On the morning of the twenty-fourth a curious little incident happened—I dug the facts out of the police news—in a small public-house on the outskirts of South London. Obviously it is no more than the sheerest coincidence. Four men were drinking a friendly glass of beer together on their way back to work from breakfast. Their ecclesiastical zeal seems to have been peculiarly strong, for they distinctly stated that they were celebrating Christmas on that date, and I deduce from that statement that beer-drinking was comparatively infrequent with them.

However, as they were about to part, there entered to them a fifth, travel-stained and tired, who sat down and demanded some stronger form of stimulant. The new-comer was known to these four, for his name was given, and his domicile was mentioned as Hackney Wick. He was a small man, very active and very silent and rather pale; and he seems to have had something of a mysterious reputation even among his friends and to be considered a dangerous man to cross.

He made no mystery, however, as to where he had come from, nor whither he was going. He had come from Kent, he said, and humorously added that he had been hop-picking, and was going to join his wife and the family circle for the festival of Christmas. He remarked that his wife had written to him to say she had lodgers.

The four men naturally stayed a little to hear all this news and to celebrate Christmas once more, but they presently were forced to tear themselves away. It was as the first man was leaving (his foreman appears to have been of a tyrannical disposition) that the little incident happened.

"Why," he said, "Bill" (three out of the five companions seemed to have been usually called "Bill"), "Bill, your boots are in a mess."

The Bill in question made caustic remarks. He observed that it would be remarkable if they were not in such weather. But the other persisted that this was not mud, and a general inspection was made. This resulted in the opinion of the majority being formed that Bill had trodden in some blood. Bill himself was one of the majority, though he attempted in vain to think of any explanation. Two men, however, declared that in their opinion it was only red earth. (A certain obscurity appears in the evidence at this point, owing to the common use of a certain expletive in the mouth of the British working-man.) There was a hot discussion on the subject, and the Bill whose boots were under argument seems to have been the only man to keep his head. He argued very sensibly that if the stains were those of blood, then he must have stepped in some—perhaps in the gutter of a slaughter-house; and if it was not blood, then it must be something else he had trodden in. It was urged upon him that it was best washed off, and he seems finally to have taken the advice, though without enthusiasm.

Then the four men departed.

The landlady's evidence was to the same effect. She states that the new-comer, with whose name she had been previously unacquainted, though she knew his face, had remained very tranquilly for an hour or so and had breakfasted off bacon and eggs. He seemed to have plenty of money, she said. He had finally set off, limping a little, in a northward direction.

Now this incident is a very small one. I only mention it because, in reading the evidence later, I found myself reminded of a parallel incident, recorded in a famous historical trial, in which something resembling blood was seen on the hand of the judge. His name was Ayloff, and his date the sixteenth century.

(II)

Mrs. Partington had a surprise—not wholly agreeable—on that Christmas Eve. For at half-past three, just as the London evening was beginning to close in, her husband walked into the kitchen.

She had seen nothing of him for six weeks, and had managed to get on fairly well without him. I am not even now certain whether or no she knows what her husband's occupation is during these absences of his—I think it quite possible that, honestly, she does not—and I have no idea myself. It seemed, however, this time, that he had prospered. He was in quite a good temper, he was tolerably well dressed, and within ten minutes of his arrival he had produced a handful of shillings. Five of these he handed over to her at once for Christmas necessaries, and ten more he entrusted to Maggie with explicit directions as to their expenditure.

While he took off his boots, his wife gave him the news—first, as to the arrival of the Major's little party, and next as to its unhappy dispersion on that very day.

"He will 'ave it as the young man's gone off with the young woman," she observed.

Mr. Partington made a commentatory sound.

"An' 'e's 'arf mad," she added. "'E means mischief if 'e can manage it."

Mr. Partington observed, in his own particular kind of vocabulary, that the Major's intentions were absurd, since the young man would scarcely be such a peculiarly qualified kind of fool as to return. And Mrs. Partington agreed with him. (In fact, this had been her one comfort all day. For it seemed to her, with her frank and natural ideas, that, on the whole, Frank and Gertie had done the proper thing. She was pleased, too, to think that she had been right in her surmises as to Gertie's attitude to Frank. For, of course, she never doubted for one single instant that the two had eloped together in the ordinary way, though probably without any intentions of matrimony.)

Mr. Partington presently inquired as to where the Major was, and was informed that he was, of course, at the "Queen's Arms." He had been there, in fact, continuously—except for sudden excursions home, to demand whether anything had been heard of the fugitives—since about half-past eleven that morning. It was a situation that needed comfort.

Mrs. Partington added a few comments on the whole situation, and presently put on her bonnet and went out to supplement her Christmas preparations with the extra five shillings, leaving her husband to doze in the Windsor chair, with his pipe depending from his mouth. He had walked up from Kent that morning, he said.

She returned in time to get tea ready, bringing with her various "relishes," and found that the situation had developed slightly since her departure. The Major had made another of his infuriated returns, and had expanded at length to his old friend Mr. Partington, recounting the extraordinary kindness he had always shown to Frank and the confidence he had reposed in him. He had picked him up, it seemed, when the young man had been practically starving, and had been father and comrade to him ever since. And to be repaid in this way! He had succeeded also by his eloquence, Mrs. Partington perceived, in winning her husband's sympathies, and was now gone off again, ostensibly to scour the neighborhood once more, but, more probably, to attempt to drown his grieved and wounded feelings.

Mrs. Partington set her thin lips and said nothing. She noticed also, as she spread the table, a number of bottles set upon the floor, two of them with yellow labels—the result of Maggie's errand—and prepared herself to face a somewhat riotous evening. But Christmas, she reflected for her consolation, comes but once a year.

It was about nine o'clock that the two men and the one woman sat down to supper upstairs. The children had been put to bed in the kitchen as usual, after Jimmie had informed his mother that the clergyman had been round no less than three times since four o'clock to inquire after the vanished lodger. He was a little tearful at being put to bed at such an unusually early hour, as Mr. Parham-Carter, it appeared, had promised him no less than sixpence if he would come round to the clergy-house within five minutes after the lodger's return, and it was obviously impossible to traverse the streets in a single flannel shirt.

His mother dismissed it all as nonsense. She told him that Frankie was not coming back at all—that he wasn't a good young man, and had run away without paying mother her rent. This made the situation worse than ever, as Jimmie protested violently against this shattering of his ideal, and his mother had to assume a good deal of sternness to cover up her own tenderness of feeling. But she, too—though she considered the flight of the two perfectly usual—was conscious of a very slight sense of disappointment herself that it should have been this particular young man who had done it.

Then she went upstairs again to supper.

(III)

The famous archway that gives entrance to the district of Hackney Wick seems, especially on a rainy night, directly designed by the Great Eastern Railway as a vantage ground for observant loafers with a desire to know every soul that enters or leaves Hackney Wick. It is, of course, possible to, enter Hackney Wick by other ways—it may be approached by the marshes, and there is, I think, another way round about half a mile to the east, under the railway. But those ways have nothing whatever to do with people coming from London proper. You arrive at Victoria Park Station; you turn immediately to the right and follow the pavement down, with the park on your left, until you come to the archway where the road unites with that coming from Homerton. One is absolutely safe, therefore, assuming that one has not to deal with watchful criminals, in standing under the arch with the certitude that sooner or later, if you wait long enough, the man whom you expect to enter Hackney Wick will pass within ten yards of you.

Mr. Parham-Carter, of course, knew this perfectly well, and had, finally, communicated the fact to the other two quite early in the afternoon. An elaborate system of watches, therefore, had been arranged, by which one of the three had been on guard continuously since three o'clock. It was Jack who had had the privilege (if he had but known it) of observing Mr. Partington himself returning home to his family for Christmas, and it was Dick, who came on guard about five, who had seen the Major—or, rather, what was to him merely a shabby and excited man—leave and then return to the "Queen's Arms" during his hour's watch.

After the amazing and shocking news, however, of the accident to Lord Talgarth and Archie, the precautions had been doubled. It was the clergyman who had first bought an evening paper soon after five o'clock, and within five minutes the other two knew it also.

It is of no good to try to describe the effect it had on their minds, beyond saying that it made all three of them absolutely resolute that Frank should by no possible means escape them. The full dramatic situation of it all they scarcely appreciated, though it soaked more and more into them gradually as they waited—two of them in the Men's Club just round the corner, and the third, shivering and stamping, under the arch. (An unemployed man, known to the clergyman, had been set as an additional sentry on the steps of the Men's Club, whose duty it would be, the moment the signal was given from the arch that Frank was coming, to call the other two instantly from inside. Further, the clergyman—as has been related—had been round three times since four o'clock to Turner Road, and had taken Jimmie into his pay.)

The situation was really rather startling, even to the imperturbable Dick. This pleasant young man, to whom he had begun to feel very strangely tender during the last month or two, now tramping London streets (or driving a van), in his miserable old clothes described to him by the clergyman, or working at the jam factory, was actually no one else at this moment but the new Lord Talgarth—with all that that implied. Merefield was his, the big house in Berkeley Square was his; the moor in Scotland.... It was an entire reversal of the whole thing: it was as a change of trumps in whist: everything had altered its value....

Well, he had plenty of time, both before he came off guard at seven and after he had joined the clergyman in the Men's Club, to sort out the facts and their consequences.

About half-past ten the three held a consultation under the archway, while trains rumbled overhead. They attracted very little attention here: the archway is dark and wide; they were muffled to the eyes; and there usually is a fringe of people standing under shelter here on rainy evenings. They leaned back against the wall and talked.

They had taken further steps since they had last met. Mr. Parham-Carter had been round to the jam factory, and had returned with the news that the van had come back under the charge of only one of the drivers, and that the other one, who was called Gregory (whom Mr. Parham-Carter was inquiring after), would certainly be dismissed in consequence. He had taken the address of the driver, who was now off duty—somewhere in Homerton—with the intention of going to see him next morning if Frank had not appeared.

There were two points they were discussing now. First, should the police be informed? Secondly, was it probable that Frank would have heard the news, and, if so, was it conceivable that he had gone straight off somewhere in consequence—to his lawyers, or even to Merefield itself?

Dick remembered the name of the firm quite well—at least, he thought so. Should he send a wire to inquire?

But then, in that case, Jack shrewdly pointed out, everything was as it should be. And this reflection caused the three considerable comfort.

For all that, there were one or two "ifs." Was it likely that Frank should have heard the news? He was notoriously hard up, and the name Talgarth had not appeared, so far, on any of the posters. Yet he might easily have been given a paper, or picked one up ... and then....

So the discussion went on, and there was not much to be got out of it. The final decision come to was this: That guard should be kept, as before, until twelve o'clock midnight; that at that hour the three should leave the archway and, in company, visit two places—Turner Road and the police-station—and that the occupants of both these places should be informed of the facts. And that then all three should go to bed.

(IV)

At ten minutes past eleven Dick moved away from the fire in the Men's Club, where he had just been warming himself after his vigil, and began to walk up and down.

He had no idea why he was so uncomfortable, and he determined to set to work to reassure himself. (The clergyman, he noticed, was beginning to doze a little by the fire, for the club had just been officially closed and the rooms were empty.)

Of course, it was not pleasant to have to tell a young man that his father and brother were dead (Dick himself was conscious of a considerable shock), but surely the situation was, on the whole, enormously improved. This morning Frank was a pauper; to-night he was practically a millionaire, as well as a peer of the realm. This morning his friends had nothing by which they might appeal to him, except common sense and affection, and Frank had very little of the one, and, it would seem, a very curious idea of the other.

Of course, all that affair about Jenny was a bad business (Dick could hardly even now trust himself to think of her too much, and not to discuss her at all), but Frank would get over it.

Then, still walking up and down, and honestly reassured by sheer reason, he began to think of what part Jenny would play in the future.... It was a very odd situation, a very odd situation indeed. (The deliberate and self-restrained Dick used an even stronger expression.) Here was a young woman who had jilted the son and married the father, obviously from ambitious motives, and now found herself almost immediately in the position of a very much unestablished kind of dowager, with the jilted son reigning in her husband's stead. And what on earth would happen next? Diamonds had been trumps; now it looked as if hearts were to succeed them; and what a very remarkable pattern was that of these hearts.

But to come back to Frank—

And at that moment he heard a noise at the door, and, as the clergyman started up from his doze, Dick saw the towzled and becapped head of the unemployed man and his hand beckoning violently, and heard his hoarse voice adjuring them to make haste. The gentleman under the arch, he said, was signaling.

The scene was complete when the two arrived, with the unemployed man encouraging them from behind, half a minute later under the archway.

Jack had faced Frank fairly and squarely on the further pavement, and was holding him in talk.

"My dear chap," he was saying, "we've been waiting for you all day. Thank the Lord you've come!"

Frank looked a piteous sight, thought Dick, who now for the first time saw the costume that Mr. Parham-Carter had described with such minuteness. He was standing almost under the lamp, and there were heavy drooping shadows on his face; he looked five years older than when Dick had last seen him—only at Easter. But his voice was confident and self-respecting enough.

"My dear Jack," he was saying, "you really mustn't interrupt. I've only just—" Then he broke off as he recognized the others.

"So you've given me away after all," he said with a certain sternness to the clergyman.

"Indeed I haven't," cried that artless young man. "They came quite unexpectedly this morning."

"And you've told them that they could catch me here," said Frank "Well, it makes no difference. I'm going on—Hullo! Dick!"

"Look here!" said Dick. "It's really serious. You've heard about—" His voice broke.

"I've heard about it," said Frank. "But that doesn't make any difference for to-night."

"But my dear man," cried Jack, seizing him by the lapel of his coat, "it's simply ridiculous. We've come down here on purpose—you're killing yourself—"

"One moment," said Frank. "Tell me exactly what you want."

Dick pushed to the front.

"Let him alone, you fellows.... This is what we want, Frank. We want you to come straight to the clergy-house for to-night. To-morrow you and I'll go and see the lawyers first thing in the morning, and go up to Merefield by the afternoon train. I'm sorry, but you've really got to go through with it. You're the head of the family now. They'll be all waiting for you there, and they can't do anything without you. This mustn't get into the papers. Fortunately, not a soul knows of it yet, though they would have if you'd been half an hour later. Now, come along."

"One moment," said Frank. "I agree with nearly all that you've said. I quite agree with you that"—he paused a moment—"that the head of the family should be at Merefield to-morrow night. But for to-night you three must just go round to the clergy-house and wait. I've got to finish my job clean out—and—"

"What job?" cried two voices simultaneously.

Frank leaned against the wall and put his hands in his pockets.

"I really don't propose to go into all that now. It'd take an hour. But two of you know most of the story. In a dozen words it's this—I've got the girl away, and now I'm going to tell the man, and tell him a few other things at the same time. That's the whole thing. Now clear off, please. (I'm awfully obliged, you know, and all that), but you really must let me finish it before I do anything else."

There was a silence.

It seemed tolerably reasonable, put like that—at least, it seemed consistent with what appeared to the three to be the amazing unreason of all Frank's proceedings. They hesitated, and were lost.

"Will you swear not to clear out of Hackney Wick before we've seen you again?" demanded Jack hoarsely.

Frank bowed his head.

"Yes," he said.

The clergyman and Dick were consulting in low voices. Jack looked at them with a wild sort of appeal in his face. He was completely bewildered, and hoped for help. But none came.

"Will you swear—" he began again.

Frank put his hand suddenly on his friend's shoulder.

"Look here, old man. I'm really rather done up. I think you might let me go without any more—"

"All right, we agree," said Dick suddenly. "And—"

"Very good," said Frank. "Then there's really no more—"

He turned as if to go.

"Frank, Frank—" cried Jack.

Frank turned and glanced at him, and then went on.

"Good-night," he cried.

And so they let him go.

They watched him, in silence, cross the road by the "Queen's Arms" and pass up the left-hand pavement. As he drew near each lamp his shadow lay behind him, shortened, vanished and reappeared before him. After the third lamp they lost him, and they knew he would a moment later pass into Turner Road.

So they let him go.

(V)

Mr. Parham-Carter's room looked very warm and home-like after the comfortlessness of the damp lamp-lit streets. It was as has already been related: the Madonna, the prints, the low book-cases, the drawn curtains, the rosy walls, the dancing firelight and the electric lamp.

It was even reassuring at first—safe and protected, and the three sat down content. A tray with some cold meat and cheese rested on the table by the fire, and cocoa in a brown jug stood warming in the fender. They had had irregular kinds of refreshments in the Men's Club at odd intervals, and were exceedingly hungry....

They began to talk presently, and it was astonishing how the sight and touch of Frank had cheered them. More than one of the three has confessed to me since that a large part of the anxiety was caused by his simple absence and by imaginative little pictures of street accidents. It would have been so extremely ironical if he had happened to have been run over on the day on which he became Lord Talgarth.

They laid their little plans, too, for the next day. Dick had thought it all out. He, Jack and Frank were to call at the lawyers' office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and leave a message, as the office would be closed of course, immediately after the wanderer had been dressed properly in ready-made clothes. Then they would catch the early afternoon train and get to Merefield that night. The funeral could not possibly take place for several days: there would have to be an inquest.

Then they read over the account of the smash in the Star newspaper—special edition. It seemed to have been nobody's fault. The brake had refused to act going down a steep hill; they had run into a wall; the chauffeur had been thrown clean over it; the two passengers had been pinned under the car. Lord Talgarth was dead at once; Archie had died five minutes after being taken out.

So they all talked at once in low voices, but in the obvious excitement of relief. It was an extraordinary pleasure to them—now that they looked at it in the sanity conferred by food and warmth—to reflect that Frank was within a quarter of a mile of them—certainly in dreary surroundings; but it was for the last time. To-morrow would see him restored to ordinary life, his delusions and vagaries plucked from him by irresistible circumstance, and the future in his hands.

Midnight still found them talking—alert and cheerful; but a little silence fell as they heard the chiming of bells.

"Christmas Day, by George!" said the clergyman. "Merry Christmas!"

They shook hands, smiling shamefacedly, as is the custom of Englishmen.

"And to think of old Frank—" mused Jack half aloud. "I told you, Guiseley, about his coming to me in the autumn?" (He had been thinking a great deal about that visit lately, and about what Frank had told him of himself—the idea he had of Something going on behind the scenes in which he had passively to take his part; his remark on how pleasant it must be to be a squire. Well, the play had come to an end, it seemed; now there followed the life of a squire indeed. It was curious to think that Frank was, actually at this moment, Lord Talgarth!)

Dick nodded his head, smiling to himself in his beard. Somehow or another the turn things had taken had submerged in him for the present the consciousness of the tragedy up at Merefield, and his own private griefs, and the memory of Jenny.

Jack told it all again briefly. He piled it on about the Major and his extreme repulsiveness, and the draggled appearance of Gertie, and Frank's incredible obstinacy.

"And to think that he's brought it off, and got the girl home to her people.... Well, thank the Lord that's over! We shan't have any more of that sort of thing."

Dick got up presently and began to walk about, eyeing the pictures and the books.

"Want to turn in?" asked the cleric.

"Well, I think, as we've an early start—"

The clergyman jumped up.

"You've a beastly little room, I'm afraid. We're rather full up. And you, Mr. Kirkby!"

"I'll wait till you come back," he said.

The two went out, after good-nights, and Jack was left staring at the fire.

He felt very wide-awake, and listened contentedly to the dying noises of the streets. Somewhere in that hive outside was Frank—old Frank. That was very good to think of....

During these last months Frank's personality had been very persistently before him. It was not that he pretended to understand him in the very least; but he understood enough now to feel that there was something very admirable in it all. It was mad and quixotic and absurd, but it had a certain light of nobility. Of course, it would never do if people in general behaved like that; society simply could not go on if everyone went about espousing the cause of unhappy and badly-behaved individuals, and put on old clothes and played the Ass. But, for all that, it was not unpleasant to reflect that his own friend had chosen to do these things in despite of convention. There was a touch of fineness in it. And it was all over now, thank God.... What times they would have up in the north!

He heard a gate clash somewhere outside. The sound just detached itself from the murmur of the night. Then a late train ran grinding over the embanked railway behind the house, and drew up with the screaming of brakes at Victoria Park Station, and distracted him again.

"Are you ready, Mr. Kirkby?" said the clergyman, coming in.

Jack stood up, stretching himself. In the middle of the stretch he stopped.

"What's that noise?" he asked.

They stood listening.

Then again came the sharp, prolonged tingle of an electric bell, followed by a battering at a door downstairs.

Jack, looking in the other's face, saw him go ever so slightly pale beneath his eyes.

"There's somebody at the door," said Mr. Parham-Carter. "I'll just go down and see."

And, as Jack stood there, motionless and breathless, he could hear no sound but the thick hammering of his own heart at the base of his throat.