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 T h e N ovel s o f

ALEX
MILLER

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The Novels of Alex Miller_final Pages.indd 2 27/01/12 12:29 PM
 T h e N ovel s o f

ALEX
MILLER A n I n trod u ctio n

E di t e d by Rob er t Dixo n

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 First published 1912 by Allen & Unwin

Published 2020 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Introduction and selection copyright © Robert Dixon 2012

Copyright © in individual contributions retained by authors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au

Internal design by Brittany Britten

Set in 11/16 pt Minion by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

ISBN-13: 9781742378640 (pbk)

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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii
Chronology viii

Disestablished Worlds: 1
An Introduction to the Novels of Alex Miller
Robert Dixon

1. The Mask of Fiction: A Memoir 29

Alex Miller

2. Alex Miller and Leo Tolstoy: 42

Australian Storytelling in a European Tradition
Brenda Walker

3. ‘My Memory Has a Mind of Its Own’: 55

Watching the Climbers on the Mountain and
The Tivington Nott
Peter Pierce

4. Alex Miller: 66
Migrant Writer
Ingeborg van Teeseling

5. The Presence of Absence in The Sitters 78

Ronald A Sharp

6. Like/Unlike: 89
Portraiture, Similitude and the Craft of Words in The Sitters
Brigitta Olubas

7. An Artist in the Family: 101

Reconfgurations of Romantic Paradigms in Prochownik’s Dream
Adrian Caesar

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 8. Representing ‘the Other’ in the Fiction of Alex Miller 114
Elizabeth Webby

9. Continental Heartlands and Alex Miller’s 125

Geosophical Imaginary
Elizabeth McMahon

10. Personal Perspectives on the Central 139

Queensland Novels
Frank Budby, Elizabeth Hatte and Anita Heiss

11. The Frontier Wars: 156

History and Fiction in Journey to the Stone Country
and Landscape of Farewell
Shirley Walker

12. Old Testament Prophets, New Testament Saviours: 170

Reading Retribution and Forgiveness Towards
Whiteness in Journey to the Stone Country
Liliana Zavaglia

13. Dougald’s Goat: 187

Alex Miller and the Species Barrier
David Brooks

14. The Ruin of Time and the Temporality of Belonging: 201

Journey to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell
Brigid Rooney

15. Trusting the Words: 217

Refections on Landscape of Farewell
Raimond Gaita

16. ‘Bright Treasures of Perception’: 231

Writing Art and Painting Words in Autumn Laing
Geordie Williamson

Further Reading 245

Contributors 249
Index 254

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book had its origins in a symposium on ‘The Novels of Alex Miller’
hosted by Australian Literature at the University of Sydney on 13–14 May
2011. Brenda Walker’s chapter, ‘Alex Miller and Leo Tolstoy: Australian Story-
telling in a European Tradition’, was originally presented on the evening of
13 May as the 2011 Herbert Blaiklock Memorial Lecture. I want to thank Alex
Miller for his generous and tactful engagement with the project; Stephanie
Miller for her assistance in preparing the Chronology and photographic illus-
trations, and her transcription of Chapter 11, ‘Personal Perspectives on the
Central Queensland Novels’; Frank Budby, Liz Hatte and Anita Heiss for their
memorable involvement in the symposium; Geordie Williamson for his fne
essay on what was, at the time of writing, a novel still in press; Melpomene
Dixon, Georgina Loveridge, Stephen Mansfeld and Liliana Zavaglia for vari-
ous kinds of research, editorial and administrative assistance; and fnally
Elizabeth Weiss and Siobhán Cantrill at Allen & Unwin, and Ali Lavau, for
their commitment to publishing a book of literary criticism and appreciation.

vii

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 CHRONOLOGY

1936 Birth of Alexander McPhee Miller, 27 December, to Winifred Mary

Millar (née Croft) and Alexander McPhee Millar. (The surname
Miller is incorrectly entered into the records.) Lives at 32 Cumber-
land Street, London SW1 with parents and one sibling, Kathy.
1938 Moves with parents and two siblings, Kathy and Ruth, to 101 Pen-
dragon Road, Downham, SE6.
1948 Birth of brother, Ross.
1951 Leaves home and works as a farm labourer in Somerset.
1952 Travels alone to Australia.
Works as a farm hand near Gympie; as a stockman at Goathlands Sta-
tion near Springsure; then as a ringer on Augustus Downs in the Gulf
of Carpentaria.
1957 Works in New Zealand breaking in horses.
1958 Arrives in Melbourne.
Meets Max Kelly, historian, who encourages Alex to go to university.
1959 Begins evening study to gain entry to university.
Meets Max and Ruth Blatt. Max becomes a close friend and mentor.
1961 Marries Anne Neil, social worker and artist in her later life. They sep-
arate for the last time in 1970 and divorce in 1983. Anne remains a
close friend until her death in 2004.
1965 Completes Bachelor of Arts in history and English, University of Mel-
bourne. Travels to Italy for three months and returns to England for
one year, where he works for the Japanese Trade Commission.

viii

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 The Novels of Alex Miller

1966 Works as research offcer, Department of External Territories then

Department of Trade and Industry, Canberra.
1969 Purchases farm at Araluen. Raises beef cattle while writing novels.
1974 Sells farm and travels to Paris to write and to learn French.
1975 Publishes ‘Comrade Pawel’ in Meanjin and meets Jim Davidson, his-
torian and editor of Meanjin.
Meets lifelong partner Stephanie Pullin.
Completes Diploma of Education and commences teaching humani-
ties at Brunswick Technical School. Develops a close friendship with
Alan O’Hoy, art teacher, artist, art collector and the inspiration for
Lang Tzu in The Ancestor Game.
1977 Travels to England with Stephanie.
1978 Returns to Melbourne for performance of Kitty Howard by the Mel-
bourne Theatre Company.
Birth of Alex and Stephanie’s son, Ross.
1980 Works as emergency humanities teacher.
Moves with Stephanie and Ross to Port Melbourne, their home for
the next twenty-one years.
Founds Anthill Theatre with Jean-Pierre Mignon and ex-Pram Fac-
tory people. Meets playwright and novelist Ray Mooney.
1981 Performance of Exiles at Anthill.
1982 Encouraged by the poet Kris Hemensley, Alex abandons the theatre
and returns to novel writing.
Begins teaching English at Glenroy Technical School.
1983 Marries Stephanie in Melbourne with his parents present.
1984 Death of Alex’s father.
Negotiates half-time teaching position at Glenroy Technical School.
Works on The Tivington Nott.
1986 Teaches professional writing half-time, Holmesglen College of TAFE.
Meets Peter Davis, writer and photographer, and Liz Hatte, teacher
and archaeologist.
1987 Visits Shanghai and Hangzhou with Stephanie and Ross while writ-
ing The Ancestor Game. Meets Ouyang Yu, poet and novelist.
1988 Publishes Watching the Climbers on the Mountain.

ix

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 Chronology

1989 Publishes The Tivington Nott.

Birth of Alex and Stephanie’s daughter, Kate.
1990 Meets Barrett Reid, poet, and Paul Carter, writer and intellectual, at
the Braille Award for The Tivington Nott. Is invited to Barrie Reid’s
home at Heide. At Heide he meets the artist Rick Amor and later sits
for a portrait by Amor.
1992 Publishes The Ancestor Game.
1993 Receives his frst major awards for The Ancestor Game: the Miles
Franklin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the
Barbara Ramsden Award.
Travels to London for a private audience with the Queen, then on to
Toronto and New York for literary festivals.
1994 Death of Alex’s mother.
Invited to teach creative writing at La Trobe University.
1995 Publishes The Sitters. Visits Tunisia and Rome for work on Conditions
of Faith.
1997 Visits Liz Hatte in Townsville and meets Col McLennan, the models
for Bo and Annabelle in Journey to the Stone Country.
2000 Publishes Conditions of Faith and begins an ongoing relationship
with Allen & Unwin.
Spends six weeks in Paris with Stephanie and family.
Travels from Townsville to Mount Coolon with Liz Hatte and Col
McLennan, elder of the Jangga. Meets Frank Budby, elder of the
Barada, at Nebo. The friendships that follow lead to the novels Jour-
ney to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell.
2001 Wins the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the New South Wales
Premier’s Literary Awards for Conditions of Faith.
Awarded the Centenary Medal.
Moves from Port Melbourne to Castlemaine with Stephanie and
Kate.
2002 Publishes Journey to the Stone Country.
Opens Sanctuary at Herring Island, an exhibition of work by artists
Lyndell Brown, Charles Green and Patrick Pound. This experience
informs the novel Prochownik’s Dream.

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 The Novels of Alex Miller

Begins an important literary friendship with the biographer Hazel

Rowley.
2003 Wins second Miles Franklin Literary Award for Journey to the Stone
Country.
2005 Publishes Prochownik’s Dream.
Meets writer, academic and Aboriginal activist Anita Heiss at an Aus-
tralian literature conference in Hamburg.
2007 Publishes Landscape of Farewell.
2008 Travels to Beijing to accept the 2008 Weishanhu Award for Best
Foreign Novel in the 21st Century from the People’s Literature Pub-
lishing House in China for Landscape of Farewell.
Awarded the Manning Clark House National Cultural Award for an
outstanding contribution to the quality of Australian cultural life.
2009 Publishes Lovesong.
2010 Travels to Kilkenny in Ireland and to Scotland with Stephanie, visits
London and while there fnds the voice for Autumn in Autumn Laing.
2011 Wins the Age Fiction Award, the Age Book of the Year and the Chris-
tina Stead Prize for Fiction in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary
Awards, as well as the People’s Choice Award, for Lovesong.
Symposium on ‘The Novels of Alex Miller’, University of Sydney,
13–14 May.
Publishes his tenth novel, Autumn Laing.
In late 2011 Alex learned of the extraordinary coincidence that his
great-great-aunt Jane Miller was married in Castlemaine in 1871—
the country town where Alex lives with his wife Stephanie—and that
Jane Miller died in South Yarra in 1900. It now seems Alex has several
generations of family connections in Castlemaine and Melbourne.
Until he received this information, Alex believed himself to be the
sole representative of his family’s line in Australia.

xi

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 DISESTABLISHED WORLDS:
An Introduction to the Novels of Alex Miller

ROBERT DIXON

Critic and novelist Brenda Walker begins her essay in this volume by
suggesting that ‘Alex Miller may be Australia’s greatest living writer’ (42). The
purpose of The Novels of Alex Miller is to begin the work of testing that claim.
Miller has now published ten novels. He has won the Miles Franklin Literary
Award (twice), the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the New South Wales
Premier’s Literary Award; his novels have been warmly embraced by Austral-
ian readers and translated into other languages, most notably into Chinese;
and in 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal. Surprisingly, though,
for a writer of this stature, there has yet been no major study of his life and
work. One reason for this may simply be the reluctance of Australian pub-
lishers to take on serious, evaluative works of literary criticism: it has been
many years now since the Oxford Australian Writers and the UQP Australian
Authors series were wound up, and one consequence has been that an entire
generation of Australian writers, including Miller, has not been accorded the
critical appreciation that was routinely given to our major writers prior to
the late 1980s.
A second reason may be that Miller has come upon us relatively quickly
as a major writer. His frst novel, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain,
was published as recently as the Bicentennial year, 1988. Major national and
international recognition came with the publication of his third novel, The

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 Robert Dixon

Ancestor Game, in 1992. As I write in August 2011, that is only nineteen years
ago, yet Miller’s tenth novel, Autumn Laing, is now in press and due for pub-
lication in October 2011. This is an extraordinary rate of production—on
average, a major novel every two years—although, as we will see, Miller’s
commitment to the vocation of writing was made early, and the novels were
sometimes long in gestation. His novels are by and large accessible to the
general reading public yet manifestly of high literary seriousness—substan-
tial, technically masterly and assured, intricately interconnected, and of great
imaginative, intellectual and ethical weight.
A third reason may be that Miller’s novels have often drawn upon and
imaginatively transformed the details of his own life and the lives of his
friends in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. We might
recall how much our understanding of Patrick White, for example, was
enhanced by the publication of his own memoir, Flaws in the Glass, in 1981,
and by David Marr’s biography and edition of the letters in 1991 and 1994.
No wonder, then, that Australian readers and critics are still coming to terms
with Miller’s body of work. The Novels of Alex Miller has been designed to
provide foundational information about Miller’s life and the sources of his
art that will further help readers to appreciate the richness and complexity
of his achievement in fction: to that end, it includes a memoir, ‘The Mask of
Fiction’, freshly written for this collection, a chronology, a selection of pho-
tographs, and a series of essays in which nineteen contributors—including
leading academic critics, novelists, writers and literary journalists—begin
the work of exploring Miller’s achievement across the entire range of his
novels, from Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (1988) to Autumn
Laing (2011).
Alexander McPhee Miller was born in London on 27 December 1936,
the son of a Scottish father and an Irish mother. The family lived initially at
32 Cumberland Street, London SW1, and in 1938 moved to 101 Pendragon
Road in the Downham council estate in Bromley SE6. His mother, Wini-
fred, had been in private service before her marriage to his father, Alexander
McPhee. His father was a cook at Crockford’s Club and later at the Grosvenor
Hotel in London. There were three other children: sisters Kathy and Ruth,
and brother Ross. Miller has said that it was made ‘very clear’ to him that the

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 The Novels of Alex Miller

family were not part of England’s ‘ruling culture’, and that this made it dif-
fcult for him to fnd ‘meaning and purpose’ in his early life (Van Teeseling,
interview). His sense of unsettlement was perhaps exacerbated by the effects
of the war on his father’s personality and behaviour, to which Miller refers
discreetly in a number of essays and interviews. Increasingly estranged from
his family and with no strong feelings of belonging to local or national com-
munities, Miller sensed the need to get away, and at the age of ffteen he left
school in London to work as a farm labourer on Exmoor in Somerset. There
is an echo here—or perhaps it is an inverted echo, given their different fam-
ily backgrounds and expatriate directions—of the young Patrick White, who
at the same age also felt himself to be ‘a stranger in my own country’ (Flaws,
46). At this time, as he explains in ‘The Mask of Fiction’, Miller was shown
a collection of black and white photographs of the Australian outback, the
work—as he would learn many years later—of Sidney Nolan. These images
had an intense impact on his burgeoning artistic sensibility and led him to
formulate a plan of escape from the austerity of post-war Britain by emigra-
tion to a new country that he was coming to see in near-mythical terms. In
The Ancestor Game, the young Lang Tzu, who is establishing the grounds of
his own freedom by severing his ties with his ancestors, is advised to ‘Long
for something you can’t name . . . and call it Australia’ (259). Despite Miller’s
sense of displacement, this image of place as a site of almost utopian pos-
sibility would recur in the novels that began to germinate in his memory
and imagination from this time. It is what Bill Ashcroft, drawing on the uto-
pian philosophy of Ernst Bloch, describes as ‘Heimat’, ‘that “home” that we all
sense but have never experienced’, and which is fundamental to literature’s
role in producing those moments of ‘anticipatory illumination’ by which we
begin to imagine a different world (‘Australian Transnation’, 1).
Miller arrived in Australia alone in 1952 at the age of sixteen. It was to be
his ‘land of fresh beginnings’, and he immediately hitchhiked north from Syd-
ney in search of Nolan’s outback. Despite the uncertainties of his childhood,
photographs taken at this time show a young man whose physical strength
and youthful grace are suggestive of an inner strength: a growing sense of
purpose and self-presence. For the next six years he would work in a variety
of rural jobs, initially as a farm hand near Gympie in southeast Queensland,

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 Robert Dixon

then as a stockman at Goathlands Station near Springsure in Queensland’s

Central Highlands, and later as a ringer on Augustus Downs, a cattle station
in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In 1957 there was a spell as a horse breaker in New
Zealand. He recalls that the dramatic escarpments of the Central Queensland
ranges were not quite Nolan’s outback, ‘but I fell in love with the country’,
and when he returned to it as a successful writer in 2000, it would inspire
the settings of his Central Queensland novels, Journey to the Stone Country
(2002) and Landscape of Farewell (2007).
Miller ‘came out of the bush’ when he was twenty-one, arriving in Mel-
bourne in 1958. Recognising his artistic and intellectual aspirations, a group
of friends—including Polish Jewish émigrés Max and Ruth Blatt, and the
historian Max Kelly—encouraged him to undertake the evening studies that
would allow him to qualify for university entrance. Miller was an arts stu-
dent at the University of Melbourne in the early 1960s, graduating in 1965
with majors in history and English. At this time he met Anne Neil, a social
worker and painter, whom he married in 1961. The marriage failed, but after
their fnal separation in 1970 and until her death from a stroke in 2004, Anne
remained a close friend to Miller and his second wife, Stephanie. After gradu-
ation, Miller spent some months travelling in Italy and returned to England,
where he worked for the Japanese Trade Commission and began to heal the
breach with his frst family. Returning to Australia in 1966, he worked as a
research offcer for the Department of External Territories and then for the
Department of Trade and Industry in Canberra, but in 1969 he left the public
service and bought a farm in the Araluen Valley west of Goulburn, where he
raised beef cattle and began his apprenticeship as a novelist.
Miller has said that while he had been a storyteller from early childhood,
it took many years before he found his ‘authentic material’ (‘Waxing’, 24).
A key to this process was the wise counsel of his friend, Max Blatt, whom
Miller recalls as ‘a central European intellectual of the kind JP Stern and
WG Sebald write about with such beautiful nostalgic elegance’ (‘Waxing’,
25). Max interpreted European literature and philosophy to him in a way
that he had not encountered at university, and helped him fnd his vocation
as a writer. At Araluen, between 1969 and 1974, Miller wrote three man-
uscripts which he describes as his ‘pre-novels’ (‘Waxing’, 25). Max would

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 The Novels of Alex Miller

come up to visit by train from Melbourne, staying for a week at a time. On

one such visit, Miller presented him with a 400-page novel in manuscript,
which Max read through the day and into the early evening. Miller recalls: ‘I
was woken by the thump of the 400 pages landing beside my head. I sprang
up. Max was lighting a cigarette. With a mixture of disappointment, frustra-
tion and regret, he said, “Why don’t you write about something you love?”’
(‘Waxing’, 25). And then an exchange took place between the two men that
resonates throughout Miller’s mature novels. That night, Max Blatt told
Miller the story of his own escape from an anti-Semitic attack in Poland at
the beginning of the war: ‘He told me the simple bones of the story in a few
sentences. I did not sleep that night but wrote the story in detail and in the
morning I gave it to him to read . . . When he fnished reading it, he said with
feeling, “You could have been there”, and embraced me’ (‘Waxing’, 25). The
result was Miller’s frst published piece of fction, the short story ‘Comrade
Pawel’ (1975), which is set in Poland in 1939. This sharing of a personal
story foreshadows the way Steven Muir, in The Ancestor Game, reworks Ger-
trude Spiess’s own fctionalisation of her father’s diaries; it foreshadows the
way the artist’s memory is reinvigorated by his encounter with Jessica Keal in
The Sitters, and again when Toni Powlett frst speaks of his father’s death to
Marina Golding in Prochownik’s Dream (2005); it prefgures Professor Max
Otto’s writing up of Dougald Gnapun’s account of his ancestor’s military
leadership in Landscape of Farewell; and it is echoed nearly forty years later
in the novelist’s appropriation of John Patterner’s story in Lovesong (2009).
In recalling this foundational moment with Max Blatt, Miller asks, ‘Why did
I believe, and why do I still believe, that this story was mine? What made it
mine?’ (‘Waxing’, 25).
There is much here that illuminates the novelist’s craft and preoccupa-
tions. These include, as Peter Pierce remarked in a pioneering article on
Miller, the essential ‘solitariness’ of the writer who nonetheless enters into
deeply empathic engagements with other people and other cultures; the
sharing of a private experience or place or event that triggers the memory
and imagination of both teller and listener; and the simultaneously imagina-
tive and ethical nature of both interpersonal engagements, and the equally
intimate acts of writing and reading: ‘He told me the story so that I would

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 Robert Dixon

understand . . . anti-Semitism’ and ‘I took him to mean . . . that my account

of the events that happened to him . . . conveyed the truth of his experience’
(‘Waxing’, 25). Miller therefore shares with Jacques Derrida a concern with
the ethics of friendship as a force for our own becoming, which nonethe-
less honours the essential difference of the other person. And he shares with
Martha Nussbaum a belief that the novel is peerless among modern forms
of communication for dealing with the affective and ethical dimension of
human relationships, both intimate and social. Writing, Miller has said, is his
way of ‘locating connections’ in what has otherwise been a life characterised
by a series of disconnections—‘plural selves, worlds and cultures’ (‘The Mask
of Fiction’, 30). Those three ‘pre-novels’ had been too self-absorbed to interest
a publisher. The exchange with Max Blatt and the writing of ‘Comrade Pawel’,
however, awakened the relationship between the self and the other that is
not only a hallmark of Miller’s novels, but also of his mode of writing as an
imaginative and ethical practice. As he puts it so simply and directly, ‘In this
preoccupation with the self I was mistaken, and it was not until I ceased writ-
ing directly about myself and began to write imaginatively of the people and
the places most dear to me that my writing began to . . . gain me a readership’
(‘The Mask of Fiction’).
After the sale of the Araluen property in 1974, and following a period
in Paris, Miller moved back to Melbourne where he completed a Diploma
of Education and began a new career as a humanities teacher at Brunswick
Technical School. He there developed a close friendship with Alan O’Hoy, an
art teacher, artist and art collector who would be the inspiration for Lang Tzu
in The Ancestor Game. Also in 1975, Miller met Stephanie Pullin, whom he
married in 1983. In ‘The Mask of Fiction’, he confesses that meeting Stephanie
and creating their family fnally made sense of his life (30): their son Ross was
born in 1978 and their daughter Kate in 1989. In 1980, the family moved
to Port Melbourne, where they lived for the next twenty-one years until the
move to Castlemaine in central Victoria in 2001.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Miller was active in Melbourne
theatre circles and focused on writing plays. Kitty Howard was performed by
the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1978, and in 1980 he co-founded the
Anthill Theatre with Jean-Pierre Mignon and others from the Pram Factory.

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 The Novels of Alex Miller

His play Exiles was performed there the following year. In 1982, encouraged
by the poet Kris Hemensley, Miller abandoned the theatre and returned to
novel writing. Supporting himself and his young family by a series of teach-
ing positions—full-time at Glenroy Technical School from 1982 and then
half-time from 1984, and half-time at Holmesglen College of TAFE from
1986—Miller set about making the diffcult transition to being a professional
writer. He was working on a large manuscript that would become his frst two
published novels, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain and The Tivington
Nott. They were originally conceived as a single work drawing on Miller’s
experience as a farm hand on Exmoor, his subsequent emigration to Aus-
tralia, and his years in Central Queensland and the Gulf of Carpentaria. It
was to be called Jimmy Diamond, in memory of an Aboriginal ringer with
whom he had worked in the Gulf Country in the mid 1950s. As he explains
in ‘The Mask of Fiction’, ‘this book was going to bridge the two lives, the
two worlds, and their apparently unconnected realities’ (32), but when he
reached the end of the Exmoor section, he realised that the frst novel had
emerged from his re-creative imagination whole and complete. It was a novel
about English rural life, and Miller was unable to fnd a publisher for it in
Australia, and so the second novel to be written, Watching the Climbers on the
Mountain, which is set in Central Queensland, was published frst, in Sydney
in 1988. The Exmoor novel, The Tivington Nott, was published in London
in 1989. In these frst two novels, we fnd in their earliest form many of the
themes of Miller’s later work. As Brenda Walker observes, The Tivington Nott
‘is centrally concerned with the situation of the outsider’ (48); it is ‘a medi-
tation on issues of territory and intrusion’ (49). And despite their different
settings, their shared gestation is readily apparent in the many structural and
thematic connections between them. As Peter Pierce says of Watching the
Climbers on the Mountain, ‘a hemisphere away, but we are again with a closed
rural community, as in The Tivington Nott, one that is about to be disrupted
by an outsider’ (59).
Miller was now in his early ffties, and in drawing upon his earlier experi-
ences for fction, he has said that he felt like an archaeologist who had only just
begun to excavate ‘a buried city of great complexity’ (‘This Is How’, 30). Those
metaphors he uses to describe the original project of Jimmy Diamond—the

The Novels of Alex Miller_final Pages.indd 7 27/01/12 12:29 PM

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week, might thrill at her smile—even while he worked to wed her to Lord
Harrowby. And perhaps— Who could say? Hard as he might work, might
he not be thwarted? It was possible.

So after lunch he sent Thacker a reassuring message, promising to stay.

And at the end of a dull hour in the lobby, he set out to explore the town.

The Mermaid Tea House stood on the waterfront, with a small second-
floor balcony that looked out on the harbor. Passing that way at four-thirty
that afternoon, Minot heard a voice call to him. He glanced up.

"Oh, Mr. Minot—won't you come into my parlor?" Cynthia Meyrick

smiled down on him.

"Splendid," Minot laughed. "I walk forlorn through this old Spanish
town—suddenly a lattice is thrown wide, a fair hand beckons. I dash
within."

"Thanks for dashing," Miss Meyrick greeted him, on the balcony. "I was
finding it dreadfully dull. But I'm afraid the Spanish romance is a little
lacking. There is no moonlight, no lattice, no mantilla, no Spanish beauty."

"No matter," Minot answered. "I never did care for Spanish types. They
flash like a sky-rocket—then tumble in the dark. Now, the home-grown
girls—"

"And nothing but tea," she interrupted. "Will you have a cup?"

"Thanks. Was it really very dull?"

"Yes. This book was to blame." She held up a novel.

"What's the matter with it?"

"Oh—it's one of those books in which the hero and heroine are forever
'gazing into each other's eyes.' And they understand perfectly. But the reader
doesn't. I've reached one of those gazing matches now."
 "But isn't it so in real life—when people gaze into each other's eyes,
don't they usually understand?"

"Do they?"

"Don't they? You surely have had more experience than I."

"What makes you think so?" she smiled.

"Because your eyes are so very easy to gaze into."

"Mr. Minot—you're gazing into them—brazenly. And—neither of us

'understand,' do we?"

"Oh, no—we're both completely at sea."

"There," she cried triumphantly. "I told you these authors were all
wrong."

Minot, having begun to gaze, found difficulty in stopping. She was near,
she was beautiful—and a promise made in New York was a dim and distant
thing.

"The railroad folders try to make you believe Florida is an annex to

Heaven," he said. "I used to think they were lying. But—"

She blushed.

"But what, Mr. Minot?"

He leaned close, a strange light in his eyes. He opened his mouth to

speak.

Suddenly he glanced over her shoulder, and the light died from his eyes.
His lips set in a bitter curve.

"Nothing," he said. A silence.

"Mr. Minot—you've grown awfully dull."

 "Have I? I'm sorry."

"Must I go back to my book—"

She was interrupted by the shrill triumphant cry of a yacht's siren at her
back. She turned her head.

"The Lileth," she said.

"Exactly," said Minot. "The bridegroom cometh."

Another silence.

"You'll want to go to meet him," Minot said, rising. He stood looking at

the boat, flashing gaily in the sunshine. "I'll go with you as far as the street."

"But—you know Lord Harrowby. Meet him with me."

"It seems hardly the thing—"

"But I'm not sentimental. And surely Allan's not."

"Then I must be," said Minot. "Really—I'd rather not—"

They went together to the street. At the parting of the ways, Minot turned
to her.

"I promised Lord Harrowby in New York," he told her, "that you would
have your lamp trimmed and burning."

She looked up at him. A mischievous light came into her eyes.

"Please—have you a match?" she asked.

It was too much. Minot turned and fled down the street. He did not once
look back, though it seemed to him that he felt every step the girl took
across that narrow pier to her fiancé's side.
 As he dressed for dinner that night his telephone rang, and Miss
Meyrick's voice sounded over the wire.

"Harrowby remembers you very pleasantly. Won't you join us at dinner?"

"Are you sure an outsider—" he began.

"Nonsense. Mr. Martin Wall is to be there."

"Ah—thank you—I'll be delighted," Minot replied.

In the lobby Harrowby seized his hand.

"My dear chap—you're looking fit. Great to see you again. By the way—
do you know Martin Wall?"

"Yes—Mr. Wall and I met just before the splash," Minot smiled. He
shook hands with Wall, unaccountably genial and beaming. "The Hudson,
Mr. Wall, is a bit chilly in February."

"My dear fellow," said Wall, "can you ever forgive me? A thousand
apologies. It was all a mistake—a horrible mistake."

"I felt like a rotter when I heard about it," Harrowby put in. "Martin
mistook you for some one else. You must forgive us both."

"Freely," said Minot. "And I want to apologize for my suspicions of you,

Lord Harrowby."

"Thanks, old chap."

"I never doubted you would come—after I saw Miss Meyrick."

"She is a ripper, isn't she?" said Harrowby enthusiastically.

Martin Wall shot a quick, almost hostile glance at Minot.

"You've noticed that yourself, haven't you?" he said in Minot's ear.

 At which point the Meyrick family arrived, and they all went in to
dinner.

That function could hardly be described as hilarious. Aunt Mary fluttered

and gasped in her triumph, and spoke often of her horror of the new. The
recent admission of automobiles to the sacred precincts of Bar Harbor
seemed to be the great and disturbing fact in life for her. Spencer Meyrick
said little; his thoughts were far away. The rush and scramble of a business
office, the click of typewriters, the excitement of the dollar chase—these
things had been his life. Deprived of them, like many another exile in the
South, he moved in a dim world of unrealities and wished that he were
home. Minot, too, had little to say. On Martin Wall fell the burden of
entertainment, and he bore it as one trained for the work. Blithely he
gossiped of queer corners that had known him and amid the flow of his
oratory the dinner progressed.

It was after dinner, when they all stood together in the lobby a moment
before separating, that Mr. Henry Trimmer made good his promise out of a
clear sky.

Cynthia Meyrick stood facing the others, talking brightly, when suddenly
her face paled and the flippant words died on her lips. They all turned
instantly.

Through the lobby, in a buzz of excited comment, a man walked slowly,

his eyes on the ground. He was a tall blond Englishman, not unlike Lord
Harrowby in appearance. His gray eyes, when he raised them for a moment,
were listless, his shoulders stooped and weary, and he had a long drooping
mustache that hung like a weeping willow above a particularly cheerless
stream.

However, it was not his appearance that excited comment and caused
Miss Meyrick to pale. Hung over his shoulders was a pair of sandwich
boards such as the outcasts of a great city carry up and down the streets.
And on the front board, turned full toward Miss Meyrick's dinner party, was
printed in bold black letters:
 I
AM
THE
REAL
LORD
HARROWBY

With a little gasp and a murmured apology, Miss Meyrick turned quickly
and entered the elevator. Lord Harrowby stood like a man of stone, gazing
at the sandwich boards.

It was at this point that the hotel detective sufficiently recovered himself
to lay eager hands on the audacious sandwich man and propel him violently
from the scene.

In the background Mr. Minot perceived Henry Trimmer, puffing

excitedly on a big black cigar, a triumphant look on his face.

Mr. Trimmer's bomb was thrown.

CHAPTER VI
TEN MINUTES OF AGONY

"All I ask, Mister Harrowby, is that you consent to a short interview with
your brother."

Mr. Trimmer was speaking. The time was noon of the following day, and
Trimmer faced Lord Harrowby in the sitting-room of his lordship's hotel
suite. Also present—at Harrowby's invitation—were Martin Wall and Mr.
Minot.

His lordship turned his gray eyes on Trimmer's eager face. He could
make those eyes fishy when he liked—he made them so now.
 "He is not my brother," he said coldly, "and I shall not see him. May I
ask you not to call me Mr. Harrowby?"

"You may ask till you're red in your noble face," replied Trimmer, firm
in his disrespect. "But I shall go on calling you 'Mister' just the same. I call
you that because I know the facts. Just as I call your poor cheated brother,
who was in this hotel last night between sandwich boards, Lord Harrowby."

"Really," said his lordship, "I see no occasion for prolonging this
interview."

Mr. Trimmer leaned forward. He was a big man, but his face was
incongruously thin—almost ax-like. The very best sort of face to thrust in
anywhere—and Trimmer was the very man to do the thrusting without
batting an eye.

"Do you deny," he demanded with the air of a prosecutor, "that you had
an older brother by the name of George?"

"I certainly do not," answered Lord Harrowby. "George ran off to

America some twenty-two years ago. He died in a mining camp in Arizona
twelve years back. There is no question whatever about that. We had it on
the most reliable authority."

"A lot of lies," said Trimmer, "can be had on good authority. This
situation illustrates that. Do you think, Mr. Harrowby, that I'd be wasting
my time on this proposition if I wasn't dead sure of my facts. Why, poor old
George has the evidence in his possession. Incontrovertible proofs. It
wouldn't hurt you to see him and look over what he has to offer."

"Your lordship," Minot suggested, "you know that I am your friend and
that my great desire is to see you happily married next week. In order that
nothing may happen to prevent, I think you ought to see—"

"This impostor," cut in his lordship haughtily. "No, I can not. This is not
the first time adventurers have questioned the Harrowby title. The dignity of
our family demands that I refuse to take any notice whatsoever."
 "Go on," sneered Trimmer. "Hide behind your dignity. When I get
through with you you won't have enough left to conceal your stick-pin."

"Trimmer," said Martin Wall, speaking for the first time, "how much
money do you want?"

Mr. Trimmer kept his temper admirably.

"Your society has not corrupted me, Mr. Wall," he said sweetly. "I am
not a blackmailer. I am simply a publicity man. I'm working on a salary
which Lord Harrowby—the real Lord Harrowby—is to pay me when he
comes into his own. I've handled successfully in publicity campaigns prima
donnas, pills, erasers, perfumes, holding companies, race horses, soups and
society leaders. It isn't likely that I shall fall down on this proposition. For
the last time, Mr. Allan Harrowby, will you see your brother?"

"Lord Harrowby, if I were you—" Minot began.

"My dear fellow." His lordship raised one slim hand. "It is quite
impossible. Which, I take it, terminates our talk with Mr. Trimmer."

"Yes," said Mr. Trimmer, rising. "Except for one thing. Our young friend
here, when he urges you to grant my request, is giving a correct imitation of
a wise head on youthful shoulders. He's an American, and he knows about
me—about Henry Trimmer. I guess you never heard, Mr. Harrowby, what I
did for Cotrell's Ink Eraser—"

"Come on," said Mr. Wall militantly, "erase yourself."

"For the moment, I will," smiled Mr. Trimmer. "But I warn you, Mr.
Harrowby, you are going to be sorry. You aren't up against any piker in
publicity—no siree. That little sandwich-board stunt of mine last night was
just a starter. I'm going to take the public into partnership. Put it up to the
people—that's my motto."

"Good day, sir," snapped Lord Harrowby.

 "Put it up to the people. And when I pull off the little trick I thought of
this morning, you're going to get down before me on your noble knees, and
beg off. I warn you. Good day, gentlemen. And may I add one simple
request on parting? Watch Trimmer!"

He went out, slamming the door behind him. Mr. Wall rose and walked
rapidly toward a decanter.

"Rather tough on you, Lord Harrowby," he remarked, pouring himself a

drink. "Especially just now. The fresh bounder! Ought to have been kicked
out of the room."

"An impostor," snorted Harrowby. "A rank impostor."

"Of course." Mr. Wall set down his glass. "But don't worry. If Trimmer
gets too obstreperous, I'll take care of him myself. I guess I'll be going back
to the yacht."

After Wall's departure, Minot and Harrowby sat staring at each other for
a long moment.

"See here, your lordship," said Minot at last. "You know why I'm in San
Marco. That wedding next Tuesday must take place without fail. And I can't
say that I approve of your action just now—"

"My dear boy," Harrowby interrupted soothingly, "I appreciate your

position. But there was nothing to be gained by seeing Mr. Trimmer's
friend. The Meyricks were distressed, naturally, by that ridiculous
sandwich-board affair last evening, but they have made no move to call off
the wedding on account of it. The best thing to do, I'm sure, is to let matters
take their course. I might be able to prove that chap's claims false—and
then again I mightn't, even if I knew they were false. And—there is a third
possibility."

"What is that?"

"He might really be—George."

 "But you said your brother died, twelve years ago."

"That is what we heard. But—one can not be sure. And, delighted as I

should be to know that George is alive, naturally I should prefer to know it
after next Tuesday."

Anger surged into Minot's heart.

"Is that fair to the young lady who—"

"Who is to become my wife?" Lord Harrowby waved his hand. "It is.
Miss Meyrick is not marrying me for my title. As for her father and aunt, I
can not be so sure. I want no disturbance. You want none. I am sure it is
better to let things take their course."

"All right," said Minot. "Only I intend to do every thing in my power to

put this wedding through."

"My dear chap—your cause is mine," answered his lordship.

Minot returned to the narrow confines of his room. On the bureau, where
he had thrown it earlier in the day, lay an invitation to dine that night with
Mrs. Bruce. Thus was Jack Paddock's hand shown. The dinner was to be in
Miss Meyrick's honor, and Mr. Minot was not sorry he was to go. He took
up the invitation and reread it smilingly. So he was to hear Mrs. Bruce at
her own table—the wittiest hostess in San Marco—bar none.

The drowsiness of a Florida midday was in the air. Mr. Minot lay down
on his bed. A hundred thoughts were his: the brown of Miss Meyrick's eyes,
the sincerity of Mr. Trimmer's voice when he spoke of his proposition, the
fishy look of Lord Harrowby refusing to meet his long lost brother. Things
grew hazy. Mr. Minot slept.

On leaving Lord Harrowby's rooms, Mr. Martin Wall did not

immediately set out for the Lileth, on which he lived in preference to the
hotel. Instead he took a brisk turn about the spacious lobby of the De la Pax.
 People turned to look at him as he passed. They noted that his large,
placid, rather jovial face was lighted by an eye sharp and queer, and a bit
out of place amid its surroundings. Mr. Wall considered himself the true
cosmopolite, and his history rather bore out the boast. Many and odd were
the lands that had known him. He had loaned money to a prince of Algiers
(on excellent security), broken bread with a sultan, organized a baseball
nine in Cuba, and coming home from the East via the Indian ports, had
flirted on shipboard with the wife of a Russian grand duke. As he passed
through that cool lobby it was not to be wondered at that middle west
merchants and their wives found him worthy of a second glance.

The courtyard of the Hotel de la Pax was fringed by a series of modish

shops, with doors opening both on the courtyard and on the narrow street
outside. Among these, occupying a corner room was the very smart jewel
shop of Ostby and Blake. Occasionally in the winter resorts of the South
one may find jewelry shops whose stock would bear favorably competition
with Fifth Avenue. Ostby and Blake conducted such an establishment.

For a moment before the show-window of this shop Mr. Wall paused,
and with the eye of a connoisseur studied the brilliant display within. His
whole manner changed. The air of boredom with which he had surveyed his
fellow travelers of the lobby disappeared; on the instant he was alert, alive,
almost eager. Jauntily he strolled into the store.

One clerk only—a tall thin man with a sallow complexion and hair the
color of a lemon—was in charge. Mr. Wall asked to be shown the stock of
unset diamonds.

The trays that the man set before him caused the eyes of Mr. Wall to
brighten still more. With a manner almost reverent he stooped over and
passed his fingers lovingly over the stones. For an instant the tall man
glanced outside, and smiled a sallow smile. A little girl in a pink dress was
crossing the street, and it was at her that he smiled.

"There's a flaw in that stone," said Mr. Wall, in a voice of sorrow. "See
—"
 From outside came the shrill scream of a child, interrupting. The tall man
turned quickly to the window.

"My God—" he moaned.

"What is it?" Mr. Wall sought to look over his shoulder. "Automobile—"

"My little girl," cried the clerk in agony. He turned to Martin Wall,
hesitating. His sallow face was white now, his lips trembled. Doubtfully he
gazed into the frank open countenance of Martin Wall. And then—

"I leave you in charge," he shouted, and fled past Mr. Wall to the street.

For a moment Martin Wall stood, frozen to the spot. His eyes were
unbelieving; his little Cupid's bow mouth was wide open.

"Here—come back—" he shouted, when he could find his voice.

No one heeded. No one heard. Outside in the street a crowd had

gathered. Martin Wall wet his dry lips with his tongue. An unaccountable
shudder swept his huge frame.

"My God—" he cried in a voice of terror, "I'm alone!"

For the first time he dared to move. His elbow bumped a hundred
thousand dollars' worth of unset diamonds. Frightened, he drew back. He
collided with a show-case rich in emeralds, rubies and aquamarines. He put
out a plump hand to steady himself. It rested on a display case of French,
Russian and Dutch silver.

Mr. Wall's knees grew weak. He felt a strange prickly sensation all over
him. He took a step—and was staring at the finest display of black pearls
south of Maiden Lane, New York.

Quickly he turned away. His eyes fell upon the door of a huge safety
vault. It was swinging open!

Little beads of perspiration began to pop out on the forehead of Martin

Wall. His heart was hammering like that of a youth who sees after a long
separation his lady love. His eyes grew glassy.

He took out a silk handkerchief and passed it slowly across his damp
forehead.

Staggering slightly, he stepped again to the trays of unset stones. The

glassy eyes had grown greedy now. He put out one huge hand as the lover
aforesaid might reach toward his lady's hair.

Then Mr. Wall shut his lips firmly, and thrust both of his hands deep into
his trousers pockets. He stood there in the middle of that gorgeous room—a
fat figure of a man suffering a cruel inhuman agony.

He was still standing thus when the tall man came running back.
Apprehension clouded that sallow face.

"It was very kind of you." The small eyes of the clerk darted
everywhere; then came back to Martin Wall. "I'm obliged—why, what's the
matter, sir?"

Martin Wall passed his hand across his eyes, as a man banishing a
terrible dream.

"The little girl?" he asked.

"Hardly a scratch," said the clerk, pointing to the smiling child at his
side. "It was lucky, wasn't it?" He was behind the counter now, studying the
trays unprotected on the show-case.

"Very lucky." Martin Wall still had to steady himself. "Perhaps you'd like
to look about a bit before I go—"

"Oh, no, sir. Everything's all right, I'm sure. You were looking at these
stones—"

"Some other time," said Wall weakly. "I only wanted an idea of what you
had."

"Good day, sir. And thank you very much."

 "Not at all." And the limp ex-guardian passed unsteadily from the store
into the glare of the street.

Mr. Tom Stacy, of the Manhattan Club, half dozing on the veranda of his
establishment, was rejoiced to see his old friend Martin Wall crossing the
pavement toward him.

"Well, Martin—" he began. And then a look of concern came into his
face. "Good lord, man—what ails you?"

Mr. Wall sank like a wet rag to the steps.

"Tom," he said, "a terrible thing has just happened. I was left alone in
Ostby and Blake's jewelry shop."

"Alone?" cried Mr. Stacy. "You—alone?"

"Absolutely alone."

Mr. Stacy leaned over.

"Are you leaving town—in a hurry?" he asked.

Gloomily Mr. Wall shook his head.

"He put me on my honor," he complained. "Left me in charge of the

shop. Can you beat it? Of course after that, I—well—you know, somehow I
couldn't do it. I tried, but I couldn't."

Mr. Stacy threw back his head, and his raucous laughter smote the lazy
summer afternoon.

"I can't help it," he gasped. "The funniest thing I ever—you—the best
stone thief in America alone in charge of three million dollars' worth of the
stuff!"

"Good heavens, man," whispered Wall. "Not so loud!" And well might
he protest, for Mr. Stacy's indiscreet and mirthful tone carried far. It carried,
for example, to Mr. Richard Minot, standing hidden behind the curtains of
his little room overhead.

"Come inside, Martin," said Stacy. "Come inside and have a bracer. You
sure must need it, after that."

"I do," replied Mr. Wall, in heartfelt tones. He rose and followed Tom
Stacy.

Cheeks burning, eyes popping, Mr. Minot watched them disappear into
the Manhattan Club.

Here was news indeed. Lord Harrowby's boon companion the ablest
jewel thief in America! Just what did that mean?

Putting on coat and hat, he hurried to the hotel office and there wrote a
cablegram:

"Situation suspicious are you dead certain H. is on the level?"

An hour later, in his London office, Mr. Jephson read this message
carefully three times.

CHAPTER VII
CHAIN LIGHTNING'S COLLAR

The Villa Jasmine, Mrs. Bruce's winter home, stood in a park of palms
and shrubbery some two blocks from the Hotel de la Pax. Mr. Minot walked
thither that evening in the resplendent company of Jack Paddock.
 "You'll enjoy Mrs. Bruce to-night," Paddock confided. "I've done her
some rather good lines, if I do say it as shouldn't."

"On what topics?" asked Minot, with a smile.

"International marriage—jewels—by the way, I don't suppose you know

that Miss Cynthia Meyrick is to appear for the first time wearing the famous
Harrowby necklace?"

"I didn't even know there was a necklace," Minot returned.

"Ah, such ignorance. But then, you don't wander much in feminine
society, do you? Mrs. Bruce told me about it this morning. Chain
Lightning's Collar."

"Chain Lightning's what?"

"Ah, my boy—" Mr. Paddock lighted a cigarette. "You should go round

more in royal circles. List, commoner, while I relate. It seems that the Earl
of Raybrook is a giddy old sport with a gambling streak a yard wide. In his
young days he loved the Lady Evelyn Hollowway. Lady Evelyn had a horse
entered in a derby about that time—name, Chain Lightning. And the Earl of
Raybrook wagered a diamond necklace against a kiss that Chain Lightning
would lose."

"Wasn't that giving big odds?" inquired Minot.

"Not if you believe the stories of Lady Evelyn's beauty. Well, it

happened before Tammany politicians began avenging Ireland on Derby
Day. Chain Lightning won. And the earl came across with the necklace.
Afterward he married Lady Evelyn—"

"To get back the necklace?"

"Cynic. And being a rather racy old boy, he referred to the necklace
thereafter as Chain Lightning's Collar. It got to be pretty well known in
England by that name. I believe it is considered a rather neat piece of
jewelry among the English nobility—whose sparklers aren't what they were
before the steel business in Pittsburgh turned out a good thing."

"Chain Lightning's Collar," mused Minot. "I presume Lady Evelyn was
the mother of the present Lord Harrowby?"

"So 'tis rumored," smiled Paddock. "Though I take it his lordship favors
his father in looks."

They walked along for a moment in silence. The story of this necklace of
diamonds could bring but one thing to Minot's thoughts—Martin Wall
drooping on the steps of the Manhattan Club while old Stacy roared with
joy. He considered. Should he tell Mr. Paddock? No, he decided he would
wait.

"As I said," Paddock ran on, "you'll enjoy Mrs. Bruce to-night. Her lines
are good, but somehow—it's really a great problem to me—she doesn't
sound human and natural when she gets them off. I looked up her beauty
doctor and asked him if he couldn't put a witty gleam in her eye, but he told
me he didn't care to go that far in correcting Mrs. Bruce's Maker."

They had reached the Villa Jasmine now, a great white palace in a
flowery setting more like a dream than a reality. The evening breeze
murmured whisperingly through the palms, a hundred gorgeous colors
shone in the moonlight, fountains splashed coolly amid the greenery.

"Act Two," muttered Minot. "The grounds surrounding the castle of the
fairy princess."

"You have to come down here, don't you," replied Paddock, "to realize
that old Mother Nature has a little on Belasco, after all?"

The whir of a motor behind them caused the two young men to turn.
Then Mr. Minot saw her coming up the path toward him—coming up that
fantastic avenue of palms—tall, fair, white, a lovely figure in a lovely
setting—
 Ah, yes—Lord Harrowby! He walked at her side, nonchalant,
distinguished, almost as tall as a popular illustrator thinks a man in evening
clothes should be. Truly, they made a handsome couple. They were to wed.
Mr. Minot himself had sworn they were to wed.

He kept the bitterness from his tone as he greeted them there amid the
soft magic of the Florida night. Together they went inside. In the center of a
magnificent hallway they found Mrs. Bruce standing, like stout Cortez on
his Darien peak, triumphant amid the glory of her gold.

Mr. Minot thought Mrs. Bruce's manner of greeting somewhat harried

and oppressed. Poor lady, every function was a first night for her. Would the
glare of the footlights frighten her? Would she falter in her lines—forget
them completely? Only her sisters of the stage could sympathize with her
understandingly now.

"So you are to carry Cynthia away?" Minot heard her saying to Lord
Harrowby. "Such a lot of my friends have married into the peerage. Indeed,
I have sometimes thought you English have no other pastime save that of
slipping engagement rings on hands across the sea."

A soft voice spoke in Minot's ear.

"Mine," Mr. Paddock was saying. "Not bad, eh? But look at that
Englishman. Why should I have sat up all last night writing lines to try on
him? Can you tell me that?"

Lord Harrowby, indeed, seemed oblivious of Mrs. Bruce's little bon mot.
He hemmed and hawed, and said he was a lucky man. But he did not mean
that he was a lucky man because he had the privilege of hearing Mrs.
Bruce.

Mr. Bruce slipped out of the shadows into the weariness of another
formal dinner. Mrs. Bruce glittered, and he wrote the checks. He was a
scraggly little man who sometimes sat for hours at a time in silence. There
were those unkind enough to say that he sought back, trying to recall the
reason that had led him to marry Mrs. Bruce.
 When he beheld Miss Cynthia Meyrick, and knew that he was to take
her in to dinner, Mr. Bruce brightened perceptibly. None save a blind and
deaf man could have failed to. Cocktails consumed, the party turned toward
the dining-room. Except for the Meyricks, Martin Wall, Lord Harrowby and
Paddock, Dick Minot knew none of them. There were a couple of colorless
men from New York who, when they died, would be referred to as
"prominent club men," a horsy girl from Westchester, an ex-ambassador's
wife and daughter, a number of names from Boston and Philadelphia with
their respective bearers. And last but not least the two Bond girls from
Omaha—blond, lovely, but inclined to be snobbish even in that company,
for their mother was a Van Reypan, and Van Reypans are rare birds in
Omaha and elsewhere.

Mr. Minot took in the elder of the Bond girls, and found that Cynthia
Meyrick sat on his left. He glanced at her throat as they sat down. It was
bare of ornament. And then he beheld, sparkling in her lovely hair, the
perfect diamonds of Chain Lightning's Collar. As he turned back to the table
he caught the eye of Mr. Martin Wall. Mr. Wall's eye happened to be
coming away from the same locality.

The girl from Omaha gossiped of plays and players, like a dramatic page
from some old Sunday newspaper.

"I'm mad about the stage," she confided. "Of course, we get all the best
shows in Omaha. Why, Maxine Elliott and Nat Goodwin come there every
year."

Mr. Minot, New Yorker, shuddered. Should he tell her of the many and
active years in the lives of these two since they visited any town together?
No. What use? On the other side of him a sweet voice spoke:

"I presume you know, Mr. Minot, that Mrs. Bruce has the reputation of
being the wittiest hostess in San Marco?"

"I have heard as much." Minot smiled into Cynthia Meyrick's eyes.
"When does her act go on?"
 Mrs. Bruce was wondering the same thing. She knew her lines; she was
ready. True, she understood few of those lines. Wit was not her specialty.
Until Mr. Paddock took charge of her, she had thought colored newspaper
supplements humorous in the extreme. However, the lines Mr. Paddock
taught her seemed to go well, and she continued to patronize the old stand.

She looked up now from her conversation with her dinner partner, and
silence fell as at a curtain ascending.

"I was just saying to Lord Harrowby," Mrs. Bruce began, smiling about
her, "how picturesque our business streets are here. What with the Greek
merchants in their native costumes—"

"Bandits, every one of them," growled Mr. Bruce, bravely interrupting.

His wife frowned.

"Only the other day," she continued, "I bought a rug from a man who
claimed to be a Persian prince. He said it was a prayer-rug, and I think it
must have been, for ever since I got it I've been praying it's genuine."

A little ripple of amusement ran about the table. The redoubtable Mrs.
Bruce was under way. People spoke to one another in undertones—little
conversational nudges of anticipation.

"By the way, Cynthia," the hostess inquired, "have you heard from Helen
Arden lately?"

"Not for some time," responded Miss Meyrick, "although I have her
promise that she and the duke will be here—next Tuesday."

"Splendid." Mrs. Bruce turned to his lordship. "I think of Helen, Lord
Harrowby, because she, too, married into your nobility. Her father made his
money in sausage in the Middle West. In his youth he'd had trouble in
finding a pair of ready-made trousers, but as soon as the money began to
roll in, Helen started to look him up a coat of arms. And a family motto. I
remember suggesting at the time, in view of the sausage: 'A family is no
stronger than its weakest link.'"
 Mrs. Bruce knew when to pause. She paused now. The ripple became an
outright laugh. Mr. Paddock sipped languorously from his wine-glass. He
saw that his lines "got over."

"Went into society head foremost, Helen did," Mrs. Bruce continued.
"Thought herself a clever amateur actress. Used to act often for charity—
though I don't recall that she ever got it."

"The beauty of Mrs. Bruce's wit," said Miss Meyrick in Mr. Minot's ear,
"is that it is so unconscious. She doesn't appear to realize when she has said
a good thing."

"There's just a chance that she doesn't realize it," suggested Minot.

"Then Helen met the Duke of Lismore," Mrs. Bruce was speaking once
more. "Perhaps you know him, Lord Harrowby?"

"No—er—sorry to say I don't—"

"A charming chap. In some ways. Helen was a Shavian in considering

marriage the chief pursuit of women. She pursued. Followed Lismore to
Italy, where he proposed. I presume he thought that being in Rome, he must
do as the Romeos do."

"But, my dear lady," said Harrowby in a daze, "isn't it the Romans?"

"Isn't what the Romans?" asked Mrs. Bruce blankly.

"Your lordship is correct," said Mr. Paddock hastily. "Mrs. Bruce

misquoted purposely—in jest, you know. Jibe—japery."

"Oh—er—pardon me," returned his lordship.

"I saw Helen in London last spring," Mrs. Bruce went on. "She confided
to me that she considers her husband a genius. And if genius really be
nothing but an infinite capacity for taking champagnes, I am sure the poor
child is right."
 Little murmurs of joy, and the dinner proceeded. The guests bent over
their food, shipped to Mrs. Bruce in a refrigerating car from New York, and
very little wearied by its long trip. Here and there two talked together. It
was like an intermission between the acts.

Mr. Minot turned to the Omaha girl. Even though she was two wives
behind on Mr. Nat Goodwin's career, one must be polite.

It was at the close of the dinner that Mrs. Bruce scored her most telling
point. She and Lord Harrowby were conversing about a famous English
author, and when she was sure she had the attention of the table, she
remarked:

"Yes, we met his wife at the Masonbys'. But I have always felt that the
wife of a celebrity is like the coupon on one's railway ticket."

"How's that, Mrs. Bruce?" Minot inquired. After all, Paddock had been
kind to him.

"Not good if detached," said Mrs. Bruce.

She stood. Her guests followed suit. It was by this bon mot that she
chose to have her dinner live in the gossip of San Marco. Hence with it she
closed the ceremony.

"Witty woman, your wife," said one of the colorless New Yorkers to Mr.
Bruce, when the men were left alone.

Mr. Bruce only grunted, but Mr. Paddock answered brightly:

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

"Why—er—really—" Mr. Paddock blushed. Modest author, he.

A servant appeared to say that Lord Harrowby was wanted at once

outside, and excusing himself, Harrowby departed. He found his valet, a
plump, round-faced, serious man, waiting in the shadows on the veranda.
For a time they talked together in low tones. When Harrowby returned to
the dining-room, his never cheerful face was even gloomier than usual.

Spencer Meyrick and Bruce, exiles both of them, talked joyously of

business and the rush of the day's work for which both longed. The New
York man and a sapling from Boston conversed of chamber music. Martin
Wall sat silent, contemplative. Perhaps had he spoken his thoughts they
would have been of a rich jewel shop at noon—deserted.

A half-hour later Mrs. Bruce's dinner-party was scattered among the

palms and flowers of her gorgeous lawn. Mr. Minot had fallen again to the
elder girl from Omaha, and blithely for her he was displaying his Broadway
ignorance of horticulture. Suddenly out of the night came a scream.
Instantly when he heard it, Mr. Minot knew who had uttered it.

Unceremoniously he parted from the Omaha beauty and sped over the
lawn. But quick as he was, Lord Harrowby was quicker. For when Minot
came up, he saw Harrowby bending over Miss Meyrick, who sat upon a
wicker bench.

"Cynthia—what is it?" Harrowby was saying.

Cynthia Meyrick felt wildly of her shining hair.

"Your necklace," she gasped. "Chain Lightning's Collar. He took it! He

took it!"

"Who?"

"I don't know. A man!"

"A man!" Reverent repetition by feminine voices out of the excited

group.

"He leaped out at me there—by that tree—pinioned my arms—snatched

the necklace. I couldn't see his face. It happened in the shadow."

"No matter," Harrowby replied. "Don't give it another thought, my

child."
 "But how can I help—"

"I shall telephone the police at once," announced Spencer Meyrick.

"I beg you'll do nothing of the sort," expostulated Lord Harrowby. "It
would be a great inconvenience—the thing wasn't worth the publicity that
would result. I insist that the police be kept out of this."

Argument—loud on Mr. Meyrick's part—ensued. Suggestions galore

were offered by the guests. But in the end Lord Harrowby had his way. It
was agreed not to call in the police.

Mr. Minot, looking up, saw a sneering smile on the face of Martin Wall.
In a flash he knew the truth.

With Aunt Mary calling loudly for smelling salts, and the whole party
more or less in confusion, the return to the house started. Mr. Paddock
walked at Minot's side.

"Rather looks as though Chain Lightning's Collar had choked off our
gaiety," he mumbled. "Serves her right for wearing the thing in her hair. She
spoiled two corking lines for me by not wearing it where you'd naturally
expect a necklace to be worn."

Minot maneuvered so as to intercept Lord Harrowby under the portico.

"May I speak with you a moment?" he inquired. Harrowby bowed, and

they stepped into the shadows of the drive.

"Lord Harrowby," said Minot, trying to keep the excitement from his
voice, "I have certain information about one of the guests here this evening
that I believe would interest you. Your lordship has been badly buffaloed.
One of our fellow diners at Mrs. Bruce's table holds the title of the ablest
jewel thief in America!"

He watched keenly to catch Lord Harrowby's start of surprise. Alas, he

caught nothing of the sort.
 "Nonsense," said his lordship nonchalantly. "You mustn't let your
imagination carry you away, dear chap."

"Imagination nothing! I know what I'm talking about." And then Minot
added sarcastically: "Sorry to bore you with this."

His lordship laughed.

"Right-o, old fellow. I'm not interested."

"But haven't you just lost—"

"A diamond necklace? Yes." They had reached a particularly dark and
secluded spot beneath the canopy of palm leaves. Harrowby turned
suddenly and put his hands on Minot's shoulders. "Mr. Minot," he said,
"you are here to see that nothing interferes with my marriage to Miss
Meyrick. I trust you are determined to do your duty to your employers?"

"Absolutely. That is why—"

"Then," replied Harrowby quickly, "I am going to ask you to take charge
of this for me."

Suddenly Minot felt something cold and glassy in his hand. Startled, he
looked down. Even in the dark, Chain Lightning's Collar sparkled like the
famous toy that it was.

"Your lordship!—"

"I can not explain now. I can only tell you it is quite necessary that you
help me at this time. If you wish to do your full duty by Mr. Jephson."

"Who took this necklace from Miss Meyrick's hair?" asked Minot hotly.

"I did. I assure you it was the only way to prevent our plans from going
awry. Please keep it until I ask you for it."

And turning, Lord Harrowby walked rapidly toward the house.

 "The brute!" Angrily Mr. Minot stood turning the necklace over in his
hand. "So he frightened the girl he is to marry—the girl he is supposed to
love—"

What should he do? Go to her, and tell her of Harrowby's amiable

eccentricities? He could hardly do that—Harrowby had taken him into his
confidence—and besides there was Jephson of the great bald head, the Peter
Pan eyes. Nothing to do but wait.

Returning to the hotel from Mrs. Bruce's villa, he found awaiting him a
cable from Jephson. The cable assured him that beyond any question the
man in San Marco was Allan Harrowby and, like Cæsar's wife, above
suspicion.

Yet even as he read, Lord Harrowby walked through the lobby, and at his
side was Mr. James O'Malley, house detective of the Hotel de la Pax. They
came from the manager's office, where they had evidently been closeted.

With the cablegram in his hand, Minot entered the elevator and ascended
to his room. The other hand was in the pocket of his top coat, closed tightly
upon Chain Lightning's Collar—the bauble that the Earl of Raybrook had
once wagered against a kiss.

CHAPTER VIII
AFTER THE TRAINED SEALS

Mr. Minot opened his eyes on Thursday morning with the uncomfortable
feeling that he was far from his beloved New York. For a moment he lay
dazed, wandering in that dim borderland between sleep and waking. Then,
suddenly, he remembered.

"Oh, yes, by jove," he muttered, "I've been knighted. Groom of the

Back-Stairs Scandals and Keeper of the Royal Jewels—that's me."
 He lifted his pillow. There on the white sheet sparkled the necklace of
which the whole British nobility was proud—Chain Lightning's Collar.
Some seventy-five blue-white diamonds, pear-shaped, perfectly graduated.
His for the moment!

"What's Harrowby up to, I wonder?" he reflected "The dear old top!

Nice, pleasant little party if a policeman should find this in my pocket."

Another perfect day shone in that narrow Spanish street. Up in

Manhattan theatrical press agents were crowning huge piles of snow with
posters announcing their attractions. Ferries were held up by ice in the river.
A breeze from the Arctic swept round the Flatiron building. Here lazy
summer lolled on the bosom of the town.

In the hotel dining-room Mr. Minot encountered Jack Paddock, superb in

white flannels above his grapefruit. He accepted Paddock's invitation to join
him.

"By the way," said Mrs. Bruce's jester, holding up a small, badly printed
newspaper, "have you made the acquaintance of the San Marco Mail yet?"

"No—what's that?"

"A morning newspaper—by courtesy. Started here a few weeks back by

a noiseless little Spaniard from Havana named Manuel Gonzale. Slipped in
here on his rubber soles, Gonzale did—dressed all in white—lovely lemon
face—shifty, can't-catch-me eyes. And his newspaper—hot stuff, my boy. It
has Town Topics looking like a consular report from Greenland."

"Scandals?" asked Mr. Minot, also attacking a grapefruit.

"Scandals and rumors of scandals. Mostly hints, you know. Several

references this morning to our proud and haughty friend, Lord Harrowby.
For example, Madame On Dit, writing in her column, on page one, has this
to say: 'The impecunious but titled Englishman who has arrived in our
midst recently with the idea of connecting with certain American dollars has
an interesting time ahead of him, if rumor speaks true. The little incident in
the lobby of a local hotel the other evening—which was duly reported in
this column at the time—was but a mild beginning. The gentleman in
charge of the claimant to the title held so jealously by our British friend
promises immediate developments which will be rich, rare and racy.'"

"Rich, rare and racy," repeated Minot thoughtfully. "Ah, yes—we were
to watch Mr. Trimmer. I had almost forgot him in the excitement of last
evening. By the way, does the Mail know anything about the disappearance
of Chain Lightning's Collar?"

"Not as yet," smiled Mr. Paddock, "although Madame On Dit claims to

have been a guest at the dinner. By the way, what do you make of last
night's melodramatic farce?"

"I don't know what to make of it," answered Minot truthfully. He was
suddenly conscious of the necklace in his inside coat pocket.

"Then all I can say, my dear Watson," replied Mr. Paddock with
burlesque seriousness, "is that you are unmistakably lacking in my powers
of deduction. Give me a cigarette, and I'll tell you the name of the man who
is gloating over those diamonds to-day."

"All right," smiled Minot. "Go ahead."

Mr. Paddock, reaching for a match tray, spoke in a low tone in Minot's
ear.

"Martin Wall," he said. He leaned back. "You ask how I arrived at my

conclusion. Simple enough. I went through the list of guests for possible
crooks, and eliminated them one by one. The man I have mentioned alone
was left. Ever notice his eyes—remind me of Manuel Gonzale's. He's too
polished, too slick, too good to be true. He's traveled too much—nobody
travels as much as he has except for the very good reason that a detective is
on the trail. And he made friends with simple old Harrowby on an Atlantic
liner—that, if you read popular fiction, is alone enough to condemn him.
Believe me, Dick, Martin Wall should be watched."

"All right," laughed Minot, "you watch him."

 "I've a notion to. Harrowby makes me weary. Won't call in a solitary
detective. Any one might think he doesn't want the necklace back."

After breakfast Minot and Paddock played five sets of tennis on the hotel
courts. And Mr. Minot won, despite the Harrowby diamonds in his trousers
pocket, weighing him down. Luncheon over, Mr. Paddock suggested a drive
to Tarragona Island.

"A little bit of nowhere a mile off-shore," he said. "No man can ever
know the true inwardness of the word lonesome until he's seen Tarragona."

Minot hesitated. Ought he to leave the scene of action? Of action? He

glanced about him. There was less action here than in a Henry James novel.
The tangle of events in which he was involved rested for a siesta.

So he and Mr. Paddock drove along the narrow neck of land that led
from the mainland to Tarragona Island. They entered the kingdom of the
lonely. Sandy beach with the ocean on one side, swamps on the other.
Scrubby palms, disreputable foliage, here and there a cluster of seemingly
deserted cottages—the world and its works apparently a million miles away.
Yet out on one corner of that bleak forgotten acre stood the slim outline of a
wireless, and in a little white house lived a man who, amid the sea-gulls and
the sand-dunes, talked daily with great ships and cities far away.

"I told you it was lonesome," said Mr. Paddock.

"Lonesome," shivered Minot. "Even God has forgot this place. Only
Marconi has remembered."

And even as they wandered there amid the swamps, where alligators and
rattlesnakes alone saw fit to dwell, back in San Marco the capable Mr.
Trimmer was busy. By poster and by hand-bill he was spreading word of his
newest coup, so that by evening no one in town—save the few who were
most concerned—was unaware of a development rich, rare and racy.

Minot and Paddock returned late, and their dinner was correspondingly
delayed. It was eight-thirty o'clock when they at last strolled into the lobby
of the De la Pax. There they encountered Miss Meyrick, her father and Lord
Harrowby.

"We're taking Harrowby to the movies," said Miss Meyrick. "He

confesses he's never been. Won't you come along?"

She was one of her gay selves to-night, white, slim, laughing,
irresistible. Minot, looking at her, thought that she could make even
Tarragona Island bearable. He knew of no greater tribute to her charm.

The girl and Harrowby led the way, and Minot and Paddock followed
with Spencer Meyrick. The old man was an imposing figure in his white
serge, which accentuated the floridness of his face. He talked of an
administration that did not please him, of a railroad fallen on evil days.
Now and again he paused and seemed to lose the thread of what he was
saying, while his eyes dwelt on his daughter, walking ahead.

They arrived shortly at the San Marco Opera-House, devoted each

evening to three acts of "refined vaudeville" and six of the newest film
releases. It was here that the rich loitering in San Marco found their only
theatrical amusement, and forgetting Broadway, laughed and were thrilled
with simpler folk. A large crowd was fairly fighting to get in and Mr.
Paddock, who volunteered to buy the tickets, was forced to take his place at
the end of a long line.

Finally they reached the dim interior of the opera-house, and were
shown to seats far down in front. By hanging back in the dusk Minot
managed to secure the end seat, with Miss Meyrick at his side. Beyond her
sat Lord Harrowby, gazing with rapt British seriousness at the humorous
film that was being flashed on the screen.

Between pictures Harrowby offered an opinion.

"You in America are a jolly lot," he said. "Just fancy our best people in
England attending a cinematograph exhibition."

They tried to fancy it, but with his lordship there, they couldn't. Two
more pictures ran their filmy lengths, while Mr. Minot sat entranced there in
the half dark. It was not the pictures that entranced him. Rather, was it a
lady's nearness, the flash of her smile, the hundred and one tones of her
voice—all, all again as it had been in that ridiculous automobile—just
before the awakening.

After the third picture the lights of the auditorium were turned up, and
the hour of vaudeville arrived. On to the stage strolled a pert confident
youth garbed in shabby grandeur, who attempted sidewalk repartee. He
clipped his jests from barber-shop periodicals, bought his songs from an ex-
barroom song writer, and would have gone to the mat with any one who
denied that his act was "refined." Mr. Minot, listening to his gibes, thought
of the Paddock jest factory and Mrs. Bruce.

When the young man had wrung the last encore from a kindly audience,
the drop-curtain was raised and revealed on the stage in gleaming splendor
Captain Ponsonby's troupe of trained seals. An intelligent aggregation they
proved, balancing balls on their small heads, juggling flaming torches, and
taking as their just due lumps of sugar from the captain's hand as they
finished each feat. The audience recalled them again and again, and even
the peerage was captivated.

"Clever beasts, aren't they?" Lord Harrowby remarked. And as Captain

Ponsonby took his final curtain, his lordship added:

"Er—what follows the trained seals?"

The answer to Harrowby's query came almost immediately, and a

startling answer it proved to be.

Into the glare of the footlights stepped Mr. Henry Trimmer. His manner
was that of the conquering hero. For a moment he stood smiling and
bowing before the approving multitude. Then he raised a hand commanding
silence.

"My dear friends," he said, "I appreciate this reception. As I said in my

handbill of this afternoon, I am working in the interests of justice. The
gentleman who accompanies me to your delightful little city is beyond any
question whatsoever George Harrowby, the eldest son of the Earl of
Raybrook, and as such he is entitled to call himself Lord Harrowby. I know
the American people well enough to feel sure that when they realize the
facts they will demand that justice be done. That is why I have prevailed
upon Lord Harrowby to meet you here in this, your temple of amusement,
and put his case before you. His lordship will talk to you for a time with a
view to getting acquainted. He has chosen for the subject of his discourse
The Old Days at Rakedale Hall. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to
introduce—the real Lord Harrowby."

Out of the wings shuffled the lean and gloomy Englishman whom Mr.
Trimmer had snatched from the unknown to cloud a certain wedding-day.
The applause burst forth. It shook the building. From the gallery descended
a shrill penetrating whistle of acclaim.

Mr. Minot glanced at the face of the girl beside him. She was looking
straight ahead, her cheeks bright red, her eyes flashing with anger. Beyond,
the face of Harrowby loomed, frozen, terrible.

"Shall we—go?" Minot whispered.

"By no means," the girl answered. "We should only call attention to our
presence here. I know at least fifty people in this audience. We must see it
through."

The applause was stilled at last and, supremely fussed, the "real Lord
Harrowby" faced that friendly throng.

"Dear—er—people," he said. "As Mr. Trimmer has told you, we seek

only justice. I am not here to argue my right to the title I claim—that I can
do at the proper time and place. I am simply proposing to go back—back
into the past many years—back to the days when I was a boy at Rakedale
Hall. I shall picture those days as no impostor could picture them—and
when I have done I shall allow you to judge."

And there in that crowded little southern opera-house on that hot

February night, the actor who followed the trained seals proceeded to go
back. With unfaltering touch he sketched for his audience the great stone
country seat called Rakedale Hall, where for centuries the Harrowbys had
dwelt. It was as though he took his audience there to visit—through the
massive iron gates up the broad avenue bordered with limes, until the high
chimneys, the pointed gables, the mullioned windows, and the walls half
hidden by ivy, creeping roses and honeysuckles were revealed to them. He
took them through the house to the servants' quarters—which he called "the
offices"—out into the kitchen gardens, thence to the paved quadrangle of
the stables with its arched gateway and the chiming clock above. Tennis-
courts, grape-houses, conservatories, they visited breathlessly; they saw
over the brow of the hill the low square tower of the old church and the
chimneys of the vicar's modest house. And far away, they beheld the trees
that furnished cover to the little beasts it was the Earl of Raybrook's
pleasure to hunt in the season.

Becoming more specific, he spoke of the neighbors, and a bit of romance

crept in in the person of the fair-haired Honorable Edith Townshend, who
lived to the west of Rakedale Hall. He described at length the picturesque
personality of the "racing parson," neighbor on the south, and in full accord
with the ideas of the sporting Earl of Raybrook.

The events of his youth, he said, crowded back upon him as he recalled
this happy scene, and emotion well-nigh choked him. However, he managed
to tell of a few of the celebrities who came to dinner, of their bon mots,
their preferences in cuisine. He mentioned the thrilling morning when he
was nearly drowned in the brook that skirted the "purple meadow"; also the
thrilling afternoon when he hid his mother's famous necklace in the biscuit
box on the sideboard, and upset a whole household. And he narrated a
dozen similar exploits, each garnished with small illuminating details.

His audience sat fascinated. All who listened felt that his words rang true
—even Lord Harrowby himself, sitting far forward, his hand gripping the
seat in front of him, until the white of his knuckles showed through.

Next the speaker shifted his scene to Eton, thrilled his hearers with the
story of his revolt against Oxford, of his flight to the States, his wild days in
Arizona. And he pulled out of his pocket a letter written by the old Earl of
Raybrook himself, profanely expostulating with him for his madness, and
begging that he return to ascend to the earldom when the old man was no
more.
 The "real Lord Harrowby" finished reading this somewhat pathetic
appeal with a little break in his voice, and stood looking out at the audience.

"If my brother Allan himself were in the house," he said, "he would have
to admit that it is our father speaking in that letter."

A rustle of interest ran through the auditorium. The few who had
recognized Harrowby turned to stare at him now. For a moment he sat
silent, his face a variety of colors in the dim light. Then with a cry of rage
he leaped to his feet.

"You stole that letter, you cur," he cried. "You are a liar, a fraud, an
impostor."

The man on the stage stood shading his eyes with his hand.

"Ah, Allan," he answered, "so you are here, after all? Is that quite the
proper greeting—after all these years?"

A roar of sympathetic applause greeted this sally. There was no doubt as

to whose side Mr. Trimmer's friend, the public, was on. Harrowby stood in
his place, his lips twitching, his eyes for once blazing and angry.

Dick Minot was by this time escorting Miss Meyrick up the aisle, and
they came quickly to the cool street. Harrowby, Paddock and Spencer
Meyrick followed immediately. His lordship was most contrite.

"A thousand pardons," he pleaded. "Really I can't tell you how sorry I
am, Cynthia. To have made you conspicuous—what was I thinking of? But
he maddened me—I—"

"Don't worry, Allan," said Miss Meyrick gently. "I like you the better for
being maddened."

Old Spencer Meyrick said nothing, but Minot noted that his face was
rather red, and his eyes were somewhat dangerous. They all walked back to
the hotel in silence.
 From the hotel lobby, as if by prearrangement, Harrowby followed Miss
Meyrick and her father into a parlor. Minot and Paddock were left alone.

"My word, old top," said Mr. Paddock facetiously, "a rough night for the
nobility. What do you think? That lad's story sounded like a little bit of all
right to me. Eh, what?"

"It did sound convincing," returned the troubled Minot. "But then—a
servant at Rakedale Hall could have concocted it."

"Mayhap," said Mr. Paddock. "However, old Spencer Meyrick looked to

me like a volcano I'd want to get out from under. Poor old Harrowby! I'm
afraid there's a rift within the loot—nay, no loot at all."

"Jack," said Minot firmly, "that wedding has got to take place."

"Why, what's it to you?"

"It happens to be everything. But keep it under your hat."

"Great Scott—does Harrowby owe you money?"

"I can't explain just at present, Jack."

"Oh, very well," replied Mr. Paddock. "But take it from me, old man—
she's a million times too good for him."

"A million," laughed Mr. Minot bitterly. "You underestimate."

Paddock stood staring with wonder at his friend.

"You lisp in riddles, my boy," he said.

"Do I?" returned Minot. "Maybe some day I'll make it all clear."

He parted from Paddock and ascended to the third floor. As he wandered

through the dark passageways in search of his room, he bumped suddenly
into a heavy man, walking softly. Something about the contour of the man
in the dark gave him a suggestion.
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