Mr. Jetsam, having with an attentive ear heard the vague sound of the shutting of a door, came out a second time from the mysterious attic and descended the stairs. He was a man to omit no precautions, and every door that he passed he locked on the outside, not only on the servants’ floor, but on the first floor. He penetrated then to the ground-floor, and fastened not merely every door, but every window. At last he arrived at the front door.

“It’s a pity to lock her out,” he murmured to himself; “but what can I do? It would be madness to let her assist at the scene I have to go through. She expects to, but I must disappoint her.”

And he noiselessly bolted and locked the front door.

The fact was that Mr. Jetsam’s plans had been slightly deranged. He had hoped to get through his great scene—the scene to which all his efforts had tended—during Rosie’s first absence on the river. He relied on Rosie; he had been amazed at her goodness and her fortitude; he had been still more amazed at his singular influence over her; and he naturally told her a great deal. But he did not tell her quite everything. He feared to frighten her. Hence proceeded one of his reasons for sending her to the boat, with the object of sinking the coffer further in the river as the tide fell. But she had dispatched the business with such extraordinary celerity, and he, on his part, had been so hindered by such an unexpected contretemps, that she was back again before even he had begun.

Thus, he had been obliged to invent a new errand for her, and he flattered himself that he had invented the errand, and dispatched her on it, with a certain histrionic skill—and he had the right so to flatter himself. It desolated him to deceive her, to hoodwink her; but he saw no alternative.

Having secured the house, he ascended again, this time taking less care to maintain an absolute silence, to the first floor. The affair was fully launched now, and no one could interrupt him. If Pauline awoke in her locked bedroom and heard things, so much the worse for her, he reflected. She could not go out on to her balcony because he had seen long ago to the fastening of the window. Therefore she might cry as much as she liked. He laughed as he thought of this, not having the least idea that he had so elaborately fastened the door and the window of an empty room.

He went into Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom with a slight swagger, and shut the door. A fire was burning in the grate. He cast a single glance at the bed and its mute and helpless occupant, and putting his little lantern on the mantelpiece, he walked round the room, inspecting its arrangement and its corners. Then, suddenly remembering his own burglarious exploit of forcing an entrance into the room by the window, he approached the window, flung it wide open and stepped outside on to the balcony. Far across the expanse of the Oriental Gardens, in the moonlight, he discerned a figure vaguely moving in the direction of the river. It was a woman’s figure.

“There she is,” he murmured. “Admirable creature! Why did I not meet such a woman when I was younger?”

Then he came in again, shut and fastened the window, and drew the heavy curtains across it, taking care that no chink was left through which light could be seen. Then he began to whistle softly, and he turned on all the electricity in the apartment; there were a cluster of lamps in the ceiling, and two lights over’ the dressing-table, besides the table-lamps, and his own trifling gleam of a lantern. The room was brilliantly, almost blindingly, lit, and every object stood revealed.

He stepped towards the bed, and deliberately gazed into the eyes of the stricken old woman. Mrs. Ilam’s burning orbs blinked at intervals. Otherwise she gave no sign of volition or of life. Jetsam placed his eyes in the fixed line of her gaze, so that they were obliged to exchange a glance. She appeared to be unconscious of it. Only a scarcely perceptible trÉmulation ran along her arms, which lay stretched, as usual, outside the coverlet, like the arms of a corpse.

“Well,” said Jetsam, “here I am at last, you see. Do you recognize me? I’ve changed, haven’t I, old hag? But you can’t be mistaken in me.”

The pent-up bitterness of a lifetime escaped from him in the tones of his voice. But the old woman showed no symptom that the terrible past was thus revisiting her in its most awful form.

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Jetsam continued. “For over forty years you have been sure that I was dead, and that your crime was one of the thousands of crimes which go unpunished. And look here,” he went on; “if you have any doubt, murderess, as to my identity, look at this. I’ll make you look at it, by heaven!”

He bent down, drew up the trouser of his left leg to the knee, and pushed the sock into his boot, so that the calf of the leg was exposed. On the fleshy part of the calf could be plainly seen a large birth-stain. With the movement of an acrobat he raised that leg over the bed, over the eyes of Mrs. Ilam, and held it there during several seconds. Then he dropped it.

“There!” he exclaimed. “That’s to show you who it is you have to deal with.”

His voice was cruel, icy, and inexorable. He had no pity, no trace of mercy, for the woman who, whatever the enormity of her sins, was entitled to some respect by reason of her extreme age, her absolutely defenceless condition, and her suffering.

“They tell me you can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” he said, “by your eyelids. Blinking means ‘yes,’ and no movement means ‘no.’ I am going to put some questions to you. Did you take the photograph out of the box? Answer.”

Mrs. Ilam closed her eyes and kept them closed.

“What does that mean?” Jetsam grumbled. “Open your eyes again, murderess.”

But Mrs. Ilam did not open her eyes again. She obstinately kept them closed; and she might have been asleep, except that now and then a tear exuded from under the lids.

“I’ll make you open them,” cried Jetsam.

His hand approached the old woman’s eyes, but even his implacable and cruel bitterness recoiled from the coward villainy of touching that stricken and helpless organism. He drew back his hand, and some glimmering sense of the dreadfulness of the scene which he was acting reached his heart. The thought ran through his brain that it was a good thing Rosie had not been present.

“Very well,” he said, “as you like. Only I know that you, or one of you, must have taken that photograph out of the box, and I have every reason to believe that it is in this room. In any case I mean to know very shortly whether it is or not.”

So saying, he went abruptly out of the room, shutting the door, and climbed once more to the attic.

“Jakel” he called quietly.

And a Soudanese, the brother of Ilam’s protector, “Spats,” obediently appeared.

“I am ready,” said Jetsam. “Come, pass in front of me. I will lock the door myself.”

They went together to Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.

“You know how to search, Jake?” Jetsam instructed him. “Everything in this room has to be searched to find a photograph—a photograph, you know—the same sort of thing as this.” And he pointed to a portrait of Josephus Ilam that stood on the mantelpiece.

The Soudanese nodded.

“Begin with the chest of drawers,” he said.

In a quarter of an hour the room was in such a state of havoc as might have resulted from the passage through it of a cyclone. Every drawer in every piece of furniture had been ransacked and emptied. The Soudanese had even climbed on a chair in order to inspect the top of the wardrobe, and had dislodged therefrom a pile of cardboard boxes. Every book had been torn to pieces. Piles of letters lay scattered about. The floor was heaped up with Mrs. Ilam’s private possessions. Chairs were overturned. One or two vases with narrow necks and wide bases had been smashed in order the better to search their interiors. The place was wrecked. But the mysterious photograph which Jetsam wanted had not been discovered. The Soudanese had found dozens of photographs, but not the right one.

The bed of the invalid was alone undisturbed. Among all the ruins of the chamber it remained untouched, white, apparently inviolate, and the old woman’s arms lay ever in the same position, and her eyes, open and blazing now, gazed ever at the same spot in the ceiling.

“I have it!” exclaimed Jetsam suddenly. “The bed—the bed! The box was hidden under the bed, but I got it. The photograph is hidden under the bed, and I will get it.”

He hesitated. Dare he search the bed? Dare he disturb its helpless burden? He wondered. He was ready for anything. He was capable of slaughter, but he wavered and retreated before the idea of searching for the photograph in the place where the box had been.

Then he suddenly decided.

“Take firm hold of the bed itself, not the mattress,” he ordered the Soudanese, “and I will take hold on this side. Be very gentle. Do not disarrange the clothes. We will lift it over the foot of the bedstead and place it on the floor. Carefully now—carefully!”

And with the utmost delicacy the two men lifted the bed bodily and laid it very gently on the floor, and Mrs. Ilam’s gaze was directed to a new point: of the ceiling.

“That will be a change for you,” said Jetsam, with a touch of compunction in his voice. “I was obliged to do it. We’ll put you back presently.”

And he searched thoroughly the mattress and the bedstead, but there was no photograph.

He paused and wiped, his brow. The Soudanese stood at attention by the side of the bed. Jetsam looked at Jake.

“Go and fetch him down,” he said peremptorily to the Soudanese.

And Jake vanished.

“One way or another this shall end,” he murmured, gazing at the old woman in her lowly position among the heaped confusion of the floor; and he waited, eyeing at intervals the door.

At length the door opened, and the Soudanese came in, and he was leading by the hand Josephus Ilam. Jetsam stepped quickly behind them and shut and locked the door.

“Now then, Ilam,” said he, “sit down. Make him sit down, Jake.”

And quite obediently Ilam sat down on a chair, near the night-table. He made no remark; he scarcely looked round; his senses seemed to be dulled; it was as though his mind had retired to some fastness from which it refused to emerge.

“What do you want?” Ilam demanded gloomily. “What have you been doing?”

“I’m going to make one last appeal to you, Ilam,” said Jetsam. “I kidnapped you for this, I may tell you. I was determined to confront the mother and the son if necessity should arise. But you nearly did for me by swallowing too much of that blessed opiate. You are clumsy, even when you are a victim. However, you’ve got over it nicely, haven’t you? Pretty notion, wasn’t it,” he continued, “to conceal you in your own attic, where no one would ever think of looking for you? But it wanted doing, my weighty friend—it wanted doing.”

“What are you after?” Ilam asked again, as if in the grip of one fixed idea. “You’ve got the money—what else do you want?”

“You know perfectly well what I want,” said Jetsam. “My case is complete except for that photograph, and I’ve secured as much money as will keep me on my pins till I’ve forced you to see reason. But the photograph is lacking; you are aware of that. It’s certainly rather hard lines on you that you should be forced to give up the very thing whose possession by me will ruin you. But what would you have? I am desperate, and no one knows better than you and this sad creature here that my cause is just. Tell me where the photograph is.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ilam doggedly.

Jetsam turned to Mrs. Ilam.

“Listen, murderess,” he said, and Ilam shuddered at that word: “if you do not answer my questions I will kill your son before your eyes. Does Ilam know where the photograph is?”

Once again the old woman obstinately shut her eyes and refused to give any indication.

Ilam, who seemed mentally to be quickly regaining his normal state, stood up and moved to the fireplace.

“Stand!” said Jetsam angrily, and he drew his revolver from his pocket. “I will know where that photograph is or I will hang for you. I shall not be the first man who has died in a good cause. Now, where is that photograph? Did you or your mother take it out of the box?”

He lifted the revolver.

“I took it out of the box,” snarled Ilam—“I—I—I—and my mother knew nothing.”

“And where is it?” asked Jetsam, smiling triumphantly.

“It is here,” Ilam cried, and he took a faded photograph from his breast pocket. “You never thought of searching me, eh? Ass!”

“Give it me,” said Jetsam quietly.

“No,” said Ilam; and with a sudden movement he stuck it in the fire.

The flame destroyed it in an instant.

Jetsam sprang towards him, and then fell back as if stunned. Jetsam was beaten, after all. He gave a sort of groan and walked to the other side of the room, as if in a dream. He had failed, and he meant to commit suicide. All his trouble, all his risks, had gone for nothing. He raised the revolver again, and no one in the room quite guessed the tragedy that was preparing for them. His finger was on the trigger.

Immediately behind him was a draught-screen, and the draught-screen began mysteriously to sink forward. It lodged lightly on his shoulders. He turned, the revolver at his temple; and round the screen, from behind it, appeared Rosie.

“Don’t do that,” she said calmly, and she took the revolver out of his unresisting hand.

Jetsam turned round, saw that the person who had so mysteriously interfered was Rosie herself, and sank down on a chair.

“You have done me an evil turn,” he breathed, at the same time with a gesture ordering the Soudanese to leave the room.

“I have saved your life,” she said simply.

“Yes,” he replied, with a trace of bitterness. “That is what I mean. You are not the first who has saved my life. And if the first saviour had refrained we should all have been happier now.”

“Do not say that,” she whispered. “I——”

“You—you would never have met me,” he said curtly.

“I am glad I have met you,” she retorted, bravely facing him.

“Ah!” he sighed. “And yet you play tricks on me! Yet you make promises to me and break them!”

“No, no,” she cried. “I only promised to go to the boat, and I would have gone to the boat afterwards.”

“Why did you not go at once?”

She told him how she had gone by accident into Pauline’s bedroom and found it empty, and how thus all her suspicions were aroused.

“I was afraid your plans might fail,” she said; “and you had threatened to kill yourself if they failed; and I thought something dreadful might happen during my absence. And so—so—I hid myself here—without thinking. I’m so sorry.”

And tears came to her eyes.

“A few minutes ago I might have been seriously perturbed by what you have told me,” said Jetsam. “But what does it matter now? If your sister is against me, if the house is surrounded by spies, it makes no difference. I wanted to kill this man here. I should have killed him; but I thought of the annoyance it would give you. Yes,” he smiled, “I did really. Not to mention the futile trouble it would cause me. And on the whole I regarded it as simpler and neater to kill myself. But you have stopped that. Will you oblige me by putting down that revolver? It is at full cock.”

“You will not touch it?” she demanded.

“I will not touch it,” he replied.

She laid it at the foot of the bed, and then bent down inquiringly to old Mrs. Ilam, who rested with closed eyes.

“She is asleep,” murmured Rosie.

“Through all this?”

“Yes, thank heaven! She sleeps very heavily sometimes. Will you not put the bed back in its place? I do not like to see it here. It is painful, very painful, in spite of all you have told me about her, to see this. She is very old and very helpless.” During the conversation Ilam had remained in a sort of stupor. It was as though the effort of putting the photograph in the fire, and then the shock of Rosie’s sudden appearance, had exhausted the energies which he had managed with difficulty to collect as the results of the narcotic passed away; it was as though the narcotic had resumed its sway over him for a time. But now he came brusquely forward, taking two long steps across the room, and stood between Rosie and Jetsam, and he put his face quite close to Rosie’s face, as an actor does to an actress on the stage.

“Are you this scoundrel’s accomplice?” he asked hoarsely.

“Cousin,” said Rosie, “Mr. Jetsam is not a scoundrel, and I am nobody’s accomplice.”

“He has nearly killed me, and he has robbed me of two thousand five hundred pounds,” pursued Ilam. “If that is not being a scoundrel, what is? Tell me that. You are his accomplice. You came into this house to serve his ends.”

“Indeed, I did not,” protested Rosie, “I came into this house with my sister at your urgent request.”

“Yes,” sneered Ilam. “That is what you made me believe, you chit! You worked it very well; but I know different now.”

“Until I came here I had never seen Mr. Jetsam,” said Rosie.

“You have come to understand each other remarkably well in quite a few days.”

“Perhaps we have,” admitted the girl. “But if you object you have a simple remedy.”

“What is that?”

“You say he is a thief and almost a murderer. You say that I am his accomplice; we are criminals therefore. Bring us to justice. Have the entire affair thrashed out, Cousin Ilam.”

“You know that I cannot do that,” said Ilam.

“I am well aware that you dare not,” said Rosie. “The scandal would be intolerable. Think of Pauline’s feelings.”

“But suppose Pauline, too, is in the conspiracy?”

“There would always be the scandal. It would ruin the City.”

“It is neither the scandal nor the City that you are thinking of, Cousin Ilam,” said Rosie. “It is merely yourself or your mother. If it is your mother, well and good.”

Ilam retired a couple of paces, uncertain what to say in reply, and possibly fearing some attack from Mr. Jetsam, who stood behind him. There was a silence, and then Ilam murmured:

“Ah! my poor mother, sleeping there in the midst of all this!”

It was a cry from the strange man’s heart, and another silence ensued. The situation had reached such a point as baffled all the parties to it to discover a solution.

It was Jetsam who broke the silence.

“I will leave you,” he said in a low voice.

“Good-bye,” he said, as no one replied.

“Where are you going to?” asked Rosie.

“I am merely going,” answered Jetsam.

“But you will tell me where?” she insisted.

“It is vague,” he replied. “Out of your life—that is all I can say. It was too much to hope that at the end of a career which has been one long and uninterrupted misfortune the sun of happiness should shine on me. I was destined to failure from the beginning. You do not know all my story; but you know some of it—enough to enable you, perhaps, to forgive me. Good-bye!”

He moved to the door.

“You will not leave me like that,” said Rosie. “You dare not leave me like that. You are going to kill yourself.”

“No,” he said. “I have got over that caprice, I think. I shall drag out my existence to its natural end.”

“Give me your address,” Rosie said doggedly.

He shook his head.

“You are cruel,” she whimpered. “After——”

She was interrupted by Ilam himself, who said:

“Rosie, go downstairs. I have two words to speak to this fellow. Go downstairs. Leave us.” His tone was cold and acid.

“Yes,” Jetsam agreed after a moment. “Leave us; we have to speak to each other.”

“You will not go without seeing me?” asked Rosie.

“I will not,” replied Jetsam, and the next instant the two men were alone together in the room, save for the unconscious form of Mrs. Ilam.

The door had been locked again, this time by Ilam.

“She is in love with you,” Ilam shouted fiercely. “You have imposed on her; you have taken advantage of her ignorance of life, and she is in love with you! It is infamous. I am stronger than you, and unless you promise me——”

“Idiot!” Jetsam stopped him. “What are you raving about? You must be mad. You must have forgotten—as your mother forgets. As for this poor girl being in love with me——-” He stopped with a hard laugh. “What has that to do with you?”

“It has everything to do with me,” cried Ilam, and, as if transported by fury, he suddenly sprang on Jetsam, who was all unprepared, and, clasping him in a murderous embrace, threw him to the ground. “I’ve had enough of you,” he ground out the words through his teeth. “And if I finish you, I can easily show that it was in self-defence.”

And he had scarcely spoken when his hands fell lax in astonishment and alarm, for immediately outside the window, or so it seemed, there sounded four notes of a trombone, brazen, clear, and imposing in the night. No one who has heard Beethoven’s greatest symphony will ever forget the four notes—commonly called the notes of fate—with which the most tremendous of musical compositions opens. It was these notes which the trombone had given forth. There was a silence, and the instrument repeated them, and in the next pause that followed, the two men who an instant before had been joined in a dreadful struggle, lay moveless, listening to their own breathing; and a third time the trombone sounded.