Front matter

Table of Contents

I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR

II. THE HELSHAM MYSTERY

III. THE MAN WITH THE WILD EYES

IV. THE SECRET OF THE LAKE

V. THE DIAMOND LIZARD

VI. THE PRICK OF A PIN

VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MILLIONAIRE

VIII. THE EMPTY HOUSE

IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD

X. THE HAVERSTOCK HILL MURDER

XI. THE BROWN BEAR LAMP

I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR

When I first knew Dorcas Dene she was Dorcas Lester. She came to me with a letter from a theatrical agent, and wanted one of the small parts in a play we were then rehearsing at a West End theatre.

She was quite unknown in the profession. She told me that she wanted to act, and would I give her a chance? She was engaged for a maid-servant who had about two lines to speak. She spoke them exceedingly well, and remained at the theatre for nearly twelve months, never getting beyond "small parts," but always playing them exceedingly well.

The last part she had played was that of an old hag. We were all astonished when she asked to be allowed to play it, as she was a young and handsome woman, and handsome young women on the stage generally like to make the most of their appearance.

As the hag, Dorcas Lester was a distinct success. Although she was only on the stage for about ten minutes in one act and five minutes in another, everybody talked about her realistic and well-studied impersonation.

In the middle of the run of the play she left, and I understood that she had married and quitted the profession.

It was eight years before I met her again. I had business with a well-known West End solicitor. The clerk, thinking his employer alone, ushered me at once into his room. Mr. — was engaged in earnest conversation with a lady. I apologised. "It's all right," said Mr. —, "the lady is just going." The lady, taking the hint, rose, and went out.

I saw her features as she passed me, for she had not then lowered her veil, and they seemed familiar to me.

"Who do you think that was?" said Mr. — mysteriously, as the door closed behind his visitor.

"I don't know," I said; "but I think I've seen her before somewhere. Who is she?"

"That, my dear fellow, is Dorcas Dene, the famous lady detective. You may not have heard of her; but with our profession and with the police, she has a great reputation."

"Oh! Is she a private inquiry agent, or a female member of the Criminal Investigation Department?"

"She holds no official position," replied my friend, "but works entirely on her own account. She has been mixed up in some of the most remarkable cases of the day—cases that sometimes come into court, but which are far more frequently settled in a solicitor's office."

"If it isn't an indiscreet question, what is she doing for you? You are not in the criminal business."

"No, I am only an old-fashioned, humdrum family solicitor, but I have a very peculiar case in hand just now for one of my clients. I am not revealing a professional secret when I tell you that young Lord Helsham, who has recently come of age, has mysteriously disappeared. The matter has already been guardedly referred to in the gossip column of the society papers. His mother, Lady Helsham, who is a client of mine, has been to me in the greatest distress of mind. She is satisfied that her boy is alive and well. The poor lady is convinced that it is a case of cherchez la femme, and she is desperately afraid that her son, perhaps in the toils of some unprincipled woman, may be induced to contract a disastrous mésalliance. That is the only reason she can suggest to me for his extraordinary conduct."

"And the famous lady detective who has just left your office is to unravel the mystery—is that it?"

"Yes. All our own inquiries having failed, I yesterday decided to place the case in her hands, as it was Lady Helsham's earnest desire that no communication should be made to the police. She is most anxious that the scandal shall not be made a public one. To-day Dorcas Dene has all the facts in her possession, and she has just gone to see Lady Helsham. And now, my dear fellow, what can I do for you?"

My business was a very trifling matter. It was soon discussed and settled, and then Mr. — invited me to lunch with him at a neighbouring restaurant. After lunch I strolled back with him as far as his office. As we approached, a hansom cab drove up to the door and a lady alighted.

"By Jove! it's your lady detective again," I exclaimed.

The lady detective saw us, and came towards us.

"Excuse me," she said to Mr. —, "I want just a word or two with you."

Something in her voice struck me then, and suddenly I remembered where I had seen her before.

"I beg your pardon," I said, "but are we not old friends?"

"Oh, yes," replied the lady detective with a smile; "I knew you at once, but thought you had forgotten me. I have changed a good deal since I left the theatre."

"You have changed your name and your profession, but hardly your appearance—I ought to have known you at once. May I wait for you here while you discuss your business with Mr. —? I should like to have a few minutes' chat with you about old times."

Dorcas Lester—or rather Dorcas Dene, as I must call her now—gave a little nod of assent, and I walked up and down the street smoking my cigar for fully a quarter of an hour before she reappeared.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting a long time," she said pleasantly, "and now if you want to talk to me you will have to come home with me. I'll introduce you to my husband. You needn't hesitate or think you'll be in the way, because, as a matter of fact, directly I saw you I made up my mind you could be exceedingly useful to me."

She raised her umbrella and stopped a hansom, and before I quite appreciated the situation, we were making our way to St. John's Wood as fast as a very bad horse could take us.

On the journey Dorcas Dene was confidential. She told me that she had taken to the stage because her father, an artist, had died suddenly and left her and her mother nothing but a few unmarketable pictures and the unpaid tradesmen's bills to settle.

"Poor dad!" she said. "He was very clever, and he loved us very dearly, but he was only a great big boy to the last. When he was doing well he spent everything he made and enjoyed life—and when he was doing badly he did bills and pawned things, and thought it was rather fun. At one time he would be treating us to dinner at the Café Royal and the theatre afterwards, and at another time he would be showing us how to live as cheaply as he used to do in his old Paris days in the Quartier Latin, and cooking our meals himself at the studio fire.

"Well, when he died I got on to the stage, and at last—as I daresay you remember—I was earning two guineas a week. On that I and my mother lived in two rooms in St. Paul's-road, Camden Town.

"Then a young artist, a Mr. Paul Dene, who had been our friend and constant visitor in my father's lifetime, fell in love with me. He had risen rapidly in his profession, and was making money. He had no relations, and his income was seven or eight hundred a year, and promised to be much larger. Paul proposed to me, and I accepted him. He insisted that I should leave the stage, and he would take a pretty little house, and mother should come and live with us, and we could all be happy together.

"We took the house we are going to now—a sweet little place with a lovely garden in Oak Tree-road, St. John's Wood—and for two years we were very happy. Then a terrible misfortune happened. Paul had an illness and became blind. He would never be able to paint again.

"When I had nursed him back to health I found that the interest of what we had saved would barely pay the rent of our house. I did not want to break up our home—what was to be done? I thought of the stage again, and I had just made up my mind to see if I could not get an engagement, when chance settled my future for me and gave me a start in a very different profession.

"In the next house to us there lived a gentleman, a Mr. Johnson, who was a retired superintendent of police. Since his retirement he had been conducting a high-class private inquiry business, and was employed in many delicate family matters by a well-known firm of solicitors who are supposed to have the secrets of half the aristocracy locked away in their strong room.

"Mr. Johnson had been a frequent visitor of ours, and there was nothing which delighted Paul more in our quiet evenings than a chat and a pipe with the genial, good-hearted ex-superintendent of police. Many a time have I and my husband sat till the small hours by our cosy fireside listening to the strange tales of crime, and the unravelling of mysteries which our kind neighbour had to tell. There was something fascinating to us in following the slow and cautious steps with which our kindly neighbour—who looked more like a jolly sea captain than a detective—had threaded his way through the Hampton Court maze in the centre of which lay the truth which it was his business to discover.

"He must have thought a good deal of Paul's opinion, for after a time he would come in and talk over cases which he had in hand—without mentioning names when the business was confidential—and the view which Paul took of the mystery more than once turned out to be the correct one. From this constant association with a private detective we began to take a kind of interest in his work, and when there was a great case in the papers which seemed to defy the efforts of Scotland Yard, Paul and I would talk it over together, and discuss it and build up our own theories around it.

"After my poor Paul lost his sight Mr. Johnson, who was a widower, would come in whenever he was at home—many of his cases took him out of London for weeks together—and help to cheer my poor boy up by telling him all about the latest romance or scandal in which he had been engaged.

"On these occasions my mother, who is a dear, old-fashioned, simple-minded woman, would soon make an excuse to leave us. She declared that to listen to Mr. Johnson's stories made her nervous. She would soon begin to believe that every man and woman she met had a guilty secret, and the world was one great Chamber of Horrors with living figures instead of waxwork ones like those of Madame Tussaud's.

"I had told Mr. Johnson of our position when I found that it would be necessary for me to do something to supplement the hundred a year which was all that Paul's money would bring us in, and he had agreed with me that the stage afforded the best opening.

"One morning I made up my mind to go to the agent's. I had dressed myself in my best and had anxiously consulted my looking-glass. I was afraid that my worries and the long strain of my husband's illness might have left their mark upon my features and spoilt my 'market value' in the managerial eye.

"I had taken such pains with myself, and my mind was so concentrated upon the object I had in view, that when I was quite satisfied with my appearance I ran into our little sitting-room, and, without thinking, said to my husband, 'Now I'm off! How do you think I look, dear?"

"My poor Paul turned his sightless eyes towards me, and his lip quivered. Instantly I saw what my thoughtlessness had done. I flung my arms round him and kissed him, and then, the tears in my eyes, I ran out of the room and went down the little front garden. When I opened the door Mr. Johnson was outside with his hand on the bell.

"'Where are you going?' he said.

"'To the agent, to see about an engagement.'

"'Come back; I want to talk to you.'

"I led the way back to the house, and we went into the dining-room which was empty.

"'What do you think you could get on the stage?' he said.

"'Oh, if I'm lucky I may get what I had before—two guineas a week. You see, I've never played anything but small parts.'

"'Well then, put off the stage for a little and I can give you something that will pay you a great deal better. I've just got a case in which I must have the assistance of a lady. The lady who had worked for me for the last two years has been idiot enough to get married, with the usual consequences, and I'm in a fix.'

"'You—you want me to be a lady detective—to watch people?' I gasped. 'Oh, I couldn't!'

"'My dear Mrs. Dene,' Mr. Johnson said gently, 'I have too much respect for you and your husband to offer you anything that you need be afraid of accepting. I want you to help me to rescue an unhappy man who is being so brutally blackmailed that he has run away from his broken-hearted wife and his sorrowing children. That is surely a business transaction in which an angel could engage without soiling its wings.'

"'But I'm not clever at—at that sort of thing!'

"'You are cleverer than you think. I have formed a very high opinion of your qualifications for our business. You have plenty of shrewd common sense, you are a keen observer, and you have been an actress. Come, the wife's family are rich, and I am to have a good round sum if I save the poor fellow and get him home again. I can give you a guinea a day and your expenses, and you have only to do what I tell you.'

"I thought everything over, and then I accepted—on one condition. I was to see how I got on before Paul was told anything about it. If I found that being a lady detective was repugnant to me—if I found that it involved any sacrifice of my womanly instincts—I should resign, and my husband would never know that I had done anything of the sort.

"Mr. Johnson agreed, and we left together for his office.

"That was how I first became a lady detective. I found that the work interested me, and that I was not so awkward as I had expected to be. I was successful in my first undertaking, and Mr. Johnson insisted on my remaining with him and eventually we became partners. A year ago he retired, strongly recommending me to all his clients, and that is how you find me to-day a professional lady detective."

"And one of the best in England," I said, with a bow. "My friend Mr. — has told me of your great reputation."

Dorcas Dene smiled.

"Never mind about my reputation," she said. "Here we are at my house—now you've got to come in and be introduced to my husband and to my mother and to Toddlekins."

"Toddlekins—I beg pardon—that's the baby, I suppose?"

A shade crossed Dorcas Dene's pretty womanly face, and I thought I saw her soft grey eyes grow moist.

"No—we have no family. Toddlekins is a dog."

* * * * * * *

It was difficult for me to imagine, as I glanced around the delightful little drawing-room and noted everywhere the evidences of artistic simplicity and refinement, that I was in the house of the famous lady detective. I had not been introduced to the blind husband many minutes before I felt that we were old friends. Paul Dene, the blind artist, interested me at once. A handsome man, well above the medium height, with a mass of fair waving hair; there was something in the blind, gentle face that riveted your attention and claimed your sympathy at once. He rose as his wife entered the room, a questioning look upon his face, for my footstep was unfamiliar to him. Dorcas Dene took his hand and led him towards me. "Paul, dear," she said, "this is an old friend of mine. This is the gentleman who gave me my first chance as an actress."

We chatted together for a few minutes, and then a buxom, grey-haired lady came bustling into the room, followed by a big brindle bulldog, wagging the whole of his body. He ran to his mistress with a little snort of joy, stood up on his hind-legs, and licked her hands affectionately, and then turned and looked at me inquiringly.

"Friends, Toddlekins," said his mistress. Then turning to me, she added with a smile, "You can pat him quite safely now I have introduced you."

"He would come in, Dorcas," exclaimed the middle-aged lady, "and I didn't know you had company."

"This is Mr. Saxon, the dramatist, mother."

The old lady gave me a rather distant bow, and eyed me somewhat suspiciously. "I've heard of you, sir," she said, "and I know how good you were to my daughter years ago, but I don't hold with melodramas, and I never shall; and how Christian people can pay money to see their fellow-creatures blown up with dynamite, and murdered, and condemned to death for what they never did, and turned out of house and home to die in the snow, is what I shall never understand."

I suppose I looked slightly uncomfortable, for Dorcas Dene broke in with a merry little laugh. "Mother doesn't mean any harm, Mr. Saxon, it's only her funny little way; she puts us all right here—don't you mother dear?"

"I always say what I think," replied the old lady. "It's old-fashioned I dare say, but I'm one of the old-fashioned sort. But I'd better take the dog out—Mr. Saxon's afraid of him."

"No, no, I assure you," I exclaimed, reddening, "I—I love dogs," and I stooped down and timidly patted Toddlekins, who was sniffing suspiciously at my calves.

"You needn't be ashamed of being afraid of Toddlekins," the old lady exclaimed, with evident disbelief in my disclaimer. "Most people are at first. He hates strangers coming to the place."

I saw a shade of annoyance pass over the blind artist's gentle face. "An old friend of my wife's won't be a stranger here very long," he said quietly, then gave a little whistle, and the bulldog ran quickly across the room and laid his great head on his master's knee.

"Well, I suppose I'm wrong as usual!" exclaimed the old lady, tossing her head, "but all the same, Mr. Saxon may just as well know that the dog nearly killed a man once, and I'm as certain as I am that I'm alive that one day he'll kill another if he's ever left alone with that young man that comes to wind up the clocks. He's taken a dislike to that young man, has Toddlekins, and, Dorcas, my dear, don't say I haven't warned you. When it does happen, don't expect me to interfere; I was never brought up to bite bulldogs' tails to make them leave go, and it's not the sort of thing you can ask a respectable servant to do." And with that, the old lady turned upon her heel and sailed out of the room, and her daughter followed her, evidently to pacify her.

"You mustn't mind Mrs. Lester," said Paul Dene, as the door closed behind them. "She's a dear, good soul, really, and I don't know what we should do without her; but she has an idea that she is the only person in the house who has any sense, and she has a mania for speaking what she calls 'her mind.' The dog's as gentle as a lamb, but he did once nearly kill a man, and that is how my wife came by him. He was reared from a puppy by a rough at the East End. This man was constantly ill-using his wife, to whom the dog was devotedly attached. One day the man, in a drunken frenzy, knocked his wife down. As she lay on the floor, he bent over her, and was about to strike her with a poker, when the dog suddenly sprang at him, and seized him by the throat, and held him till the neighbours rushed in. The dog had saved the woman's life, but the man was terribly injured, and it was a question with the police of having the dog killed, when my wife, who had heard the story, asked the officer in charge of the case to let her have him; and Toddlekins has been our faithful friend and guardian ever since."

I looked at Toddlekins, who had curled himself up at his master's feet and was sleeping with one eye open, and I made up my mind that when I said "Good-bye" to Dorcas Dene, I would put out my hand in a manner that should not admit of the slightest misinterpretation, and I was rather relieved when Paul Dene turned the conversation on to another topic.

He presumed I was aware of his wife's present profession. I explained how I had met her at the solicitor's, and that she had told me I might be of use to her in the case on which she was present engaged. Had he heard the particulars?

He said he had not, as his wife had only received her instructions that day, but in all business matters she invariably consulted him. "You see," he said, "my blindness is a very valuable quality. Seeing nothing physically, my mental vision is intensified. I can think a problem out undisturbed by the surroundings which distract people who have their eyesight. When people want 'a good think,' as they call it, they often shut themselves in a room and close their eyes. I am a man who is always thinking with closed eyes. In all her difficulties my wife comes to me, and generally we hold a council of four."

"Of four?"

"Yes, the council consists of myself, Dorcas, her mother, and Toddlekins."

I was obliged to give a little laugh. "I should hardly have thought that Mrs. Lester could have been of much service in unravelling a mystery."

"That is where you are wrong. Mrs. Lester often hits the right nail on the head before either of us. We are building up an elaborate theory, and she takes a plain, straightforward, matter-of-fact, common-sense view, and it turns out to be the right one. Detectives are only human, you know, and, like the rest of the world, they frequently go looking about in every direction for something that lies close to their hand all the time."

At that moment the door opened, and I started up in astonishment. A dark-skinned old gipsy woman, such as one meets on the racecourses, had come into the room.

I gave a nervous look at the bulldog, expecting him to spring at the intruder. But he only opened his eyes and wagged his tail, and then the truth suddenly flashed upon me.

It was Dorcas Dene. "Mr. Saxon," she said, "they are playing a gipsy play at the theatre; I want you to go with me to the manager, and get him to let me go on with the gipsy crowd at the end of the third act." And then she added with a little laugh, "I told you you would be useful to me."

"But I thought you were going to investigate the mysterious disappearance of young Lord Helsham?" I stammered.

"Exactly—that's why I want to get behind the scenes of the —— Theatre. Unless I am very much mistaken, that is where 'the lady in the case' is most likely to be found."

"But we can't go together through the street with you—ahem!—like that."

Dorcas Dene laughed. "No, I want you to meet me outside the theatre at eight o'clock, and get me engaged at once as a real gipsy super. I'm sure you can manage that for me. I thought, before you left, you had better see me exactly as I shall meet you to-night. And now, good afternoon and au revoir."

"You think you will find Lord Helsham, then? You have a clue to the mystery already?"

"I may find Lord Helsham to-night if you get me behind the scenes, but as to the clue to the mystery of his disappearance, that is quite another matter. And now I rely upon you. Until eight o'clock this evening, au revoir."

I shook hands cordially with Dorcas Dene and her blind husband, and patted Toddlekins respectfully. A minute afterwards, I was out in the quiet little road trying to think out the mystery for myself.

Here was a young nobleman, his own master, and free to do as he chose, and yet he had deliberately left his mother a prey to the greatest anxiety as to his whereabouts. There was no necessity for him to "disappear," to carry on an intrigue, or even to contract an undesirable marriage.

Not even in the days of my youthful romance had I waited so eagerly for the hour and the lady, as I waited that evening for eight o'clock and Dorcas Dene.

II. THE HELSHAM MYSTERY

I sat in the stalls watching the third act of the great gipsy drama, which had drawn all London to the —— Theatre. I had persuaded the manager, with whom I was on friendly terms, to allow Dorcas Dene, the famous lady detective, to have the use of his stage for her own purposes, disguised as a gipsy super.

But she had so far refused to tell me the name of the actress through whom she expected to run young Lord Helsham to earth that evening, or at least to be able to learn why he had disappeared.

It had been agreed between us that after the third act was over I should go behind, and she would then be able to communicate with me.

Directly the curtain was down the manager joined me, and took me through the private door and left me on the stage. The old gipsy woman was waiting about for me in a quiet corner.

"What success?" I asked eagerly.

Without replying to my question, Dorcas Dene gripped me excitedly by the arm.

"Get a hansom to the stage-door," she said. "I want you to come with me somewhere."

I glanced hesitatingly at her costume.

"Don't be afraid," she said. "The cloak I brought with me will cover all this, and I have a thick veil in my pocket."

I went out to get a hansom, and it was barely at the door before Dorcas Dene was by my side. She sprang lightly in and motioned me to follow, telling the cabman to drive to Grosvenor Square.

"You are going to see Lady Helsham?" I said.

"Yes, I must. Lord Helsham is on the point of committing suicide."

"How on earth have you found that out?" I gasped.

"By a very simple process. Lady Helsham, in our interview this morning, gave me a photograph which she had found among her son's papers. It was the photograph of a very beautiful girl taken in stage costume. On the back of it was written, 'To dearest Bertie, from Nella.' The photographer was Alfred Ellis, of Baker Street, who—it being a theatrical photograph taken for public sale—had printed beneath it, 'Miss Nella Dalroy, in "The Gipsy Wife."'"

"Ah, now I understand why you wanted to get behind the scenes to-night. You wanted to see Nella Dalroy."

"Exactly. Lord Helsham's name is Bertie. Now a girl who puts 'To dearest Bertie, from Nella,' is either engaged to him, or, for the sake of her morals, ought to be. You understand?"

"Yes—I begin to understand."

"To-night I was able to watch Miss Dalroy narrowly. I could see that she was prey to some great anxiety. Once she nearly broke down, and went on with her part with the greatest difficulty. I was sure then that young Lord Helsham's disappearance was not to the advantage of Nella Dalroy.

"During the second act she had to wait, and she stood at the wings. One of the young ladies of the company, evidently her friend, came and talked to her, and I managed to overhear a little of the conversation.

"'Haven't you heard anything more?' said her friend.

"'Yes—to-night just as I left home—a letter telling me that he sees no way out of his trouble, and that I must forget him, and that we shall never meet again—and—and'—here her voice quivered—'he says he has left me all that he has a right to leave me. Oh, what can he mean by that?'

"At that moment Miss Dalroy's cue came, and she went on the stage. It was fortunate for her that it was a tearful scene she was playing, or her agitation must have been noticeable."

Dorcas Dene leant back in the hansom, lost in thought.

After a moment's silence I ventured to ask her how she arrived at the conclusion that Lord Helsham contemplated suicide.

"What else can it mean?" she answered, half speaking to herself. "'I have left you all I have a right to leave.' If he thought of himself in the future as a living man, he would have said, 'I will give you all.'"

I shook my head, and murmured that I really couldn't see any possible reason why a wealthy young nobleman who was his own master should put an end to his life after making a will in favour of a pretty actress who was deeply in love with him.

"Nor I," replied Dorcas Dene. "But I am engaged to restore her son to Lady Helsham, and it is my duty to restore him alive if possible. But here we are at Grosvenor Square."

I got out and assisted Dorcas Dene to alight. "May I wait for you?" I said.

"Not here. But you will do me a great service if you will take the cab and go on to Oak Tree Road, and tell my husband I shall be home some time to-night."

* * * * * * *

It was past midnight when Dorcas Dene joined the little family circle at Oak Tree Road. Paul Dene, the blind artist, had invited me to stay and keep him company until his wife returned.

A few minutes later, the lady detective, divested of her war-paint, was leaning back in the arm-chair and "stating her case," in order that she might have the opinion of her husband and her mother upon it.

Briefly and concisely Dorcas Dene put her "points."

"Here is the case so far as I've gone," she said. "Lord Helsham left Grosvenor Square last week after a 'few words' with his mother. What those 'words' were about, she will not tell me. 'Family matters' is all the explanation I can get from her. He has not been to his club or to his country house, or any hotel in his right name, because inquiries in these directions had been exhausted before I was called in. He is in great distress of mind about something, because he has written a heart-broken letter to the girl he probably intended to marry. She is evidently still devoted to him, so that love has nothing to do with his mental condition. If love is not the cause of his extraordinary behaviour, what can be?"

The blind artist, who had sat silently listening, turned his sightless eyes towards his wife. "Mr. Saxon has told us, Dorcas, that you had an idea the poor fellow contemplated suicide, and he has told us how you arrived at that conclusion. If you reject love and insanity there is only one other thing that will drive a man to deliberate suicide."

"And that is?"

"Fear."

Dorcas laid her hand gently on her husband's arm. "Yes, your thought is mine, dear," she said softly, "but what does he fear?"

"What did his mother say to-night, when you told her what your discoveries had led you to believe?"

"Although, of course, she was horrified, and for a time upset, she really seemed—how shall I put it?—rather relieved in her mind!"

"Relieved to hear her son was likely to kill himself!" exclaimed Mrs. Lester indignantly.

"Well, perhaps relieved is hardly the word. She has seemed to me all along to be in a state of nervous terror as to something dreadful being likely to happen, and when I suggested suicide it seemed as though that was not the worst that she had contemplated. That's what I meant by its being a relief to her."

"Whatever is it that Lord Helsham fears," murmured the blind artist, "it is evident that his mother fears it also. No other theory would account for her being 'relieved'—as you call it—by the idea that he has suicide in his mind."

"Yes," said Dorcas Dene, "and she can only feel that relief for two reasons—either that his death would prevent his arrest for some crime, or would prevent the discovery of something which would bring terrible consequences to him."

"Or to her," said Paul, quietly.

Dorcas Dene started.

"Yes!" she cried, springing to her feet, "that's it—that would account for everything."

"What sort of person is this Lady Helsham?" I asked, venturing to join in the council.

Dorcas Dene drew her notebook from her pocket. "Here is the family history as I got it from Mr. — when I took up the case. The late Lord Helsham married a young Scotch lady who was a member of a travelling opera troupe."

"Heredity again!" murmured Paul. "The son falls in love with an actress."

"Two years after their marriage the Earl was killed by a fall from his horse in the hunting-field. The next heir was the Earl's younger brother, the Hon. John Farman, but the peerage had to remain in abeyance pending the accouchement of Lady Helsham, an event which occurred prematurely a month later."

"And the child born a month after its father's death was the present Lord Helsham?"

"Yes," said Dorcas Dene, "that is so. Here are some further particulars. Lady Helsham some years later adopted her sister's little girl, a child of the same age as her son, and the children were brought up together until lately, when her ladyship endeavoured to bring about a marriage between the two. But his lordship informed his mother that the idea was entirely repugnant to him, and eventually the young lady left the family mansion and went back to reside with her real mother in Scotland. Mr. — said he gave me these particulars as it was possible, though not probable, that ill-feeling had come between the mother and son through this young lady. And it was concerning her that the 'words' occurred which preceded Lord Helsham's departure from his home."

"And that view of the case you have not thought out at all, Dorcas?" asked Paul Dene.

"No, I thought it better to look for the girl Lord Helsham was likely to go after than for the one he was likely to avoid. But——" Dorcas Dene rose and began to pace the room. No one spoke a word. Suddenly she came up to me and held out her hand.

"Good-night," she said. "I am so much obliged to you for all your help to-day. Come and see us again soon, won't you?"

"But I should like to know more about this case," I said; "I am much interested in it, you know."

"Yes, I quite understand that," replied the lady detective, "but I am afraid it will turn out a far more difficult business than I imagined when I undertook it. Good-night."

There was nothing for me to do but shake hands all round and make as dignified an exit as was possible under the circumstances.

* * * * * * *

A few days afterwards business called me to Paris, and it was quite a fortnight later that sitting one evening outside the Café de la Paix reading the Daily Telegraph the name of Lord Helsham caught my eye, and I turned eagerly to an article headed, "A Mystery Cleared Up," and read the following:

"The mystery surrounding the strange disappearance of Lord Helsham has at last been elucidated. His lordship's clothes and watch and scarf-pin have been found in a small cave on the coast near Cromer. It is supposed that his lordship, who must have been staying in the neighbourhood incognito, and who was an expert swimmer, had gone out early in the morning to bathe from the shore. The supposition is that he was seized with cramp and sank unobserved, that part of the coast being a secluded and lonely one. It is not probable after this lapse of time that the body will be recovered. The missing nobleman was traced, and the discovery made, by the famous lady detective Mrs. Dorcas Dene. Lord Helsham is succeeded by his uncle, the Hon. John Farman, who is unmarried."

Immediately on my return to town I hastened to call at Oak Tree Road. Dorcas Dene was out in the pretty little garden at the back reading to her husband, who was sitting under the trees in a great wicker chair. Toddlekins, the bulldog, was lying stretched out in the sunshine.

As I looked at the little group from the dining-room window, I could not help thinking how far removed the loving and tender wife devoting herself to the blind husband seemed from the woman who had unravelled the mystery of the tragic fate of young Lord Helsham.

The servant took my card to her mistress, and Dorcas Dene came in smiling and happy, and gave me a sweet, womanly welcome.

"Won't you come into the garden? Paul will be so pleased," she said.

I shook my head. "Presently. But first I want to know about the Helsham case. I think you ought to tell me, because once—just for a little time—we were partners in this business, you know."

Dorcas Dene's gentle face became suddenly grave. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, "I suppose I ought to tell you. Sit down and you shall hear the story of what happened after you left that night in as few words as possible, for I want to get back to the book I am reading to Paul. It's a sweet book, and we're just in the middle of it. You ought to read it. It is 'The Man who was Good.'"

"Never mind about the man who was good, I want to hear about the woman who was clever. How did you find poor Lord Helsham, and what was the cause of his unhappy fate?"

"You remember our conversation the night we parted," said Dorcas Dene. "The next morning at nine o'clock I went straight to the residence of the Hon. John Farman, the person who would succeed to the title if anything happened to Lord Helsham. He had heard of the disappearance, but concluded it was some temporary feminine entanglement. I showed him how necessary it was that he should be one of the earliest to know of his nephew's fate, and begged him to tell me anything that would assist me in my enquiries. Having already certain ideas in my head, I asked him if he knew where Lord Helsham was born, and he told me that Lady Helsham was confined at the house of her sister, the wife of a captain in the merchant service, who had at the time just sailed for Australia. This sister was residing in Scotland, and Lady Helsham had gone to her in the early days of her widowhood. Mr. Farman himself was absent from England at the time on a hunting expedition in the Rockies, and it was not until a later period that he received the news of his brother's death and the birth of an heir.

"'Had the child been a girl you would have inherited everything?'

"'With the exception of the income secured to Lady Helsham, yes. As it was a boy—'

"'You accepted the situation. And when Lady Helsham returned to London she brought her child with her, of course?'

"'Yes. I arrived a few days after her return. We were not friendly during my brother's lifetime, but I desired to show every courtesy I could to the widow.'

"'And as the child grew up you saw him——'

"'Frequently. He was very much attached to me, and latterly my nephew and myself have been on very friendly terms.'

"'But you have not assisted in any way in endeavouring to find him?'

"'No. I called on Lady Helsham, and she declared there was no cause for alarm. It was an entanglement. She begged me to do nothing for fear of making a scandal. That is why I am rather astonished to learn that she has employed professional assistance' (he bowed to me) 'and let me know nothing about it.'

"'And Lady Helsham's sister and the captain?'

"'The sister is the mother of the little girl Lady Helsham afterwards adopted. I understood when this young lady left Grosvenor Square, she had gone back to her mother, who is now a widow.'

"'And now will you tell me what sort of a young man Lord Helsham was. Was he flighty, weak-minded, dissipated, cunning?'

"'Oh, no,' replied Mr. Farman, 'he was a most lovable and amiable young fellow—highly strung, and sensitive to a degree—romantic undoubtedly, but the soul of honour.'

"I bade Mr. Farman good-day, promising him the earliest information, and went to the —— Theatre. There I ascertained the address of Miss Dalroy, and at once sought an interview with her, telling her frankly that I was trying to find her lover and restore him to his friends.

"With tears in her eyes she offered to give me any assistance she could. She told me Lord Helsham had promised to marry her, and she showed me the letters she had had since his disappearance. They all spoke of a great shock he had received, and one of them of 'a terrible discovery which must separate them for ever.' It was not concerning her, but a matter relating to his own family.

"By this time I was convinced that the idea which had come to me when I so rudely asked you to take your departure was the key to the mystery. I knew after reading those letters what the skeleton in the Helsham family cupboard was, and I understood the dilemma in which the high-spirited and honourable young man suddenly found himself.

"I asked Miss Dalroy to let me see the last envelope she had received. Fortunately she had kept the letter in it, and showed it to me.

"The letter had been posted in Dunkeld. Dunkeld was in Scotland. That was where Lady Helsham's adopted daughter was—that was where Lady Helsham's sister lived, the sister in whose house Lord Helsham had been born. It was there that I should probably get the latest news of him.

"I went home, and flinging a few things into a Gladstone bag, caught the first train North. Twelve hours later I was in Dunkeld. A few hurried inquiries of the railway porters at the station, and the solitary flyman outside, and at the little station hotel, told me that I was, as they say in the sensational detective stories, 'on the track.' A young gentleman answering the description I have of Lord Helsham had come there a few days previously. The flyman had driven him to the house of Mrs. —, the merchant captain's widow, which was nearly five miles from the station, and nothing had been seen of him since.

"When the flyman had deposited me at the house, I made my way up the pathway with a fluttering heart, for in spite of my profession, I have still that feminine weakness in moments of excitement. The door was opened by an old Scotch servant. I asked for Mrs. —, and without waiting for an answer walked straight into a room where I could hear voices.

"An elderly spectacled man was talking with a widow lady. As I entered I caught one sentence—but that was music in my ears.

"'There's not the slightest danger—it's a feverish cold—but the poor young fellow is very low and nervous. I should not leave him alone.'

"It was a doctor who was speaking. I didn't want to guess twice who the poor young gentleman was.

"The widow lady started as I entered and angrily asked me what I wanted.

"'A few words with you alone,' I answered. The doctor bowed and left us together.

"'Who are you?' exclaimed the widow, betraying her nervous agitation in her manner, 'and what do you want with me?'

"'My name is Dorcas Dene—I come from Lady Helsham with a message for her son.

"'You know——!' gasped the widow.

"'That he is here and upstairs ill—yes. This terrible discovery has been a severe shock to him.'

"At the words 'terrible discovery' the widow lady reeled and caught a chair for support.

"'You know that—Lady Helsham has told you?'

"'I had to know,' I answered, evading the question. 'Now for the sake of everybody we must decide what is the best to be done to avoid scandal. He talks of killing himself, but that is cowardly. What do you think can be done?'

"It was a trap and the woman fell into it.

"'I don't know,' she gasped. 'Bertie declares that if he lives he will not retain the title or the property. He says that his death is the only thing that can save me and my sister from—from——' She hesitated; then with a sudden terror that she had betrayed too much, she cried, 'But if you know—tell me what you know.'

"'Only what I was bound to know to be of any use in the case,' I said, quietly. 'That the child which Lady Helsham bore in this house was not the child she returned to London with as the heir. He has discovered that he has unwittingly dispossessed another of the title and estates, and he refuses to be a party to the fraud any longer. The only way in which he can restore them is by dying. To publish the truth now would be to put Lady Helsham in the dock, and, as you say, you also, for you were a party to the imposture.'

"'It was my sister who persuaded me—who took my baby boy from me and left the girl at home with me. My husband was away. Only the old servant you have just seen was with me, and she cannot read or write. It was so simple and—and——'

"'And the doctor?'

"She hesitated. 'Why do you ask these questions of me? If you know all Lady Helsham must have told you.'

"'I have come from Lady Helsham to find her son—the rest I have learned for myself. Now you must tell me everything or I cannot help you. If I abandon the case it will be taken up by the police.'

"I succeeded at last in showing the unhappy woman that she must make a clean breast of it, and she confessed everything. There was no idea of fraud at first. Lady Helsham came to her sister, who was alone and expecting her confinement. It was the coincidence of her own child being born prematurely, and within twenty-four hours of her sister's, that made Lady Helsham grasp at the idea. Had she confessed that her child was a girl she would have had to give up everything—except her allowance under the will—to her husband's brother. The captain's wife was attended by a local midwife. The doctor from the nearest town sent for to Lady Helsham was away at a consultation, and only returned twenty-four hours after the premature birth of her child. When he arrived he simply saw that his patient was doing well. The sisters had by that time agreed on the fraud with the assistance of the midwife, who received a good allowance from Lady Helsham for her assistance. The doctor left, fully assured that Lady Helsham had given birth to a son, and from that hour the fraud became a simple one. The only person who might have betrayed them was the simple Scotch servant, who probably was too ignorant to understand what had been done or too terrified to open her mouth afterwards, for fear of being looked upon as an accomplice.

"This was the Helsham mystery. Lady Helsham had, it seems, in her rage at her supposed son's refusal to marry her real daughter, whom she loved and desired to benefit, involuntarily revealed her secret, threatening the young fellow with the loss of everything if he refused.

"Thereupon he quitted the house, but he feared to tell the truth, because he would be giving up his own mother to a long term of penal servitude. In his overwrought frame of mind he saw only one loophole—suicide. His death would allow the title and estates to pass to the rightful owner without the fraud being discovered and the guilty parties punished.

"He had gone to bid his mother—whom he had hitherto only regarded as his aunt—farewell, and tell her what he intended to do, had broken down, and had been unable to leave the house again."

"But he committed suicide after all!" I exclaimed.

Dorcas Dene smiled. "No, I arranged that. I knew that for the young man's sake the real Lord Helsham would spare the guilty mother if possible. I persuaded the young man to let me take his watch and clothes. I selected a place as far away from the hiding place of the missing man as possible, and decided on the Norfolk coast, near Cromer. I found the clothes where I put them."

"And the real Lord Helsham knows?"

"Everything. No good purpose would have been served by prosecuting the two women. The new Lord Helsham insisted on a written confession from all concerned, which he retains for his own protection. As I was employed by one of the guilty parties, it would have been unprofessional of me to give them to justice."

"And the young man himself?"

"Is rapidly recovering from his illness in that quiet and lonely little house in his identity. Lord Helsham has behaved handsomely. He wishes his 'nephew' to marry in his real name the girl he loves, and the young couple will presently go by separate routes to America, and there be united, and, as they love each other, will be able to live happily on the income Lord Helsham will allow them. Of course if any difficulty should arise with regard to the succession the truth will have to be known. Until then it is 'our' secret. In the meantime Lady Helsham has wisely decided to live abroad, and only her solicitor is aware of her address.

"And now you know all about the Helsham mystery. Come into the garden and see Paul, and tell me what you think of the new collar I've bought Toddlekins for his birthday."

"But," I exclaimed, "the new Lord Helsham is compounding a felony, and—well, is it wise of him, seeing that the young man is still alive?"

Dorcas Dene shrugged her shoulders. "My dear Mr. Saxon," she said, "if everybody did the legal thing and the wise thing, there would be very little work left for a lady detective."

III. THE MAN WITH THE WILD EYES

I had become a constant visitor at Oak Tree Road. I had conceived a great admiration for the brave and yet womanly woman who, when her artist husband was stricken with blindness, and the future looked dark for both of them, had gallantly made the best of her special gifts and opportunities and nobly undertaken a profession which was not only a harassing and exhausting one for a woman, but by no means free from grave personal risks.

Dorcas Dene was always glad to welcome me for her husband's sake. "Paul has taken to you immensely," she said to me one afternoon, "and I hope you will call in and spend an hour or two with him whenever you can. My cases take me away from home so much—he cannot read, and my mother, with the best intentions in the world, can never converse with him for more than five minutes without irritating him. Her terribly matter of fact views of life are, to use his own expression, absolutely 'rasping' to his dreamy, artistic temperament."

I had plenty of spare time on my hands, and so it became my custom to drop in two or three times a week, and smoke a pipe and chat with Paul Dene. His conversation was always interesting, and the gentle resignation with which he bore his terrible affliction quickly won my heart. But I am not ashamed to confess that my frequent journeys to Oak Tree Road were also largely influenced by my desire to see Dorcas Dene, and hear more of her strange adventures and experiences as a lady detective.

From the moment she knew that her husband valued my companionship she treated me as one of the family, and when I was fortunate enough to find her at home, she discussed her professional affairs openly before me. I was grateful for this confidence, and frequently I was able to assist her by going about with her in cases where the presence of a male companion was a material advantage to her. I had upon one occasion laughingly dubbed myself her "assistant," and by that name I was afterwards generally known. There was only one drawback to the pleasure I felt at being associated with Dorcas Dene in her detective work. I saw that it would be quite impossible for me to avoid reproducing my experiences in some form or other. One day I broached the subject to her cautiously.

"Are you not afraid of the assistant one day revealing the professional secrets of his chief?" I said.

"Not at all," replied Dorcas (everybody called her Dorcas, and I fell into the habit when I found that she and her husband preferred it to the formal "Mrs. Dene"); "I am quite sure that you will not be able to resist the temptation."

"And you don't object?"

"Oh, no, but with this stipulation, that you will use the material in such a way as not to identify any of the cases with the real parties concerned."

That lifted a great responsibility from my shoulders, and made me more eager than ever to prove myself a valuable "assistant" to the charming lady who honoured me with her confidence.

* * * * * * *

We were sitting in the dining-room one evening after dinner. Mrs. Lester was looking contemptuously over the last number of the Queen, and wondering out loud what on earth young women were coming to with their tailor-mades and their bicycle costumes. Paul was smoking the old briar-root pipe which had been his constant companion in the studio when he was able to paint, poor fellow, and Dorcas was lying down on the sofa. Toddlekins, nestled up close to her, was snoring gently after the manner of his kind.

Dorcas had had a hard and exciting week, and had not been ashamed to confess that she felt a little played out. She had just succeeded in rescuing a young lady of fortune from the toils of an unprincipled Russian adventurer, and stopping the marriage almost at the altar rails by the timely production of the record of the would-be bridegroom, which she obtained with the assistance of M. Goron, the head of the French detective police. It was a return compliment. Dorcas had only a short time previously undertaken for M. Goron a delicate investigation, in which the son of one of the noblest houses in France was involved, and had nipped in the bud a scandal which would have kept the Boulevards chattering for a month.

Paul and I were conversing below our voices, for Dorcas's measured breathing showed us that she had fallen into a doze.

Suddenly Toddlekins opened his eyes and uttered an angry bark. He had heard the front gate bell.

A minute later the servant entered and handed a card to her mistress, who, with her eyes still half closed, was sitting up on the sofa.

"The gentleman says he must see you at once, ma'am, on business of the greatest importance."

Dorcas looked at the card. "Show the gentleman into the dining-room," she said to the servant, "and say that I will be with him directly."

Then she went to the mantel-glass and smoothed away the evidence of her recent forty winks. "Do you know him at all?" she said, handing me the card.

"Colonel Hargreaves, Orley Park, near Godalming." I shook my head, and Dorcas, with a little tired sigh, went to see her visitor.

A few minutes later the dining-room bell rang, and presently the servant came into the drawing-room. "Please, sir," she said, addressing me, "mistress says will you kindly come to her at once?"

When I entered the dining-room I was astonished to see an elderly, soldierly-looking man lying back unconscious in the easy chair, and Dorcas Dene bending over him.

"I don't think it's anything but a faint," she said. "He's very excited and over-wrought, but if you'll stay here I'll go and get some brandy. You had better loosen his collar—or shall we send for a doctor?"

"No, I don't think it is anything serious," I said, after a hasty glance at the invalid.

As soon as Dorcas had gone I began to loosen the Colonel's cravat, but I had hardly commenced before, with a deep sigh, he opened his eyes and came to himself.

"You're better now," I said. "Come—that's all right."

The Colonel stared about him for a moment, and then said, "I—I—where is the lady?"

"She'll be here in a moment. She's gone to get some brandy."

"Oh, I'm all right now, thank you. I suppose it was the excitement, and I've been travelling, had nothing to eat, and I'm so terribly upset. I don't often do this sort of thing, I assure you."

Dorcas returned with the brandy. The Colonel brightened up directly she came into the room. He took the glass she offered him and drained the contents.

"I'm all right now," he said. "Pray let me get on with my story. I hope you will be able to take the case up at once. Let me see—where was I?"

He gave a little uneasy glance at me. "You can speak without reserve before this gentleman," said Dorcas. "It is possible he may be able to assist us if you wish me to come to Orley Park at once. So far you have told me that your only daughter, who is five-and-twenty, and lives with you, was found last night on the edge of the lake in your grounds, half in the water and half out. She was quite insensible, and was carried into the house and put to bed. You were in London at the time, and returned to Orley Park this morning in consequence of a telegram you received. That is as far as you had got when you became ill."

"Yes—yes!" exclaimed the Colonel, "but I am quite well again now. When I arrived at home this morning shortly before noon I was relieved to find that Maud—that is my poor girl's name—was quite conscious, and the doctor had left a message that I was not to be alarmed, and that he would return and see me early in the afternoon.

"I went at once to my daughter's room and found her naturally in a very low, distressed state. I asked her how it had happened, as I could not understand it, and she told me that she had gone out in the grounds after dinner and must have turned giddy when by the edge of the lake and fallen in."

"Is it a deep lake?" asked Dorcas.

"Yes, in the middle, but shallow near the edge. It is a largish lake, with a small fowl island in the centre, and we have a boat upon it."

"Probably it was a sudden fainting fit—such as you yourself have had just now. Your daughter may be subject to them."

"No, she is a thoroughly strong, healthy girl."

"I am sorry to have interrupted you," said Dorcas; "pray go on, for I presume there is something behind this accident besides a fainting fit, or you would not have come to engage my services in the matter."

"There is a great deal more behind it," replied Colonel Hargreaves, pulling nervously at his grey moustache. "I left my daughter's bedside devoutly thankful that Providence had preserved her from such a dreadful death, but when the doctor arrived he gave me a piece of information which caused me the greatest uneasiness and alarm."

"He didn't believe in the fainting fit?" said Dorcas, who had been closely watching the Colonel's features.

The Colonel looked at Dorcas Dene in astonishment. "I don't know how you have divined that," he said, "but your surmise is correct. The doctor told me that he had questioned Maud himself, and she had told him the same story—sudden giddiness and a fall into the water. But he had observed that on her throat there were certain marks, and that her wrists were bruised.

"When he told me this I did not at first grasp his meaning. 'It must have been the violence of the fall,' I said.

"The doctor shook his head and assured me that no accident would account for the marks his experienced eye had detected. The marks round the throat must have been caused by the clutch of an assailant. The wrists could only have been bruised in the manner they were by being held in a violent and brutal grip."

Dorcas Dene, who had been listening apparently without much interest, bent eagerly forward as the Colonel made this extraordinary statement. "I see," she said. "Your daughter told you that she had fallen into the lake, and the doctor assures you that she must have told you an untruth. She had been pushed or flung in by someone else after a severe struggle."

"Yes!"

"And the young lady, when you questioned her further, with this information in your possession, what did she say?"

"She appeared very much excited, and burst into tears. When I referred to the marks on her throat, which were now beginning to show discoloration more distinctly, she declared that she had invented the story of the faint in order not to alarm me—that she had been attacked by a tramp who must have got into the grounds, and that he had tried to rob her, and that in the struggle, which took place near the edge of the lake, he had thrown her down at the water's edge and then made his escape."

"And that explanation you do accept?" said Dorcas, looking at the Colonel keenly.

"How can I? Why should my daughter try to screen a tramp? Why did she tell the doctor an untruth? Surely the first impulse of a terrified woman rescued from a terrible death would have been to have described her assailant in order that he might have been searched for and brought to justice."

"And the police, have they made any inquiries? Have they learned if any suspicious persons were seen about that evening?"

"I have not been to the police. I talked the matter over with the doctor. He says that the police inquiries would make the whole thing public property, and it would be known everywhere that my daughter's story, which has now gone all over the neighbourhood, was untrue. But the whole affair is so mysterious, and to me so alarming, that I could not leave it where it is. It was the doctor who advised me to come to you and let the inquiry be a private one."

"You need employ no one if your daughter can be persuaded to tell the truth. Have you tried?"

"Yes. But she insists that it was a tramp, and declares that until the bruises betrayed her she kept to the fainting-fit story in order to make the affair as little alarming to me as possible."

Dorcas Dene rose. "What time does the last train leave for Godalming?"

"In an hour," said the Colonel, looking at his watch. "At the station my carriage will be waiting to take us to Orley Court. I want you to stay beneath my roof until you have discovered the key to the mystery."

"No," said Dorcas, after a minute's thought. "I could do no good to-night, and my arrival with you would cause talk among the servants. Go back by yourself. Call on the doctor. Tell him to say his patient requires constant care during the next few days, and that he has sent for a trained nurse from London. The trained nurse will arrive about noon to-morrow."

"And you?" exclaimed the Colonel, "won't you come?"

Dorcas smiled. "Oh, yes; I shall be the trained nurse."

The Colonel rose. "If you can discover the truth and let me know what it is my daughter is concealing from me I shall be eternally grateful," he said. "I shall expect you to-morrow at noon."

"To-morrow at noon you will expect the trained nurse for whom the doctor has telegraphed. Good evening."

I went to the door with Colonel Hargreaves, and saw him down the garden to the front gate.

When I went back to the house Dorcas Dene was waiting for me in the hall. "Are you busy for the next few days?" she said.

"No—I have practically nothing to do."

"Then come to Godalming with me to-morrow. You are an artist, and I must get you permission to sketch that lake while I am nursing my patient indoors."

* * * * * * *

It was past noon when the fly, hired from the station, stopped at the lodge gates of Orley Park, and the lodge-keeper's wife opened them to let us in.

"You are the nurse for Miss Maud, I suppose, miss?" she said, glancing at Dorcas's neat hospital nurse's costume.

"Yes."

"The Colonel and the doctor are both at the house expecting you, miss—I hope it isn't serious with the poor young lady."

"I hope not," said Dorcas, with a pleasant smile.

A minute or two later the fly pulled up at the door of a picturesque old Elizabethan mansion. The Colonel, who had seen the fly from the window, was on the steps waiting for us, and at once conducted us into the library. Dorcas explained my presence in a few words. I was her assistant, and through me she would be able to make all the necessary inquiries in the neighbourhood.

"To your people Mr. Saxon will be an artist to whom you have given permission to sketch the house and the grounds—I think that will be best."

The Colonel promised that I should have free access at all hours to the grounds, and it was arranged that I should stay at a pretty little inn which was about half a mile from the park. Having received full instructions on the way down from Dorcas, I knew exactly what to do, and bade her good-bye until the evening, when I was to call at the house to see her.

The doctor came into the room to conduct the new nurse to the patient's bedside, and I left to fulfil my instructions.

At "The Chequers," which was the name of the inn, it was no sooner known that I was an artist, and had permission to sketch in the grounds of Orley Park, than the landlady commenced to entertain me with accounts of the accident which had nearly cost Miss Hargreaves her life.

The fainting-fit story, which was the only one that had got about, had been accepted in perfect faith.

"It's a lonely place, that lake, and there's nobody about the grounds, you see, at night, sir—it was a wonder the poor young lady was found so soon."

"Who found her?" I asked.

"One of the gardeners who lives in a cottage in the park. He'd been to Godalming for the evening, and was going home past the lake."

"What time was it?"

"Nearly ten o'clock. It was lucky he saw her, for it had been dark nearly an hour then, and there was no moon."

"What did he think when he found her?"

"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, he thought at first it was suicide, and that the young lady hadn't gone far enough in and had lost her senses."

"Of course, he couldn't have thought it was murder or anything of that sort," I said, "because nobody could get in at night—without coming through the lodge gates."

"Oh! yes, they could at one place, but it'ud have to be somebody who knew the dogs or was with someone who did. There's a couple of big mastiffs have got a good run there, and no stranger 'ud try to clamber over—it's a side gate used by the family, sir—after they'd started barking."

"Did they bark that night at all, do you know?"

"Well, yes," said the landlady. "Now I come to think of it, Mr. Peters—that's the lodge-keeper—heard 'em, but they was quiet in a minute, so he took no more notice."

That afternoon the first place I made up my mind to sketch was the Lodge. I found Mr. Peters at home, and my pass from the Colonel secured his good graces at once. His wife had told him of the strange gentleman who had arrived with the nurse, and I explained that there being only one fly at the station and our destination the same, the nurse had kindly allowed me to share the vehicle with her.

I made elaborate pencil marks and notes in my new sketching book, telling Mr. Peters I was only doing something preliminary and rough, in order to conceal the amateurish nature of my efforts, and keep the worthy man gossiping about the "accident" to his young mistress.

I referred to the landlady's statement that he had heard dogs bark that night.

"Oh, yes, but they were quiet directly."

"Probably some stranger passing down by the side gate, eh?"

"Most likely, sir. I was a bit uneasy at first, but when they quieted down I thought it was all right."

"Why were you uneasy?"

"Well, there'd been a queer sort of a looking man hanging about that evening. My missus saw him peering in at the lodge gates about seven o'clock."

"A tramp?"

"No, a gentlemanly sort of man, but he gave my missus a turn, he had such wild, staring eyes. But he spoke all right. My missus asked him what he wanted, and he asked her what was the name of the big house he could see, and who lived there. She told him it was Orley Park, and Colonel Hargreaves lived there, and he thanked her and went away. A tourist, maybe, sir, or perhaps an artist gentleman, like yourself."

"Staying in the neighbourhood and examining its beauties perhaps."

"No; when I spoke about it the next day in the town I heard as he'd come by the train that afternoon; the porters had noticed him, he seemed so odd."

I finished my rough sketch and then asked Mr. Peters to take me to the scene of the accident. It was a large lake and answered the description given by the Colonel.

"That there's the place where Miss Maud was found," said Mr. Peters. "You see it's shallow there, and her head was just on the bank here out of the water."

"Thank you. That's a delightful little island in the middle. I'll smoke a pipe here and sketch. Don't let me detain you."

The lodge-keeper retired, and obeying the instructions received from Dorcas Dene, I examined the spot carefully.

The marks of hobnailed boots were distinctly visible in the mud at the side, near the place where the struggle, admitted by Miss Hargreaves, had taken place. They might be the tramp's—they might be the gardener's; I was not skilled enough in the art of footprints to determine. But I had obtained a certain amount of information, and with that, at seven o'clock, I went to the house and asked for the Colonel.

I had, of course, nothing to say to him, except to ask him to let Dorcas Dene know that I was there. In a few minutes Dorcas came to me with her bonnet and cloak on.

"I'm going to get a walk while it is light," she said; "come with me."

Directly we were outside I gave her my information, and she at once decided to visit the lake.

She examined the scene of the accident carefully, and I pointed out the hobnailed boot marks.

"Yes," she said, "those are the gardener's probably—I'm looking for someone else's."

"Whose?"

"These," she said, suddenly stopping and pointing to a series of impressions in the soil at the edge. "Look—here are a woman's footprints, and here are larger ones beside them—now close to—now a little way apart—now crossing each other. Do you see anything particular in these footprints?"

"No—except that there are no nails in them."

"Exactly—the footprints are small, but larger than Miss Hargreaves'—the shape is an elegant one, you see the toes are pointed, and the sole is a narrow one. No tramp would have boots like those. Where did you say Mrs. Peters saw that strange-looking gentleman?"

"Peering through the lodge gates."

"Let us go there at once."

Mrs. Peters came out and opened the gates for us.

"What a lovely evening," said Dorcas. "Is the town very far?"

"Two miles, miss."

"Oh, that's too far for me to-night."

She took out her purse and selected some silver.

"Will you please send down the first thing in the morning and buy me a bottle of Wood Violet scent at the chemist's. I always use it, and I've come away without any."

She was just going to hand some silver to Mrs. Peters, when she dropped her purse in the roadway, and the money rolled in every direction.

We picked most of it up, but Dorcas declared there was another half-sovereign. For fully a quarter of an hour she peered about in every direction outside the lodge gates for that missing half-sovereign, and I assisted her. She searched for quite ten minutes in one particular spot, a piece of sodden, loose roadway close against the right-hand gate.

Suddenly she exclaimed that she had found it, and, slipping her hand into her pocket, rose, and, handing Mrs. Peters a five-shilling piece for the scent, beckoned me to follow her, and strolled down the road.

"How came you to drop your purse? Are you nervous to-night?" I said.

"Not at all," replied Dorcas, with a smile. "I dropped my purse that the money might roll and give me an opportunity of closely examining the ground outside the gates."

"Did you really find your half-sovereign?"

"I never lost one; but I found what I wanted."

"And that was?"

"The footprints of the man who stood outside the gates that night. They are exactly the same shape as those by the side of the lake. The person Maud Hargreaves struggled with that night, the person who flung her into the lake and whose guilt she endeavoured to conceal by declaring she had met with an accident, was the man who wanted to know the name of the place, and asked who lived there—the man with the wild eyes."

IV. THE SECRET OF THE LAKE

"You are absolutely certain that the footprints of the man with the wild eyes, who frightened Mrs. Peters at the gate, and the footprints which are mixed up with those of Miss Hargreaves by the side of the lake, are the same?" I said to Dorcas Dene.

"Absolutely certain."

"Then perhaps, if you describe him, the Colonel may be able to recognise him."

"No," said Dorcas Dene, "I have already asked him if he knew anyone who could possibly bear his daughter a grudge, and he declares that there is no one to his knowledge. Miss Hargreaves has scarcely any acquaintances."

"And has had no love affair?" I asked.

"None, her father says, but of course he can only answer for the last three years. Previously to that he was in India, and Maud—who was sent home at the age of fourteen, when her mother died—had lived with an aunt at Norwood."

"Who do you think this man was who managed to get into the grounds and meet or surprise Miss Hargreaves by the lake—a stranger to her?"

"No; had he been a stranger, she would not have shielded him by inventing the fainting fit story."

We had walked some distance from the house, when an empty station fly passed us. We got in, Dorcas telling the man to drive us to the station.

When we got there, she told me to go and interview the porters and try and find out if a man of the description of our suspect had left on the night of the "accident."

I found the man who had told Mr. Peters that he had seen such a person arrive, and had noticed the peculiar expression of his eyes. This man assured me that no such person had left from that station. He had told his mates about him, and some of them would be sure to have seen him. The stranger brought no luggage, and gave up a single ticket from Waterloo.

Dorcas was waiting for me outside, and I gave her my information.

"No luggage," she said; "then he wasn't going to an hotel or to stay at a private house."

"But he might be living somewhere about."

"No; the porters would have recognised him if he had been in the habit of coming here."

"But he must have gone away after flinging Miss Hargreaves into the water. He might have got out of the grounds again and walked to another station, and caught a train back to London."

"Yes, he might," said Dorcas, "but I don't think he did. Come, we'll take the fly back to Orley Park."

Just before we reached the park Dorcas stopped the driver, and we got out and dismissed the man.

"Whereabouts are those dogs—near the private wooden door in the wall used by the family, aren't they?" she said to me.

"Yes, Peters pointed the spot out to me this afternoon."

"Very well, I'm going in. Meet me by the lake to-morrow morning about nine. But watch me now as far as the gates. I'll wait outside five minutes before ringing. When you see I'm there, go to that portion of the wall near the private door. Clamber up and peer over. When the dogs begin to bark, and come at you, notice if you could possibly drop over and escape them without someone they knew called them off. Then jump down again and go back to the inn."

I obeyed Dorcas's instructions; and when I had succeeded in climbing to the top of the wall, the dogs flew out of their kennel, and commenced to bark furiously. Had I dropped I must have fallen straight into their grip. Suddenly I heard a shout, and I recognised the voice—it was the lodge-keeper. I dropped back into the road and crept along in the shadow of the wall. In the distance I could hear Peters talking to someone, and I knew what had happened. In the act of letting Dorcas in, he had heard the dogs, and had hurried off to see what was the matter. Dorcas had followed him.

* * * * * * *

At nine o'clock next morning I found Dorcas waiting for me.

"You did your work admirably last night," she said. "Peters was in a terrible state of alarm. He was very glad for me to come with him. He quieted the dogs, and we searched about everywhere in the shrubbery to see if anyone was in hiding. That man wasn't let in at the door that night by Miss Hargreaves; he dropped over. I found the impression of two deep footprints close together, exactly as they would be made by a drop or jump down from a height."

"Did he go back that way—were there return footprints?"

I thought I had made a clever suggestion, but Dorcas smiled, and shook her head. "I didn't look. How could he return past the dogs when Miss Hargreaves was lying in the lake? They'd have torn him to pieces."

"And you still think this man with the wild eyes is guilty? Who can he have been?"

"His name was Victor."

"You have discovered that!" I exclaimed. "Has Miss Hargreaves been talking to you?"

"Last night I tried a little experiment. When she was asleep, and evidently dreaming, I went quietly in the dark and stood just behind the bed, and in the gruffest voice I could assume, I said, bending down to her ear, 'Maud!'

"She started up, and cried out, 'Victor!'

"In a moment I was by her side, and found her trembling violently. 'What's the matter, dear?' I said, 'have you been dreaming?'

"'Yes—yes,' she said. 'I—I was dreaming.'

"I soothed her, and talked to her a little while, and finally she lay down again and fell asleep."

"That's something," I said "to have got the man's Christian name."

"Yes, it's a little, but I think we shall have the surname to-day. You must go up to town and do a little commission for me presently. In the meantime, pull that boat in and row me across to the fowl island. I want to search it."

"You don't imagine the man's hiding there," I said. "It's too small."

"Pull me over," said Dorcas, getting into the boat.

I obeyed, and presently we were on the little island.

Dorcas carefully surveyed the lake in every direction. Then she walked round and examined the foliage and the reeds that were at the edge and drooping into the water.

Suddenly pushing a mass of close overhanging growth aside, she thrust her hand deep down under it into the water and drew up a black, saturated, felt hat.

"I thought if anything drifted that night, this is where it would get caught and entangled," said Dorcas.

"If it is that man's hat, he must have gone away bareheaded."

"Quite so," replied Dorcas, "but first let us ascertain if it is his. Row ashore at once."

She wrung the water from the hat, squeezed it together and wrapped it up in her pocket-handkerchief and put it under her cloak.

When we were ashore, I went to the lodge and got Mrs. Peters on to the subject of the man with the wild eyes. Then I asked what sort of a hat he had on, and Mrs. Peters said it was a felt hat with a dent in the middle, and I knew that our find was a good one.

When I told Dorcas she gave a little smile of satisfaction.

"We've got his Christian name and his hat," she said; "now we want the rest of him. You can catch the 11.20 easily."

"Yes."

She drew an envelope from her pocket and took a carte de visite from it.

"That's the portrait of a handsome young fellow," she said. "By the style and size I should think it was taken four or five years ago. The photographers are the London Stereoscopic Company—the number of the negative is 111,492. If you go to Regent Street, they will search their books and give you the name and address of the original. Get it, and come back here."

"Is that the man?" I said.

"I think so."

"How on earth did you get it?"

"I amused myself while Miss Hargreaves was asleep by looking over the album in her boudoir. It was an old album, and filled with portraits of relatives and friends. I should say there were over fifty, some of them being probably her school-fellows. I thought I might find something, you know. People have portraits given them, put them in an album, and almost forget they are there. I fancied Miss Hargreaves might have forgotten."

"But how did you select this from fifty? There were other male portraits, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, but I took out every portrait and examined the back and the margin."

I took the photo from Dorcas and looked at it. I noticed that a portion of the back had been rubbed away and was rough.

"That's been done with an ink eraser," said Dorcas. "That made me concentrate on this particular photo. There has been a name written there or some word the recipient didn't want other eyes to see."

"That is only surmise."

"Quite so—but there's a certainty in the photo itself. Look closely at that little diamond scarf-pin in the necktie. What shape is it?"

"It looks like a small V."

"Exactly. It was fashionable a few years ago for gentlemen to wear a small initial pin. V. stands for Victor—take that and the erasure together, and I think it's worth a return fare to town to find out what name and address are opposite the negative number in the books of the London Stereoscopic Company."

* * * * * * *

Before two o'clock I was interviewing the manager of the Stereoscopic Company, and he readily referred to the books. The photograph had been taken six years previously, and the name and address of the sitter were "Mr. Victor Dubois, Anerley Road, Norwood."

Following Dorcas Dene's instructions, I proceeded at once to the address given, and made enquiries for a Mr. Victor Dubois. No one of that name resided there. The present tenants had been in possession for three years.

As I was walking back along the road I met an old postman. I thought I would ask him if he knew the name anywhere in the neighbourhood. He thought a minute, then said, "Yes—now I come to think of it there was a Dubois here at No. —, but that was five years ago or more. He was an oldish, white-haired gentleman."

"An old gentleman—Victor Dubois!"

"Ah, no—the old gentleman's name was Mounseer Dubois, but there was a Victor. I suppose that must have been his son as lived with him. I know the name. There used to be letters addressed there for Mr. Victor most every day—sometimes twice a day—always in the same hand-writing, a lady's—that's what made me notice it."

"And you don't know where M. Dubois and his son went to?"

"No, I did hear as the old gentleman went off his head, and was put in a lunatic asylum; but they went out o' my round."

"You don't know what he was, I suppose?"

"Oh, it said on the brass plate, 'Professor of Languages.'"

I went back to town and took the first train to Godalming, and hastened to Orley Court to report the results of my enquiries to Dorcas.

She was evidently pleased, for she complimented me. Then she rang the bell—we were in the dining-room—and the servant entered.

"Will you let the Colonel know that I should like to see him?" said Dorcas, and the servant went to deliver the message.

"Are you going to tell him everything?" I said.

"I am going to tell him nothing yet," replied Dorcas. "I want him to tell me something."

The Colonel entered. His face was worn, and he was evidently worrying himself a great deal.

"Have you anything to tell me?" he said eagerly. "Have you found out what my poor girl is hiding from me?"

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you yet. But I want to ask you a few questions."

"I have given you all the information I can already," replied the Colonel a little bitterly.

"All you recollect, but now try and think. Your daughter, before you came back from India, was with her aunt at Norwood. Where was she educated from the time she left India?"

"She went to school at Brighton at first, but from the time she was sixteen she had private instruction at home."

"She had professors, I suppose, for music, French, etc.?"

"Yes, I believe so. I paid bills for that sort of thing. My sister sent them out to me to India."

"Can you remember the name of Dubois?"

The Colonel thought a little while.

"Dubois? Dubois? Dubois?" he said. "I have an idea there was such a name among the accounts my sister sent to me, but whether it was a dressmaker or a French master I really can't say."

"Then I think we will take it that your daughter had lessons at Norwood from a French professor named Dubois. Now, in any letters that your late sister wrote you to India, did she ever mention anything that had caused her uneasiness on Maud's account?"

"Only once," replied the Colonel, "and everything was satisfactorily explained afterwards. She left home one day at nine o'clock in the morning, and did not return until four in the afternoon. Her aunt was exceedingly angry, and Maud explained that she had met some friends at the Crystal Palace—she attended the drawing class there—had gone to see one of her fellow students off at the station, and sitting in the carriage, the train had started before she could get out and she had had to go on to London. I expect my sister told me that to show me how thoroughly I might rely upon her as my daughter's guardian."

"Went on to London?" said Dorcas to me under her voice, "and she could have got out in three minutes at the next station to Norwood!" Then turning to the Colonel, she said, "Now, Colonel, when your wife died, what did you do with her wedding ring?"

"Good heavens, madam!" exclaimed the Colonel, rising and pacing the room, "what can my poor wife's wedding ring have to do with my daughter's being flung into the lake yonder?"

"I am sorry if my question appears absurd," replied Dorcas quietly, "but will you kindly answer it?"

"My wife's wedding ring is on my dead wife's finger in her coffin in the graveyard at Simla," exclaimed the Colonel, "and now perhaps you'll tell me what all this means!"

"To-morrow," said Dorcas. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll take a walk with Mr. Saxon. Miss Hargreaves' maid is with her, and she will be all right until I return."

"Very well, very well!" exclaimed the Colonel, "but I beg—I pray of you to tell me what you know as soon as you can. I am setting spies upon my own child, and to me it is monstrous—and yet—and yet—what can I do? She won't tell me, and for her sake I must know—I must know."

"You shall, Colonel Hargreaves," said Dorcas, going up to him and holding out her hand. "Believe me, you have my sincerest sympathy."

The old Colonel grasped the proffered hand of Dorcas Dene.

"Thank you," he said, his lips quivering.

* * * * * * *

Directly we were in the grounds Dorcas Dene turned eagerly to me.

"I'm treating you very badly," she said, "but our task is nearly over. You must go back to town to-night. The first thing to-morrow morning go to Somerset House. You will find an old fellow named Daddy Green, a searcher in the inquiry room. Tell him you come from me, and give him this paper. When he has searched, telegraph the result to me, and come back by the next train."

I looked at the paper, and found written on it in Dorcas's hand:

"Search wanted.

Marriage—Victor Dubois and Maud Eleanor Hargreaves—probably between the years 1890 and 1893—London."

I looked up from the paper at Dorcas Dene.

"Whatever makes you think she is a married woman?" I said.

"This," exclaimed Dorcas, drawing an unworn wedding-ring from her purse. "I found it among a lot of trinkets at the bottom of a box her maid told me was her jewel-case. I took the liberty of trying all her keys till I opened it. A jewel-box tells many secrets to those who know how to read them."

"And you concluded from that——?

"That she wouldn't keep a wedding-ring without it had belonged to someone dear to her or had been placed on her own finger. It is quite unworn, you see, so it was taken off immediately after the ceremony. It was only to make doubly sure that I asked the Colonel where his wife's was."

* * * * * * *

I duly repaired to Somerset House, and soon after midday Daddy Green, the searcher, brought a paper and handed it to me. It was a copy of the certificate of the marriage of Victor Dubois, bachelor, aged twenty-six, and Maud Eleanor Hargreaves, aged twenty-one, in London, in the year 1891. I telegraphed the news, wording the message simply "Yes," and the date, and I followed my wire by the first train.

When I arrived at Orley Park I rang several times before anyone came. Presently Mrs. Peters, looking very white and excited, came from the grounds and apologised for keeping me waiting.

"Oh, sir—such a dreadful thing!" she said—"a body in the lake!"

"A body!"

"Yes, sir—a man. The nurse as came with you here that day, she was rowing herself on the lake, and she must have stirred it pushing with her oar, for it come up all tangled with weeds. It's a man, sir, and I do believe it's the man I saw at the gate that night."

"The man with the wild eyes!" I exclaimed.

"Yes sir! Oh, it is dreadful—Miss Maud first, and then this. Oh, what can it mean!"

I found Dorcas standing at the edge of the lake, and Peters and two of the gardeners lifting the drowned body of a man into the boat which was alongside.

Dorcas was giving instructions. "Lay it in the boat, and cover it with a tarpaulin," she said. "Mind, nothing is to be touched till the police come. I will go and find the Colonel."

As she turned away I met her.

"What a terrible thing! Is it Dubois?"

"Yes," replied Dorcas. "I suspected he was there yesterday, but I wanted to find him myself instead of having the lake dragged."

"Why?"

"Well, I didn't want anyone else to search the pockets. There might have been papers or letters, you know, which would have been read at the inquest, and might have compromised Miss Hargreaves. But there was nothing—"