed of his loss. That would
be of service, however, only to the extent of
enabling us to return his property, for he would
probably know no more about how he came to
lose it than we knew ourselves.

" I suppose you are quite serious, " I said, sitting
on the edge of my desk and looking across at

199

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Brocklebank, as he leaned with his back on the
mantelpiece, "I suppose you are quite serious
when you say, as you often do, that you have no
morals in the ordinary sense?"

"None in any sense," he answered,

"Why don't you steal habitually?"

"Because I have no need to and don't want to
be locked up."

"No other reason?"

"None whatever. And precious few people,
in my opinion, if they looked into themselves and
spoke the truth, could say that they had any other
reason. What they think is a moral sense is
really an ingrained habit. It's also a method of

self-defense against the natural acquisitive in-

stincts of the impossessing. I would steal any- j

thing, if I needed it and could do so with safety." '

He left his place and sat down in a chair, rather
heavily, as if he were tired. j

"Of course, what Rachel and you think is ^

absurd," he said; "but I don't mind telling you j

that it has struck me, the last few days, that there
is something rather queer about this business."

I pricked up my ears. "What makes you say
that?" I asked.

200

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

"Little things. It's the accumulation of them.
I seem to have been suffering from some entirely
new illness that no one has ever had before, judg-
ing from the effects. I think I ought to write to
the Royal College of Physicians. It might inter-
est them."

"What things do you mean?"

"Well, look at that arm." He pulled up his
sleeve to the elbow. "It's as smooth as a baby's.
There used to be a good deal of hair on it. It's
the same in other places. And the hair on my
head has got smoother and thinner, much. In
fact, I'm suddenly getting bald. And there was
a small scar just below my right knee, where I cut
it when I was a boy and it had to be stitched. I
thought it was permanent. It has gone — com-
pletely, absolutely, not a trace of it left. But the
strangest thing of all is that I can't sleep properly.
I used to sleep quite well, except when Rachel
kicked."

"Insomnia?" I said.

"No — ^just the reverse. I sleep too much and
too heavily, but it doesn't do me any good. When
I get up in the morning I don't feel as if I had
been sleeping, I feel as if I had been fighting.^

20I

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

I was not, it was evident, to be permitted to
cany into effect my heroic intention to put Brock-
lebank's aflfairs out of my mind. I immediately
began to ask myself how this new information
bore upon Dr. Hegiras's theory. I could see no
reason why, if he were right, these results
should follow: why Brocklebank*s hair should
fall off and his scars disappear, why he should
sleep heavily and ineffectually. On the other
hand, if it were conceivable that he had come
through a cremation alive — But it was not
conceivable.

"What about this letter?" he asked. "What
do you make of it?"

" It looks, " I said, " as if it had come from some-
one who has heard either that you are dead and
can't believe it, or that you are alive and can't
believe it."

"But I don't know her, I've never heard of her;
and this house — where is it? — 'Jllingham, by
Petersfield,' is about as familiar as the mountains
of the moon."

"Perhaps," I suggested, "she is one of your
unknown friends who helped you to get back to
England."

202

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

"In that case, why should she doubt my exist-
ence? It won't do, Reece."

"The best way to clear up the mystery,** I said,
"would be to see her."

"I think so. What day will suit you?*'

" Suit me ! It has nothing to do with me.**

"On the contrary," said Brocklebank, "I can't
see her in a hotel. She might want to talk secrets.
I shall have to borrow your flat for the event."

"Any evening you like," I said. "If you will
give me the date, I'll arrange to be out."

"No such thing," said my partner. "I*m not
facing it alone. You've got to be there. I might
need your protection. I have a suspicion that
my fatal beauty is responsible for this."

"The writer of this letter, " I said, looking at it,
"is not young.**

"How do you know?**

"Victorian handwriting.**

" I wouldn't trust it. There are many silly ways
of pretending to read personality, and graphology
is about the worst. I would rather have palm-
istry, I would rather have phrenology, because in
both cases you get a chance of looking at the
person*s face and making him talk.'

203

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"I say she is over fifty, " I persisted,

"Are you betting?"

"Obviously not," I answered. "No woman
would ever admit she was over fifty."

He took the letter and got up. " This is Thurs-
day, " he said. "Will Monday do? "

"Yes," I answered; "but I shall judge for my-
self whether I stay in the room."

Brocklebank nodded and went out by the swing
door.

He received a reply, by return of post, accepting
the appointment gratefully. This new incident,
breaking inexplicably upon inexplicable conditions,
could not but take a close hold upon one's mind
and imagination. There appeared to be no rea-
son to connect it with the mystery surrounding
Brocklebank, but I found it difficult to escape
from the feeling that in some way it might be
connected with it. As I sat waiting for him, in
my study, on the appointed evening, this feeling,
without apparent cause, grew stronger. Why did
his unknown correspondent doubt his existence?
Why, if she knew of him at all, did she doubt that
he was alive?

It was chilly for mid-September, and I had

204

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

lighted a fire. It was burning cheerfully. As it
flickered and fell and burst into brighter flame,
its light and the light from the shaded lamps
caught the gold titles of the books which lined two
sides of the room. The remaining wall-space
was occupied by a few engravings on a plain
green backgroimd. The thick Axminster carpet ^
was also of plain green, and the chairs were covered
in shades of golden brown. My main object,
indeed, had been to give the room a comfortable
aspect, not only through its furniture, but through
its quiet tones and harmonies.

I developed the fancy, as I looked round upon
the various objects it contained, that it was pos-
sibly to be the scene of a momentous meeting.
Out of the unknown, and with every circumstance
of urgency, a woman was coming to meet a man
who, in some way, whatever might be the ex-
planation, had passed through an experience as
mystifying and appalling as could ever have fallen
to the lot of a human being.

Presently, as I waited, my thoughts drifted
from speculations concerning the impending meet-
ing to a review of the existing position. More than
a fortnight had now elapsed since Brocklebank's

205

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

reappearance. During that time, at his request,
I had twice been to Byfleet to see his wife. Not
only was her aversion to him, her dread of him,
not weakening, it was becoming stronger. By no
possibility, I was convinced, could she live with
him again. What, then, was to happen? He
could not be expected to go on indefinitely liv-
ing in a hotel; and she, I knew, would decline
to go on indefinitely occupying his house. It was
an intolerable situation, obviously and urgently
demanding to be terminated by a formal separa-
tion. It was evident that such a settlement
could only be reached by consent. No court
would give Mrs. Brocklebank a separation, no
court would believe our story, whatever evidence
we might adduce, in the face of Brocklebank's
actual presence. It occurred to me that, if we
cotUd get it believed, she would be entitled, not
to a separation merely, or to a divorce, but to a
declaration that she was a widow and that her
husband's estate should pass to his executors and
be administered for her benefit. Brocklebank,
for his part, would have to start his second life,
as he had started his first, penniless.
The flow of my thoughts, at this point, was

206

THE FIRST WORD FROM MRS. STUART

interrupted by the sound of the hall door-bell.
I looked at the clock. It wanted ten minutes
to the appointed time. That slightly surprised
me, for Brocklebank was not given, in general, to
overscrupulous punctuality as regards his social
engagements.

I heard the swish of my housekeeper's skirts as
she passed along the hall. A few moments later
she opened the door of my study.

" Mrs. Stuart, " she said.

207

CHAPTER XIII

A NEW MYSTERY

TE woman who entered my study would
probably have attracted attention any-
where. She was tall and handsome, even
majestic; and though her age could not have
exceeded the middle thirties, her hair — so much of
it, at least, as could be seen under her hat — was
quite white. Her face which, otherwise, might
have been merely interesting was made by its
snowy setting truly beautiful. She was fashion-
ably dressed, and appeared to be controlling some
strong emotion.

She came up to me quickly, with a slight jingle

of some chain or trinkets. "I don't know how to

thank you enough, Mr. Brocklebank," she said,

•* and I don't know how to begin to explain."

" It is for me to explain, " I said to her. " I am

208

A NEW MYSTERY

not Mr. Brocklebank : I am his friend and partner,
Mr. Lovell Reece. My partner is living in a hotel
at present. That is not a very convenient meeting
place, and he thought you might prefer to come
here. I expect him every moment. Indeed,
when I heard your ring, I thought it was
he."

She glanced at the clock. "I am early,'* she
said. "The drive was shorter than I expected,
and I was too anxious and unsettled to calculate
carefully the time it would take."

Just then the telephone bell rang. " Do, please,
sit down," I said to her. "And will you excuse
me, for a moment, while I answer the telephone?"

She sat down in one of the easy chairs, carrying
out even this commonplace change of posture with
a certain natural grace and charm. She drew her
cloak close over her semi-evening gown, and, as
she bent slightly to the fire, I saw an involuntary
shiver pass through her.

' The call proved to be from Brocklebank, and
his message, in the circumstances, was discon-
certing. "After all," I said to my visitor, when
I had put back the receiver, "I*m afraid it's
Hamlet without the Prince. My partner has
14 209

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

just rung up to say that he is laid by the heels
with a sudden and violent attack of lumbago.
He cannot even crawl out of his room, far less
come here. He asks me to apologize to you and
to make a later appointment for him, if you would
care for one."

Mrs. Stuart became suddenly alert. *' Lum-
bago, did you say?" she asked. "Oh, but I know
all about that. It's a dreadful old friend. My
husband suffers from it terribly. Tell him to
take a few drops of oil of rosemary on a lump of
sugar. It will do him good. It's splendid. It
never fails."

She was so insistent that I was obliged to call
up the hotel again and have her message conveyed
to Brocklebank. When I hung up the receiver
for the second time and again turned round, I
found her watching me. There was something in
her face that made it curiously arresting, that
made it remarkable. She was evidently unhappy,
but it was more than that that struck one: the
expression of her eyes, at once intent and deep,
as if she were looking, yet not seeing ; listening, yet
imconscious of the sounds about her.

"You said, didn't you," she asked, "that you

210

)
I

A NEW MYSTERY

are a personal friend of Mr. Brocklebank as well
as his partner."

''Yes," I replied.

"That means you know him very well?"

"I know him," I answered, "as well as anyone,
probably, knows him, except his wife."

"Yes; well, then," she said, "if I may, I will
tell you my story, explain what brings me here.
You can repeat it to Mr. Brocklebank, and perhaps
he will write to me; or perhaps you yourself will
be able to tell me what it means."

"I will do everything I can," I replied. "At
any rate, for many reasons, I can promise to be
a good listener. My partner showed me your
letter."

She was still sitting forward in her chair, her
hands clasped together, tight and strained, on her
knees. "You can understand," she began, "that
only something of vital importance could have
urged me to the course I have taken. I am in
great distress, Mr. Reece."

"I feared so," I answered; "I am sorry."

She opened a small chain reticule that she had
with her, took out a folded piece of paper, evi-
dently a newspaper cutting, spread it out, and

fill

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

passed it to me. "Will you read that?" she
asked.
This is what I read :

"mysterious disappearance of an angler

"Our Glasgow correspondent telegraphs that
considerable anxiety is felt in the neighborhood of
Craigiel, a small West Highland hamlet, owing to
the disappearance from the hotel there of an
English visitor, Mr. Francis Stuart. Mr. Stuart,
who is an enthusiastic fisherman, had been staying
more than a fortnight at the hotel, engaging every
day in his favorite sport. On Wednesday morn-
ing he came downstairs, apparently in his usual
health, but, according to some witnesses, slightly
distrait in his manner. After breakfast he left
the hotel, without taking his fishing tackle, ap-
parently intending to walk on the moor. From
that time nothing has been seen or heard of him.''

I refolded the paper and handed it back to
my visitor. " I assume it refers to a relative of
yours?" I said.

'^To my husband, " she replied. " Can you un-
derstand what that means?" she went on quickly.

212

A NEW MYSTERY

"To have someone so near to you vanish utterly,
without a word of explanation, leaving no trace of
any kind anywhere?''

I am not sure that, before that moment, I could
have replied in the affirmative. I had often read
similar paragraphs in newspapers, and had won-
dered vaguely how the facts related could be ac-
counted for; but not until Mrs. Stuart spoke, her
tone and her manner bearing eloquent testimony
to the agitation of mind she had suffered and was
suflEering, did I become fully alive to the peculiar
tragedy imderljring the incomprehensible disap-
pearance of a human being.

*'It must be terrible," I said.

"It is almost worse than a death," said Mrs.
Stuart. "That at least is definite: it is certain.
But I am utterly in the dark; the strain of sus-
pense is imrelaxing. And I have the fear of the
unknown to contend with: all kinds of possible
and impossible explanations keep crowding upon

me.

"Then you are still without news of your hus-
band?" I asked. "The paragraph, I noticed, is
over a fortnight old."

"I am still without news," she replied. "I

213

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

have exhausted every possible means of inquiry.
No one in the world appears to have seen anjrthing
of him after he left the hotel at Craigiel. All his
things, except the clothes he was wearing, were left
behind, and his bill was impaid."

"You have no theory even?"

"Yes, I have a theory," she said. "But, —
but" — she looked at me with acute disappoint-
ment and appeal in her eyes — "can you not help
me at all?"

"I!" I exclaimed. "How could I be in a posi-
tion to help you?"

" Because you are a friend of Mr. Brocklebank."

"And how could he?"

"That is whstt I hoped he could tell me. I
thought possibly he might have been a visitor at
the hotel."

I shook my head. "He was nowhere in the
neighborhood," I said. "He spent his holidays
in Switzeriand. I was with him."

I remembered, indeed, that there were seven
days for which he could not accoimt, for which
no one could account; but the wildest flight of
fancy could not suggest that he had spent them
in the Highlands of Scotland, for no conceivable

214

A NEW MYSTERY

reason and without any consciousness of the
fact.

Mrs. Stuart was silent for some seconds. "I
had better tell you more," she said, presently.
*'You asked me if I had a theory. To explain
it I must go further into detail. Will you be
patient?"

"I shall have no need of patience," I replied.
I left my desk and took a seat near her. " Is the
fire too much for you? Would you care to take
off your cloak."

I had noticed that the little shivering fits had
passed and that she was now flushed.

"Yes," she said; '* thank you." She threw
open her cloak and dropped it over the back of her
chair.

It was now further manifest that she was a
woman of quite unusual charm and beauty, cast
almost in the mold of a Greek statue. The ob-
vious youthfulness of her neck and shoulders,
the graceful and confident poise of her head, the
unbroken symmetry of her form, and the clearness
of her skin threw her snow white hair into yet
more wonderful and appealing contrast.

"My husband," she proceeded quietly, "is a

215

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

very unustial man. You would get quite a wrong
impression of him from that newspaper paragraph.
He is a mystic, a philosopher, a student of the
occult, a Theosophist. For eleven months of the
year he lives a very secluded life. The twelfth
month he goes fishing. That is his one hobby.
I don't go with him. I attempted it once, and the
fishing talk of the people in the hotel nearly
brought me to distraction. Knowing my hus-
band, as I do, for a thinker, for a poet, for a re-
cluse, for a man wrapt up in the contemplation of
the deepest problems of existence — that he can
submit to this wretched, , unprofitable chatter,
can even take part in it, is a mystery that I have
never been able to fathom."

She had been gazing into the fire while she
spoke. Suddenly she turned her face and looked
at me. "Do you know anjrthing at all about
Theosophy, Mr. Reece?"

I was hardly prepared for a question of this
kind. " I have heard of it, of course, " I answered.
" It has something to do with astral bodies."

She sighed slightly. "Is that really the extent
of your knowledge — * something to do with astral
bodies'?"

ai6

■'*ivn«a.»'«^i^B«~

A NEW MYSTERY

"Yes," I was obliged to admit, "and I*m afraid
I don't even quite know what an astral body is."
"Most people," said Mrs. Stuart, "make the
mistake of thinking, as you have done, that
Theosophy is solely concerned with the occult.
These researches into the latent undeveloped
powers of mankind are only a branch of its work.
To understand it as a whole you must know its
philosophy, its universality, its Pantheism. That
is the essential background."

"Will you sketch it in?" I asked.

"A drop, of sea-water," she said, "may not be

very important, but it is part of the ocean; a

single individual may not be very important, but

he is part of God. Very few people have any

grasp of what they are. They should think of

themselves, not as individuals, but as constituents

of the whole. It follows that no one — ^no one at

all — ^whatever he may believe, whatever he may

do, whatever he may be, is outside the pale."

" I should be very sorry to deny it, " I said.

"You are more of a Theosophist than you

knew," said Mrs. Stuart. "But, as it happens,"

she went on, "I want to talk to you, not about

that, but about what you referred to just now,

217

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

about the occult side, about certain psychic
phenomena — ^if really I am not taking your time.
It is necessary to do so, both to show you how I
come to be here, and to help you to understand
what seems to me the most probable explanation
of my husband's disappearance."

I leaned back in my chair, prepared to listen.
I do not know to what extent the subject might
otherwise have appealed to me, but, in the peculiar
circimistances surrounding my visitor's presence,
there certainly was no poUte hjrpocrisy in the in-
terest I showed.

"The physical senses," she proceeded, "are at-
ttmed to a physical environment : they can appre-
hend nothing else. In other words, they can take
cognizance only of matter of a certain degree of
density. Even ether, which penetrates every-
thing and occupies all the inter-planetary space,
is of a fineness outside their range. An expert
scientist has no means at his disposal sufficiently
delicate to enable him to become sensible of ether:
he has simply to postulate it to explain other facts.
So it would be foolish, wouldn't it, even in view
of that one fact, to Umit our notions of what
exists to what our ordinary physical senses can

218

A NEW MYSTERY

perceive? We cannot close the door to the pos-
sible existence either of finer degrees of matter
or of latent, more subtle powers within ourselves
which may bring them to our consciousness.
You would not, I mean, say that such a possibility
is outside your conception? It is not like asking
you to conceive an end of space."

"Of course not," I answered.

"Very well," she proceeded. " Now, what Theo-
sophists have done — ^and what many others who
have not used that name have done — is to develop
these latent powers. It is nothing really so very
wonderful. If you lived in an empty worid, you
would never probably develop your power of
speech ; but the power would belong to you just the
same. For a similar reason, the majority of people
never think of attempting to develop their more
subtle, psychic capacities. The few who have done
so have discovered a condition of things so bewilder-
ing to the ordinary man, so remote from his experi-
ence, that it seems incredible. A Theosophist
knows that all around you, close to you, are objects
which you cannot see, voices which you cannot
hear. The dense physical covering you wear
cloaks them as effectually as a diver's helmet, if

219

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

you suppose it without a transparent face-piece,
would cloak the sights and sounds of everyday
life."

She paused, as if expecting me to say something.
"You don't believe it?" she asked.

"I neither believe nor disbelieve," I answered,
"but I understand."

"Well, let us go a little further. Theosophy
divides all existence, including the part which our
senses perceive, into seven planes. They inter-
penetrate each other, and are spoken of as higher
or lower planes according as the matter composing
them is finer or denser. We are sitting here,"
she went on, looking round, "in a delightfully
cosy room, surrounded with books and pictures,
and lighted by shaded electric lamps. If we could
switch our consciousness to another plane, we
might find ourselves under swaying palms by the
margin of a lake. If again we could switch to yet
another plane, we should find still other conditions
about us, some environment, perhaps, that is be-
yond the range of our conception. If, finally,
we could revert to the physical, we should per-
ceive once more that we are sitting in this room.
I don't ask you to believe — it is exceedingly diflB-

220

A NEW MYSTERY

cult to believe until you have had experience —
but I ask you again if you understand, if you
follow?"
J' Yes," I replied, ''perfectly."
''I put that point," she said, smiling, "perhaps
more carefully than was necessary in your case,
because I didn't want you to get an idea of a set
of tiers occupying different regions of space, as
people often do from the use of the words higher
and lower planes. The lowest plane, the densest,
is that which you and I at present occupy, the
Physical. Next above it — nearest to it, that is,
in point of the density of its matter — is the plane
called the Astral. That is a misleading name, and
I don't know why it was chosen, for it has no
special connection with stars. Next above that
again is the Devachanic Plane. Then come the
Buddhic, the NirvSnic, and two others. Every
individual possesses, in addition to his physical
body, bodies appropriate to each of these planes,
composed of matter in ascending degrees of fine-
ness. They interpenetrate just as the planes
interpenetrate, but none of course, except the
physical, is perceptible by the physical senses.
When a man passes out of his physical body —

221

THE BROCEXEBANK RIDDLE

when he dies, as we say — ^he functions automati-
cally in his astral body, he becomes an inhabitant
of the Astral Plane. At a later stage, when
similarly he casts off the astral body, he functions
in his devachanic body, becomes an inhabitant
of the Devachanic Plane. So, in the course of
aeons which we cannot measure, he will ultimately
reach the highest plane of all, merge in the heart
of existence, become consciously God."

Mrs. Stuart paused. *'You must forgive me
for troubling you with all that," she said. "It
was necessary, in order to make what follows in-
telligible. I have omitted all detail. The scheme
is permeated — ^in my view, choked — ^with detail.
There is much about karma, and reincarnation,
and the seven sub-planes, and the quickening of
the elemental essence, and many other things, but
I have given you the outline. Now we come to
what immediately concerns us. I have told you
that, at death, everyone finds himself in his astral
body, with faculties attuned to astral conditions.
He has cast off his physical frame permanently.
But there are some people — comparatively few
in the West, but many in the East — ^who have
acquired the power to ftmction on the astral plane

222 i

A NEW MYSTERY

even during life — ^that is, while still possessing a
physical body to which they can return. My
husband is one of these. I have often found him,
at such times, in a state of deep trance. He
warned me of this before I married him, or, rather,
he asked for my cooperation. It is, in fact, very
dangerous for anyone to attempt these experi-
ments unless he has about him someone who
understands the physical condition which results,
for it might be mistaken for death. I suppose
doctors would call it catalepsy, and that is really
temporary death. It is not absolute death ; some
tiny spark of life remains in the body, or it could
never again be inhabited by an ego. Occult
science has no more power than has physical
science to introduce that mysterious spark of
life."

"But," I asked, "if a man has reached a condi-
tion of existence which, if I have followed your
argimient rightly, is superior to this, why should
he wish to return?"

"Did I say he wished to return?" Mrs. Stuart
answered. " I didn't intend to. He doesn't wish
to return, but if his physical body is alive he mtist
rettun. His period of freedom from prison is

223

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

limited. It is as if he were let out on a long
chain^ Some are able to stretch their chains
to an extent which enables them to pass right
through the astral plane and enter the devachanic
— the heaven world, as it is sometimes called.
It is said that a few have occasionally penetrated
even to the buddhic. It is unnecessary to say
that those who have temporarily attained those
supernal heights, who have experienced that
wonderful freedom and harmony, return to the
gross, clogging, jarring conditions of physical life
very reluctantly. But at least their scale of
values has become rightly adjusted: they have
no need to postulate for poor human beings any
state of torment in excess of their present suffer-
ings. They know that the worst is here and now.
This is the hell."

"This!" I exclaimed.

"Are you perfectly happy? Am I? Is any-
one you know, even among those of means and
leisure, let alone the masses? A few perhaps,
in the heyday of youth and health and strength,
are relatively so. The majority is always more or
less conscious of its prison, of the constant drag,
the insistent necessities, the lurking terrors of

224 ,

A NEW MYSTERY

physical life. Watch the faces of people who pass
you in the street — ^nearly all anxious, tired,
worried — ^at the best, indifferent — ^rarely a smile.
To a Theosophist physical beings are all struggling
heavily to make their way through a slough of
the grossest kind of matter, occasionally catching
passing glimpses of Kghter and freer conditions."

I had been tr3mig, all the time she had been
speaking, to find some means of applying what she
said to my own bewildering experiences. Here
was a woman evidently closely mixed up with the
occult, with the mystical, with matters outside
the ordinary knowledge and perceptions of human
beings, and she had deliberately brought herself
into touch with a man upon whom there centred
jQu mystery which left common practical faculties
dazed and helpless. I was very loath to relin-
quish the thought that the two things might in
some way bear upon each other, but I could per-
ceive as yet no connecting link between them.
Mrs. Stuart had used one word that Dr. Hegiras
had used, the word "catalepsy." It was not an
ordinary word — ^not a word you would hear in a
thousand ordinary conversations — ^and it did not
define an ordinary condition. Yet there was
IS 225

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

nothing in her psychical theories that I found
it possible to fit to the hypothesis which the alien-
ist had advanced, nothing that could help it
or simplify it. It seemed, indeed, a wretched
business to be reduced to the supposition that
a woman, exceptional both in appearance and
in intellect, had made her way to my flat,
and had carefully expounded to me the prin-
ciples of a metaphysical system, merely as the
result of accident. I felt that there must be a
linking secret somewhere, if we could extract it.

However, she had not yet finished. I was
leaning towards her, resting on the elbow of my
chair. "And how," I asked her, "does all this
help you to explain the disappearance of your
husband?"

226

CHAPTER XIV

ACROSS THE ABYSS

FR several seconds Mrs. Stuart sat playing
with her reticule, looking into the fire.
*'It is very difficult to explain in a few
words," she said at last. "You will be able to
understand that, like ever3rthing else, this power
of throwing yourself across the abyss into another
state of being becomes increasingly easy with
training and practice. I have never personally suc-
ceeded in doing it at all, but I know that it does
become easier. When a man has reached a certain
stage of expertness he can get to the lower sub-
planes of the astral without even putting himself
into a trance. What he does is to throw the major
portion of his consciousness across, while retaining
just enough in his physical frame to enable it to
walk about and carry on, for a time, the mechani-

227

THE BROCKLEBANK RTODLE

cal oflSoes of life. You have a dose analogy in
everyday experience, in the case of an old lady
knitting and reading, or knitting and talking.
Most of her consciousness is with her book or
with her conversation, but just enough of it is with
the knitting to keep her fingers moving the needles
in the right way. Ordinary absence of mind is
another instance of the same kind. In both those
conditions, consciousness is divided, and divided
in unequal degrees, not of course between the
astral and physical planes, but between two sub-
planes of the physical. Have I made that plain
to you? "

"Perfectly, "I said.

"Probably you yourself have often smoked a
pipe and written a letter at the same time?"

"Often."

"You say, no doubt, that you smoke auto-
matically; but you don't. If some difficulty in
the letter calls for a sudden extra draft of conscious-
ness to the higher plane, you find afterwards,
probably, that the pipe has gone out. You cannot
keep a pipe alight, you cannot go on drawing at
it, vinless a fraction of consciousness is retained to
the business of smoking. Well, now, I think that,

228

ACROSS THE ABYSS

when my husband came down on the morning
mentioned in the newspaper paragraph, he must
have divided his consciousness, in the way I have
described, between the astral and the physical.
There is evidence that his mind was not centered
in his usual occupations, in the fact that he did not
take his rod and tackle with him when he went
out. The paragraph says, too, that his manner
appeared to be distrait. That is just how such
a condition as I have been telling you about would
present itself to an ordinary observer. There is a
common phrase which exactly expresses the fact:
the man is "not all there." I have constantly
dreaded that he might allow himself to do this at a
time when I was not present to look after him. It
is a fear that has weighed on me all my married
life. You see the danger? A sudden extra draft
of consciousness to the astral, such as I spoke of
in regard to you and your pipe, would leave the
physical body helpless. It might go on moving
for a time, in the strict literal sense of the word,
mechanically. But think of it! In a town he
would have been run down by the traffic. On a
lonely moor — " She stopped. She had been
speaking with difficulty.

229

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"You feax," I began, "that-

"Yes, I fear," she broke out, "that he walked
blindly, like a somnambulist, into some swamp,
which engulfed him completely. And I had
prayed him, besought him, almost on my knees,
never to do it when I was not there. So often
I had implored him — " Again she stopped, her
voice breaking, tears starting in her eyes.

I got up and stoked the fire, choosing lumps of
coal with rather more care and deUberation than
was absolutely necessary.

"But I still don't understand," I said, when I
had returned to my seat, "how you came to think
that my partner, Brocklebank, might be in a
position to help you.

"Because my husband told me so," said Mrs.
Stuart.

"Before he went to Scotland?"

"No; on the day I wrote the letter to Mr.
Brocklebank."

"Well, but how can that be?" I asked. "If
you have heard from him, what becomes of your
theory that he walked into a swamp?"

"It remains exactly where it was." My vis-
itor smiled through tears that had barely dried.

230

ACROSS THE ABYSS

"You have still some more to leaxn, haven't you?
I hope you are not very tired?"

She said this in such a charming way, that I
think, even had I been tired of the subject, I should
have contrived to deny it with every appearance
of truth. But, in fact, I was far from being any-
thing of the kind: on the contrary, I was waiting
for her explanation with intense curiosity, even
with excitement. I shook my head.

"If I have made myself at all clear," she pro-
ceeded, "you will be able to tinderstand that,
though it is quite impossible for physical beings
to perceive objects composed of the finer astral
matter, it is not impossible for astral beings to per-
ceive objects formed of the denser physical matter.
Par from that, they perceive the world as we know
it with perfect facility. They do so, at least, on
the lower sub-planes of the astral; on the higher
sub-planes they are so far from the physical that
they gradually lose all consciousness of it. But
though they are aware of the physical world, it
is exceedingly diflBcult for them to commtmicate
with it, because of our heavy material encasement.
Even our atmosphere is to them dense matter.
An astral being might shout at you, beat you, and

231

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

you would be quite insensible of it. It would be
like attempting to attract the attention of someone
in the central chamber of a pyramid by tapping on
the exterior."

"Rather tantalizing!" I said.

"Intensely tantalizing," cried Mrs. Stuart,
potmcing sharply on my lightly uttered word.
"Probably those who are new to astral conditions
have no greater trouble to contend with. If they
have any special reason for wishing to commimi-
cate, it becomes veritably a nightmare, and their
imavailing efforts hold them to the lower sub-
planes far beyond a normal term. There would
be no possibility of commtmication at all, if all
physical beings were constructed as the majority
are constructed. But, just as there are some
people who possess capacities appropriate to phy-
sical conditions which others do not possess, so
there are some — only a few, if you think of the
teeming millions in the world, but not few in
actual numbers — ^who have a limited power to use
on this plane their astral faculties. Those who
can use the astral sight are called clairvoyants,
those who can use the astral hearing are called
clairaudients. Many of them are employed as

232

ACROSS THE ABYSS

professional mediums between the physical and
astral planes. I myself have a very slight power
of clairvoyance, and rather more of clairaudience.
Now," she suggested, looking at me with a smile,
"you see what we are coming to?"

"You have had some commimication in this
way, from your husband?"

" On the morning that I wrote to your partner, "
she said, "just as I was waking, I become tem-
porarily clairaudient. To be more precise, I re-
tained in physical consciousness the remnant of a
power which I had probably been exercising com-
pletely during sleep. I heard my husband's
voice. One does not hear, as one hears in ordinary
experience, with the ears, but with the whole of
one's being. The effect is of a sotmd coming from
within, not from without. He gave me Mr.
Brocklebank's name and address. I repeated it
aloud, again and again, to stamp it on my memory,
and as spon as I could get paper and pencil, wrote
it down."

"That would not necessarily mean," I put in,
"if I have imderstood what you have been saying,
that he was dead?"

" No, in his case, it wouldn't : it would mean only

233

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

that he was on the astral when he spoke. He
might have been alive then; he migjbt be alive
now. He has often spoken to me from the astral
before, in order to test my powers and to give me
opportunities to train them. But this message
was not of that kind. He was speaking earnestly,
urgently, and he was trying to say more — or
rather, he was trying to make me hear more. But
I couldn't. His voice became indistinct and in-
termittent and small — ^like a voice a long, long
way oflf, or as if it were fathoms deep in the sea
— it went farther and farther down, it wavered
and struggled and died, and I remained conscious
only of the physical sounds about me."

Mrs. Stuart stopped speaking, and for two or
three minutes the ensuing silence was unbroken.
I was sitting with one knee drawn up between rny
hands, staring into the fire.

"All I retained," my companion's voice re-
sumed, "was a slip of paper bearing the words —

WILLIAM BROCKLEBANK, 5I, FRIAR's COURT, MARK

LANE, LONDON. Now, why did he give me that

■

name?"

I still made no immediate reply. The cir-
cumstances surroimding Brocklebank were so

234

ACROSS THE ABYSS

peculiar, that I felt bound to pass them carefully,
one by one, tinder review, to see if they could sug-
gest an answer to Mrs. Stuart's question. He him-
self, I knew very well, would confidently put down
all I had been hearing to fairy tales. He would be
ready with an explanation, but it would be an
explanation of a definitely rationalistic kind. He
would, in fact — I felt very little doubt of it —
impugn Mrs. Stuart's bona fides. Of course that
was a possibility which had to be looked at, which
one naturally and inevitably looked at. I dis-
carded it utterly. In the first place, I could see
no motive for the elaborate imposture that would
have to be assiuned. In particular, I could dis-
cern no means whereby it could lead to an extor-
tion of money. But granting that the story I had
listened to could be supposed to be in some way a
prelude to a scheme for raising the wind, a credu-
lous and superstitious person would surely have
been chosen for the recipient of it; it would not
have been laimched (for, of course, this interview
had been arranged for Brocklebank) upon one of
the hardest materialists and skeptics in London.
But, far more than by such arguments, I was
convinced of Mrs. Stuart's good faith by the

235

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

woman herself, by the charm and obvious sincerity
of her personality. I felt indeed, with a slight,
quick flush of heat, that it was an oflEense to her
that such thoughts should be passing through my
mind.

It was necessary, therefore, to accept her story
as she related it, and to believe that she had ob-
tained Brocklebank's name and address, either
in a dream, or, as she supposed, through her
possession of the unusual and questioned power
called clairaudience. But why had she been di-
rected to Brocklebank? What connection could
he have with her husband?

Had the latter disappeared in Switzeriand in-
stead of in Scotland, I should have felt called
upon to tell her of the recent circumstances in
Brocklebank's history. For in that case one
could not quite have excluded the possibility that,
at a time when he was not normally responsible
for his actions, the latter had foimd Mr. Stuart's
body and had disposed of it, after taking posses-
sion of his clothes and valuables. I remembered
Brocklebank's own statement that he would have
no compimction in stealing anything he needed,
if he could safely do so. It was certainly neces-

236

ACROSS THE ABYSS

sary to admit, in view of what had happened, that
he might have returned to England by the date
of Mr. Stuart's disappearance. But for what
imaginable reason could he have set off immedi-
ately to the Highlands of Scotland? And how
could one account for his taking such a journey
without retaining the smallest recollection of it?
There existed the possibility that the Theosophist
had not gone for a walk on the moor, as supposed, '
but had taken train for London, and had there
met Brocklebank, perhaps at the Great Northern
Hotel, and given him some information. If that
were the case, the latter would be able to cany it
to Mrs. Stuart when he met her.

There remained one further possibility, which
could not quite be left out of accotmt. If Mr.
Stuart was dead, as appeared probable, the two
men had died about the same time. They might,
therefore, presuming Mrs. Stuart's metaphysical
theories to be sotmd, or to be reared on a basis of
truth, have become associated in some extra-
physical condition, such as she called the Astral
Plane. But how would that help us? There
had been nothing in my visitor's statement sug-
gesting that her husband, for all the supernormal

237

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

powers attributed to him and his investigations
of the occult, could perform miracles, that he
would be in a position to oflfer Broddebank infor-
mation enabling him to live again; and certainly
there was nothing about Broddebank himself
and his recollections to tempt one to regard him
as a messenger from the unseen.

I pushed such thoughts aside. Prom no point
of view could I discern any reason for disclosing
the unexplained and, except for Dr. Hegiras*s
suggestion, the apparently inexplicable mystery
surrounding my partner. I was very reluctant
to speak of it except tmder a clear imperative.
Several recent experiences had shown me that it
was necessarily received with incredulity, and that
I was accused, in assorted shades of candor, of
being either a liar or a madman. And I was
growing more and more sensitive to, and more and
more resentful of, that class of critidsm.

'* Frankly, I don't know," I replied at last to
Mrs. Stuart's question. "I should regard William
Broddebank as just about the last man in the
world to concern himself seriously with the
phenomena which your husband has been in-
vestigating. He is a secularist and a materi-

238

ACROSS THE ABYSS

alist of the hardest and most uncompromising
type."

"Perhaps that is the reason why his name was
given to me," said Mrs. Stuart. ''A Theosophist
doesn't seek knowledge solely for its own sake, as
a scientist does. He seeks it in order to be in a
better position to help any of his fellow-men who
may be in difficulties."

I could not keep back a smile. "Brocklebank
doesn't regard himself as being in difficulties,"
I said. "We are the people, according to him,
who are in difficulties."

Mrs. Stuart passed from this. "Why were
you so long in answering my question?" she
asked.

"Because I wanted to go through all I know
about my partner," I answered, "to see if I could
suggest an explanation."

"And none occurred to you?"

"I can think of only one possibility," I said,
"and that a remote one. If your husband did
not go on the moor when he left the hotel, but took
a train to London, he might have come across
Brocklebank. There is just that slender chance
that my partner may be able to tell you something.

239

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

I'm afraid I can think of nothing else. Anyhow,
you would like to meet him, wouldn't you?"

'*0h, yes, please," she said. "Will he, or will
you, ring me up when he is well enough to see me?
I am staying at the Cecil."

"Yes, of course," I answered. "I'll ring you
up to-morrow in any case. I wish I could do more
to help you."

She rose. "It has been very good of you to
listen so patiently, " she said, giving me her hand.
"I am afraid you must have foimd me and my
woes very tiresome."

"On the contrary," I replied, "you have
widened my horizon and given me lots to think
about." I glanced towards a spirit-stand and
glasses. "Can I offer you any bachelor fare?"

"Nothing, thank you," she said, shaking her
head. "We are teetotallers and vegetarians and
all the horrible things."

"Well, I admit, " I said, as we walked out of the
room, "that it does sometimes strike me as rather
a barbarous business to kill and eat animals. But
why not enjoy in moderation the fruits of the
earth, in the shape of wine?"

I opened the door of the flat. She glanced at

240

ACROSS THE ABYSS

me with a humorous, deprecating smile. '*Some
day," she said, "I hope we shall talk of all these
things."

" I hope so too, " said I.

When I had closed the door behind her and
turned back into the flat, I noticed on a table in the
hall a letter which had arrived by the evening post.
It bore a Swiss stamp and the Geneva postmark.

My thoughts were jerked back from Mrs.
Stuart's affairs to the grim specter hatmting my
own hearth. I saw shadows crossing the open
mouth of a furnace and a white, still form lying
in its glare; I saw the features of Brocklebank
calm as marble. The picture swept away and
another took its place: a coffin that stirred, a
coffin that rocked irregularly, a coffin that heaved
up its lid bit by bit, till knotted, lacerated hands
got through and a terrible contorted face appeared
at the cleft.

I went into my study, closed the door, and
opened the letter. The following is a translation
of what I read :

"Dear Sir,
" In reply to your esteemed communication, we

241

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

take the liberty to inform you that, on the date
mentioned, the body of an adult male was brought
here for cremation. According to the authorizing
papers supplied, the name of the deceased was
' William Brocklebank.' The incineration was care-
fully carried out in the presence of one member of
the bereaved family, the body being completely
consumed in the space of an hour and a half.
Subsequently the ashes were handed to the widow
in a light metal casket specially made to her in-
structions.

''Begging you. Sir, to accept the assurance of
our high consideration and esteem, we have the
honor to be," etc.

I tossed the letter into the air. So my eyes
had not deceived me. Not only was I sane now,
but I had been steadily sane all through.

I went to the side table and mixed myself a
glass of whisky and Schweppe.

242

CHAPTER XV

THE MEETING

TE next morning, to my surprise, Brockle-
bank arrived at the office at his customary
hour. The oil of rosemary, it appeared,
had worked wonders, and he was in high spirits.
Nevertheless, my inexplicable feeling of aversion
to the man, of repugnance to his society, had
steadily grown during the last fortnight, and
nothing he could say or do, no revelation of
personal characteristics, however intrinsically ad-
mirable or delightful, could remove it. I got
used to him as I talked to him, but always at first
I had this feeling of repugnance. When I saw
him standing in the doorway leading from his
office to mine, evidently enjojnng my surprise, I
felt an inward shrinking from him and breathed
an inward hope that at least he would not touch
me.

343

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Your friend is a magician," he said. "Has
she any more specifics of the same kind? If so,
I'm willing to go into partnership on liberal terms.
I'll sink a little capital and we'll come out as
'Magical Cures Unlimited.* Not only should
we make a fortime, but the undertaking would
have the secondary advantage of benefiting the
human race."

"You are better?" I asked.

"Absolutely well. Convey to the lady my
grateful thanks."

"She still wants to see you," I said.

"A woman of her evident discernment naturally
would."

"What night will suit you? Make it as soon as
possible: she is in London on purpose."

" I'm overwhelmed. To-night, " he said.

"Right. I'll ring her up."

"What was the explanation?" he asked.

"It's too long a story to begin now. Come
early to-night, and I'll tell you before she arrives."

Throughout that day my thoughts reverted
again and again to my visitor of the previous
evening. I retained a vivid impression of her
wonderful face, her calm introspective eyes, her

244

THE MEETING

obvious distress, the quiet flow of her voice as
she had talked of things utterly outside the domain
of ordinary experience with the simple certitude
that might have accompanied a description of
travels in India. The more I thought about her,
the more convinced I became of her sincerity, the
more strongly I felt that her account of the means
whereby she had become possessed of Brockle-
bank's address — ^whatever might be the psycho-
logical explanation — must be accepted.

That my partner's own view would not coincide
with this was immediately apparent when he came
to my flat in the evening. He arrived half an
hour before the time I had appointed with Mrs.
Stuart and took the chair which she had occupied
twenty-four hours earlier.

"What do you think of Theosophy?" I asked
him. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Anything about it!" he exclaimed. "I used
to know a man who talked of nothing else."

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"Theosophists," he replied, "are people who be-
lieve everything. They believe in angels, devils,
fairies, vampires, salamanders, werewolves — every-
thing. Their credulity is without limit."

245

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"You must keep those views to yourself when
our visitor comes," I said. "She is a Theoso-
phist."

'* Oh, I see," His face was screwed up in a way
which indicated a satisfactory comprehension of
human guile. "She has been talking to me on
the astral plane. That explains the letter. Does
she see elementals imder the chairs?"

"She never mentioned the word."

"Oh, she doesn't play her part well. The
correct form is to gaze for half a minute into
vacancy with glassy eyes, then to point with the
forefinger outstretched and say, ' There's a horrible
elemental imder your chair.' That makes you
jtmip."

"What's an elemental?" I asked.

"A horrid beast, resembling your sins, gibbering
at you. It's beneath the dignity of a Theosophist
to say he believes in devils, so he calls them ele-
mental. Did she tell you about the loathsome
seventh sub-plane? "

"She said something about sub-planes."

"But the seventh," said Brocklebank, "is a
very special dish. It is reserved for you and me,
and others of the carnally minded. A Theoso-

246

THE MEETING

phist is too much of a philosopher to say he believes
in hell, so he calls it the seventh sub-plane."

"According to Mrs. Stuart," I said, "so far as
I followed her, there is nothing worse than this
world. She calls this hell, in a relative sense."

"Yes, for spiritually minded Theosophists.
But for you and me — ^for beer drinkers and those
who attend to the lusts of the flesh — there's the
dickens of a slimy patch, full of creeping things.
Did she tell you about the walking corpses you are
liable to meet?"

"Not a word."

"Oh, she skipped all the horrors."

"Well, she said that she thought the whole con-
ception was choked with detail."

"I quite agree with her," said Brocklebank:
"choked to death."

I told him Mrs. Stuart's story exactly as she
had given it to me. He made no comment tmtil
I finished, merely nodding his head from time to
time to indicate that he followed.

"Well," I asked, at the end, "what do you
make of it?"

"Just what I made of it before," he replied.

"I've forgotten what that was."

247

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"My fatal beauty."

"Be serious for a few minutes."

"I am serious," he maintained. "For some
reason or other, she wants to get to know me, and
so she has concocted this story. Probably it's a
device to obtain money."

This was precisely the attitude I had anticipated
he would take; yet I felt indignant.

"You wouldn't say that if you knew her," I
said.

"She evidently knew her man," he asserted.
"Your simple faith is touching. Of course she is
personally attractive and well dressed : they always
are. Probably the police have a list of convic-
tions."

"Then how do you get over the newspaper
cutting?"

"That's genuine, very likely. It may have sug-
gested the scheme, whatever it is. She could
easily take a name to correspond. No doubt she
is used to it."

"But she wrote from a good address, and she
is staying at the Cecil.'

"How do you know she is.'

"She told me so.'

248

w sne 15."

THE MEETING

"My dear Reece! And even if she were, that
wouldn't clear her."

"Oh, I dare say I am very gullible," I said.
"But, anyhow, as it happens, I am not her man,
whom you say she knew. You are her man.
You are the person she expected to talk to. I
only came into it accidentally."

"Yes, she made a mistake," he said. "She
may have heard some of these stories that are
floating round about me and have got a wrong
impression."

"Then it comes to this: you don't accept a word
of what she says?"

"A word here and there," he answered; "but
you can't expect me to believe in astral bodies and
mysterious voices."

"Why not?"

"Because I have a rough working basis of
common-sense about me."

"You might very well have that," I said,
"and yet be less obstinately imbedded in sheer
materialism."

" Well, but look at the thing, " he said. "Even
you can't pretend to think that she has been hav-
ing mysterious vocal communications from a man

249

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

who is dead, or who, at any rate, has mislaid him-
self in Scotland.'*

''Yes, I do/' I said flatly.

He laughed and took out his cigarette case.
"Oh, you would believe anything."

"Do you believe," I asked him, "that two
people separated by hundreds of miles, and not
connected in any way, can speak to each
other?"

"You are thinking of wireless telegraphy?"

" I am applying no name to it, " I said, " that or
any other. I merely make a statement and ask
you if you believe it."

"Of course I believe it. It's a fact."

"Yet, a few years ago — twenty or thirty years
ago — ^if I had said that I believed it, you woiild
have told me that I would believe anything."

He laughed again. "Very probably."

"Do you believe," I asked further, "that your
body is entirely composed of minute moving tmits
of electricity — ^that it is, in fact, material only to
our coarse senses?"

"Are you talking about the divisibility of atoms,
the new electron theory?"

"Again," I said, "I am not appljring any

250

THE MEETING

names to what I say: I'm simply making a state-
ment and asking if you believe it."

"It seems as if we had to believe it. And why
not?" he asked. "If a thing exists at all, it's
neither more nor less incomprehensible as electri-
city than as matter."

"Common-sense doesn't get in the way," I said,
"because Science has recently given it its blessing.
Now I heard to-day — I've been talking about this
subject — ^that Theosophists have been saying the
same thing for years, but people like you, who have
got a rough working basis of common-sense, treated
their statements as the meanderings of harmless
lunatics."

"If they really said that," Brocklebank de-
clared, " they made a good shot. Even old Moore
does that occasionally."

"That might be the explanation or it might
not. I'm not prepared to dogmatize, as you are.
I can't see that it is necessary to rule a thing out
absolutely, unless it is a proven scientific fact.
Science moves comparatively slowly; its methods
necessitate that it should. Other less exact and
minute ways of discovering truths go ahead of it,
philosophy for instance. Philosophers have been

251

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

telling us for ages that there is no such thing as
objective reality, that only the ego exists. People
called it metaphysical subtlety and took no notice.
But Science has now cut down the whole objective
universe to electricity, perhaps to ether, so we are
getting on."

"I didn't say we weren't," said Brocklebank.

'*Well, but this is my point," I went on: "You
will naturally admit that there are still, probably,
a good many things in the cosmos which Science
hasn't foimd out?"

"Naturally."

"Then why say so positively that occultism,
mysticism, psychical research, or whatever you
like to call it, cannot have got into touch with any
of those things?"

"Oh, the whole thing is tomfoolery."

"That's sheer dogmatism again. And a man
who takes his stand by Science ought to be the
last to dogmatize about what he doesn't know.
For my part, I neither believe nor disbelieve; but
it seems to me to be quite possible that these
people, Theosophists, Spiritualists — I admit that
many of them are cranks and humbugs and washy
sentimentalists, but the genuine ones, the practical

252

THE MEETING

ones — ^may be doing things, using forces, without
knowing the how and the why of them. Later on,
Science will come along in its leisurely way,
step by step, and tell us the how and the
why."

"Well, so long as it satisfies you, *' said Brockle-
bank, throwing the end of his cigarette into the
fire.

If he intended to say any more it was cut short,
for at that moment the door opened and Mrs.
Stuart was announced.

She came in, as she had done on the previous
evening, a wonderfully striking, almost queenly
figure ; but now her face was lighted by a friendly
smile of greeting as she gave me her hand. Even
while I held it, even while she was speaking, I saw
the smile vanish and a series of startling, kalei-
doscopic changes of expression chase one another
across her features — ^incredulity, sudden joy,
mystification, and, slowly, something like fear.
Brocklebank had risen behind me. It was at him
she was looking.

"Mr. Brocklebank," I said.

Mrs. Stuart withdrew her hand from mine. In
a few moments, the blood which had left her

253

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

cheeks flowed back and her face resumed its normal
expression.

"Do forgive me," she said to Brocklebank,
" I*m afraid I must have startled you. You are so
like my husband that for a moment I thought you
were he. At least, " she said, examining him and
hesitating, "when I first came into the room I
thought you were like him, but, now that I really
look at you, I don't know that you are."

Brocklebank's cheeks were widening, his eyes
were twinkling. " It's just like my bad luck, " he
said, "that you discovered your mistake in time."

Mrs. Stuart laughed. "Oh, that woidd have
been a catastrophe, " she said.

"Far from that," said Brocklebank, "it might
have saved one : I should have sent Reece straight
home to tell the Chicken that someone appreciated
me.

"And who is the Chicken?" asked Mrs. Stuarts

"The Chicken," said Brocklebank, "is my
wife, who, I regret to say, has recently developed
a serious blindness to her husband's merits."

Mrs. Stuart looked at him for a few seconds.
"I'm so sorry," she said, sitting down.

It was a trite sentence, but it was not spoken

254

THE MEETING

in a trite way. She really felt it. Her quick
sensibility had discovered, in a few minutes, what
was hidden from most of his friends, what I my-
self only vaguely guessed, that he did feel, and feel
keenly, the estrangement from his wife.

"You were rather out in your reckoning,
Reece, " said Brocklebank, dropping back into his
chair. "It was lucky for you that you didn't
take my bet."

"What was the bet about?" asked Mrs. Stuart.

"Oh, that's a dark mystery," he replied.

"Has Mr. Reece told you everything that I told
him yesterday?"

"Very carefully," said Brocklebank.

"Can you explain it?"

"Not in the least, " he answered; "but I'm very
grateful to the astral voices."

"If you were truthful and impolite," she said,
"you would say that you don't believe me."

"Then I won't be truthful and impolite. But
what have I done to call down such an impeach-
ment?"

"You don't look like a true believer."

"Reece has been telling tales, " he asserted.

"A few; but I think I should have known."

255

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

She looked at him with a sudden turn to serious-
ness, even with appeal. ''Call it fancy, if you
like, Mr. Brocklebank, " she said, "but it is true
that I leamt your name and address in the way
I have explained. That must mean something.
Will you, in spite of your skepticism, search your
memory for a possible clue?"

**That is exactly what I have been doing, " said
Brocklebank; ** and the result, I regret to report, is
practically nil.'

You have not met my husband?

"Not to my knowledge.'

" Or heard from him? "

He shook his head.

"Nobody has spoken to you about him?"

" I have no recollection of it."

"Then what did you mean when you said the
result was practically nil?"

"I think I might have said totally nil," he
answered; "but your name, in some way, is
familiar."

Mrs. Stuart became alert. "My surname?"
she asked.

"Yes; I don't remember your Christian

name."

256

THE MEETING

She drew a deep sigh. *'At last something T*
she said.

"Oh no, no," said Brocklebank hastily, with
his laugh; "you mustn't build on it. It's too
vague. It's nothing. ' '

"But you meant specially and recently famil-
iar?" she asked. "Of course everybody has
heard the name."

"Yes," he answered, "specially and recently,
but very dim and evasive. It is mixed up with
other dim and evasive things that have got into
my orbit lately. I think I have seen it written."

"Just the surname."

"No," he answered, after a pause, "there was
an initial."

"What initial?" Mrs. Stuart was watching
him eagerly now, waiting, it was clear, with acute
but repressed anxiety for every answer.

Brocklebank stuck his two hands together un-
der his^chin and stared straight in front of him
— a way he had when he was thinking.

" It might be L," he said, at last, " or it might be
V, or it might be F. I think it was one of the
three."

Mrs. Stuart opened her chain-bag and took out
17 257

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

a letter. She folded it, so as to leave only a part
of the writing visible, and handed it to him. "Is
that handwriting familiar?" she asked.

'*'The weather remains fairly good,'" he read
aloud, "'but the fish are shy.'" He shook his
head and passed the letter back to her. "No,"
he said; "we draw that covert blank."

"If I wrote down the name with each of the
initials, it might help you to remember where
you saw it," said Mrs. Stuart. "Will you give
me some paper, please, Mr. Reece?"

I got a sheet and handed it to her on a writing-
pad. Brocklebank passed her a pencil from his
pocket.

"I'm not sure about it being written," he said.
"I rather think it was printed."

"Very well. I'll try to print it. What initials
did you say? L? Yes. S— T— U— I'm afraid
my printing is not very good — " Suddenly she
stopped. She was looking at the pencil-case in
her hand. Slowly she raised her head and looked
at Brocklebank, the expression of her face com-
pletely changed. "Will you tell me where you
got this pencil?" she asked.

"Certainly," said Brocklebank. "I awoke

258

THE MEETING

one morning and found that Father Christmas
had left it."

She stared at him,

''Surely Father Christmas isn't beyond a
Theosophist?" he suggested, smiling broadly.
"You are not going to say you don't believe in
him?"

She turned to me. "What does he mean?"
she asked.

"He had an illness which left his memory
impaired, " I said. "When he recovered he fotmd
himself in possession of that pencil-case, among
other things. No one can explain it."

"Lots of other things," said Brocklebank,
cheerfully; "in fact, a full equipment."

" Can you show me some of the other things? "

He felt in his pockets and took out first a flexible
nail-file and then a small leather sovereign purse,
both of which he handed to her.

"There are some more, if you'll wait a minute, "
he said, still feeling in his pockets. "There was
a bunch of keys, but they're no use and I don't
carry them about."

Mrs. Stuart examined the articles, turned them
over. Then she looked up.

259

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"These axe my husband's things," she an-
nounced, quietly.

For some minutes, since the handing out of the
articles began, I had been vaguely prepared for
her to say this, but the definite statement was no
less astonishing and bewildering.

Brocklebank, for his part, was in no way per-
turbed. He looked very solemn. "I must have
met him on the astral, * ' he said. ' * Here's another. ' '
He handed her a crocodile-leather cigarette case.

Mrs. Stuart looked at it. "This couldn't have
belonged to my husband, " she said. " He doesn't
smoke."

"Evidently I met several benevolent friends,"
said Brocklebank.

Mrs. Stuart had opened the case. "There ap-
pears to be a piece of soft folded paper behind
the cigarettes," she said.

Brocklebank looked. "Oh, I thought that was
part of the wadding, " he said.

Mrs. Stuart took out the paper and unfolded
it. "It's the bill," she said. "You bought the
case at an Edinburgh store."

"Never been in Scotland in my life," said

Brocklebank.

260

THE MEETING

"Look at it." Mrs. Stuaxt showed him the
bill. "'W. Brocklebank, Esq., one cigarette
case, seven and six.' That's not the bill in ink
which they send you by post : it's the soft duplicate
form which they hand you across the counter and
which you pay at the desk."

"What was it Horatio said?" asked Brockle-
bank.

"Exactly what I've been telling you, Brockle-
bank," I said. "But Horatio didn't siay it."

" On the asstmiption that visions are about, " he
said to Mrs. Stuart, "how do you account for
this?"

"We can account for it without visions," she
answered: "you must have been in Scotland, you
must have met my husband, and you must have
bought a cigarette case."

" You said you remembered being in a shop, " I
reminded him.

Brocklebank, as usual, found a humorous aspect
in the situation that was unfolding. His eyes
were twinkling, laughter was bubbling up in him.
"But why should I go to Scotland even in a
dream?" he asked. "And how do I come to be
in possession of jewelry and trinkets and articles

261 '

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

of wearing apparel belonging to a man whose
acquaintance I have yet to make?'*

We made no reply and a short silence followed.
The humor apparent to Broddebank did not
appeal to me and did not, evidently, appeal to
Mrs. Stuart. It was present in both our minds,
I think, that his sentence might have concluded:
"belonging to a man who has disappeared, and
whose body, probably, is lying at the bottom of a
marsh in Scotland." I began to perceive, indeed,
that, if Mr. Stuart's body should be found, there
would be circimistantial evidence to support a
charge of murder against Brocklebank. He could
be proved to be in possession of articles of value
belonging to the former, he could be proved, by
the date on the bill for the cigarette case, to have
been in Scotland on the day that he disappeared,
and he could be proved to have arrived, late on
that same evening, at a hotel adjoining the London
terminus of the Great Northern Railway.

While these thoughts were passing through my
mind, I noticed that Mrs. Stuart was looking at
him intently. The expression of her face, which
at first was speculative, changed slowly until it
indicated, unmistakably, dread, even horror.

262

THE MEETING

"Will you let me look at your hand, the right
one?" she asked suddenly. There was a queer
husky, nervous stress in her voice.

Brocklebank readily stretched out his hand and
laid it within hers. "Take as long as you like,"
he said; "there's no hurry."

Mrs. Stuart, however, took a very short time,
and then, with evident difficulty, said, "Thank
you."

Brocklebank affected to be intensely reproachful
and indignant. "But you can't read a hand as
quickly as that?" he said. "I've been told that
I have a very interesting left hand. The love
line is in the left hand."

My eyes were on Mrs. Stuart. She was gazing
at him in a fascinated way, but recoiling from him,
drawing into herself with a look on her face of
unutterable repugnance and loathing. What she
had seen on his hand I could not imagine, but it
was something, clearly, which had shocked and
revolted her through and through.

Fortunately Brocklebank himself did not notice
the change that had come over her. He had
launched upon a funny story about palmistry.

Before 'he was half through with it, Mrs. Stuart

263

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

rose, with a hasty, half -uttered apology, and said
she must go.

Brocklebank got up, expostulating. "It*s
against all social canons," he said. ''Just as we
were getting friendly ! ' '

She made a movement of her head — it was
barely a nod — ^in his direction, and fled, rather
than walked, out of the room.

I followed, completely at sea. At the hall door
she turned to me.

"I must speak to you," she said quickly, with
strange agitation, '*I must speak to you at once.
Will you come to my hotel?"

" Yes, " I answered. " Give me just one moment."

I returned to the study. Brocklebank was
standing by the mantelpiece, lighting a cigarette.

"That was a cleverish trick to get my gold
pencil-case," he said.

"I am going to take Mrs. Stuart home," I
informed him.

He made a great parade of protest. "I refuse
my consent. Mrs. Stuart is my find, not yours.
You're trespassing."

"Help yourself to whisky," I said and closed
the door upon him.

264

CHAPTER XVI

BLACK MAGIC

I HAVE no recollection that a single word was
spoken, either by Mrs. Stuart or by me,
during the drive to the hotel. She was
deeply engrossed in her own thoughts, and I did
not break in upon them. I was conscious, I
remember, as I looked out of the window of the
taxi-cab at the traffic of Oxford Street, of a feeling
of lightness, of exhilaration. That was due, I
think, in part, to the pure spirit of adventure,
and, in part, to the sense that my companion was
an unusually capable woman, working in an un-
usual field of inquiry, and that she, if anyone,
might be expected to be able to throw some light
upon a mystery which had hung over me like a
nightmare for more than a fortnight, and which
became only more impenetrable and bewildering

265

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

with every addition to my knowledge of the cir-
cumstances surrounding it. The revelations at
my flat had shown me only that there was some
connecting link between the affair of Brocklebank
and the affair of Stuart.

When we reached the Hotel Cecil, Mrs. Stuart
took me to a sitting-room on the second floor.
She did not sit or ask me to sit, but, as soon as the
door was closed, turned to me and asked :

**I want you to tell me if anything strange has
happened to Mr. Brocklebank recently, within the
last few weeks, anything for which you cannot
accovmt? You spoke of a loss of memory."

I had been expecting some such question as this,
and had determined to answer it.

"Something so strange has happened to him,"
I said, "that I do not expect you to believe it
when I tell it, something so strange that, though
I was an eye-witness of all that occurred, I could
not believe it myself, I doubted my sanity and
have even consulted a specialist in disorders of the
brain."

Mrs. Stuart merely nodded. Then I related
to her all the material circumstances of Brockle-
bank's recent history, from the date of our journey

266

BLACK MAGIC

to Chamonix to the moment when he reappeared
in my office.

''Less than a month ago," I concluded, "I saw
Brocklebank dead ; I saw him cremated ; and now
he is alive."

Mrs. Stuart had listened without making any
comment.

"You are incredulous?" I said.

"No."

"You believe it?" I asked in amazement.

"Yes."

" I not only believe it, " she added," but I should
have found the greatest difficulty in believing any-
thing materially different from what you have
told me."

She walked across the room to a writing table
and, for the first time since our entrance, sat down.
A leather escritoire was standing on the table.
She unlocked this and took out a sheet of paper.

"Since my husband's disappearance," she said,
"I have written down everything that has come
through from him. Except for the name and ad-
dress that I got on the morning that I have told
you about, when for a few minutes I was pe-
culiarly receptive, there is very little, only four

267

THE BROCELEBANK RIDDLE

words: 'body/ 'dead,' 'trance,' and again
'body/

"I thought/' she went oa, "that he was trying
to tell me that he had died in a trance and where
his body was to be found. It was partly on that
account that I got the impression that he had
walked into a swamp; and, my mind being pie-
possessed with that idea, it would be more than
ever difficult for him to bring his meaning to my
intelligence. I know now that I was wrong; that
he was not referring to his own death but to that
of someone else. To-night I have discovered
everything that he has been trying to tell me."

I was standing, watching her, my elbow resting
on the mantelpiece.

"Sit down," she said. "We have a lot to talk
about. Have you no impression of the truth?"

I was afraid that she was going to accuse
Brocklebank of murder.

"I realize, of course," I answered, "as you told
Brocklebank, that he has probably somehow met
your husband."

"I was mistaken," she said. "They have
never met."

I drew a breath of relief. "But in that case,"

268

BLACK MAGIC

I said, "how did he come into possession of his
things? Do you mean that he stole them?"

"More than that."

"Just tell me," she went on, "how did you
recognize Mr. Brocklebank when he reappeared?
You say he had changed."

"Very much," I answered.

"His hair had changed, his hands had changed,
his features had become finer, his build lighter.
What did you recognize?"

I reflected for a few moments. " It is really very
diflScult to say," I replied. "A man may change
outwardly to a very large extent indeed, but you
know it is he. You can't mistake him, unless
a number of years have elapsed, when his very
nature and character may have altered or de-
veloped."

"What you recognized, in fact," suggested Mrs.
Stuart, "was the essential man?"

"Precisely."

"Then it ought not to be immensely difficult for
you to understand what I am going to tell you."
She looked straight into my eyes — I was sitting
facing her across the table, my chin on my hands.
"That man — ^your partner, the man who calls

269

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

himself Brocklebank — ^is using my husband's
body."

I stared at her for a while, scarcely grasping her
meaning. To one whose whole training and habit
of thought had been to regard a man and his body
as an inseparable unit, the idea propounded was
by no means so simple of apprehension as it had
been to Mrs. Stuart, who divided the two as easily
as she divided the clothes from the wearer.

*'Did you hear me, Mr. Reece?" she asked, still
looking at me, when perhaps a minute had passed
in silence.

*'Yes — I'm thinking," I answered.

Then suddenly I saw again, as in my flat, an
expression of unutterable repulsion pass over her
face. *'But can't you see the horror of it?" she
cried out. "Can't you understand what it is to
me to see the face I have loved laughing in that
alien way? To see the features I know so well,
so intimately, put to strange coarse uses, utterly
desecrated?"

The depth and reality of the sentiment pervading
her drove into my understanding with far greater
force than had her mere statement. She was
speaking of what was to her a live and atrocious

270

BLACK MAGIC

actuality.. Moreover, I connected it with the in-
explicable repugnance to Brocklebank that had
been growing in my own soul, and with the horror
he had inspired in the breast of his wife. " I don't
only fear him, " I remembered her saying, *' I hate
him."

As Mrs. Stuart's meaning took hold of me, as it
fitted itself slowly to facts of my own experience
and gathered conviction, I was not immediately
impressed by its bearing upon ourselves and our
personal problems. Those latter were, for a
time, overwhelmed by a dazed and giddy sense
of the immense, the immeasurable significance of
such an occurrence — ^had it indeed occupred — to
the whole body of humanity. Was the individual
being, as a separable entity, stirviving death, a
proven fact? Was the question which, for time
beyond reckoning, had divided thinkers and
feelers, reason and instinct, here solved? Was
it solved against himself through the agency of
Brocklebank — Brocklebank the materialist?

Mrs. Stuart's voice recalled me from these
speculations to their starting point. "Does it
seem so inconceivable?" she asked.

"No," I answered. "I can't say that. It

• 271

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

fits, curiously. But I can't go all the way, all at
once."

"I haven't had time yet," she said quietly, "to
think out the detail. I mean, I can't say posi-
tively, at this moment, how the change was
effected. But I am as sure of the fact itself as
I am sure that I am talking to you. I was misled
at first because the man himself so obviously was
not my husband. When it came out that he was
in possession of the pencil-case and the other
things, I looked at him more closely, I looked at
his features, I mean, eliminating the personality
behind. They were altered and altering, the man
Brocklebank had already stamped much of his
individuality upon them, but I could not mistake
them. Then 1 asked to see his hand. He im-
agined I professed to be a palmist. So did you,
I think?"

''Yes," I said.

"I thought so. People always appear to sup-
pose that Theosophy is a kind of fortune-telling.
They Itimp us with palmists and astrologers and
cranks and swindlers generally. It is nothing of
the kind. I make no more pretension than you
do to be able to tell fortunes, and it wasn't to

272

BLACK MAGIC

read his lines that I asked the man to let me look
at his right hand. It was because I wanted to see
if he had a long scar running right across his
wrist, a scar very familiar to me, I found it.
It was then that I came away. My last particle
of doubt had gone, and I could not remain in the
same room with him any longer."

"I have had a similar feeling," I admitted,
"during the last fortnight — sl queer, instinctive
aversion — ^for which I could not account."

"Your senses were quicker than your mind;
they were telling you what you could not inter-
pret. That man has no right to be here," she cried
out, with sudden vehemence. "One's whole soul
revolts against him. He is dead. His presence
is a horrible and offensive intrusion."

"But it is impossible for me to accept this,"
I said, "as simply as you are able to accept it.
You are asking me to believe that something has
happened which is outside all human knowledge
and experience."

" Oh, no, " she answered, " it has often happened

before; but never, to my knowledge, in this way.

It is the means and the object, not the fact, that

are so revolting. There is a good deal that

z8 273

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

is esoteric in Theosophy — ^necessarily so. Phe-
nomena are discovered and investigated, but are
not yet understood, and, while that is the case,
to publish the facts from the housetops would
be not only useless, but harmful. If you are
interested in the subject and will come to see me
some day at lUingham, I can give you names
and particulars in a number of cases: they are all
in the Theosophical records. There is no question
whatever that this transference of a physical body
from one occupant to another has often been
carried out. There are people living on this
plane at this moment who have never been bom
in our sense, and there are people no longer living
on this plane who have never died in our sense.
But in all such cases the transference has been
carried out with the consent and by the desire of
the living person, of the person, that is, possess-
ing a physical body. Now my husband has not
willingly relinquished his body; of that I am sure.
He had no desire to die yet; physical life main-
tained its hold on him and its interest for him.
His body, beyond doubt, has been stolen, dehb-
erately appropriated when it had been temporarily
vacated. It is the most iniquitous and horrible

274

BLACK MAGIC

form of larceny that anyone could commit or
imagine."

It was not, for all that, I conjectured, one that
would be ruled out by Brocklebank's code of
ethics. To reproduce ourselves and to get the
better of other people, I had heard him say, were
the sole purposes of existence. Granting Mrs.
Stuart's premises, I could conceive him finding
a very htunorous flavor in the trick he had played
upon the unfortunate Theosophist.

"But will you tell me," I asked, "exactly what
you suppose has happened?"

"I am not prepared yet," she replied, "as I
warned you, to commit myself to every detail,
but I can tell you generally what certainly has
occurred. Your partner, Brocklebank, died about
the beginning of the last week in August."

"On the 22d," I said.

"On the 22d; nearly a week before my hus-
band's disappearance. That happened on the
28th. During the interval Brocklebank was dead :
he had no place or part in physical life. He
would remain generally conscious of it, but be
imable to participate in it. A Theosophist says
he was functioning in his astral body on the

275

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

Astral Plane; but you need not, unless you like,
accept that phraseology. Well, what would be
the attitude of such a man in such circumstances?
You tell me he is earth bound, enslaved to the
material conditions which the physical senses
cognize; without aspirations to any finer or fuller
development; regarding this heavy, enervat-
ing existence as 'our one chance/ That is
so?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, then, what would be his attitude when
he found himself removed from a state that to
him is everything?"

" I agree, " I answered, " that he would probably
want to get back to it."

" He would want to get back to it ; he would look
upon himself as having been deprived by death
of something desirable that was legitimately his.
And the only possible means whereby he could
again enter the physical plane would be by
occupjring somebody else's body, by committing
the awful larceny that I have spoken about. Do
you deny him the will to do that, presuming he had
the power?"

"He might not quite realize the eflEect," I said;

276

BLACK MAGIC

"he would be obsessed by his desire; but no, I
don't."

"I have told you that it can be done," Mrs.
Stuart went on, "and he would find ready helpers,
those who have acquired powers as yet imperfectly
understood and are prepared to use them tmscru-
pulously. Theosophists call them black magi-
cians. They are like our anarchists — enigmatical,
malignant — soured, perhaps, and spiteful — ^whose
only object seems to be to upset normal processes
and produce a condition of chaos. They would
help him, they would be glad to find a man willing
to undertake such a part. Sometime between the
morning of the 28th of August, when my husband
disappeared, and the morning of the 29th, when
Brocklebank awoke to physical consciousness in
the Great Northern Hotel, the change must have
beeneflEected."

" Do you mean, " I asked, " that, at that particu-
lar time, your husband would inevitably be the
victim, that there would be no one else possible?"

"Oh, dear, no! His field of choice would be
quite wide, for besides all the students in occult
schools who have acquired the power to leave
their physical bodies almost at will — a vexy

277

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

numerous class, particularly in the east — ^there
are numbers of people who involuntarily and
habitually do so during ordinary sleep, though
they remain on this plane totally tmconscious of
their experiences. But he would naturally choose
a man of his own race and of similar age, and one
whose body possessed a general correspondence in
build and cast of features to the one he had
lost."

"But in temperament and character," I ob-
jected, "your husband was evidently entirely
different."

" That wouldn't matter. He was not concerned
with the man, but only with the material structure
he inhabited. Having obtained possession of a
body, he would force it to the uses he desired and
quickly impress upon its features his own prevail-
ing characteristics. I was horrified, as I have
told you, to see to-night the extent to which he
has already done that."

"But there would be a limit," I said, "to his
power of forcing a body immediately to the uses
he desired. For some purposes the muscles have
to be trained to obey the will, and if they had had
no previous training — " I stopped abruptly. A

278

BLACK MAGIC

recollection had sprung into my mind. " Did your
husband play golf?" I asked.

''No."

"Did he drive a motor car?"

"No," she replied again; "his only hobby was
fishing."

"And I believe you said he was very ab-
stemious? "

"He was a teetotaller."

I felt a rush of hot blood through my veins.
The exactness, the completeness with which the
objections I was preparing to advance had been
met by my own experience carried a force of
conviction to my mind far greater than anything
that had gone before. The theory fitted, too,
with the curious hesitation of many people to
rfecognize him, with the mistrust even of his own
dog. An amazed, an awed, and, strangely, an
exhilarated sense that Mrs. Stuart was right took
hold of me. At the lowest, there was a weight
of evidence impossible to ignore supporting the
supposition that this thing that she spoke of had
actually taken place — ^this thing to me, at least —
whatever it might be to her — ^unheard of in human
experience. It was a weight of evidence unbroken,

279

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

so far as I could see, except in one direction. That
point I put to her,

*' But if he spent all this time, these six or seven
days, in some other state of conscious existence, "
I asked, ''how can you account for the fact that
he has no recollection of it, not the faintest? Such
hazy remembrances as came to him are of trains
and shops, peculiarly terrestrial things."

"I admit," Mrs. Stuart answered, '*that at
present I cannot explain those slight recollections.
But I am sure they are explicable. You must
come and see me again to-morrow. To-night I
am tired and shocked and distressed beyond
measure. I can only say that they are not con-
nected with the Astral. Of all that happened
there he can retain no sense whatever. It is
exceedingly difficult even for a trained expert to
carry . impressions from one plane to another.
For a neophyte it would be an impossibility. As
regards that his mind must be a blank."

I made no comment. For several minutes we
sat facing one another across the table. At last
I broke the silence.

"Presuming," I said, slowly, "that you are
right — and, impossible as it seems, I come to think

280

BLACK MAGIC

more and more that you are right — ^you would be
neither wife nor widow, Mrs. Brocklebank would
be neither wife nor widow, relationships, mone-
tary affairs, everything, on both sides, would be
in inextricable chaos. The situation would be
appalling."

Mrs. Stuart rose from her seat and stood above
me. A look in her face caught me and stopped me
as I was rising too. Possessed by horror, as she
clearly was, every revolted fiber of her being re-
coiling, quivering, her strange beauty was yet
lifted and illuminated by a curious exaltation.

"Appalling!" she repeated. "To me he is
some monstrous creature, some terrible, grotesque,
imholy birth. His existence here in this guise is
an injustice and an offense to his wife, to you, to
me, and, most of all, to my husband. His presence
is a continuing, unendurable outrage. Death is
the only solution. Death is the only force that
can drive him, and must drive him, from the body
he has usurped."

281

CHAPTER XVII

THE RECOLLECTIONS

I WENT to the oflSce the next morning with
feelings in violent conflict. On the one hand,
I was reluctant to the last degree to enter a
building where I should come in contact with
such a man as Mrs. Stuart had visioned; on the
other, I was spurred on by an intense curiosity to
discover whether or not her amazing supposition
was borne out by a close examination of my
partner's features. I had in my pocket a photo-
graph of him, taken in the previous year, which
Mrs. Brocklebank had given me on the night of
our return from France.

When I went into his office, I found him,
fortunately, speaking at the telephone; so I was
able, for two or three minutes, to look at him
minutely. I stood in a position which gave me a

282

THE RECOLLECTIONS

three-quarter view of his face, and compared it,
feature by feature, with the photograph.

He finished his conversation on the telephone
and looked up at me expectantly. I had put
back the photograph in my pocket.

''Here is a letter from Cuthbertsons, " I said.
*' I think you had better answer it : you know more
about the matter than I do."

He took the letter and I returned to my own
room and sat down.

My last doubt had been removed. Mrs.
Stuart's tales of black magicians did not much
impress me; but that the man William Brockle-
bank, by some means, by some mysterious agency
outside my comprehension, was now manifested
in a body other than that in which he had been
bom, I was morally sure. In comparison with
the photograph, his present features were revealed
as roughly similar in cast, in general proportion
and relation to each other, but in detail all different.
The bridge of the nose was much finer, the slight
retrouss6 tip was not there, the chin was more
pointed, the eyebrows straighter, the eyes larger,
the ears were shorter, smaller, closer to the head,
the hair was thinner and smoother. These dif-

283

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

ferences were clearly apparent, though, as Mrs.
Stuart had said, he had already begun to impress
the face with his own characteristics. There was
the same fullness of lip, the same arched creases
in the brow, the little lines radiating from the
.comer of his eyes and his mouth. In particular,
a perpendicular furrow in each cheek, though not
so deep as I remembered them, were definitely
present.

Is a man poured into a prepared mould, or does
he beat out his shape from within? The question
struggled out of a chaos of giddy, inarticulate
thoughts and incoherent emotion, as I sat at
my desk, again looking at the photograph; and
for a time I followed its train with a mind curiously
cold and detached. Both processes, no doubt, take
place; in the work of the former we see heredity,
in the work of the latter we see individuality.
Noting how Brocklebank had stamped himself
upon his form in a fortnight, how he had ham-
mered it with his character, one could not escape
the inference that the latter process is by far the
more important of the two. While looking at
him as he talked at the telephone, I had been dis-
posed to wonder that features, differing in so many

284

THE RECOLLECTIONS

respects from those I had known, should have mis-
led me. But the moment he put back the receiver
and looked up at me with his familiar expression,
I knew that it was quite impossible that I could
have failed to recognize him. I fully realized,
indeed, perhaps for the first time in my life, the
immense superiority, as an identifiable fact, of
the individual over the form, of the man over his
body. We don't identify a friend by his features;
we know him instinctively. He may have dis-
guised himself, but the moment he moves, the
moment he speaks, the moment he looks at us,
we know him ; the man shows through the disguise
as clearly as through a sheet of glass; absurdly
altered, he is patently, transparently himself.
It is only when a man is not familiar to us, when
we know him but slightly, that our eye rests, for
identification, upon his features. A few people
who had not been intimate with Brocklebank had
failed to recognize him, but his friends had known
him at once, in spite of his changed appearance.
Mrs. Stuart, on the other hand, had been slow
to identify her husbaad's features, because she
had been confused and blinded by the presence
of another man behind them.

285

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

I emerged from the little pocket of detached
mentality as suddenly as I had entered it, and,
for the rest of the morning, alternated between
moods of numb helplessness before an unthink-
able situation and fits of strangely inordinate
emotion. As the full reality of what had hap-
pened pressed home upon my consciousness, I was
gripped, not only by repugnance and horror, but,
as Mrs. Stuart had been, by a burning sense of
indignation. Brocklebank, in this guise, had no
right to be here ; he was an alien, an intruder, an
exotic from another plane, a man who had had his
life. To satisfy his own crass materialism, his
obstinate belief in the exclusive value of the solid
circimistances of physical existence, he had played
a trick upon us, intolerable in its callous disregard
of every natural feeling. I believed that Mrs.
Stuart would murder him rather than permit such
a situation to continue; and, at that moment at
least, flushing with the sense of the terrible affront
that had been put upon her, I felt that I should
not blame her if she did.

When I went to see her in the afternoon, how-
ever, I found that her mood had changed. Her
emotions were no longer in the ascendant. She

286

THE RECOLLECTIONS

was thinking, coldly and keenly, and quite calmly.
She asked me, first, if Brocklebank appeared, and
had appeared since his return, to be in a perfectly
normal state of mental and physical health.

**Has he any unusual experiences," she asked
particularly, ''that are in any way unusual?"

"The only thing that I have heard him com-
plain about," I answered, "is that he sleeps too
heavily and yet does not feel rested."

"Yes," she said, slowly; "that is what I meant
— something like that." She remained silent for
several minutes, sitting with her elbows on the
table before her and her chin on her hands, deep
in thought. "I keep getting a glimmering," she
said, at last, "but no more as yet."

" How does his wife accept him? " she asked next.

" She is frightened of him, and she has conceived
a violent abhorrence of him. We had a terrible
scene one night when he went home. That is
why he is now staying at a hotel."

"And were they good friends before? Did
they get on well?"

"Splendidly. She was devoted to him."

"Where does she live?" Mrs. Stuart asked,
after a pause.

287

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"At Byfleet, on the South Western."

"It's not very far, is it?"

"Oh, no; under an hour."

"I think I should like to go and see her before
I return to Illingham," she said, "if you can take
me down. I think I ought to. She is as much
concerned, poor thing, as I am. Can you arrange
for that, and as soon as possible. I am very
anxious to get back home. I feel I may leam more
there, and I have done all I can here for the
present."

"I can speak to her on the telephone to-day,"
I said, "and, if it suits her, we will go to-morrow
— even to-night, if you would prefer it."

"Yes, I think so, " said Mrs. Stuart; "then I can
go home to-morrow. Will you see if you can get
on now?"

There was a telephone in the room. I rang up
the exchange, got the connection, and within ten
minutes had settled the matter with Mrs. Brockle-
bank. We were to go down that evening, and she
would send the car to the station to meet us.

"As a reward for that service," said Mrs.
Stuart, with the first smile I had seen on her face
since she discovered the truth, "I will tell you

288

THE RECOLLECTIONS

the meaning of those queer recollections of Mr.
Brocklebank. They puzzled me last night because
I was prepossessed with the idea that my husband
had been beguiled to London in a state of semi-
trance."

'* I thought, " I said, " that you supposed he had
walked into a swamp."

" Oh, that was before I suspected the truth. His
body," she added, with another smile, "couldn't
very well be both at the bottom of a swamp and
sitting in your flat."

I blushed at my own stupidity. "Please ex-
plain," I asked.

"Well, it is quite clear to my mind," she went
on, "that, in addition to the necessary absolute
failure to recall anjrthing that happened during
six days when he was not on this plane at all,
Mr. Brocklebank retains no recollection, or only a
faint, fitful recollection, of the events of a whole
day after he had taken possession of my husband's
body."

"Then you think that the change took place on
the moor, during this condition of semi- trance?"

"No, it couldn't have taken place while he was
in a state of semi-trance; the trance would need
19 289

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

to be complete. I think it had happened before
then. I think the man who walked out of the
Craigiel Hotel on the Wednesday morning — the
man described in the paper as being strange and
distrait in his manner — ^was not my husband at
all, but Brocklebank."

"Then your husband must have put himself
into a state of trance during the preceding
night?"

"Yes, I am sorry to say he must."

"AndBrocklebank?"

"When he attained consciousness in those
circumstances, he wouldn't have the faintest idea
what he was doing in Scotland. He would make
enquiries, which would account for his being con-
sidered distrait, and the answers would only
bewilder him more. He did, in fact, make such
enquiries, as I have heard from the proprietor;
and it was that which made me assume that my
husband must have been in that curious state that
I have told you of, when only a fraction of physical
consciousness is retained. I have often been with
him at such a time, when he could walk perfectly
well, avoid obstacles, cross the road at the right
places, and reach his intended destination; but

290

THE RECOLLECTIONS

if I put a question to him, he would either not
answer at all or his answer would be rubbish."

''But why should Brocklebank go on the
moor?"

"I don't think he did. That was merely an
assumption of the newspaper correspondent, who
said he was ^apparently intending to walk on the
moor/ Much more probably, he went straight
to the nearest station and took the first train for
London. His first thought would inevitably be
to get back home. He would reach King's Cross
late at night, no doubt very tired, dazed and un-
certain of himself, and probably also, if he had
drunk any wine or spirits, slightly intoxicated,
and would go to the nearest hotel, the Great
Northern. It is easy to understand that it would
not be imtil after he had had a full night's sleep,
that he would wake to complete, enduring con-
sciousness in the body he had appropriated."

"That would accoimt for his recollection of a
train," I said; ''but what about the shop?"

"What would you do," asked Mrs. Stuart, "if
you found yourself on your way to Loqdon in a
rough tweed suit and a fishing cap, with no luggage
and without even a cigarette in your pocket?"

291

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Yes, " I said, " I see; I should go and buy some
things at the first opportunity."

"The first opportunity, in his case, would
probably be Edinburgh, where he would have to
change trains. And since he would have articles
of various descriptions to buy, he would save
himself trouble and time by going to a large
store."

"He remembered something — did I tell you? —
about hearing someone say, 'It's only sixteen.' "

"Yes," said Mrs. Stuart; "I think I can even
explain that. My husband took a sixteen collar.
Perhaps Mr. Brocklebank took a larger?"

"I don't know," I answered, "but I think it's
very likely."

"Prestuning he did, he would naturally ask for
the larger size. The shopman, looking at him,
might think he had made a mistake, might ask
to see the one he was wearing. Brocklebank
would take it off; the shopman would say, 'It's
only sixteen' ; Brocklebank would be surprised."

The soimdness of her reasoning in this latter
respect received a striking confirmation that same
afternoon, after I had returned to the office.
Brocklebank suddenly pushed open the commimi-

292

THE RECOLLECTIONS

eating door and bounced into my room, looking
very pleased with himself.

" I've just remembered, " he said. " It came to
me all of a sudden."

"Remembered what?" I asked.

"About that name 'Stuart' — where I saw it."

"Oh!" I had to re-order my ideas. "Well,
where? "

"It was marked on a collar — one of those I
found in my room at the Great Northern."

"So I suppose your purloined it," I said, "to-
gether with the pencil-case and the sovereign purse
and the other things."

"Looks like it," he said, chuckling frankly;
"but nobody can prove it."

"Speaking of collars," I asked, suddenly, "what
size do you take?"

"Seventeen," he answered, promptly.

"Is that the size you are wearing now?"
^ He looked at me, for a few seconds, with a very
characteristic expression on his face — ^an expres-
sion due to a violent inward struggle to prevent
himself laughing, so that the dryness or sarcasm
of the remark he proposed to make might not be
spoiled.

293

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Oh, no," he said, gravely, when he had
brought his voice under the requisite control, *'I
take seventeen, but I wear twelve and a half; I
like the choked feeling it gives you."

"Just to satisfy my curiosity," I asked, "would
you mind taking it off and looking?"

"My dear Reece," he said, in the same tone as
before, "if the dignity of the partners in this firm
has ceased to be of any consequence to you,
there is all the more reason why I should keep
scruptdous watch and guard upon it. I don't
say it in any way of complaint, but I have noticed
that, of late, you have become strangely frivolous
and have ceased to pay that strict attention to busi-
ness which has hitherto marked a long and honor-
able career. Where have you been this afternoon,
for instance? I've answered three telephone calls
for you and interviewed Barker."

It occurred to me that, whether he complained
or not, he had some right of complaint; for since
his reappearance my attention to business, far
from being strict, had been very disjointed and
perfimctory indeed.

I treated him honestly. " I've been to see Mrs.
Stuart, " I said.

294

THE RECOLLECTIONS

I got, of coiirse, the answer I expected. He
bellowed with laughter.

*' I knew it was a love affair, " he said, when he
had recovered his breath. *'I only wanted to
make you adroit it."

I allowed him to think so.

"Last night," he proceeded, "and the night
before, and now again to-day, and always closeted
alone with her! You are making the pace un-
commonly stiflE. Are you going to see her again
to-night?"

"Yes,"IrepUed.

"And she is supposed to be lamenting the dear
recently departed! You don't waste time, either
of you. Before you plight your troth, " he went
on, with the same grave air as before, "it is my
duty to inform you that the law won't prestune
death imtil seven years have elapsed. Seven
years! She is a good-looking woman now, but
think of seven years!"

"Time passes," I suggested.

"Yes, and so does the bloom on the peach.
Unless I'm in error, she'll be well on the wrong
side of forty by that time. Without using de-
rogatory or imseemly language, I should say that

295

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

you are acting like a damned fool. A man in yotir
position, comfortably off, no hereditary vices, not
too old, and no uglier than most men — ^why, there
are hundreds of them, thousands, ready to drop
into your hands. You can take your choice
among the fairest flowers that bloom. And you
elect to wait seven years, and then marry an old
woman. Seven years!" he cackled, as he opened
the communicating door. "You won't be so
young yourself by that time."

I called him back. "You haven't looked to see
the size of your collar, " I reminded him.

" My collar ! " he repeated. "What on earth — ?
Look here, Reece, I know a man in love gets odd
fancies. I can htunor you once in a way. But
you must learn to restrain yourself. I can't keep
on doing things of this sort for seven years."

He took off his collar and looked at the marks
inside it.

"This is a queer thing," he said, in a puzzled
tone. " It's not seventeen : it's sixteen."

"It's only sixteen," I said; "and again you are
surprised."

296

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STRANDED WOMEN

AS my narrative draws to a close, I find myself,
as at the beginning, very sensible that I
must encoimter the skepticism of men and
women whose experience has been exclusively of the
tangible and visible things of a tangible and visi-
ble world. That feeling is increased by the knowl-
edge that, in this respect, the most exacting part
of my task lies yet before me, that the most amaz-
ing circumstance in a record of events both in-
ordinate and bizarre has still to be approached.
I know, of course, that to many people, many
thousands the world over, nothing that I have
told or shall tell will present more diflSctdty, will
appear less credible, than does the rising and
setting of the sun to the ordinary mind. But
those who have studied phenomena outside the

297

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

physical sciences are in numbers negligible among
the multitude who have not.

It may be said, too, that there are witnesses
who can speak to my veracity, who can confirm
every incident I have related. That is so. But
a witness, whoever he may be, who testifies to
the occurrence of something inexplicable by any
of the laws or processes at present known to
science, is always suspect. Life outside this life
is manifested every day to the sight or hearing
of hundreds of reputable men and women, but
the world will not believe what they say. The
great mass of htunanity remains steadily, strangely,
obstinately incredtdous. A cloud of witness can-
not convince people of the persistence of the
individual after death.

I have no right of complaint ; for I myself, until
I became involved in these events, was among the
number. I had a strong intuitive feeling that the
ego is permanent, but I thought that no proof of
its continuance beyond the span of a physical life
had ever been obtained. I hoped, I desired, but
I was not sure. A well-known scientist has ad-
mitted that '* There is to me no thought so intoler-
able as the thought of my own annihilation. To

298

THE STRANDED WOMEN

be blotted out while life flows out into greater
knowledge and towards grander power, that is
almost insupportable." That probably expresses
the feeling of every intellectual man and woman.
He goes on to say that he can "see no proof" to
the contrary; and there again, no doubt, he reflects
the prevailing sentiment. It is a curious fact that,
while people passionately desire proof on this
subject, they decline to accept the evidence that
is offered them, decline even to examine it, be-
cause it is mixed up, undoubtedly, with chicanery.
They will not take the trouble to sift it, to wash it,
to separate the gold from the dross.

These reflections pass through my mind as I
approach the most remarkable part of my narra-
tive, as I come to describe an occurrence illumi-
nating to those who witnessed it in a degree
impossible to exaggerate, but so removed from
ordinary experience that it cannot be easily credible
when presented, however carefully, through the
medium of a reporter.

Following my conversation with Brocklebank,
I returned to Mrs. Stuart's hotel. I foimd her
waiting for me, and, after an early dinner, we
went down to Byfleet. Mrs. Brocklebank, whose

299

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

black dress still suggested, with pitiful, ironic per-
sistence, a recent loss, received us with a wonder-
ing, slightly apprehensive expression in her pretty,
appealing eyes. I had told her over the telephone
the general purpose of our visit, and the informa-
tion had evidently caused her some trepidation, as
was inevitable when she was approached by any
new development of the strange and terrifying
tragedy that had broken so cruelly across her life.
Mrs. Stuart was instantly attracted to her.
Indeed, her appearance — ^young, small, lonely,
and unhappy — could not but have struck a
sympathetic chord in the heart of so protective
and kindly a woman. She sat down beside her
and explained to her, quietly and fully, the ab-
struse cause of her present position and the re-
lationship of that position to her own; beginning,
as she had begun with me, by showing her the
newspaper cutting, and keeping her mind carefully
directed to the corresponding dates in the two
series of events. Mrs. Brocklebank listened
intently, looking up from time to time at the
other woman, in a puzzled, mystified way, and
occasionally glancing at me, as if to see if I en-
dorsed the statements that were being made.

300

THE STRANDED WOMEN

This latter interrogative she put into words
when Mrs. Stuart finished. "Do you believe it,
Mr. Reece?" she asked. "Do you think that
this can possibly have happened?"

"I'm sure of it," I answered. "I compared
his face to-day, when he was speaking at the tele-
phone, with the photograph you gave me, and not
a single feature was quite the same : it was another
face." J went on to point out the bearing of the
golf and the motor car incidents, of the instinctive
repugnance we had both felt, of the purchases
in Scotland and the possession of Mr. Stuart's
clothes. "I don't pretend," I concluded, "to
be able to say anything on the point of whether
Mrs. Stuart is right or wrong in her view of the
conditions beyond the physical horizon, which
led up to the change and made it possible. That
is all obscure to me. But the fact itself is in-
dubitable."

For awhile Mrs. Brocklebank remained pensive.
A feathery brown curl — a familiar friend of mine —
had separated from its fellows and strayed over
her cheek. Then, quite suddenly, I saw her
face light up. Her eyes shone, her whole aspect
changed with the enchanting effect of the sun

301

THE BROCKLEBANK RTODLE

breaking from bdund doods. "1 knew that it
wasn't Billy, "' she died oat.

A Utile later, Mrs. Stuart, referring to Brodde-
bank, used the term "your husband." To my
surprise, Mrs. Brocklebank instantly challenged
it.

"He is not my husband,*' she said, almost
sharply: "he is yours. He is the man mentioned
in the newspaper paragraph, the man who left
the hotel in Scotland that Wednesday morning.
Billy died at Chamonix a week before."

This was a startling aspect of the position,
which, I was astonished to think, had not, until
that moment, presented itself to me. I was
absolutely certain that the man was not Mrs.
Stuart's husband: I knew him beyond question.
But I saw that, if it could be shown, as undoubt-
edly it could, that his body was Stuart's body, if
his movements could be traced, as probably they
could, from Craigiel to the Great Northern Hotel,
a jury would require no more subtle method of
identification. They would listen to nothing else.
They would say that he had usurped Brocklebank's
name and position, and imposed upon his friends.
They would find that he was the husband of Mrs.

302

THE STRANDED WOMEN

Stuart — of Mrs. Stuart who loathed him even
more than Mrs. Brocklebank loathed him.

The latter's unexpected statement had fallen
in the room like a bombshell. Mrs. Stuart made
no immediate rejoinder. Probably her mind
followed a train of thought similar to that which
passed through mine.

At last she said firmly: "He is neither one nor
the other: he is an offense, an outrage."

"Yes," said Mrs. Brocklebank, very decidedly.

"It must never be allowed, " I said, "to become
a matter for decision by a Court of Law. It is
outside the compass of any tribimal likely to be
constituted in our time."

Both women agreed with that.

Before we returned to London, Mrs. Stuart
asked Mrs. Brocklebank to go with her, the next
day, to her home in Hampshire. "We must
protect each other," she said. "We are both
lonely and both unhappy, and we are commonly
involved in this appalling thing."

Mrs. Brocklebank was standing in the hall, a
pathetic little figure, preparing to bid us good-bye
and to face another solitary night. Her face
brightened like a flower in sudden sunshine.

303

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

The past fortnight, alone in her house, wracked
by her thoughts, probably misunderstood by her
friends, had evidently been torture to her. The
prospect of change, and of the companionship of
a woman who not only understood her trouble
but shared it, contained an obvious and powerful
appeal. After some small polite demur, she ac-
cepted the invitation; and the two women ar-
ranged to meet at Waterloo.

In the train, on the way back to London, Mrs.
Stuart broke a long period of silence with an
enigmatical request. My thoughts, I remember,
were still traveling over the ground opened by
the doubt of which woman was wife and which
widow. " Can I rely upon your help, " she asked,
"if I need it?"

"In what way?" I asked.

"I don't know. I only think I may need it.
The present position is intolerable for everybody.
That poor little thing has been nearly driven out
of her mind."

"To do him justice," I said, "I don't suppose
he ever thought what the effect would be upon
other people."

"He thought of nothing, probably." A flush

304

THE STRANDED WOMEN

of indignation, of anger rose suddenly to her
cheeks. "He was swamped, like all materialists,
by overconfidence in his own assertions. He has
died and he lives; and he still says, with complacent
dogmatism, that death is the end of the chapter."

" He hasn't a doubt about it," I said.

"Oh, it makes me angry," she cried. "They
are so sure — so superior. Think of the world,
think of the dull drag and squalor of much of it,
most of it. That is a materialist's 'be all and
end all.' That satisfies him as a reason for the
existence of self-conscious beings. If this were
all," she said solemnly, "to give life would be an
infinitely greater crime than to take it.

"Can I rely upon your help, Mr. Reece?" she
asked again.

"You said last night that the problem
only be solved in one way, " I reminded her.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of that. I woi
ask your help for that," she answered. "It
is impossible to say in what way I may need
it. My power to take messages seems pitifully
feeble now that there is an imperative call upon
it. It is as if a ship were sinking at sea and the
wireless would work only weakly and intermit-
M 305

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

tently. Yet I feel that something somehow may
be done, and that at any moment I may get the
clue to it."

"Yes, of course, you may count on me," I said.

Four or five days later \ received a letter from
her, calling upon me to carry out this promise.

"I want you," she wrote, '*to come down here
for a day or two and to bring Mr. Brocklebank
with you. I could, of course, ask him direct, but
I have so little excuse, I know him so slightly, that
I fear he might, not imnaturally, decline. It is
safer far, I am sure, to leave it to you to induce
him in some way to come with you. It is very
important that he should: I am sure of that, but
of no more as yet. The messages are very feeble
and broken. I know that my husband is strug-
gling to tell me more, that he is meeting difficulty
of some kind, that he needs help from me. What
exactly he wishes me to do I cannot distinguish,
except to get Mr. Brocklebank to come here to
this house. I shall learn more, I must learn more.
In the meantime, do, for all our sakes, arrange
this."

The letter reached me by the evening post at
my flat. The next morning, about ten o'clock,

306

THE STRANDED WOMEN

I went into Brocklebank's office. When I opened
the door, I received a shock that sent the blood to
my heart. He was hunched up in his chair, his
arms spread on his desk, his head resting on them.
I comiected this with Mrs. Stuart's letter and
with the forces that apparently were concentrating
upon him. I thought that he had died as mys-
teriously as he had come to life.

I went up to him quietly and looked closely at
his face, as it lay sideways. He was not dead;
he was not even in a swoon; he was merely asleep.
Such a circumstance, after my fear, was oddly
ludicrous; but I felt no inclination to laugh. It
was so completely at variance with all my experi-
ence of him, that, for a few moments, I could onlv
stand and look at him in astonishment
plexity. If I had needed further and a
unquestionable proof of the correctness
Stuart's conclusion, that view of him asle ^
have supplied it. There was no more than a
slight resemblance to the man I had previously
known: but for his clothes and for the fact that
he was sitting in Brocklebank's chair in Brockle-
bank's room, I should not have recognized him.

It was surprisingly difficult to rouse him. I
307

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

shouted his name without effect. Eventually
I had to conquer my repugnance and to put a
hand on his shoulder and shake him. At last he
lifted his head and stared at me vaguely.

"You had something to say yesterday," I said,
smiling, '* about wasting the office time and about
the dignity of the partners in this firm."

He quickly recovered himself. His sense of
humor, as usual, was equal to the situation. " I'm
no great believer in the strenuous life," he
said.

"So it appears," said I.

"It makes you grow old before your time.
If people would only take things restfully and
easily, they would be young at seventy."

"If that i^ your idea," I suggested, "what
about a week-end in the country— birds warbling,
insects humming, a droning summer day?"

"Man alive, this is September."

"So it is, " I admitted. "Well, there's a sug-
gestion of peaceful repose about auttunn tints."

"What has put the idea into your head?" he
asked, looking up from some papers which he had
drawn in front of him.

" Mrs. Stuart has asked me to stay a day or two

308

THE STRANDED WOMEN

at her house in Hampshire, and she wants me to
persuade you to come too."

When he had relieved himself of some of the
amusement which this information caused him,
he said, still struggling with laughter: "I'm to be
chaperon, I presume?"

"Oh, no; she is not alone."

"Then I am to entertain the companion and
keep her out of the way?"

"Just as you like," I said: "it 's your wife."

"Rachel!" he exclaimed.

I nodded.

"What on earth is she doing there?"

"She went because she was asked, and because
she likes Mrs. Stuart."

"But when did she meet her?"

"The other evening: we went down to
her."

"You and Mrs. Stuart?"

I nodded again.

He gasped. "Do you mean to say," he said,
"that the affair has gone so far already, that you
are dragging the family into it?"

"Whose family? "

" Yours — mine — the firm's."
309

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

"Put it that way, if you lite," I said. "What
shall I say to her?"

"Oh, yes, I'll come and see the fun. But what
about the Chicken?"

"Well, Mrs. Stuart knows there has been a
diflSculty and she still asks you."

"Blessed are the peacemakers," said Broclde-
bank.

"Don't count too much on that, "I -said. "You
can't manage her these days. You are not the
man you were."

He was silent for some seconds.

"To tell the truth, Reece," he said, in a rare

burst of candor, "I don't very much care. I've

lost grip in some curious way. Things don't

me, there's no salt in them: I don't want

g. The last few days I've had the queerest

I've ever had in my life, as if I shouldn't

I was dead. It may be this drowsiness.

jinning to worry me. I can't wake and

I can't keep awake. It's just as if I had been

drugged."

"Do you suspect that?" I asked, with sudden
curiosity.

"I can't," he answered. "I mix my own liquor
310

THE STRANDED WOMEN

and take it when I like. I don't dine in the same
restaurant two nights together. But that is what
it feels like."

"A doctor would probably tell you to get out of
London," I said. "It may be bracing at lUing-
ham."

"Where's that?"

"Mrs. Stuart's house."

"All right," he said, returning to his papers.
" Next Saturday. A change may do me good,"

For many days that sentence was to ring in my
ears: "A change may do me good."

CHAPTER XIX
THE LITTLE ROOM AT HXINGHAH

THE afternoon that we went out to lUingham
was, I remember, soft and warm and bril-
liantly fine, and our journey took us through
some of the most beautiful parts of Surrey. The
sun shone brightly on a green countryside, wooded
"'""'"'' and scattered houses, as the train drew out
e London suburbs and passed Woking and
i. Later, while it slowly climfeed the long
, the Haslemere district, the scene from the
; window was quite enchanting. Ri<^e
dge of pine and heather and bracken and
birch rolled away and rose higher, till they were
boimded in the far distance by a range of hills
blue and mysterious; and every now and again
one's eye was caught by a little sheet of water
Gparkling like a diamond. Fancy pictured, amcmg
312

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

all this, innumerable dells and hollows and green,
solitary glades. Such a scene, viewed from a
modem railway carriage, a moving prison, sug-
gested inevitably the ecstasy that can be found in
escaping from the world of men and plunging deep
into the heart of nature in her happiest mood; it
sent the sense of the joy of living coursing through
one's veins.

Brocklebank, sitting opposite me, appezu^d to
be little interested in it. Once or twice, at my
invitation, he glanced perfunctorily out of the
window. But, for the most part of the journey,
he nodded and dozed in his comer.

At Petersfield we found a large car waiting for
us, in charge of a chauffeur in a neat green 1"
This aroused Brocklebank from his lethar,
make one of his characteristic remarks.

" If the income runs to other things on the
scale as this, Reece," he said, as he drew
rug about him, "you'll be able to retire from
ness in seven years."

The drive from the station was through pleasant

pastoral country, peaceful and quiet m the autumn

evening, but lacking the romantic beauty of that

passed in the train. The car took us along quickly

313

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

and silently. I enjoyed the luxurious motion in
the soft air, in spite of a certain vague apprehen-
sion of the unknown; and so it was with some
disappointment that I realized, after covering
perhaps five or six miles, that the chauffeur was
slowing down preparatory to making the turn
through a pair of lodge gates ahead. We swept up
a considerable length of drive and finally stopped
before the portico of a long, low house of old
plastered brick, with a double row of tall windows
in front. It was closely surrounded with oaks
and beeches, and appeared somewhat gloomy.
The daylight was faiUng, and I noticed that
a light already showed through one of the
windows.

chauffeur, carrying our bags, led us
h the front door into a roomy, carpeted
irrounded with furniture of black oak bear-
abundance of blue china. As we entered,
tuart and Mrs. Brocklebank, hand in hand,
came out from one of the rooms opening upon it.
They made a singular contrast: Mrs. Stuart tall
and queenly, Mrs. Brocklebank small, pretty, and
winsome; the strange, striking beauty of the former
emphasized by and emphasizing Mrs. Brockle-
314

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILUNGHAM

bank's plaintive, almost childish, appeal and the
haunting diaim of her serious eyes.

Both women looked sli^^tly pale. With an
^ort, very apparent to me, whether or not it was
equally so to my companion, Mrs. Stuart gave
Brocklebank her hand and spoke a few words of
conventional welcome. Mrs. Brocklebank made
an attempt to smile and said something about
"all three of us meeting here." I knew very well
that her hand was gripping Mrs. Stuart's.

"A man who notices these things," said Brockle-
bank, as we went upstairs to our rooms, "might
say that our welcome was slightly on the frigid
side. Rachel is an iceberg and the other woman
is an arctic continent."

"They'll thaw," I said.

I had every reason for knowing, indeec
they neither would nor could do anything
sort, but it was evident that something
nature of surface cordiality would have
practised, if the constraint during this visit was
not to become intolerable. The dressing gong had
gone as we stood in the hall, we had been shown
straight to our rooms, and I had not had a moment
to speak to Mrs. Stuart alone. I remained, there-
315

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

fore, for the present, in utter ignorance of her
motive in bringing Brocklebank to her house. It
occurred to me forcibly, as I got into my even-
ing clothes, that only a vital and imperative one
could have induced her to subject all four of us to
an ordeal which she must have foreseen, from her
own feelings, would be singularly trying.

On this score, I was exceedingly relieved, when

I reached the drawing-room, to find that there

was another visitor in the house — a tall, heavy

man with a big, clean-shaven face and pendulous

cheeks, who was introduced as Dr. Jefferson. His

presence provided us with the fullest excuse for

keeping the conversation away from personal

liner, in consequence, instead of

1 function I had £inticipated in

II, was got through comparatively

led at first that he was an old

Stuart, and was somewhat sur-

om a reference later, that she had

made his acquaintance only in the course of the

previous few days. He proved to be one of those

men who, quite honestly and without ostentation,

discover a first-hand knowledge of almost any

subject that may be opened. He did not give

316

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

the impression of being peculiarly erudite, he had
not pored over books; but he had traveled and
kept his eyes open, and had never missed an
opportunity to obtain a new experience. From
Hindu magic or the water of Lourdes to the
remains of pakeolithic man, from an earthquake
in China to the cooking of an omelet^ he could
speak from direct personal acquaintance with the
subject. This, combining with a genial disposi-
tion, made him as happy an accession to the party
as could have been found. One inevitably sus-
pected, indeed, that Mrs. Stuart had invited him
to the house for the purpose of relieving what must
otherwise have been an intolerable tension.

During dessert the conversation drift
crystal-gazing, through auto-suggesticm ;
force to hypnotism. I noticed that thest
transitions were quietly brought about
Stuart, whether solely in her capacity ol
or with some additional motive I could
Once again Dr. Jefferson disclosed a fi
knowledge of the subject that had come under
discussion.

"Probably far more people possess this power

than ever suspect it," he said. "It was more or

317

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

less by accident, when I was in the States a few
years ago, that I discovered I had it myself."

One had the sense, as he said this, of a qtiicken-
ing of attention on the part of everyone at the
table.

"You can hypnotize?" I asked.

"Oh, yes — give me a reasonably good subject,"

"How interesting!" Mrs. Stuart exclaimed.
"Can you, will you, give us a demonstration to-
night, after dinner?"

"That must depend," said Dr. Jefferson, look-
ing from one to another of us with a smile on his
face, "upon whether anyone is willing to play the
part of demonstratee."

id Mrs. Stuart. " Let us make
suggested, "that anyone he

roposal was rather unfair upon

who, it appeared to me, would

m, for she struck one as almost

an ideal subject. She accepted, however, quite

readily, and Brocklebank and I did the same.

"With the stipulation," said the former, "that
I am not to be asked to wash my face in a basin of
flour."

318

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

"So you have merely to look round, Dr. Jeffer-
son, " said Mrs. Stuart, " and choose your victim."

The doctor scanned our faces. To my surprise,
his eye passed Mrs. Brodclebank after a slight
scrutiny and conttaued its search round the
table. He examined us all twice, and eventually
stopped at the member of the party I should have
expected to see chosen last — William Brocklebank.

"I think Mr. Brocklebank might possibly lend
himself," he said, "to a satisfactory experiment."

"I!" exclaimed Brocklebank, obviously genu-
iaely amazed. " I've got a will of iron."

"Oh, of course, if you exert it, I can do nothing,"
said the doctor. "But I think 1
in the compact," he added, smilin

"Do as you like," said Brockl
undercurrent of laughter, dippin;
"Whether it is the result of the
we have had or comes from a ge
well spent life, I feel far too peai
to resist anytiiing."

"Then don't be long coming," said Mrs. Stuart,
rising. "We will give you quarter of an hour and
no more."

The two women left the room, and, since the
319

THE BROCELEBANK RIDDLE

wine was of the kbd i^ndi one expects to find in
the houses of abstainers, we tcXkywei tbem without
exceeding tlie allotted time. Tbey were seated
before a fire in the lialL

"I think," said Mrs. Stuart, "we will go to a
nnall room which my husband used for most of
his psychical experimoits: its influence might help.
I have seen ghosts in tiiis room, " she added, with a
smile at us, as she led the way.

"Then Reece had better stay behind," said
Brocklebank. " His nerves are not equal to
ghosts."

She took us up the stairs to the first floor and

down a long, wide corridor. At the end of this,

jp a narrow, carpeted staircase. We

behind her in single file, the doctor

d and then Brocklebank. I waited

xklebank to follow, but she asked me

(This separated us by a few steps from

he party.

i-nj yuu know what is going to happen?" I

asked her.

"I knew," she replied, "that he wouldn't
choose us."
"No more?"

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

She shook her head.

The staircase opened, at the top, mto a small
room, circular or octagonal, certainly not square.
It was difficult to tell its shape, however, for it was
almost surrounded with plain, dark screens, simi-
lar to those used by photographers for back-
grounds. I noticed that there was, in fact, a
camera in the room, pushed into an angle of one
of the screens. Mrs. Brocklebank's eye caught
this, and then she looked at me.

"Spirit photography," I said to her. I
Spoke in a low voice and was somewhat sur-
prised to find that it was half caught in my
breath.

In another comer there was a n
something like a small wardrobe i
a curtained front. I learnt afterw
room was the only one cm the secori
end of the house. It formed a low
been used by a previous occupant f
tory. It was lighted apparently
but no lamps were visible. It was merely suffused
with a bright, somewhat reddish light. Besides
the camera, the cabinet, and the screens, it con-
tained several chairs and a sofa, a small round
« 321

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

table, and a closed bureau. The floor covering
was dark and plain.

" I don't see any ghosts, " said Bnxdde-
bank. " I suppose the machinery is behind the

Nobody made any reply. He appeared to be
the only member of the party who was not con-
scious of a certain tension.

"What do we do?" he asked. "I am under the
impression that I am the chosen lamb that is to
be led to the slaughter."

*' You are the chosen lamb, " said the doctor.
"In those circumstances," said Brocklebank,
ike the most comfortable chair, because
't put me into a trance, I shall certainly
). No washing in a bowl of flour, re-
ar anything else that will give Reece
to make ribald observations later."
[own, choosing, as he had said, the most
le chair. The doctor drew up a second
3at close to him, opposite.
" Look steadily into my eyes, " he said.
Brocklebank obeyed.

For fully a minute, amid silence made audible
by the ticking of a small clock, the hypnotist
322

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

stared at him intently. Then he raised his hands
and made several passes in frcmt of his eyes.

It appeared to me unlikely that such a man as
Brocklebank could prove amenable to hypnotic
influence. I was mistaken. Very quickly, sur-
prisingly quickly, we saw undoubted signs that he
was yielding. Certain little subconscious move-
ments of his hands, resting on the arms of the
chair, ceased; his eyes became fixed. The doctor
continued to make passes in front of him, perhaps
for another minute. Presently he raised Brockle-
bank's eyehds. The latter made no movement.
Then the hypnotist rose from his seat.

"Will you help me to move him
he said to me.

I complied. That Brocklebank w
and not merely in a deep sleep, as 1 1
at the office, was evident from the
limbs.

"He won't wake till I release h
doctor to Mrs. Stuart, when we h
our task. "If necessary, I can keep him imder
for days."

"Oh, I am sure it won't be," said Mrs. Stu^,

with more excitement — suppressed but umnistak-

323

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

able — in her tone than she had shown in my
knowledge of her. "Thank you, Dr. Jefferson."
" Do you wish me to make any suggestions to
him?"

"No; let him remain as he is for the present.
Again thank you."

She sat down, and the rest of us followed her
example. It was a strange, a bizarre situation:
a small, remote room surrounded by dark screens,
imcertainly lighted; a man in a trance lying on a
sofa; four people seated about him in tense silence,
watching. By this time it had become obvious
that it was no ordinziry hypnotic experiment that
witnessing: developments of some im-
d were expected.

:w minutes I became sensible, in an odd,

ble way, quite indescribable, that some-

LS happening. I was conscious that a

was taking place, a struggle close at

'he feeling was entirely subjective; I

; nothing, hear nothing; there had been

no outward change whatever in the circumstances

of the room. Yet that this sense was not peculiar

to me alone was indicated in the moment t^t I

became aware of it, for I felt Mrs. Brocklebank,

324

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

who was sitting n^t to me, clutch my hand. It
became sharper and stronger as seconds passed.
I was quite clearly aware that it was not a muscular
struggle that was proceeding, that it was a contest,
rather, of minds, of wills. I gradually realized,
moreover, that Brocklebank was one of the com-
batants. I realized this while my eyes were rest-
ing on him, as he lay on the sofa, his face calm,
his limbs motionless. It was, I think, the most
extraordinary, the most uncanny feeling that I
have ever experienced — that sense of a man ai-
gaged in a tense struggle, while all the time one
saw him in an attitude, and with an expression, trf
absolute repose.

Presently I took my eyes from tl
sofa and glanced at the hypnotist,
a puzzled look, but nothing more,
not exerting his will, he was concer
test with his subject. His work
was the gaoler with the key in his f

Next I looked at Mrs. Stuart, f
startled me. She was sitting forward in her chair,
her lips slightly apart, her expression — alert, anx-
ious, breathless, tense — such as one may some-
times see on the faces of spectators at a critical
325

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

stage of a race or a field game. Beyond doubt,
she was conscious of something of which the
rest of us were not conscious, or only dimly
conscious.

The light in the room, which had been bright
when we ent^ed, was growing dimmar; it was
growing, slowly but persistently, very considera-
bly dimmer. At no time did it become completely
dark, but a pcnnt of obscurity was reached when
the occupants of the room appeared merely as
outlines and shadows. I have never been able
to determine whether that darkening was actual
or illusory, whether some of the unseen lamps
iguished, or whether our faculties,
oncentrated on the invisible, became
' less sensitive to the visible. Cer-
, Stuart did not move; no one stirred.
I was made aware that the sense was
ir to me. The slow darkening, real
was equally apparent to Mrs. Brockle-
- hand fluttered in mine.
"Are you afraid?" I whispfered to her.
"No," she said, "not really, not if I can hold
you."

"Whatever happens, shall you mind?"
326

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

"No," she answered again: "but don't move,
keep near me."

So completely were all my perceptive faculties
deflected during this period, so utterly removed
was I from the plane of calculating and recording
man, that I cannot make even a rough estimate
of the length of time that elapsed while the condi-
tion lasted — the condition of strange silence and
strange darkness and strongly felt invisible things.
It mig^t have been five minutes, it might have
been an hour. Ultimately the bright, reddish
light regained its full power, slowly as it had lost
it, and, as it did so, the soise of a struggle became
less and less acute, till it died av
We had got back to the situatioi:
had been when the hypnotist pi
into the trance: nothing had cha
one a sense of futility. We had
an experience curiously and mystei
to no purpose.

Mrs. Stuart got up: her face h£
calm.

"Will you bring him round, Dr. Jefferson?"
she said.

The hypnotist approached the sofa and made
327

THE BROCKLEBANK RIDDLE

a few reverse passes before the eyes of the recum-
bent man. The latter stirred, stretched himself,
assumed a sitting posture, rose slowly to his
feet.

Mrs. Broddebank clutched my arm with both
her hands. We were looking at a tall man with
calm, steady eyes. The face we saw was not
Brocklebank's face; it was not even particularly
like his face ; it was the face of a man self-dependent
and self-absorbed to the point of isolation, of a man
looking inward, the face of a seer.

I say nothing, I offer no speculation in regard to
the detail of the mystical processes that had taken

e no attempt to see behind the veil.

3rd the facts that were manifest to

senses of four people. The man who

i William Broddebank, the man who

''rancis Stuart.

rt stood in front of her husband.

asked.

aimstances had changed so strangely
that it was difficult at first to realize the new
position. The hypnotist, perhaps with a quicker
apprehension, had disappeared. My companion
and I were suddenly and imexpectedly the wit-
328

THE LITTLE ROOM AT ILLINGHAM

nesses of a domestic scene. Mrs. Stuart's attitude
was not immediately amicable: explanations were
required, reproaches were imminent. So I took
Rachel Brocklebank by the hand and led her away.

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