Front matter (continued 4)

Again the uncontrollable tears welled into her eyes. She rose, and Faunce took the movement as his dismissal.

"You may rely upon my most earnest endeavours, madam," he said, and quietly withdrew, as she stretched a trembling hand to the bell.

"Poor soul! I'm afraid there must be sorrow for those grey hairs before we come to the end of the story," mused Faunce, as he walked back to his rooms.

He wrote to Chater, the valet, asking him to call in Essex Street next morning on particular business concerning Colonel Rannock; and the valet appeared, with exact punctuality, neatly clad, with well-brushed hat and slim umbrella, and a little look about the clean-shaved chin, broad chest, and close-cut hair, that told Faunce he had once shouldered arms, and swung round to the "Right turn!" in the white dust of a barrack-yard.

Chater was eminently a man of the world, very easy to get on with, when he had heard Faunce's credentials, and knew what was wanted of him, in Mrs. Rannock's interests. He had been Rannock's soldier-servant in Afghanistan, and had lived with him between eleven and twelve years.

"And I think you liked him," said Faunce.

"Yes, sir; I liked my master. He was a devil, but he was the kind of devil I like."

"And I suppose you knew Miss Delmaine?"

"Couldn't help that, sir. She was a devil, and the kind of devil I don't like. She was the ruin of my master—blue ruin, Mr. Faunce. He might have kept inside the ropes but for her."

"Did you know anything of his courtship of Lady Perivale?"

"Of course I did, sir. I had to carry the 'cello backwards and forwards between the Albany and Grosvenor Square."

"Do you think he cared much for Lady Perivale?"

"Well, I believe he did, in a way. He was cuts with Miss Delmaine just then. She'd been going on a little too bad. There was a prize-fighter, a man she'd known from her childhood, that was always after her, and the Colonel wouldn't stand it. Mind you, I don't believe—to give the devil his due—she ever cared for the fellow, but I think she liked making my master jealous. She is that kind of aggravating creature that knows her power over a man, and can't be happy until she's made him miserable. And then there were rows, and a regular burst up, and the Colonel swore he'd never see her again."

"And it was after the quarrel that he courted Lady Perivale?"

"Yes, it was after. He was knocked all of a heap the first time he met her ladyship, on account of her likeness to Kate. 'She's the loveliest woman I ever saw since Mrs. Randall was at her best,' he said, for he was always free with me, having lived under canvas together, and me nursing him through more than one bout of Indian fever—'and she's an oof-bird,' he said, 'and I shall be on the pig's back if I marry her.' And I know he meant to marry her, and tried hard—left off cards and drink, and cut all the young fools that he used to have hanging about him, and turned over a new leaf. I'd never known him keep steady so long since we came from India. But when he found it was all no go, and Lady Perivale wouldn't have him, he was furious. And when she went off to Italy in the autumn, he took to the cards again, and drank harder than ever, and went a mucker one way and another, and by December he had made it up with Kate, and they went off to Nice together the week before Christmas, with the intention of crossing over to Ajaccio."

"Why didn't you go with your master?"

"I had business to do for him in town. He wanted to get rid of his chambers and furniture, and I had to find a purchaser, and he wanted it all carried through very quietly, for there was a money-lender who thought he had a bill of sale on the goods."

"You succeeded in that?"

"Yes; I got him a fair price for his lease and furniture. I would give a good deal to know where he is, and what became of that money."

"Was it much?"

"Six hundred and forty pounds. Three hundred for the lease, which had only two years to run, and three hundred and forty for the furniture, at a valuation."

"Did he take all the money with him when he started for America?"

"No; he paid me half a year's wages, on account of a year and a half due, and he spent a little on himself, but he had five hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket-book, in bank-notes, when he left Waterloo."

"In bank-notes. Do you know the figures?"

"Yes; there were two hundred-pound notes, and four fifties, the rest tens and fives. I wrote a list of the numbers at his dictation."

"Have you kept that list?"

"I believe I have a copy of it among my papers. I copied the figures, knowing what a careless beggar the Colonel is, and that he was as likely as not to lose his list."

"Why did he take the money in bank-notes?"

"He had been told that a cheque-book wouldn't be of much use to him in San Francisco, and no use at all at Dawson City, where he would have to buy most of his outfit—furs, and mining tools, and a lot more."

"What put Klondyke into his head, do you think?"

"A pal of his, a Yankee, was going to try his luck there. My master was always fond of adventure, and never minded roughing it; so the scheme took his fancy."

"Chater," said Faunce, in a very earnest voice, "do you think Colonel Rannock ever got as far as Klondyke?—as far as Dawson City?—as far as 'Frisco?—as far as New York?"

"God knows, sir! I think the case looks—fishy."

"I have reason to know that he wasn't at 'Frisco in time to start for Vancouver with the pal you talk of, Mr. Bamford—and that Bamford and another friend sailed without him."

"I know that, sir. Mr. Haldane, the gentleman who came to me for information, told me the result of his inquiry."

"And this made you rather uneasy, didn't it, Chater?"

"Well, I didn't like to hear it, Mr. Faunce. But my master is a rum sort. He might change his mind at the last minute. He might go back to her."

"He didn't do that, Chater. I can answer for him."

"What do you know about her?"

"A good deal. Was she at Waterloo to see your master off by the boat-train?"

"Not she! They had one of their quarrels in Paris—and he left her there to find her way home by herself."

"You say home? Had she any house in London?"

"No, she'd never owned a house since the Abbey Road. She was in lodgings near Cheyne Walk before she went to Nice."

"Decent lodgings?"

"Oh yes, topping."

"And she didn't show up at the boat-train?"

"He didn't travel by the boat-train. He went the night before—by the Bournemouth express."

"The four-fifty-five?"

"Yes."

"Was he going to stay in Southampton that night?"

"I suppose so. He didn't tell me what was up. He seemed a bit excited and put out, and hadn't a word to throw at a dog."

"Did he promise to write to you from America?"

"Yes, he was to write to me directly he landed. He had instructions to give me."

"Do you know of any Southampton friends of Colonel Rannock's?"

"Can't say I do. He has had yachting pals there sometimes in summer, but there wouldn't be any of that sort in March."

"Mrs. Rannock is alarmed at being without letters from her son since last March. Do you consider that an alarming circumstance?"

"Yes, Mr. Faunce, I do. My master was fond of his mother, in his way. He didn't mind victimizing her to the extent of her last sovereign, poor old lady, when he was hard pushed; but he was attached to her, in his way. And I don't think he would have made her unhappy by not writing to her, if it had been in his power to write. I give him that much credit."

"Well, Chater, we shall have to set the cable at work, and find out what we can at Dawson City. And now tell me your opinion of Mrs. Randall, alias Delmaine. You describe her as a bit of a shrew; but do you know if she was really attached to the Colonel?"

"I believe she worshipped him, in her way. I—well, a letter she wrote him after their worst quarrel—the row that parted them for over two years—forced itself on my attention—happening to take it up in a casual way—and I must say it was a letter to melt a stone; but it came just when the Colonel was going all he knew for Lady Perivale, and he took no notice of it."

"And two years after he went back to her. That was weak, wasn't it?"

"I suppose it was, sir. But, after being much with a stuck-up person like Lady Perivale, a spirited, free and easy creature like Kate Delmaine would exercise a fascination."

"And you don't think she ever played him false? You don't think she cared for the prize-fighter? What was his name, by-the-by; Bolisco, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir, Jim Bolisco. No, she never cared a straw for him—a great ugly brute, with a cock-eye. She'd known him when she was a child—for her people were very low—father kept a small public out Battersea way; and it ain't easy for a woman to shake off that sort of friend. Bolisco was took up by Sir Hubert Withernsea, and used to dine at the Abbey Road sometimes, much to the Colonel's disgust. No, I don't believe Kate ever had the slightest liking for that man; but I sometimes used to fancy she was afraid of him."

CHAPTER XVI.

"Later or sooner by a minute then, So much for the untimeliness of death,— And as regards the manner that offends, That rude and rough, I count the same for gain— Be the act harsh and quick!"

His interview with Chater left John Faunce troubled in mind, and deeply meditative. Had there been a crime, or was the disappearance of Colonel Rannock a fact easily accounted for in the natural course of events? The mother's conviction that some evil had befallen him was after all founded on an inadequate reason. If he had gone to Klondyke, as he intended, the whole fabric of his life would have been changed, and the man who while in the civilized world corresponded regularly with his mother, might well forget his filial duty, in the daily toil and hourly dangers, hopes, and disappointments of the struggle for gold. It was difficult to judge a man so placed by previous experience or everyday rules. The most dutiful son might well leave home letters unwritten; or a letter, trusted to a casual hand, might easily go astray.

Then there was always the possibility that he had changed his plans; that he had stayed in New York or in San Francisco; that he had chosen some other portion of the wild West for his hunting ground; that he had spent the summer fishing in Canada, or the autumn shooting in the Alleghanies; and, again, that his letters to England had been lost in transit.

Faunce would not have been disposed to suspect foul play on so slight a ground as the absence of news from the wanderer, but there had been that in Mrs. Randall's manner and countenance which had excited his darkest suspicions, and which had been the cause of his undiminished interest in her proceedings.

If there had been a crime she knew of it, had been in it, perhaps. He had watched her and studied her, but he had never questioned her. The time was not ripe for questioning. He did not want to alarm her by the lightest hint of his suspicions. She was too important a factor in the mystery.

He called on her on the evening after his interview with Chater, and persuaded her to go to a theatre with him. It was the first time he had assumed the attitude of established friendship, but although she seemed surprised at the invitation, she accepted it.

"I shall be glad to get out of this hole for a few hours," she said, with an impatient sigh, as she pinned on her hat before the glass over the mantelpiece, the little fur toque in which she had charmed the jury.

Faunce took her to see a musical comedy, a roaring farce from start to finish, in which the most popular low comedian in London gave a free rein to his eccentricities; and he watched his companion's face from time to time while the auditorium rocked with laughter at the wild fun. Not a smile illumined that gloomy countenance. He could see that she was hardly conscious of the scene, at which she stared with fixed melancholy eyes. Once she looked round at the people near her, with a dazed expression, as if she wondered why they were laughing.

It is recorded of the first Napoleon that he once sat through a broad farce with an unchanged countenance; but then his shoulders bore the burden of empire, the lives and fortunes of myriads.

The experience of this evening went far to confirm Faunce's ideas. He took Mrs. Randall to an oyster shop, and gave her some supper, and then put her into a cab and sent her back to Selburne Street.

Just at the last, when he had paid the cabman and given her the man's ticket, her face lighted up for a moment with a forced smile.

"Thank you no end for a jolly evening," she said.

"I'm afraid it hasn't been very jolly for you, Mrs. Randall. You didn't seem amused."

"Oh, I don't think I'm up to that sort of trash now. I had too much of it when I was on the boards. And the more comic the show is, the more I get thinking of other things."

"You shouldn't think too much; it'll spoil your beauty."

"Oh, that's gone," she said, "or, if it ain't, I don't care. I'd as leave be a nigger as a 'has been,' any day. Good night. Come and see me soon; and perhaps, if you take me to a tragedy next time, I may laugh," she added.

"There's something bitter bad behind that," mused Faunce, as he tramped across the bridge to Waterloo Station for the last Putney train, "but, for all that, I can't believe she's a murderess."

Faunce spent the next morning in his den in Essex Street poring over a book to which he had frequent recourse, and of which he was justly proud, since it was the wife of his bosom who had compiled this register of passing events for his study and use, a labour of love on her part, achieved with abnormal slowness, and kept closely up to date. The book was carried home to Putney on the first of every month, and Mrs. Faunce's careful hands added such paragraphs bearing on the scheme of the work, as she had cut out of the newspapers during the previous four weeks.

It had pleased this good helpmeet to think that she was assisting her husband in his professional labours, and the gruesome nature of her researches had never troubled her.

Mrs. Faunce's book was a large folio bound in red levant leather, and containing newspaper cuttings, pasted in by the lady's careful hands, and indexed and classified with neatness and intelligence.

The volume was labelled "Not accounted for," and was a record of exceeding ghastliness.

It contained the reports of coroners' inquests upon all manner of mysterious deaths, the unexplained cases which might have been murder, the "found drowned," the nameless corpses discovered in empty houses, in lodging-house garrets, on desolate heaths and waste places; a dismal calendar of tragic destinies, the record of hard fate or of undiscovered crime.

Steadily, carefully, John Faunce searched the spacious pages where the scraps of newspaper type stood out against a broad margin of white paper. He began his scrutiny at the date on which Colonel Rannock was said to have left London, and pursued it without finding any fact worth his attention till he came to a paragraph dated May 30, and extracted from the Hants Mercury, a popular bi-weekly newspaper, published in Southampton.

"Strange Discovery at Redbridge.—An inquest was held yesterday afternoon at the Royal George, Redbridge, on the body of a man, which had been found the previous day by some workmen engaged on the repair of the road by the river. Their attention was attracted by the proceedings of some gulls that were hovering and screaming over a discarded boat that lay keel upwards in the slime and weeds of the foreshore, at a spot where the tide must have washed over it day by day. The timbers were so rotten that they crumbled under the men's hands as they tried to lift the boat; but worthless as it was, they found it carefully secured with two strong stakes which had been thrust between the timbers at stern and bow, and driven deep into the beach below the soft ooze and shifting mud that moved with every tide.

"The men pulled up the stakes and turned the keel over, and, almost buried in the mud, they found the body of a man which had evidently been lying there for a long time, and of which even the clothing was so decomposed as to be unrecognizable. The most careful scrutiny failed to afford any indication of identity, except the name of a well-known West End tailor on the trousers-buttons, and the fact that the unknown had been tall and strongly built. The doctor's evidence showed that the back of the skull had been fractured by some blunt instrument, and by a single blow of extraordinary violence. Death must have been almost instantaneous. The inquiry was adjourned in the hope of further evidence transpiring."

Other notices followed at short intervals, but no further evidence had "transpired." A verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown had ended the inquiry.

"Curious," mused Faunce, after reading the report a second time, and with profound attention, and then he went on with his book till he came to the last extract from a recent paper, another unknown victim of an unknown murderer, pasted on to the page a week ago. And of all those unsavoury records there was only that one of the body hidden under the discarded boat that engaged his attention.

He knew Redbridge, a village street with its back to the water, a few scattered houses along the shore, a homely inn, a bridge, and for the rest a swampy waste where the reeds grew tall and rank, and the wild duck skimmed. He knew the solitude that could be found along that shore, not a quarter of a mile from pleasant cottage houses, and lamplit village shops, and the gossip and movement of the inn. A likely spot for a murderer to hide his victim; and this was clearly a case of murder, the stealthy murderer's sudden blow, creeping noiselessly behind the doomed man's back, with the strong arm lifted ready to strike.

That single blow of great violence indicated the murderer's strength. But where and how had the blow been dealt, and what connection could there be between Colonel Rannock's supposed departure from Southampton, and the body found on the shore at Redbridge, four miles away?

The question was one which John Faunce told himself that he had to answer. The answer, when arrived at, might have no bearing on the case in hand, but it had to be found. Faunce's science was an inductive science, and he was always asking himself apparently futile questions and working hard at the answers.

Mr. Faunce spent the evening in his snug little sitting-room at Putney, and his sole recreation during those domestic hours was furnished by Mrs. Randall's discarded blotting-book, which he had not examined since he obtained it from the little servant in Selburne Street.

With a clear table and a strong duplex lamp in front of him, Faunce took the leaves of blotting-paper one by one, and held them between his eyes and the light, while Mrs. Faunce, reading a novel in her armchair by the fire, looked up at him every now and then with an indulgent smile.

"At your old blotting-paper work again, Faunce," she said. "I don't fancy you'll get much information out of that ragged stuff. There's too much ink, and too many blots and splotches."

"It's not a very good specimen, Nancy; but I suppose I shall come to something before I've done. It's finnicking work; but it almost always pays."

"You're so persevering; and then you love your work."

"If I didn't I should never have stuck to it, Nancy. It's rather trying work for any man that hasn't a heart like the nether millstone; and I'm afraid I haven't."

Faunce had been at work nearly two hours, and his wife's interest in a transcendently lovely heroine and a repulsively plain hero was beginning to flag, before he came upon a blurred and broken line that rewarded his patience.

In that splotched and besmeared labyrinth of lines the detective's trained eye had discovered—

1. A date, March 27.

2. Two words, "meet me——"

3. A line of fragmentary syllables, "Sou—ton—est—o'clock."

4. Three words, "always loved you."

5. "Your—nd——"

6. "ig——"

This much, the inky impression of a heavy hand and a broad-nibbed pen, Faunce was able to decipher upon two sheets of blotting-paper.

That last item, the letters "ig," with a flourish under the g, was the most significant part of his discovery.

The letter had been signed with the lady's pet name, "Pig," and Faunce told himself that to only one man would she have so signed herself—the lover who had called her by that name at the Mecca Hotel, and whose playful invention was doubtless responsible for the endearing sobriquet.

"She told me she did not know whether he sailed from Southampton or Liverpool," mused Faunce, "yet here, under my hand, is the evidence that she asked him to meet her at Southampton West."

He went to Southampton next day, and called at the office of the American Line. If Colonel Rannock had carried out his intention there must be some record of his passage to New York.

There was such a record, and a startling one, for it proved that he had not gone to America by the ship in which he meant to sail.

After some difficulty, and being referred from one clerk to another, Faunce found the young man who had booked Colonel Rannock's passage in the Boston on Friday, March 29, the evening before she sailed.

"He came after seven o'clock, when the office was shut," said the clerk. "I was at work here, and as he made a great point of it I booked his berth for him. He suffered for having left it till the eleventh hour, for there were only two berths vacant—the two worst on the ship. He grumbled a good deal, but took one of them, paid the passage money, and left his cabin trunk to be sent on board next morning. And from that day to this we have never heard of him. He gave us no address, but we have his trunk, and we hold the cash to his credit, and I suppose he'll claim it from us sooner or later."

"Was he alone?"

"He was alone when he came into the office, but there was some one waiting for him in a cab outside, and I believe the some one was a lady. He spoke to her as he came in at the door, and I heard her answer him. 'Don't be all night about it, Dick,' she said."

"Thank you," said Faunce. "His friends are getting anxious about him, but, for all that, I dare say he's safe enough, and he'll call upon you for that passage money before long."

"If he's above ground I should think he would," answered the clerk, "but I must say it looks rummy that he hasn't claimed the cash and the trunk before now," and Faunce left the office more and more concerned about that corpse under the disused boat.

The steamer Boston was to leave the docks late on Saturday afternoon. Why did Colonel Rannock go to Southampton on Friday, and how did he propose to spend the intervening hours? More questions for Faunce to answer.

A woman was with him at Southampton—a woman who had not travelled with him from Waterloo, since he was alone when Chater saw the evening express leave the platform. Who was the woman, and what was her business on the scene? That she had addressed him by his Christian name showed that she was not the casual acquaintance of an idle hour.

Faunce believed that he had found the answer to this question in Mrs. Randall's blotting-book. If the letter that had left its fragmentary impression on the blotting-paper had been sent to Colonel Rannock, a letter urging him to meet her at Southampton West, it would account for his going there the night before the steamer left. From those scattered words, and that signature, "Your fond Pig," Faunce concluded that Kate Delmaine had written to the man she loved, pleading for a parting interview, and that Rannock had responded to her appeal.

There were other questions for Faunce to answer, and it was in the quiet pursuit of knowledge that he took himself to the hotel which he deemed the best in Southampton, engaged a bedroom, and ordered a dinner in the coffee-room at the old-fashioned hour of six.

Before dining he called upon the coroner, who was also a well-known family solicitor, and heard all that gentleman could tell him about the inquest at Redbridge, which was no more than had been recorded in the local newspaper.

Faunce having revealed himself in his professional capacity, the coroner expressed his own opinion freely.

"I made up my mind that it was a murder case, and a bad one," he said; "I've got the tailor's buttons in my criminal museum. Dash, Savile Row. That stamps the victim as a stranger. We Southampton people don't get our clothes in Savile Row."

The fashionable tailor's name was the only link between the nameless corpse and the world of the living; the sole clue to identity.

There was no one in the coffee-room at six o'clock, and Faunce dined snugly at a small table near the fire, where he was able to enjoy a tête-à-tête with the head-waiter, an old servant of the hotel, and possessed of that vast extent of local and general knowledge which seems the peculiar property of head-waiters and hotel-porters. The porter's knowledge takes a wider range; but the waiter has the more subtle mind.

Faunce started his inquiry with a bold guess.

"Do you happen to remember a lady and gentleman who dined here one Friday evening in March last year—a tall man, good-looking, and a very handsome woman. He was to leave for New York next day."

"We get a good many people who are going to New York, sir—chiefly Americans who want to look about the neighbourhood—but I do call to mind such a gentleman dining here one night in the spring of last year—for the special reason that he engaged a bedroom, and didn't occupy it, and also that he left a crocodile dressing-bag that has never been claimed from that day to this."

"Should you remember his face, do you think, if you saw his photograph?"

"I think I might, sir. I don't often forget a face that I've waited upon—unless it's no more than a casual drink and out again."

Faunce produced his capacious letter-case, in which there were half-a-dozen cabinet photographs.

He selected one, and showed it to the waiter.

"Was this the man?"

"No, sir, not a bit like him."

Faunce showed him another.

"No, sir."

Faunce took out the other four, and laid them on the table. The waiter's square forefinger alighted instantly on Colonel Rannock's photograph.

"That was the man, sir."

"Good! Now I want you to tell me anything you can remember about this gentleman and the lady who was with him. Take your time. I shall be here all the evening."

"There's not much to tell, sir, except the odd thing of his not coming back to the hotel. You see, sir, it's in this way. He and she comes in after eight o'clock. He gives me his bag, and tells me to order his room for him, and he orders dinner, anythink on the premises, as quick as possible, in a private room. I offers him the cartdurving, and he orders a bottle of Wachter, and they has their dinner cosy and quiet, all to theirselves. I can see as she is upset about something, and I gather that he's starting for New York next day, and that he's going to Klondyke. He sends me out of the room when the dishes are on the table, and I gather that they want to talk—but in taking in the tart—which they don't touch—and the cheese, I hear her persuade him to go for a turn by the water after dinner. He doesn't seem to want to go, but she presses it, saying as she has a splitting head, and thinks the night air will do her good. She looks pretty bad, as white as chalk, and her eyelids red with crying."

"Well, they went out together, I suppose?"

"Yes, they has their coffee and their liqueur—she has two goes—and then they go out. It must have been near eleven, for they sat a long time over their dinner, and the night was pitch dark. If they was strangers they might have walked into the water as easy as walk beside it; but whatever they did, that's the last we ever see of 'em, and my master was out of pocket for two dinners and a bottle of champagne; but there's the crocodile bag, and even if it's full of brickbats, it's worth three or four sovereigns to anybody as a bag; and if the gent don't turn up at the end of the year we shall put in an advertisement that, if not claimed, it will be sold to pay expenses."

"Did it never strike you that the gentleman might have met with foul play?"

"Well, no! There was her, you see. Two of 'em could hardly have got made away with and nobody hear of it. I expect he was running away with somebody else's wife, or some other rum start, and they went off to Jersey by the steamer that starts at midnight."

"And you've never given the matter a thought since that night, I suppose?"

"Well, sir, it wasn't my business to think about it. I ain't in the detective line, thank God."

Faunce smoked the cigar of thoughtfulness by the coffee-room fire, went to bed at ten o'clock, and was out after an early breakfast next morning, strolling by the water between all that is left of the old city wall and the West Station. The tide was in, and the wavelets plashed gaily against the low parapet, and Faunce saw how by a false step in the darkness any one might drop into eight or nine feet of water. But then there was the medical evidence of that smashing blow on the skull. Nor could any theory of accidental drowning account for the finding of the body four miles away, battened down under a rotten boat.

Faunce spent the rest of his morning in desultory conversation with three or four men who let out boats for hire, in whose ways and customs he showed a keen interest, wanting to know the how, when, and where of their letting, and if ever they lost a boat. He discovered one case—happening late in the previous March—of a man who had had a narrow escape of losing a handsome skiff, which had been taken "off" him one afternoon by a stranger, and which had been found adrift next morning near the West Station, and never a sixpence of the day's hire did he get from that swindling rascal.

Faunce tested the boatman's memory by close questioning about the stranger's personal appearance, and with some difficulty arrived at certain broad characteristics which had impressed the man at the time of the hiring.

"There was not many people wanting boats so early in the year," he said; "but this one told me as he had a niece living at Hythe, and wanted to give her an afternoon on the water. 'It may be dark when I brings back your boat,' he says, 'but I'm an old salt, and you needn't be afraid I shall damage her.' He was a big, powerful-looking chap, and he had something of a seaman's look, so I trusted him—and that's how he tret me," concluded the boatman, resentfully.

"If you can find me the precise date of that hiring, I'll give you a sovereign for it," said Faunce.

Thus stimulated, the boatman knew he could find the date. He had a rough-and-ready ledger in which he entered most hirings, and cash received—and he had certainly noted down the loss of a day, and the way he'd been swindled.

Faunce went home with him to a queer little slum between the river and the bar gate, and did not leave him till he had a copy of the man's entry in his pocket-book.

"I may want your evidence next assizes," he said; "but if I do, you'll be paid for your time."

"Thank 'ee, sir. I knew that bloke was a bad 'un."

These were all the answers to his questions that Faunce could find in Southampton. He went back to town that afternoon, and he spent a rollicking evening at the Battersea Gamecock, in the company of Mr. Bolisco and a little knot of his admirers, of whom some were "bookies," and others, members of the pugilists' noble profession. The evening's talk was mostly of the Turf and the prize-ring, and it furnished Faunce with no direct answers to his questions; but it enabled him to turn the full light of his psychological science upon Bolisco's character and temperament.

"A wild beast on two legs," was Faunce's summing up of the pugilist, as he strolled away from the sporting tavern.

He was closeted for an hour next morning with the landlord of the Gamecock, from whom he received more than one direct answer to his questions.

First, as to the link between Kate Delmaine, alias Prodgers, and Jim Bolisco?

Mr. Lodway, the present landlord, had been barman when Bill Prodgers had the Gamecock, and he remembered Kitty Prodgers running about, fifteen years old, a rough-headed girl in a pinafore; but always a beauty, and always with a devil of a temper. She was an only child, and motherless. Nobody knew anything about her mother, who had died before Prodgers took the Gamecock. The girl and her father used to quarrel, and Bolisco, who lodged in the house off and on, used to stick up for her, and Prodgers and he sometimes came to blows.

"And this," concluded Mr. Lodway, "was the beginning of their walking about together."

"They were sweethearts then, Kate and Bolisco?"

"Well, they kind of kep' company, though she was such a kid that nobody thought it was going to lead to anything. Bolisco was a good-looking chap then, before he got his smeller smashed in the mill with the Hammersmith nigger. They kep' company for a year or two, off and on, for it wasn't in Kate to go on long with anybody without quarrelling; and then, after one of her rows with her father, she walks off and gets herself engaged at the Spectacular Theatre, straight off. She was such a clipper at seventeen that she had but to show herself to a manager to get took on. He'd have engaged forty such, I reckon, at the same price. The father was drinking as much as he knew how by that time, and things were going to the bad here, and he took no more trouble about the girl than if she'd been a strayed kitten: but me and one or two more went after her, and found her in decent lodgings in Katherine Street, and as straight as a die. But six months after that she had her house in St. John's Wood, and her brougham, as smart as a duchess; and the mug who was paying the piper was one of Bolisco's patrons, a Yorkshire bart, very young, and as green as a spring cabbage."

"And Bolisco was still hanging about her?"

"Lord! yes; he wasn't likely to lose sight of her while she had the spending of that young softy's rhino."

"Mr. Bolisco is a bit of a spendthrift, I take it."

"Above a bit. Never could keep his money long, and yet never was guilty of a generous action, as I know of. It's all gone backing wrong 'uns—sometimes horses, sometimes pugilists. Of course, he's had the straight tip now and again, and has pulled off a good thing; but as a rule, Bolisco ain't lucky. Why, to my certain knowledge he had four hundred pound spare cash less than a year ago—won it over the City and Suburban—and I don't believe he's got a tanner except what she gives him."

"Meaning Mrs. Randall?"

"Just so! And he owes me nine weeks' board and lodging. I shouldn't take it as quiet as I do, if he wasn't a bit of a draw. The young 'uns like to see him and hear him talk."

"And he sets a good example in the way of hard drinking?"

"Oh, I don't encourage any man to drink more than he can stand. But as long as he can carry his liquor like a gentleman——"

"You don't put the skid on. But how did you come to know of this money of Bolisco's, last March?"

"I didn't say anythink about March."

"No, but it was about March—or April last year, that Bolisco was flush, wasn't it?"

"It was after Epsom Spring; and that was near the end of April."

"True. Did he show you the cash?"

"He brought the notes to me to get changed for him—four fifties and two hundreds. He'd been paid short, and he wanted tenners and fivers. I paid the two hundreds to my brewer, and gave Bolisco my cheque for the lot, on the London and Provincial, Battersea Branch."

"Did you keep the numbers of the notes?"

"Not me. I got the collector's receipt for the money, and that was good enough for me. I paid the four fifties into my account at the L. and P."

"You hadn't often known Bolisco as flush as that?"

"Well, perhaps not. He's often been able to flourish a tenner, or a twenty-pun' note, after a race; but he didn't use to deal in fifties and hundreds. 'Why, Jim,' says I, 'you've been getting out of your depth.' 'Why, yes, mate,' says he, 'may be I've been a bit out of my depth.'"

CHAPTER XVII.

"All of us sinful, all with need of grace, All chary of our life,—the minute more Or minute less of grace which saves a soul,— Bound to make common cause with who craves time, We yet protest against the exorbitance Of sin in this one sinner, and demand That his poor sole remaining piece of time Be plucked from out his clutch: put him to death! Punish him now! As for the weal or woe Hereafter, God grant mercy! Man be just, Nor let the felon boast he went scot-free!"

The sky was dull and leaden, and there was a fine rain falling—the kind of rain that means to stay—when Faunce bent his footsteps from Sloane Square to Selburne Street, Chelsea.

"The kind of atmosphere that slackens fiddle-strings and women's nerves," thought Faunce. "I shall find her in the doldrums."

"Well, Betsy, how's your first floor to-day?" he asked, when the little servant opened the door.

"Oh, she's in one of her nasty tempers—just because the sittin'-room chimley smoked all the mornin'—and she's that low! But you'll cheer 'er hup, I dessay."

"I don't know about that, Betsy," said Mr. Faunce, who did not feel himself the harbinger of joy.

"Come in, can't you?" Mrs. Randall said peevishly, when he knocked at the door.

She was crouching over the fire, in a room that was grey with smoke, and she was wearing a terrible garment of soiled and crumpled plush, with a ragged bead trimming—a garment she called her tea-gown, but which on her "low" days was breakfast, tea, and dinner gown, and sometimes served also as bed-gown, when the morphia needle had been freely used, and she flung herself upon her bed in a casual way, to dream through the long night.

"Oh, it's you!" she said. "Come and sit down, if you can breathe in this stifling hole. That beast of a chimney left off smoking an hour ago, but I can't get the smoke out of the room, though I had the winder open till I got the shivers. Well, what's your news?" she asked carelessly, by way of starting the conversation.

"Bad," he answered, in a grave voice. "Very bad. I have just come from Southampton."

It was nearly four o'clock, and the London light was waning, but it was light enough for him to see the livid change in her customary pallor.

"Well, old chap, and what may you have been doing there?" she asked, with an attempt at sprightliness. "Been to see your sweetheart, or to offer yourself for M.P. at the next vacancy?"

"I have been looking for a murdered man," he said.

Her eyes fixed themselves on his face in wondering horror.

"That ain't a very lively sort of occupation," she said, after a pause, still keeping up that assumption of gay indifference. "I hope the party wasn't a near relation."

"No; he was not of my blood, nor of yours; but he was bound to you by every link that should make a man's life sacred. He was bound to you body and soul, and you helped to murder him."

"Oh, my God!" she cried; "oh, my God! Man alive, don't talk to me like that. Take the poker and smash my head open; but don't talk like that!"

"I must. I pity you, but I can't spare you. It is my trade to drag secret crimes into the light of day."

"You're a detective," she cried. "Oh, you paltry cad, you hypocrite, you coward, to come hanging about me and pretending to be my friend."

"I'll be the best friend you ever had, if you'll give me the chance. Come now, Mrs. Randall; your life's been a misery to you ever since that night by Southampton Water."

Her terrified gaze widened as he spoke. She looked at him as if a spirit of supernatural omniscience, a Nemesis in human form, were before her.

"If this bad business had never come to light, if nobody had ever come to know how Colonel Rannock was murdered, if Bolisco had never been brought to book——"

She started at the name, but the Medusa face remained unchanged.

"How much would your life have been worth to you? Could you have ever been a happy woman?"

"No, no, no," she wailed, "never again! I loved him! He was the only man I ever loved. I used him badly enough, God knows; but he was the only one, the only one. Poor old Tony was a good sort, and I made a fool of him and helped him to ruin himself, and I was sorry when he went off in a decline. Poor chap! He just chucked his life away. Too much fizz, and too much card-playing and late hours. Poor old Tony. He was only six and twenty when the doctors gave him over."

"But Rannock was the favourite," said Faunce.

"Yes, Dick was my one true love—the handsomest, the cleverest, the bravest, and always the gentleman—always the gentleman," she repeated, sobbing, "though I don't mean to say he was straight at cards. He had to get his money somehow, poor fellow."

"You loved him, and you lured him to his death. You told Bolisco where he was going, and that he was carrying his money with him, in bank-notes."

"My God, yes! I told him. I was always a blabbing fool."

"You wrote the letter that took him to the shambles, and you stood by and saw the blow struck."

"Great God! Do you think I knew what was coming? Do you think I'm a fiend from hell dressed up like a woman?" she cried, with wildest vehemence. "I wrote the letter—I was told to, and I had to obey. I asked him to meet me at Southampton. Jim said if he could see Rannock before he left England he could get a few pounds out of him for old sake's sake; and Jim was as near beggary as a sporting man with a few old friends left can be. I never thought he meant harm. Dick and he had been friendly in the old days in the Abbey Road, and it seemed likely enough that Dick would give him a helping hand. I didn't want to write that letter, mind you, but I was bullied into doing it. You don't know what Bolisco is."

"Yes, I do. I know he's a cold-blooded murderer, and that while you and Rannock were walking by the water, Bolisco crept up behind you and struck him on the back of his head with a life-preserver—a blow that fractured his skull."

"Did any one see?" she gasped. "Oh, God, I've heard the dip of the oars as the boat crept up to the wall—I've heard it all through the night sometimes, in a dog's sleep—dip—dip—dip—and then a step on the pavement behind us, and then a crash, and the dull thud when Rannock fell. And I've sat by this fire in the half-light, as we're sitting now, and I've seen him lying on the ground, and Bolisco kneeling by his side emptying his pockets—note-case, watch, tie-pin, pulling off his rings, tearing out his shirt-studs and links, as quick as lightning—and then making me help to drag him to the boat. And I fancy I am standing alone by the river, in the darkness, hearing the dip of the oars fainter and fainter in the distance. It was like a horrible dream then; and it has been a horrible dream to me ever since, a dream that I dream over and over again, and shall go on dreaming till I die."

Her voice rose to a shriek. Faunce saw the fit of hysteria coming, and snatched the morphia bottle and the morphia needle from the table where his observant eye had marked them in his first survey of the room, the practice of his profession having taught him that the first thing to do on entering a room was to make a mental inventory of every object in it.

He held Mrs. Randall's wrist, and gave her a strong dose of her favourite sedative.

"My poor friend, you have been hardly used," he said. "But your duty lies straight before you. As an accessory after the fact, the law will deal lightly with you, and you will have every one's pity. You must turn Queen's evidence, and help us to punish Colonel Rannock's murderer."

"That I'll never do!" she said emphatically.

"Oh, but surely, if you loved this man, you must want to avenge his murder. Think what a cruel murder it was! A strong man struck down in the prime of life. Think of that unburied corpse, lying hidden on the solitary shore, the waters rolling over it as the tide rose and fell—unknown, unhonoured. If you loved him, you must want to avenge his murder."

"I ain't going to peach upon Jim Bolisco," she said doggedly. "And if I was capable of it, my evidence would be no good."

"Why not?" asked Faunce, startled.

"Because he's my husband; and a wife can't give away her husband. That's law, ain't it, Faunce?"

"Your husband? Is that true?"

"Gospel truth. We were married at Battersea Church when I was just turned seventeen. I didn't care for him, and he's been a log round my neck ever since. But he was in luck just then, and he used to give me presents—bits of jewellery, and smart hats, and such-like—and he was the first as ever took notice of me and told me I was handsome. And he said he should take a cottage at Wandsworth, with a bit of garden, and I was to be missus, and have a girl to wait upon me. But his luck turned soon after our wedding—which was on the strict q.t.—and he never took that cottage, and we never told father or anybody else. Jim said our marriage was just a bit of a lark, and we'd best forget it; but when I had a fine house and was flush of money, and might have been Lady Withernsea for good and all, but for him, he didn't forget it. I know what blackmail means, Mr. Faunce. I have been paying it ever since I was eighteen. I had to find money for Bolisco when he wanted it, for he swore he'd claim me as his wife if I didn't. I've had what's-his-name's sword hanging over my head all these years, and I got to hate the man worse every year; and now I hate him—I hate him,—I hate him with every drop of blood in my veins! I turn cold when I hear his step on the stair. I never look at him without remembering that night, and my poor Dick lying on the ground, and Bolisco's wicked hands tearing open his coat and searching his pockets, like a wild beast mauling its prey."

"And you want to see him suffer for that brutal murder, don't you?"

"No; I want nothing but to have done with it all. Just to be out of it, that's what I want. Do you think if they were to hang Bolisco, it would set my mind at rest, or make me forget what a shrew I was to poor old Dick, and how he forgave me, and came back to me after I'd treated him so bad, and how I wrote the letter that lured him to his death? What do I care what becomes of Bolisco? Let him murder somebody else, and get nabbed for that. I don't care. Nothing will stop my bad dreams, till I fall asleep for the last time: and then, who knows? There may be bad dreams underground as well as above; or one long dream of hell-fire and worms that gnaw."

"Come, come, Mrs. Randall, you mustn't despair," Faunce said kindly.

He was sorry for her, and yet what comfort could he offer? He looked at her in her ruined beauty, and thought of her life, and the two men whose lives she had spoilt. She had sown the wind, and she was reaping the whirlwind, and he saw no hope for her in the black future.

What was he to do? He had come to her prepared to make his coup d'état, having calculated that he could startle her into a revelation of the murder, in which he believed her to have been an unwilling accessory. He had succeeded, but his success was worth nothing if this one all-important witness could not be heard.

He drove to Scotland Yard, put the facts of the case before the assistant-commissioner, and Bolisco was arrested late that night at the Game Cock, on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Colonel Richard Rannock. The evidence against him, excluding Kate Delmaine's confession, was weak, but there was no time to lose, as she was likely to warn him of his danger.

If the numbers of the notes he had changed could be identified with Chater's list, there would be strong presumptive evidence against him, and other facts might come to light on inquiry to strengthen the chain of circumstance. Faunce relinquished the case to the Public Prosecutor. It had passed beyond the region of private interests. A murder so atrocious concerned the world at large, and the conviction of the murderer was a matter of public importance.

One most painful duty Faunce had to perform, and he set about it with a heavy heart. He had to tell Mrs. Rannock the story of her son's death. Soften the details as he might, it was a terrible story to tell, and he decided that it would be better for her son-in-law to be the bearer of these dismal tidings.

He called on Major Towgood, whom he found in a small house nearer Vauxhall Bridge than Eccleston Square, but by courtesy in Belgravia. The Major received him in a little den darkened by a monster pile of red brick flats, which he called the library.

"Well, Faunce, any news of the prodigal son?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bad news?"

"Very bad news, sir. I came to you in order that you might break it to Mrs. Rannock."

"It will have to stand over, Faunce. Mrs. Rannock is very ill. I may say she is dangerously ill."

"Indeed, sir? That's sudden, for it's only four days since I received her instructions, and she then appeared in fair health, considering her age."

"Yes, she was a wonder for her age, but always delicate—a bit of porcelain that ought to have been behind glass in a cabinet. And she was eaten up by anxiety about Rannock. She took a chill, coming round here to see my wife, who is laid up, the evening after you saw her, and it developed into influenza, or congestion of the lungs—God knows what! The doctors only tell me she is old, and that her life hangs by a thread; but I'm afraid we shall lose her, Faunce."

"If that sweet old lady dies without hearing what I have to tell her, I think those who love her best will have cause to thank God, sir; for I believe my story would kill her."

"Is it as bad as that?"

"It couldn't be worse, sir."

Faunce related his discoveries, and Major Towgood agreed that at all cost the truth must be kept from the murdered man's mother. In her intervals of consciousness she had repeatedly asked about Faunce and the progress of his inquiry. And there had been hours of delirium in which she thought the fondly-loved son was at her bedside. She had taken a strange doctor for him, and had talked to him as to her son.

No, she must not know while the knowledge could possibly be kept from her. But should she recover, and leave her room, the newspapers would tell her of Bolisco's arrest, and the inquiry before the magistrate at Southampton, where he was to be taken on the following day. And it would not be possible to keep the newspapers from her. For her to recover, and know her son's tragic fate, would mean a broken heart that death alone could cure.

"Perhaps you're right, Faunce. Even my wife would hardly wish the dear old lady to struggle back to life to suffer such a crushing blow. Poor Dick! We always knew that woman would be his ruin. His sin has found him out."

The Rannock murder was the cause célèbre of the next few months. The inquiry before the Southampton magistrate was adjourned from week to week, and the case against James Bolisco gradually developed, till the chain of evidence became as strong as circumstantial evidence well can be. The numbers of the notes paid to the Wandsworth brewer by the landlord of the Game Cock were traced, and proved identical with the numbers in Chater's list. Bolisco was sworn to by the boatman as the man who hired his boat on the date of Colonel Rannock's journey to Southampton, and whom he never saw after the hiring. Bolisco was also identified by the landlord of a humble little inn on the road between Redbridge and Southampton, as having come to his house after midnight, on that same date, in a strange condition, his boots and trousers smothered in river mud, and one of his hands torn and bleeding. He had hurt it with a hammer, he said. He ate a heavy supper, drank half a bottle of brandy, paid his bill before he went to bed, and left next morning before anybody in the house was astir.

Another link in the chain was a life-preserver which a Redbridge boy had picked up in a lane leading from the river to the village street, and on which were found minute splinters of bone, and tufts of human hair, adhering to the heavy leaden knob. Chater pronounced the hair to be of the colour and texture of his master's, while the surgeon, who had given his evidence before the coroner, considered this formidable weapon the kind of instrument calculated to cause the fracture he had described at the inquest.

The victim's watch and tie pin, a valuable ruby, had been pawned by the murderer late in the year, and a West-end pawnbroker swore to Bolisco as the man from whom he received them. Watch and pin were identified by Major Towgood.

Bolisco had carried out his design with a kind of brutal carelessness of consequences which might have seemed more natural in one of Nero's gladiators, a half-tamed savage from Dalmatian forests, than in a son of the London streets. He had presumed upon the consciousness of brute force, and when the inquest was over, and his victim's identity unsuspected, he had considered himself safe for life. He stared at the witnesses in a blank surprise, as one fact after another was marshalled against him, and stood with bent brows, in a sullen apathy, at the end of the proceedings, when he heard himself committed for trial at the next assizes.

In the dock at Winchester, and in the condemned cell at Newgate, he had time to reflect upon his mistakes, and to think how he might have done the thing better.

That was James Bolisco's repentance.

Mrs. Rannock did not live to know of her son's ghastly fate. Her frail life ended peacefully before Faunce's discovery was a week old. Her last breath expired in words of love, her last movement was a feeble motion of her hand towards the beloved figure which her fancy had conjured out of thin air, the figure of her son, standing by her bedside, as she had seen him again and again in delirious dreams.

Faunce did all that compassionate kindness could do for Bolisco's wretched wife. The impression of her letter in the blotting-book had been one of the links in the chain of circumstance, for, taken in conjunction with Chater's evidence, it showed why Rannock had gone to Southampton the day before the American steamer started. Her position as Bolisco's wife made her impossible as a witness; but her letter was evidence, and her relations with the murderer became as notorious as every other detail in the story of the crime.

"It can't hurt me," she told Faunce, the night after the death sentence at Winchester. "I'm past hurting. Bolisco's better out of the world, for he'd never stop doing harm as long as he was in it—and the sooner I follow him the better for me."

Faunce proved a kind friend to the unhappy woman whose days and nights were haunted by the image of her murdered lover. Broken in spirits, all the evil ways of her dissipated youth wreaking their revenge upon health and beauty, the physician to whom Faunce took her pronounced her doom. The hand of death was upon her. It was only a question of time.

"If she stays in London she will hardly last through the winter," he told Faunce. "I should recommend Bournemouth or Ventnor—Ventnor for choice. And she may rub along through next summer. But you must stop the morphia habit."

"I'll do what I can," said Faunce; "but I am a busy man. She is not of my kith and kin. Only I don't want her to die like a dog without a friend near her."

"She has been a very beautiful woman," said the doctor pityingly. "One must be sorry for such a life thrown away."

Faunce engaged Betsy, the good-natured lodging-house drudge, to take care of Mrs. Randall, and took them to cottage lodgings at Ventnor, not far from the Consumption Hospital; and in that lovely spot, facing the blue water, Kate Delmaine lived through the summer and autumn after Bolisco's execution. Faunce looking in at the cottage now and then—a flying visitor from Portsmouth or Southampton—to see that she was being properly cared for.

He had found her almost penniless in her Chelsea lodgings after the trial at Winchester, her last five-pound note having been sent to the lawyer who had undertaken Bolisco's defence. It was Lady Perivale's generous gift upon which he was now drawing for Kate Delmaine's comfort.

"After all I owe it to her that I was able to pull the business through so easily," he told himself, "and it's only fair that she should profit by my client's liberality."

The end came when November mists were rolling up the Channel, and the late roses were beginning to droop in the cottage garden. The end came peacefully, and not without the consolations of religion, for Mrs. Randall's landlady was a good Church-woman, and in touch with her parish priest, who was kindly and sympathetic, and able to understand a broken heart, even in a difficult subject, like this woman, whose life had been a stranger to all good influences.

"You've been a fast friend to me, Faunce," she said, when she was dying, and he had been summoned hastily for the last farewell; "and if I'd known a hard-headed, kind-hearted chap like you ten years ago I might have been a better woman. Well, I had my fling. There's not many women have had more of their own way or been more looked up to than I was in poor old Tony's time: there's not many women that ever had a truer lover than Dick Rannock, with all his faults. He couldn't keep straight with the cards," she murmured, beginning to wander; "but he was every inch a gentleman. Christ have mercy on his soul!"

EPILOGUE.

Grace Haldane To Susan Rodney.

"Villa Rienzi, Rome, April 15.

"You ask me, dear Sue, when I am going back to Grosvenor Square. If I were guided by my feelings at this present hour I should reply 'Never!' But feelings and inclinations may change, and my present distaste for London society and disgust at the thought of my London acquaintance may give way to the whim of the moment, and a sudden fancy for art, or music, or drama, which only London can give.

"I hope I am not a vindictive woman, but I own that I can never again take pleasure in the society of the people who so cruelly wronged me, the so-called friends who were willing to believe in misconduct that should have seemed impossible to any one who knew me; and who were not brave and honest enough to come to me and discover the truth from my own lips.

"The tragedy of Colonel Rannock's death has impressed me deeply. It is appalling to think of that energetic spirit, that soul of fire, quenched in a moment by a murderer's hand—of the man once so admired and beloved lying unknown and unwept in that solitary spot where the waters rose and fell over his unhallowed grave.

"I can but remember his talents, his charm of manner, and the days when I was perhaps nearer loving him than I suspected at the time. Thank God for that better and truer lover who came to my rescue, and who had but to enter the circle of my life to influence it for ever. Had I never known Arthur Haldane I might have married Colonel Rannock, and my fate might have been wretched, for I believe the only attraction I ever had for him, over and above my fortune, was my likeness to that other woman, his bad angel.

"No, Sue, I am not going to bury myself alive, as you suggest. We have a host of friends in this enchanting cosmopolitan city—Italians, Americans, English, French, Germans, Russians, choice spirits whose love of art and beauty has brought them here, and whose pleasures take a higher range than expensive dinners at newly-opened restaurants, and occasional contact with Royal personages.

"Arthur and I are utterly happy here. The atmosphere suits his work, and puts me in good spirits. We have found a delicious villa at Tivoli, where we shall retire towards the end of May, and where our days and nights will be spent in a garden of roses and lilies, with a fountain that makes music all day long. In the mean time this city furnishes inexhaustible pleasures and interests, and life is so vivid and joyous that I feel as if I only began to live when I came here.

"Of my husband I need not write, for I think you know all that he is to me; and in August, when we go to our place on the Scottish Border, which I used not to like, but which Arthur says he shall adore, I hope my dear old Sue will break away from troublesome suburban pupils and come to us for a long visit. By that time Arthur's new novel will be in the Press, and by that time, if all go well, there will be a young life in our home which will give new joys to our lives.

"Ever your loving friend, "Grace Haldane.

"P.S.—Pray never again address me as 'Lady Perivale.' I hate that semi-detached style. I am Mrs. Arthur Haldane, and am proud to bear my husband's name."

The Author's Autograph Edition.

Cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. Picture Boards, 2s.

1. LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET. 2. HENRY DUNBAR. 3. ELEANOR'S VICTORY. 4. AURORA FLOYD. 5. JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 6. THE DOCTOR'S WIFE. 7. ONLY A CLOD. 8. SIR JASPER'S TENANT. 9. TRAIL OF THE SERPENT. 10. THE LADY'S MILE. 11. LADY LISLE. 12. CAPTAIN OF THE VULTURE. 13. BIRDS OF PREY. 14. CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE. 15. RUPERT GODWIN. 16. RUN TO EARTH. 17. DEAD SEA FRUIT. 18. RALPH THE BAILIFF. 19. FENTON'S QUEST. 20. LOVELS OF ARDEN. 21. ROBERT AINSLEIGH. 22. TO THE BITTER END. 23. MILLY DARRELL. 24. STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 25. LUCIUS DAVOREN. 26. TAKEN AT THE FLOOD. 27. LOST FOR LOVE. 28. A STRANGE WORLD. 29. HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE. 30. DEAD MEN'S SHOES. 31. JOSHUA HAGGARD. 32. WEAVERS AND WEFT. 33. AN OPEN VERDICT. 34. VIXEN. 35. THE CLOVEN FOOT. 36. THE STORY OF BARBARA. 37. JUST AS I AM. 38. ASPHODEL. 39. MOUNT ROYAL. 40. THE GOLDEN CALF. 41. PHANTOM FORTUNE. 42. FLOWER AND WEED. 43. ISHMAEL. 44. WYLLARD'S WEIRD. 45. UNDER THE RED FLAG. 46. ONE THING NEEDFUL. 47. MOHAWKS. 48. LIKE AND UNLIKE. 49. THE FATAL THREE. 50. THE DAY WILL COME. 51. ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE. 52. GERARD. 53. THE VENETIANS. 54. ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 55. THOU ART THE MAN. 56. SONS OF FIRE. AND

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