Juliette D’Avray had a small sitting-room of her own in the Carpentaria bungalow. It was on the first floor, and it looked west, whereas Carpentaria’s study and bedroom both looked north, on the avenue. Three days after the affair of the black box, Carpentaria ran hastily up the stairs of his house and touched the knob of the door of Juliette’s sitting-room, and then he drew back his hand, nervous and hesitant. He was evidently perturbed, and he pulled his fine beard in a series of quick twitches, and then he rapped smartly on the door and coughed.

“Juliette!” he cried. He was very much surprised to discover that he had not got complete control of his voice. It broke in the middle of his half-sister’s name. “I must do better than this,” he thought, trying to command himself.

There was a pause.

“Juliette!” he cried again, more firmly.

The word was scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened wide, and Juliette stood before him. They gazed at each other for a fraction of a second, as if inimically.

“Why don’t you come in, Carlos?” she murmured softly, and her eyes fell, “instead of knocking and making such a noise. What’s the matter?”

Carpentaria was certainly astonished at the nature and tone of her remark. She seemed to wish to run away. Then he gathered himself together, with an immense show of force, as a man will when confronted by a woman who is helpless before him, but of whom he is afraid.

“I don’t want to come in,” he said.

“Why?” she demanded.

“You know why,” he said.

“Indeed I don’t,” she asserted; and she laughed—a curt laugh.

“You promised me you wouldn’t see Ilam again at present,” said Carpentaria stoutly.

Juliette tossed ever so little her charming head, with its admirable coiffure.

“I did,” she admitted.

“Well,” said Carpentaria, “he is at this moment in the sitting-room.”

Juliette’s dainty nostrils began to dilate.

“Carlos,” she said disdainfully, “do you know what you are saying? To me! Mr. Ilam is not here. I have already asked you to come in!”

“Yes,” said Carpentaria, “but you don’t make way for me. You keep well in the doorway, Juliette!”

She moved aside with a gesture of the finest feminine scorn.

“Is there space for you to enter?” she said, bitterly sarcastic.

Carpentaria stepped forward one pace. His foot was on the door-mat.

“Stop a moment, Carlos,” she said warningly, lifting her arm. “I repeat that Mr. Ilam is not here. I cannot imagine what put the idea into your head. But whatever put it in, let me advise you to put it out again at once. Under the circumstances, if you come into this room, now that I have distinctly told you that Mr. Ilam is not here, it will be equivalent to calling me a liar. I could not suffer that, even from you, Carlos. I should leave you. We should quarrel for ever. Think what you are doing.”

Tears stood in her eyes.

Carpentaria shuffled his feet in an agony of uncertainty.

“Come in if you doubt me,” Juliette continued. “But if you do, it will be the end.”

Carpentaria turned slowly away, and passed down the corridor.

“Of course I don’t doubt you,” he called out.

Juliette made no response. She waited till her half-brother had descended the stairs, then she shut the door quietly, and ran to the Louis Quinze sofa, with its gilded borders, that stood a little way from the window.

“You can come out,” she whispered.

And from behind the sofa emerged the bulky form of Josephus Ilam.

“Great heavens!” he muttered, searching in his pocket for a handkerchief.

Juliette sat down on a chair and burst into tears. The contrast between their two handkerchiefs—Ham’s enormous, like himself, and Juliette’s a fragment of lace no larger than a piece of bread-and-butter—was one of those trifles which put an edge of the comical on the tragic stuff of life.

“You are an astounding woman!” exclaimed Ilam, wiping his brow.

“I have lied to him—I have deceived him. You heard what I said?” whimpered Juliette.

“You behaved superbly,” said Ilam.

“I behaved shamefully,” said the woman. “But I did it for you!”

And she looked at him over her handkerchief, with wet eyelashes.

Ilam would have gone through unutterable torture for her in that moment. It was a highly strange thing—this late coming of love into the existence of Josephus Ilam. It transformed him. It made him feel that, at fifty, he was only just beginning to grasp the meaning of life. It made him see that hitherto his days and his years had been wasted on vain things, and that the only commodity really worth having in this world was such a look as Juliette gave him out of her impassioned eyes. He could not understand what so bewitching and lively a woman as Juliette could see in a heavy, gloomy fellow like him. For the matter of that, probably no other person, save only Juliette, could understand that mystery. But then, when a woman loves a man, she sees him in a radiance shed from her own soul, and it changes him.

“My poor friend,” said Juliette, composing herself, “why do you put me in such an awkward position, coming upstairs like this, and in the middle of the day, too? You must have bribed one of the servants.”

“I did,” said Ilam.

“Well, don’t tell me which,” Juliette put in quickly.

He bent down and kissed her. Yes, this heavy and rather creaky person, who had laughed at love for several decades, bent down and kissed a pretty woman sitting on a Louis Quinze sofa; moreover, he put his arms round her. He did it clumsily, of course, but Juliette did not think so.

“I was obliged to see you,” he told her. “I couldn’t go without seeing you. Why have you so persistently kept out of my way? You were so kind that morning—when Carpentaria surprised you. Has he been bullying you?”

“Ah!” exclaimed Juliette, suddenly excited. “I cannot tell you what he said to me. You know I love him best in the world—next to—you. But he said such things to me—such things!”

“He said—oh, my dearest!—he said his life was not safe—he said no one’s life was safe in this City—he said he had been shot at in the bandstand; and, you know, that business of the milk was dreadful. The strange thing is that Carlos won’t consult the police about it.”

“But how does this affect us—affect you and me?” demanded Ilam bravely.

“Dearest,” said Juliette, “poor Carlos thinks—he actually thinks——”

“That I am trying to kill him?”

“He thinks you have something to do with it.”

“But why? Why should I want to kill your brother—your brother?”

“Yes, indeed!” agreed Juliette. “And why should you want to kill anybody’s brother?” she added.

“Of course,” he said hastily. “Why should I want to kill any person at all?”

“Carlos says that he is not the only person you have tried to kill.”

“Ha! And who is the other? Give me the full catalogue.”

“I don’t know. He says you have buried a man in the grounds, and that he saw you do it.”

“Juliette!” Ilam stepped backwards. Then he stopped. “Juliette,” he repeated, “I swear to you most solemnly that I have never tried to kill anyone.”

“Dearest, you shouldn’t have said that!” she remonstrated. “You shouldn’t have sworn to me. It is an insult to my love. Do you imagine that I believed Carlos for a single instant? Do you imagine it?”

She looked at him proudly, gloriously.

“How splendid you are!” muttered Josephus Ilam, son of the soda-water manufacturer. The admiration was drawn out of him. He had not guessed that women could be so fine. And then he perceived that he, too, must be splendid, that he must be worthy of her; and so he proceeded: “Nevertheless, it is true that I did bury a man in the grounds a few nights ago.”

The perspiration stood afresh on his brow as he made the confession.

“You!” she murmured.

“I thought he was dead,” said Ilam, speaking quickly. “I thought I should be accused of his murder. And so I—the fact is, I was mad. I was off my head. I must have been. Until yesterday I actually fancied I was being haunted by his ghost. Yes! me! me—thinking a thing like that! But I did; and yesterday I was in that big crush, during the shower, in the Court of the Exposition Palace, and he, too, was in the crowd. I saw him; I touched him; he didn’t see me, thank Heaven! Then I knew that what I had buried was not a corpse.”

“Who is this man?” asked Juliette calmly.

“My angel!” said Ilam, driven to poetry by the stress of his emotion, “you mustn’t inquire; there are some things I can’t tell you—at least, not yet. When we are married, when matters are settled a bit, I will tell you everything, but not now.”

“Why not now?” she persisted.

“Look here,” he said, “if you persist I shall simply go and kill myself.”

She paused.

“My friend,” she resumed, “you do not love me as much as I love you. The measure of love is trust, and you do not trust me completely.”

“I love you in my way,” said Ilam doggedly; “men are not like women.”

“That is true,” she admitted philosophically.

“I would tell you everything if I was free to do so,” he said.

“Dearest”—she addressed him in quite a new tone—“you know something about those attacks on Carlos’ life.”

She spoke with an air of absolute certainty.

“I have had nothing to do with them,” he said.

“But you know something about them.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I can tell from your manner,” she said triumphantly.

“I know nothing for certain, nothing precise,” said Ilam—“nothing that I can tell you—nothing that I dare tell you.”

“Dearest,” she remarked, with a faint acidity, “it seems to me that you have come here to-day in order not to tell me things.”

He deprecated her tone with an appealing gesture.

“I can tell you, at any rate, this,” he said, “that your brother’s life is no longer in danger—of that I am sure.”

“You are atoning,” she smiled.

“Which is more than can be said of my life,” Ilam proceeded, not heeding her smile.

“Your life is in danger?” she questioned, rushing to him as though she would protect him.

Ilam, without a word, led her to the window, from the corner of which a glimpse of the avenue could be caught, and walking to and fro there in the avenue was the Soudanese.

“You see that man?” said Ilam. “It’s the fellow they call ‘Spats’ in the native village. I don’t know why. He is devoted to me; he is fully armed; he follows me everywhere. I have only to blow this whistle”—and Ilam produced a whistle from his pocket.

“Darling”—and Juliette clung to him—“is it so bad as that? Who is it that threatens you?”

“The man that I buried,” said Ilam quietly.

“But what are you going to do?”

“Well,” said Ilam, “I’m come here to see you. We must get your brother on our side.”

“I’ll force him to understand at once,” cried Juliette.

“No,” said Ilam, “perhaps you would fail, as things are, but if you were my wife, you would not fail then. Carpentaria, once the thing was done, would do everything in his power to protect your husband; he likes you well enough for that. He might be angry at first, but he would see reason.”

“Dearest, you want me to marry you secretly?”

“I merely want you to go with me to the registry office at Putney.”

“Is that what you came for?”

“That is what I came for.”

“My love!” she murmured.

Yet, with that cold and penetrating insight which women have, she saw clearly that, though Ilam’s idea of getting Carpentaria’s assistance in a moment of grave danger was doubtless quite serious, it was somewhat fanciful, and that Ilam’s professed reason for their instant marriage was also fanciful, and was not a real reason, but only an excuse. He merely wanted to marry her at once, that was all, and although his life was threatened, he thought little of that. She loved him the more.

“I can make the arrangements pretty quick,” said Ilam. “You will agree, my angel?”

And she nodded, and the compact was sealed. They heard a scurrying in the passages of the house.

“Juliette! Juliette!”

It was Carpentaria’s voice, and other voices mingled with it indistinctly—the voices of the servants. “Yes!” she answered loudly and, whispering to Ilam, “Get out of the window; whistle softly for your Soudanese. You can get on to the roof of the outhouse. He will help you.”

And noiselessly she opened the window, and Ilam, struck by her tremendous resourcefulness, passed out. She heard his low whistle, and then she ran to the door and into the passage.

“The house is on fire,” said Carpentaria, meeting her.

“Is it?” she answered calmly. “Are the firemen come? where’s the fire?”—She sniffed—“Yes,” she said, “I can smell it.”

She was amazingly calm. “No woman with a man concealed in her sitting-room,” said Carpentaria to himself, “could behave so calmly upon being informed that the house was on fire. Her first thought would have been to secure the hidden man’s safety.” And Carpentaria ran downstairs with a great show of activity. He was baffled, disappointed, for he had deliberately set fire to his own house in order to drive Ilam from the sitting-room, where he felt sure Ilam was. And the trick had failed. After all, he had been mistaken. He had been convinced of his sister’s deception, and lo! she had not deceived him. Carpentaria could have killed himself.

Happily the fire was of no importance, and it was extinguished before it had done more than about five pounds’ worth of damage and alarmed more than about five thousand visitors to the City.