On one point it was absolutely essential that I should know at once exactly where I stood. I settled it as we were returning up the stairs.

'Reggie, there is one thing I wish to say. I will do everything for Twickenham that remains to be done.'

'You mean as regards the funeral and that kind of thing?'

'I do. If you will leave everything to me I will make all necessary arrangements.'

'Thank you. That's one more service. I wonder for how many things I am really in your debt, besides bread and cheese, and--even kisses.'

'Don't talk nonsense.'

'It's not nonsense. And it'll have to be talked about some day. My turn's coming.'

'We've been in stormy waters; if now we're going to sail over summer seas together, I'll be content.'

'I'll see we do.'

I had not the slightest doubt of it. And I also would see. The time of the harvest was at hand. I was quite ready to take my share of the golden grain.

The doctor was chatting to Foster. Striding up to the bed I looked down on the recumbent figure.

'I suppose, gentlemen, that there's no doubt whatever that he's dead?'

Hancock was unable to conceal his amusement.

'Are you suggesting, Mr. Howarth, that we don't know our business, or that I don't know mine? That is the late Marquis; the present Marquis is here.' He motioned with one hand towards the bed, with the other towards Reggie. To Reggie he addressed himself. 'I beg, my lord, to offer you my congratulations. I will not disguise from you that I am aware that this is an occasion on which you are entitled to receive them. We all know that your late brother was not all that he ought to be, and that he has been to you the occasion of great, long-continued, and undeserved anxiety. That burden has now been happily removed. I am sure that in the future your noble house will be worthily represented.'

'Thank you. I hope you're right.'

After all, Hancock was a prosy old fool.

'Is there anything else I can do for you, or arrange before I go? Dr. White has kindly promised to see that the late Marquis receives all proper attention.'

'Much obliged; but Mr. Howarth will see to everything.'

'I will see to the funeral.' This was Foster.

'Well, Mr. Howarth has undertaken----'

'Quite right, Reggie, I will see to everything--including the funeral, Mr. Foster. We don't propose to trouble you more than we can help.'

Mr. Foster made a few remarks to Reggie which were also meant for me.

'I trust, my lord, that my attitude towards you in the past will not be misconstrued. As I did what I held to be my duty towards your brother, so I will observe equal fidelity towards you. If it should be happily shown--which I do not doubt it will be--that you are now the Marquis and in possession of the family estates, I will study your interests with the same honesty of purpose with which I studied his.'

'Very good of you, Foster. You shall hear from me in due course.'

Reggie turned on his heel; and the great, and hitherto supreme, Mr. Foster, was snubbed. It was injudicious, perhaps, but we both of us owed him a good deal more than a snubbing.

At last Reggie and I were alone. The first thing he said, directly their backs were turned, showed what was in his mind.

'It would be awkward if what that brute Foster keeps hinting at was true, and Twickenham was married.'

'No fear of that. He wasn't. Twickenham wasn't a marrying man.'

'Let's hope it. A wife and family of his would be a crowning mercy.'

'There's not the slightest fear of anything of the kind. I'm sure of it. It's Foster's cue to make you fidgety. Don't you let him have the satisfaction of thinking that he even retains the power of making himself disagreeable.'

Reggie was observing the silent figure.

'He does look a bad lot, even now.'

'He was.'

'Vi was quite right; he died as he had lived. I believed that if he had had a few minutes longer he would have robbed me of all he could.'

'I shouldn't be surprised; the ruling passion strong in death.'

Presently he departed. I was alone with the man in the bed.

It was a curious sensation. It had all been so much easier than I had ever ventured to hope. So quickly over too. The idea which had been only mooted yesterday was already carried out. And in such triumphant fashion. And we had waited fifteen years! But then during that period I had never lighted on a Mr. Montagu Babbacombe. The man was a consummate actor; altogether beyond anything I had ever seen or heard of. On the stage his fame would fill the world; and then ring down the ages. The arch-impostor had duped them all; with the most ridiculous ease. No wonder; on one or two points he had deceived even me--whose idea the whole thing was. The death certificate would be forthcoming--poor old Hancock's conduct had been fatuous. This was a great physician! If all documents of the kind are granted with equal readiness, how many people are buried alive? The reflection was not an agreeable one. The recognition in each case had been unhesitating. Even that Didymus, Foster, was persuaded at last. There only remained one or two trifling details which required attention, and the stakes were ours.

I was a little at a loss how exactly to proceed. The key had been turned to prevent untoward interruption, but still the fact remained that voices might be audible without. If we were heard--or even if I was heard, I might be asked whom I was talking to,--which, conceivably, might be awkward. Obviously, it was a case for the extremest caution.

I leant over the bed, and I whispered,

'Babbacombe!'

He did not answer. I had not expected he would. By now I had gained some insight into his methods.

'I only want to tell you that I understand a woman's coming to wash you; "lay you out," I believe, they call it. I suppose you don't object?'

Not a sign; not a sound.

'That's all right; I don't suppose she'll worry you overmuch. By the way, where have you put that money? I don't want to know; only women of that kind are as sharp as needles; and not over scrupulous either. If you like to confide it to my keeping it will be quite safe in my charge, and you can have it whenever you want it, with the other five hundred, as you know very well.'

Nothing to show he heard.

I turned down the bedclothes, thinking that he might have slipped the notes between the sheets. Not he! Nothing in the shape of a bank-note was to be seen. My curiosity being piqued--the depths of this man really were too deep!--I looked for them in every place I could think of, subjecting the whole bed to a minute examination; he evincing not the slightest apparent interest in my proceedings. Not the vestige of a note. Could he have swallowed them? If he had not, I could not conceive what had become of them. They were not upon his body. They could hardly, at his bidding, have vanished into air. Although I was quite prepared to admit that, 'for ways that are dark,' compared to him the Heathen Chinee was an innocent suckling.

'Well, as I can't find it I imagine that the woman won't; so I suppose I make take it that the money's safe. There's only one other topic on which I wish to touch--the funeral. The undertaker's man will come and measure you to-day. The shell, and, I presume, the coffin also, will arrive to-morrow morning. You'll be placed inside, and, in the afternoon, the coffin will be closed. It will be taken down in the evening by a special train to Cressland--where you may, or may not, be aware is the family vault--the interment taking place on Wednesday. As we are none of us particularly proud of you, the interment will be as private as possible. As, I take it, you don't want to be inside the coffin when it's placed in its last resting-place, I'll look in before the undertaker's fellows; you must give up being dead, and, between us, we'll screw down the lid. I'll find an excuse which will satisfy them. I have an idea in this fertile brain of mine.--You clearly understand and agree. Say so if you don't!'

He said nothing, nor signified in any way whatever that he had attained to even a glimmer of comprehension. But I knew him. Taking his immobility to signify acquiescence, I left him asleep upon the bed.

But though I left him he was with me all the time. I could not get him out of my head. I interviewed the landlord, with whom I made arrangements on a very liberal scale to compensate him for the inconvenience the affair was causing him; and all the while that we were talking I saw, with my mental eye, the silent figure on the bed!

Thence I went to Tattenham, the funeral furnisher. The figure was with me there. I wondered what my feelings would be if I knew that I was being measured for my coffin. With what amount of ceremony would the measurer treat me? To be touched for such a purpose by such hands! I feared that under his kind offices I should not lie so still as I trusted Mr. Montagu Babbacombe would do.

At home I found, as I expected, Edith and Reggie confabulating with Violet. As I also expected, Vi began at me at once--though her tone and bearing were alike surprising. She was unwontedly meek.

'Doug'--it was very rarely that she called me 'Doug,' I had rather she had not done so then. I had too recently heard the abbreviation proceeding from other lips--'Doug, I'm sorry I behaved so badly. I know I was a wretch. Edith has made me see that, and it's no use Reggie pretending that I wasn't.'

My manner was brusque. It was a subject about which I wished to hear nothing more.

'That's all right. I wouldn't be too penitent if I were you. There was no harm done.'

'But it prevented him making his will?'

'If it did it did; and what's done can't be undone. Not that I think it matters.'

'Don't you really think it matters? Supposing any of those things happen at which it seems that Mr. Foster hinted; what then?'

'What then? Wait till then. Till then say nothing.'

I do not think she altogether grasped my meaning. Indeed I doubt if I myself clearly understood what it was I wished to say. I told them what arrangements I was making with regard to the funeral, and so on, Reggie showing himself quite of my opinion that everything should be done as quietly as possible. Had the third marquis died, after a well-ordered life, in the odour of sanctity, his corpse might have been interred with all possible honour; as things were, it was advisable that he should be laid in his last resting-place with as little form and ceremony as was compatible with decency.

When I left the room, anxious to be by myself, to think, Edith followed me. For the first time in my life I found her presence irksome. She followed me to the small apartment which I dignified by the name of library, evidently assured of the welcome which hitherto had never failed her.

'At last!' she began, as soon as we were alone together. I busied myself with some papers which were on my writing-table.

'Yes; at last.'

'We have waited for it a good many years; you and I.'

'That is so.'

This was platitudinous. I felt that if she had nothing more original to say I should have to ask her to excuse me if I gave my attention to matters which pressed. Her words, her voice, her very neighbourhood, seemed to have a singular effect upon my nervous system. It was as if I were ashamed. In some curious way, it was as if I were afraid of her. I wanted to take her in my arms; to hold her to me; to find strength in her sweet tenderness; for it was strength I needed. But I was conscious of an awkward inability to do as I had done a hundred times before--ay, a thousand. A shadowy something seemed to have interposed itself between us, as her own quick sight perceived.

'What is the matter with you, Douglas?'

The question took me aback. I looked up at her with a start, experiencing an unwonted difficulty in meeting her inquiring glances.

'The matter? Why?'

'You seem changed.'

'Changed? It's your fancy.'

'It's a very vivid fancy then. I noticed it first the night you dined with us.' On the afternoon of that day I had first seen the sleeping man. Are there any detectives like the eyes of the woman who loves? 'It has grown more perceptible since. Until now it sits upon you in a guise so that you seem transformed.'

'Many things have happened during the last day or two.'

'Yes. Have you told us of them all?'

'Of them all? What do you mean?'

'Douglas, don't you know what I mean?' She came close to me, laying her hand upon my arm. I actually quivered beneath her touch; a fact of which I had an uncomfortable conviction she was conscious. 'I've another fancy--which is also a very vivid one, that there is something behind all this of which you've said nothing. Douglas, can't you tell me?'

'What your fancy is? I'm afraid you ask something which is beyond my capacity; since it probably takes the shape of poetry rather than prose.'

'Douglas--is Twickenham married?'

'Married? My dear Edith, is that the shape your fancy takes? I know no more whether he was married than you do. Although I have a private conviction--to which I intend to adhere till the contrary is proved--that he wasn't.'

My manner plainly showed her that her shot had failed to hit the mark. She let fly another arrow; this time with a better aim.

'Douglas, where did you see him first?'

'Some day I may tell you. I don't propose to now.'

'Was he ill?'

'Not that I'm aware of.'

'It wasn't in a hospital?'

'A hospital! Edith, what is it you are driving at?'

'Nor in any place of the kind?'

'Are you suggesting that I dragged him from a sick bed to die for our benefit? Because, if so, let me assure you that when I first saw him I had no notion that anything ailed him, or that he was any nearer death than I am.'

'Well, Douglas, I won't worry you now, because I know that you are already worried about something, the burden of which I hope that one day you'll share with me.'

So she went, leaving me in a condition of mental unrest to which I had never supposed I could have fallen a prey. I could not shake off that ridiculous feeling that I had for company the silent figure on the bed; the dead man who was not dead. The interview with Edith invested him with a new significance. Already she suspected that there was more in the matter than met the eye. Was I so poor an actor? Had I so wholly failed to profit by the great example which had been set me? If it was Edith now, when would it be Violet and Reggie? If either of them gained the faintest inkling of the actual state of affairs, what would become of my house of cards, and of me? How infinitely worse would my latter state be than my first! I had never, so far as I knew, done a dishonourable thing till then. Now, on a sudden, here I was, tilting against the laws both of God and man. If I had a fall, there would be an end of me.

The next day I was busied about a multitude of things. The story had already got about, thanks, I imagine, to the people at the hotel; as a consequence I was inundated with inquiries, to some of which I was compelled to give personal attention. For instance, Morris Acrodato--grown old, but still relentless--came, assuring me that he had that unfortunate bill of Twickenham's in his pocket, and wanting to know--if he did not take out a warrant to arrest the corpse, if his claim would be favourably considered by the succeeding peer. Over and over again both Reggie and I had begged Foster to pay him what he asked, and so silence him so far as he could be silenced; but with equal persistency he had retorted by requesting us to furnish him with Twickenham's instructions to do as we desired. So after fifteen years Acrodato was still waiting for his money or his man. A portentous sum the amount which he demanded had become. Although I laughed at his notion of arresting a dead man--we are not in Sheridan's days, when a corpse was seizable--I had no hesitation in giving him my personal assurance that all should be done for him which equity called for. He rather pulled a face at my allusion to equity, that being hardly the point of view from which he wished his case to be regarded.

Try as I would, I could not get through the things which had to be done at anything like the rate which I desired, the result being that the afternoon was already well advanced before I was able to make my promised visit to Cortin's Hotel.

I realised, with a sense of shock, that a hearse stood before the door. What had happened? I looked at my watch. It was after six. The train which was to bear the coffin to Cressland was due to start in something like an hour. What an idiot I had been! Better have left everything else undone rather than run the risk of being too late.

Suppose the undertaker's men were already in the room, and Mr. Babbacombe--mistaking the cause of my non-arrival, and setting it down as intentional--had realised that their purpose was to prison him in that narrow box, and shut him off for ever from the light of day, what might not be taking place! I leaped from the cab and rushed up the steps. The landlord met me in the hall.

'The undertaker's men have arrived, sir. They are closing the coffin now.'

'Closing the coffin!'

I waited to hear no more. Never before had I mounted a flight of stairs as I did those then. I was up them in a hop, skip, and jump; not pausing to consider what I was to say or do when I reached the chamber of the supposititious dead, but only anxious to get there.

When I got there it was already too late. I saw it at a glance. Never shall I forget with what sensations!

Four men were in the room, all dressed in black. One had his hat on; the hats of the other three were together on a single chair. An oak coffin stood on a black velvet pall, which doubtless covered trestles. Two men, one at either end, were screwing on the lid. A third was prowling about the room. The fourth--the one with his hat on--was standing, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the proceedings. They all glanced towards me as I entered, unmistakably taken by surprise. The fourth man, withdrawing his hands from his pockets, made haste to remove his hat. The prowler came hurrying towards the others.

'You're--you're not closing the coffin?'

'Yes, sir. By Mr. Tattenham's instructions.'

'But it's not time.'

'Excuse me, sir, but it is. The coffin has to be placed in the van before it's attached to the train; and that means some time before it's due to start. Did you wish, sir, to see him?'

I felt dazed; filled with a whirl of confused thoughts. The voice of the undertaker's man sounded to me like a voice in a dream.

'See him. Is he'--I was about to add 'in there?' Because it seemed incredible that even so consummate an artist as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe could consent to remain quiescent while being consigned to a living tomb. But the question in such a form might have seemed too suggestive; so I substituted, 'Is he all right?'

It seemed that the man somewhat mistook my drift.

'Perfectly, sir. Make a fine photograph, sir. Looks calm and peaceful; as well as he possibly could look. We can easily remove the lid; would you like to see him, sir?'

'See him? No. I--I don't want to see him.'

'In that case, since the lid is closed, we'll be starting, sir, if you don't mind.'

I do not know what I said. Something, I suppose; because shouldering the coffin there and then, they started. They carried it from the room and bore it from my sight. I remained behind, picturing the man inside fighting for freedom. I wondered when the struggle would begin. What was that? I thought I heard a voice calling to me from the stairs without; a voice I seemed to know. I went to the door and listened. Not a sound. Across the hall below passed the four men in black, bearing the living man shut up in the box upon their shoulders.

Was he already tapping at the inner shell? Would they hear him if he were? The shell was presumably a substantial one; the wood of the outer coffin thick. He would be shrouded in his winding-clothes; his movements would be cumbered. He would quite possibly be unable to rap with sufficient force to make them hear him. He might call; or try to. In that stifling atmosphere would he be able to use his voice?

At any rate it seemed plain that nothing took place inside that polished tomb to attract their attention. The bearers passed through the swing doors, out into the street. I waited. No doubt the coffin was being placed inside the hearse. Was Mr. Babbacombe aware of it? Presently one of the undertaker's men returned to fetch the four hats which had been left behind in the room. He went down the stairs with two in either hand. Another interval. Presumably the hearse had started.

What was that noise--like the scratching of fingernails against wood? Whose voice called me? Did it come from the bed? I spun round like a teetotum.

It was merely a delusion. It must have been. The bed was unoccupied. Its emptiness affected me more than anything which had gone before. It exercised on me so singular a fascination that I continued to stare at it as if unable to take my eyes away.

What was that noise--like the scratching of a man's nails against wood? The hearse must have long since got out of the street. If it had a fast pair of horses it was probably already half-way to the station. It could not come from the bed.

When--I do not know how long afterwards--I went down the stairs, feeling as if a century had elapsed since I went up them, the landlord stopped me to express a hope that everything had been done to my satisfaction.

BOOK II.--THE LOST HUSBAND

THE STORY IS CONTINUED BY MRS. JAMES MERRETT