The crash of guns. A flare across the heavens. Battle. Dismay. Death. A night of chaos. And four men in a thicket. One of them spoke: "A bloody Hun prison, that's us! My Gawd! Where are we?" Another answered caustically: "Monsieur, we are lost—and very tired." A third man laughed. The laugh was short. "A Frenchman! Where in hell did you come from?" "Where you and the rest of us came from." The Frenchman's voice was polished; his English faultless. "We come from the tickling of the German bayonet

The East End being, as it were, more akin to the technique and the mechanics of the thing, applauded the craftsmanship; the West End, a little grimly on the part of the men, and with a loquacity not wholly free from nervousness on the part of the women, wondered who would be next. "The cove as is runnin' that show," said the East End, with its tongue delightedly in its cheek, "knows 'is wye abaht. Wish I was 'im!" "The police are nincompoops!" said the outraged masculine West End. "Absolutely!"

It was a neighbourhood of alleyways and lanes of ferocious darkness; of ill-lighted, baleful streets, of shadows; and of doorways where no doors existed, black, cavernous and sinister openings to inner chambers of misery, of squalid want, of God-knows-what. It was the following evening, and still early—barely eight o'clock. Captain Francis Newcombe turned the corner of one of these gloomily lighted streets, and drew instantly back to crouch, as an animal crouches before it springs, in the deep s

Twenty-five minutes later, Captain Francis Newcombe stood at the door of his apartment. Runnells admitted him. "Paul Cremarre here yet?" demanded the ex-captain of territorials briskly. "Yes," said Runnells. "Been here half an hour." With Runnells behind him, Captain Francis Newcombe entered the living room of the apartment. A tall man, immaculately dressed, with a small, very carefully trimmed black moustache, with eyes that were equally black but whose pupils were curiously minute, stood by th

A motor ran swiftly along a country road. Two men sat in the front seat. "My friend, Runnells," said one of the two quizzically, after a silence that had endured for miles, "what in hell is the matter with you to-night?" "I don't know," said Runnells, who drove the car. "What the captain was talking about last night, maybe—the things you feel in the air." "Bah!" said Paul Cremarre composedly. "If it is only the air! For three years we have found nothing in the air but good fortune." "That's all

Captain Francis Newcombe, a bandage swathing his head from the tip of his nose upward, groped out with his hand for a glass that stood on the bedside table, succeeded only in upsetting it, and swore savagely under his breath. At the same moment, he heard the front door of his apartment open and close. "Runnells!" he shouted irritably. "D'ye hear, Runnells? Come here!" A footstep came hurriedly along the hall, and the door of the bedroom opened. Paul Cremarre stood on the threshold. "It is not Ru

It was a night of storm. The rain, wind driven, swept the decks in gusty, stinging sheets; the big liner rolled and pitched, disgruntled, in the heavy sea. Within the smoking room at a table in the corner Captain Francis Newcombe turned from a companion who sat opposite to him to face a steward who had just arrived with a tray. "How about this, steward?" he asked. "Is this weather going to delay our getting in? I understand that if we don't pass quarantine early enough they hold us up all night.

It was a night of white moonlight; a languorous night. It was a night of impenetrable shadows, deep and black; and, where light and shadow met and merged, the treetops were fringed against the sky in tracery as delicate as a cameo. And there was fragrance in the air, exotic, exquisite, the fragrance of growing things, of semi-tropical flowers and trees and shrubs. And very faint and soft there fell upon the ear the gentle lapping of the water on the shore, as though in her mother tenderness natu

Captain Francis Newcombe, from the dock where he had been making fast a line, surveyed for a moment the deck of the Talofa below. His eyes rested speculatively on Howard Locke, who, with sleeves rolled up and grimy to the elbows, was busy over the yacht's engine; then his glance passed to Runnells on the forward deck of the little vessel, who was assiduously engaged in making shipshape coils of a number of truant ropes. Captain Francis Newcombe permitted a flicker to cross his lips. It was a new

"It's an amazing place!" said Howard Locke. "Yes; isn't it?" said Polly Wickes. "But, come along; you haven't seen it all yet." "Is there more?" Howard Locke asked with pretended incredulity. "I've seen a private power plant; an aquarium that contains more varieties of fish than I ever imagined swam in the sea; a house as magnificent and spacious as a palace; stables; gardens; flowers; bowers of Eden. More! Really?" "I think guardy was right," observed Polly Wickes naïvely. "Yes?" inquired Howar

It was dark in the room, save where the moonlight stole in through the window and stretched a filmy path across the floor until, in a strange, nebulous way, it threw into relief a cheval-glass that stood against the opposite wall. And in the glass a shadowy picture showed: The reflection of a man's figure seated in a chair, but curiously crouched as though about to spring, the shoulders bent a little forward, the head outthrust, the elbows outward, strained with weight, the hands clenched upon t

A clock somewhere in the house chimed the hour. Midnight! Polly Wickes rose hastily from the corner of the big leather-upholstered Chesterfield in which her small figure had been tucked away. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I had no idea it was so late. Every one else has been in bed ages ago." "I think," said Locke gravely, "that it is our duty to stand by that last log. It's been a rather jolly fire, you know. I—" "That is the second one you have put on after having made the same remark twice before," s

Again a clock somewhere in the house chimed the hour. And again. One o'clock. Two o'clock. The embers in the fireplace had long since turned to black charred things. Locke raised his head. Two o'clock! He had not been conscious of it when the last little glow had died away. He had turned out the light when Polly had gone—and had sat there staring at the dying fire. He had not put on another log. The fire was dead now—quite dead. He had been staring into a black fireplace—that was as black as the

For a moment, grim-lipped, Locke stood there at the door. He had accomplished exactly the opposite to what he had intended—the old man, the money, were both in infinitely greater peril now than under almost any other circumstances of which he could conceive. He did not blame himself—the vagaries, the impulses, the irrational promptings of an insane mind were beyond his control or guidance. It was the last thing he had expected the old maniac to do. But it was done now; it was too late to conside

Polly Wickes, from her pillow, stared into the darkness. There had been no thought of sleep; it did not seem as though there ever could be again. She had undressed and gone to bed—but she had done this mechanically, because at night one went to bed, because she had always gone to bed. Not to sleep! The tears blinding her eyes, she had groped her way up the stairs from the living room where she had left Howard Locke, and somehow she had reached her room. That was hours and hours ago. Surely the d

An hour to daybreak! Passion, unchecked and unrestrained, was stamped on Captain Francis Newcombe's face as he dressed now with savage, ferocious haste. He swore and snarled, making low venomous sounds in the fury that possessed him. There was no longer room for the fear that last night, here in his rooms, had gnawed at his soul itself—the fear of the unknown ; there was no longer room for fear in any sense, whether born of the intangible, or whether it knew its source in man, or God, or devil—t

Paul Cremarre! And the man was not a pleasant sight! The slime, the water and the mud! The Stygian blackness that seemed to mock and jeer at the puny ray of the flashlight! The lap-lap-lap of the wavelets that echoed back in hollow, ghostly whispers from the flooring of the boathouse above! And Runnells, grovelling, drawing in his breath with loud sucking sounds. Noises of sea and air—indefinable—all discordant—like imps in jubilee! It was a ghouls' hole! But Captain Francis Newcombe smiled—with

Howard Locke stood leaning with his shoulder against one of the verandah pillars. Behind him, in the house, he was conscious of a sort of hushed commotion. Out on the lawn in front of him little groups of negroes stood staring at the house with strained, uplifted faces, or moved across his line of vision in frightened, pathetically humorous efforts to keep an unobtrusive silence—walking on tiptoes in their bare feet on the velvet lawn. Queer how the black faces were mellowed into softer colours

Low tide at three-fifteen! Captain Francis Newcombe, in the stern of a small motor boat, drew his flashlight from his pocket and consulted his watch. Five minutes after two. He nodded his head in satisfaction. Just right! And the night was just right—just cloudy enough to make of the moonlight an ally rather than a foe. It disclosed the island there looming up ahead now perhaps a mile away; it would not disclose so diminutive a thing as this little motor boat out here on the water creeping in to