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BIG BEN was on the stroke of noon when a young man with a wind-bitten and rather haggard face came out of the Admiralty Building, and stood staring dubiously across the Horse Guards Parade. Hands thrust deep in pockets, he waited for a moment, then progressed very deliberately through the iron gate that gives access to St. James’s Park. Here he took a cynical glance at the pelicans silhouetted grotesquely against a background of taxicabs speeding along the Birdcage Walk, chose an empty seat by the water’s edge, and resigned himself to reflection.

Axed! All very polite and formal. Due notice given—standard gratuity paid. A few appreciative words from the ex-commander who had cornered a cushy office job. Lock hardly heard what he said, being too busy studying the enormous room in which he stood, and getting the feel of this huge building with the aerial on top by which the Lords of the Admiralty talked with first-class battleships and little destroyers scattered over the seven seas. To this brain-centre he had come to be axed!

He straightened his long legs toward the metropolitan pelicans, cursing the British Navy and all connected therewith. They had taken him, that was fifteen years ago, drilled, bullied, trained and in general battered him about, sending him along interminable sea lanes of salt water education, and every day making him of less and less use ashore. Yet a boy, he had smelled blood in the Bight of Heligoland and at Jutland. Three years ago he had got his first ship, an insolent destroyer, and loved every rivet in her snaky hull. He had worked—slaved—sweated—frozen. And now——!

He gave a laugh too contemptuous for one of his age, stretched himself, and started slowly in the direction of Pall Mall. Lowther was waiting in his club when Lock entered, and a glance at the young man’s face sufficed. He knew that look, so talked generalities till they were half-way through lunch.

“Been thinking about you,” he interjected suddenly; “you’re lucky to get axed so soon.”

“Lucky!”

“I think so; heard yesterday of another big batch in three months. Admiralty estimates are cut to the bone, and they won’t hit the little chaps who’ve just joined.”

“Then where does my luck come in?”

“This way—just so many jobs of the right kind. To-day there are ten men after each job; three months from now there’ll be forty.”

“Are there any jobs for my sort?” said Lock in a strained tone. “Only one thing I can do, and you know it. That’s the price of serving one’s country.”

“I know of one.” This with a cheerful little nod. “Brought it here, in fact, to talk about.”

Lock stiffened his broad, flat back. “You brought it here?”

“That’s what I said. Now, listen. A month ago I sold the steam yacht Cygnet to a Mrs. Thomas Tarrant. She’s as rich as they make ’em, having come into a big fortune just recently. She lives near Exeter. Cygnet was built by White, of Cowes, for Lord Farramore, and engined by Armstrong. She’s the last word in steam yachts, but details of that later. Interested?”

“Go on,” creaked Lock.

“Cygnet’s going into commission right away—needs entire crew from captain down—and Mrs. T. has left the thing to me. You understand?”

Lock grinned at him. The world, as now represented by this man with the big kindly face, took on a gentler aspect. One didn’t feel so lonely. Lowther was a yacht agent—the yacht agent of Southampton. At his moorings one saw fleets of big and little. Others on the slips being scraped, painted, polished and manicured. He was the sort to whom you might go and say, “A week from to-day I want to sail for the Ionian Sea with my party of a dozen friends. Please get a yacht and arrange everything.” That day week you’d sail.

“Well,” he continued, “the billet’s in my pocket. Only one thing against it.”

“What’s the crab?”

“Owner’s a woman—which suggests more to me than to you—as yet. Later, you may see what I mean. The man who undertakes to satisfy a woman owner has some contract. Oh, yes, I know. Seen too much not to. Any woman wants to own a yacht, but nine-tenths of ’em don’t like the sea. However! In this case,” he added with the least approach to a wink, “there are two women. ’Pon my word, I almost see your finish.”

Lock put the women out of his head. “What’s the job worth?”

“Say forty pounds a month.”

The young man, smiling expansively, finished his beer. What a darned decent fellow Lowther was.

“You understand that I can only recommend you,” his friend went on. “I vouch for your qualifications and all that. The rest is up to you.”

“What do I do?”

“Call on the owner, make your little bow and the right impression. Put yourself over under the examination of two pairs of very bright eyes. I’ve the idea of Mrs. T. that she’s used to having her own way, and is a woman of sharp likes and dislikes. She’s what the Scotch call ‘magerful.’ Also that if you pass muster and take the thing on, you’ll run up against something rather out of the ordinary. This because the lady doesn’t strike me as one who’d be interested in the ordinary. She’s too forceful, too—well—dominant. On top of that, it isn’t exactly usual for a widow to drop in at my shop and buy a five-hundred-tonner, so to speak, over the counter.”

“Widow!”

“Yes. Tarrant, I learned, was drowned about a year ago, when fishing off the Irish coast. He was her second husband. Not long after that she came in for a pile of money. No, there’s no sign of mourning for the departed, and the lady is feeling her oats a bit.” He nodded, at once amused and in earnest. “Go to it, Lock. I’ve the sensation that this job is large with possibilities.”

He broke off as though questioning the wisdom of having said even this much, and examined his guest’s lean face. The mouth was large and strong, the lips flexible. His eyes had the peculiar grey green that at times is azure, at times steel blue. His shoulders sloped sufficiently to mask their breadth. Over him was the sign manual of the sea, revealed in the effortless watchfulness of his gaze, his deliberate movements and the unconscious suggestion he gave of scanning intermittently broad spaces and deep distances visible to himself alone.

“Y’know,” hazarded the older man, “getting back to Mrs. T., it would be an interesting situation if she and the daughter should happen to be after the same thing. I’d hardly know which to back. Well?”

“I’m on—what do I do next?”

Lowther took a letter from his pocket. “Go down to Exeter as soon as you like, or, better, come to Southampton with me this afternoon—we’ll reach it in two hours—and make your little call to-morrow. I’ll put you up, and you can have a look at Cygnet before you talk about her. I’ll telephone the lady to expect you.”

“I say,” blurted Lock, “why are you doing all this?”

Lowther stirred his coffee in meditation. “You can leave out the ‘all,’ ” he said slowly. “Also you can take it that a few of us who have nothing to worry about are not oblivious to what’s going on at the Admiralty. They can’t help it, but we think it a bit rough that chaps like you who have served their country and ask nothing better than to go on serving her should be told that what with one thing and another and good feeling with the U.S.A. and Navy reductions, he’s out of a job. Also, I know enough of the sea to understand that when she takes a young fellow to her salty bosom she takes him entirely. There’s not much of him left ashore. He’s just a visitor in the land of his fathers. No—no thanks required. Have a look at Cygnet—you’ll like her right enough—then go and see how you hit it off with the widow and her daughter. Might as well push along now, eh?”

Lock choked a little. What a decent old world it was! Whizzing down the Portsmouth road, he uncursed the Admiralty. Later, with Lowther, he climbed on board S.Y. Cygnet, and saw more floating comforts than ever before in his life. The yacht was oil-fired, turbine-driven, and the slow entrance curve of her bows had the line from neck to shoulder of a perfectly-modelled woman. Lowther, sitting on the rail, and smiling at the keenness of this inspection, gave Cygnet a cruising speed of sixteen knots, then harked back to the manner of her purchase.

“The lady breezed in with a copy of The Yachtsman, not in any way excited, and asked to be shown over. The daughter was with her. She’ll interest you; cool as you like, but has a manner that I found impressive. They spent, I suppose, half an hour on board, then came to the office and bought. I asked had they planned their cruise, and was told no. Lock, they don’t know where to go. What strikes me as queer about this affair is that there doesn’t seem to be any man in it. But their sort don’t live without men. Thing’s impossible.”

It was this last remark that stuck in Lock’s head when next afternoon, five miles north of Exeter, he lifted the latch of the Uplands drive gate. He had walked out, thinking hard, and paused to brush the Devon dust from his boots. The house was a quarter-mile on, with French windows and stretches of perfect lawn.

A manservant opened the door, told him he was expected, and led him through a drawing-room into the garden, where two ladies were sitting. The elder rose as he approached. He felt uncomfortable, and found the situation difficult. So far he had been remote from women, thought little about them, and certainly never expected to be under womanly control. Now Mrs. Tarrant’s eyes, quick and perhaps a trifle bold, regarded him with so direct a scrutiny that it roused a touch of antagonism, and he looked back at her without a trace of the deference he had meant to show. It was as though at first meeting they had crossed lances, testing each other’s steel. This seemed to please her. She gave a little laugh, low and melodious.

“How do you do? We’ve each been wondering what the other would be like, haven’t we? Eva—Mr. Lock.”

The girl put out a hand, murmuring something. Mrs. Tarrant waved to a chair, settled on her own, lifted her finely pencilled brows, and surveyed the visitor with complacency.

“Mr. Lowther telephoned about you this morning. Of course, he’s been rather amused about us, but didn’t mean to show it.”

“Amused?”

“Well, yes. He asked me where we meant to go, and I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know. Then he began to wonder why I bought the Cygnet, since which I’ve been rather wondering myself. But now that we have her, we’ve got to use her.”

“Naturally,” said Lock, wondering how old she was.

Her face had a fine contour, with a sort of classic and flawless beauty that would survive for many a year, and with this was a conveyed physical prodigality that must have interpreted itself to many men. Emotionally, she seemed inexhaustible.

“I suppose,” she went on, “there’s no difficulty about going anywhere in the Cygnet—she’s big and fast enough?”

“Anywhere you like, Mrs. Tarrant, with water enough to float her.”

“And you could—well—take us? Mr. Lock, aren’t you going to say something about all the things Mr. Lowther assures us you can do?”

He laughed at that, matters moved more easily, and he found himself talking about himself in short staccato sentences that carried far more vividness than he imagined. For Mrs. Tarrant, who listened closely, it seemed to be exactly what she wanted, and he felt encouraged by the expression in her large, fearless eyes. He was describing his last command when something reached him from the girl, who was sitting in complete silence. It suggested that she was more interested in him than in what he had done.

“So that’s that,” he concluded. “And—er—I lunched with Mr. Lowther yesterday.”

“Well, Eva, you’ve been listening, I hope?” said Mrs. Tarrant briskly. “I think it’s just right—do you agree? You know,” here she nodded at Lock. “I’m rather afraid of my daughter.”

The girl got up without a word, crossed the lawn, and disappeared into the house. Lock turned red.

“I’m afraid I’ve talked too much, and anyway——”

He broke off. Eva was already on the way back, a large atlas under her arm. She laid this on a table beside her mother, turning the thick pages till she found the Mediterranean. It was all done with a deliberation made the more marked by her complete silence. Then, unveiling a pair of large and almost purple eyes, she said in a husky tone:

“Where would you suggest going; and why not get something settled now?”

Mrs. Tarrant laughed, and the glance she sent Lock levelled the last barrier of brief acquaintance. It was exactly as though she had confided in him: “There—that’s her way of taking the short cut to what she wants, and you can see how you stand with her.” She put this with increasing amiability, indicating that she, too, was satisfied with Lowther’s choice, that it was superfluous to say so in so many words, and they might as well move on and be practical.

Lock, infinitely relieved, began to talk. It was quite extraordinary, so lately released from a life of order and discipline, to run his finger from Gibraltar to Algiers, Tunis, pausing on the way back round the Levant, to dip into Taormina, Palermo and Naples, and knowing that it was for him to say what course these unfettered women should take. The thing was inviting, but struck him in an odd way as being soft. His world having been devoid of women, he had never considered that destiny might turn on the lift of an eyebrow. He made no allowances for such things. And, did he but know it, this extreme maleness of his increased his attractiveness to the two women, who followed the deliberate passage of his brown finger over the outspread map.

“How long would all that take?” asked Mrs. Tarrant with a sigh of contentment.

“You could do it in six weeks, but more comfortably in twelve.” He was wondering whether this yachting impulse might not pass as suddenly as it came, leaving him stranded again.

“This is all very well, mother,” said Eva in her odd tone, “but hardly fair to Mr. Lock. Naturally he’s thinking about himself, too, and twelve weeks—what’s that?”

This with a glance of complete understanding and friendship. Perhaps more than friendship, because it suggested that they two should start, here and now, with none of the usual preambles. The result was that at once he saw himself on the yacht with her, their growing intimacy, and all that might be involved. Also he felt very grateful.

“Of course,—you’re quite right. Mr. Lock, we’ve got the Cygnet, and propose to keep her. It isn’t just this cruise; there’ll be a lot more. So shall we regard it as a yearly arrangement, and leave the business side to Mr. Lowther? And now that you’re one of us, I’ll tell you something else. This first trip we mean to take alone—no guests. We want to get used to the Cygnet. So if you could be ready in a fortnight——”

He could, easily. And in spite of what she said, it was not likely that Cygnet would be in commission for more than six months out of twelve, and he would have the other six to play with. Play! The word had an attractive sound. Fifteen years since he had really played. Queer to be associated with those who did nothing else!

Mrs. Tarrant was recalled to the house, leaving the two tracing courses on the great map. The girl gave Lock another of her heavy-lidded glances, and began to talk.

“You’ve done a lot for your age; how old are you?”

“It’s not much compared to some men; I’m thirty.”

“I thought you’d say that. You’ll find it all very different now.”

“About as different as things can be.”

“And your people—where are they?”

“I haven’t any—practically. My father was killed in the war, and my mother died five years later. I’ve no brothers or sisters.”

“Neither have I,” she said. “Mr. Tarrant—perhaps you heard about him—was my stepfather.”

But the subject of Tarrant, seemingly, could keep; also her inflection suggested that it was not over-pleasant. She explored Lock for a moment with a gaze extraordinarily intimate yet utterly remote, while he, caught up in this peculiar exchange, returned it with a steadiness of which he was entirely unaware. The girl was slighter than her mother, very dark, with a pointed chin, highly arched brows and quantities of insolently black hair. Her skin was faintly olive and very smooth, and she moved with a languid physical grace. Beneath all this was the suggestion of passion and temper. Lock wondered if she had been spoiled since childhood, then decided that she and her mother must have crossed swords too often.

“It’s not going to be easy,” she said, looking distinctly alluring. “I ought to tell you that.”

“What isn’t?”

“Your job; we change too rapidly—both of us. The last thing that comes into our heads is always the most attractive. That’s how mother happened to buy the Cygnet, and I don’t know what will result on board. Probably we’ll fight like anything.”

“That doesn’t sound very serious,” he laughed.

“You just wait. I suppose it’s because we’re different. She likes people in a general way; I don’t—only a few. And the yacht is a sort of experiment. Mother’s always making them, and they never turn out as she expects.”

“I hope this one will.”

“I wonder. She argues that just the fact of having the yacht makes all sorts of things possible and natural that wouldn’t be otherwise. It’s a sort of preliminary to—well—anything you like.”

“What do you expect?” he asked, daring a little.

There was no immediate answer to that, nor did she look at him as before, but seemed to go off prospecting the future, a long, long way from him and the present moment. She reminded him of something very perfectly made and finished and potent, sleek like a torpedo nestling in its grey-steel sheath and just as charged with explosives. He wondered what would release her forces and when the explosion would take place.

“I don’t know what to expect—ever,” she said slowly. “Perhaps a girl of my age can’t. It all depends on what contacts she makes.”

She left it at that for him to consider. Contacts! he ruminated. And because he felt they had travelled far in a short time, again he resumed the picture of her and himself, perhaps on the Ionian Sea, he trying to remember that he was an employee at forty pounds a month and fighting against her inescapable allure. How easy to go a step too far! And it must be that Mrs. Tarrant had very definite ideas on this matter.

“Here’s mother now, so we’ll have tea,” she said.

Lock jerked himself back. Two menservants brought the trays. Dappled shadows filtered through the trees, casting a dancing chequer-work on silver, linen and fragile porcelain. There was a faint scent of autumn roses. The three of them were moored on a shrub-bordered lake of velvet turf to which banks of multi-coloured stocks made a brilliant fringe. A hundred yards away the polished windows of Uplands glinted at the afternoon sun. The invisible flame of a spirit lamp set up a low puttering. Lock thought of tea gulped in the officers’ mess of H.M.S. Active to the accompaniment of complaining steel frames, the throb of racing engines and the odour of hot oil. It made him smile, and Mrs. Tarrant smiled at him knowingly.

“Is it a private joke? I’m sure it’s a good one.”

He was giving her a picture of Active in a North Sea gale, when there appeared in an angle of the drive visible from the lawn the tall figure of a man, walking slowly, and halting now and then to stare curiously about. He was over six feet, and carried his hat. From his sharp scrutiny of house and grounds it was plain that the place was new to him, equally plain that he found it of considerable interest. At sight of the group he stopped, regarded them with a motionless stare, then, shaking his head, went on toward the front door.

“Who on earth can that be?” Mrs. Tarrant arrested the cream jug in mid-air. “Do you know, Eva?”

“Never saw him before: perhaps he’s selling things.”

“Not that sort at all. I wonder? Well, Peters, who is it?”

The manservant put his hand to his mouth, and gave an embarrassed cough. “If you please, madam, it’s a Mr. Jackson.”

“And who or what does he want?”

“I asked him who he wished to see, madam, and he said—he said——” Peters, stammering, got no further.

She put down the jug with a bump that Lock found eloquent, and Eva gave a little laugh.

“Well, Peters, what’s the mystery?”

“If you please, Miss, he inquired for Mr. Tarrant.”

It was an extraordinary moment, and Mrs. Tarrant’s expression not that of a bereaved woman. She looked faintly surprised, a shade amused and much interested. One could read this in the curve of her full lip and arch of strong brow. The girl glancing from Peters to her mother, seemed merely expectant, as though this stranger could be counted on to contribute something to the drama of life. Lock, ill at ease, made a motion to go.

“I’ll not wait. If you’ll address in care of Mr. Lowther about——”

“Please—no,” objected Mrs. Tarrant, “I’ll put things right in a minute, and we’ve a lot more to talk about. Peters, ask Mr. Jackson if he will kindly come out here.”

What then followed had for Lock a significance that it lacked for the two women, in that it gave him his first peep into the relations, that must have existed between Tarrant and his wife.

Jackson emerged from a French window, hat still in hand, and came toward them, a narrow though very strongly built man with a wide mouth and skin the colour of pale mahogany. He moved smoothly, leaning a little forward, with the long easy stride of one who has walked much, and regarded the three with unfeigned curiosity. Reaching them, he made a stiff little bow, his face devoid of any real expression.

“You were inquiring for my husband?” said Mrs. Tarrant calmly. “But I’m a widow now. Mr. Tarrant died a year ago.”

Jackson raised his head, slowly, mechanically. His hat dropped on the grass. He did not notice this, but stood as though frozen while one could almost hear his brain working. Then he tilted his narrow head, thrust out his chin, and took a long breath.

“Dead!” he said. “Tom Tarrant dead!”

“Please, won’t you sit down?”

Mrs. Tarrant was watching him, her head also a shade tilted, and Lock felt in his bones that this man was being appraised as never before. There was something infinitely alert about the woman. Her lids drooped, but she missed nothing. And, it began to appear, the man had brought with him something of which she inwardly approved. Then and there Lock would have sworn that she liked him. Jackson, returning the stare, had not moved a muscle.

“Please sit down,” she said again. “My husband did not speak of you that I can remember, but if you were a friend of his, you’ve every right to know about him. Were you?”

“I was.” This was in a deep, dry voice.

“This is my daughter Eva, and Mr. Lock, just out of the Navy. Were you away from England a year ago?”

“I was in South Africa and didn’t hear anything.”

“It was an accident—drowned—off the coast of Ireland. He went there to fish.”

“Fish!”

Jackson shot this out with startling abruptness, as though the very idea of Tarrant’s fishing had obliterated the news of his death. At the same time his wide mouth changed its angle, the expression of his eyes altered. It must have been that something occurred to him, but he kept it to himself, and became suave, modulated and sympathetic.

“Poor old Tom!” he murmured. “Would you care to—would you mind telling me about it? I’ve travelled a long way to see him. Last I heard was that he had married again and was living here. Got that in some paper. Then I went up country, and no more papers. I landed at Plymouth from Cape Town yesterday, and took a chance. So this young lady is Tom’s stepdaughter. Well, well.”

Eva, who had not spoken, made a restless movement. She did not like this interruption, nor did she fancy Jackson. For one thing he was too old—perhaps forty-five—to interest her. For another, she resented the intrusion just as she was making excellent progress with Lock, about whom she was rapidly nearing certain conclusions. Also, she objected to being called old Tom’s stepdaughter.

“Why don’t you tell Mr. Jackson what he wants to know, mother?”

Mrs. Tarrant, taking this very coolly, began at once:

“We were married eighteen months ago, when my husband bought this place. He seemed perfectly well at first—you know how big and strong he was—but after a few weeks seemed to change a great deal. I couldn’t understand it. The doctor said it was nerves, which seemed absurd in a man like him. But very soon life became difficult, and he used to go off by himself for weeks at a time.”

Jackson had large supple hands, and now he put his finger-tips together, pressing them with a sort of springy force, while he bent on Mrs. Tarrant a look of profound interest. Her story appeared to fascinate him.

“Yes—yes—too bad.”

“Had you known my husband long or at all intimately?”

“A good many years, and, ye-es, you might say it was intimate. Big Tom, we used to call him. I’ve seen him hold another man out at arm’s length.”

She seemed quite unimpressed.

“As it turned out,” she went on evenly, “we were destined to see very little of each other. He was always quiet, and—well—really I don’t know what else there is to tell you.”

He glanced at her curiously, then across the lawn as though expecting someone.

“Off the coast of Ireland, you said, he was drowned?”

“Yes: he had been staying in County Cork at a place called Glandore, where the fishing is supposed to be very good. He went out alone, the wind came up, and his boat was found turned over on the beach miles away. I learned that he had been acting queerly in the hotel before that. One doesn’t like the word, Mr. Jackson, but it was really suicide.”

Jackson’s compressed skull and long neck nodded slowly, like an inverted pendulum.

“Looks that way; but who’d have thought it of Tom? You see, he and I had been in some tight boxes together, and come out of them, so it’s hardly the road you’d expect him to take. Brain trouble, eh?”

“The doctor said so. Won’t you have some tea?”

It was dawning on Lock that this stranger had a certain forceful attraction. He wasn’t one to be flurried or diverted, and his entire lack of mannerism was an asset. One seemed to believe him automatically, and his personality suggested that he could go on unfolding new aspects of himself, each of increasing interest. He talked to Mrs. Tarrant as though she were a man; and it appeared that Mrs. Tarrant liked it.

“Thanks, I don’t mind if I do. And Tom’s daughter, Hope, where is she?”

There was a little crash amongst the porcelain, and Lock caught a smothered exclamation. Mrs. Tarrant, unable to conceal a swift confusion, had lost every vestige of poise. Her hand trembled, her colour changed. Eva, too, had become alert and was staring at Jackson with a sort of unveiled defiance. Lock saw this, saw the lines of secret satisfaction deepen around Jackson’s mouth, and realized that his own presence could be no longer acceptable. The visitor, by a single, simple sounding inquiry, had struck far below the surface of things. There came an imperative signal from the girl, utterly confidential and imploring. It told him to go—go now—and leave the rest—his part of the future—to her. She would look after him and it, and she didn’t want him mixed up in what would shortly be exchanged between her mother and Jackson. As to Jackson, his eyes had rounded, and were fixed on Mrs. Tarrant with something nothing short of suspicion.

Lock got up, murmuring that he must catch a train, and said good-bye. Mrs. Tarrant, apparently hypnotized, hardly saw him, though she put out her hand and promised to keep in touch. She would write to Lowther that night and confirm everything.

Eva, to his intense surprise, gave his fingers a quick, hard squeeze, that he took for gratitude. Jackson, measuring him as men measure men, sent a nod implying that he expected to be better informed about Lock before long. Then, his brain one great question mark, the young man strode off across the lawn. Odd that he should so object to leaving Jackson behind him!

At Exeter, lighting his pipe in the corner of an empty third-class carriage, Lock observed close to the window a red-faced man in blue clothes. This individual, grasping the door handle, was glancing keenly along the length of the train, as though undecided whether to take it: and it was not till the wheels began to move that he jerked open the door and got in.

“Hot!” he said, wiping his face.

Lock nodded indifferently, unfolded his paper and began to read, but his thoughts were not on anything he found. Less interesting than his own affair, and he fell to thinking of two rich women of unlimited means on a yacht, not knowing where to go or what they wanted, and himself a cicerone.

Grotesque!

Jackson! Who was Jackson? What did he know about Tarrant’s daughter, and where was she? He gave his head a little shake, and looked up to meet the quickly averted glance of his fellow-traveller.

He seemed bigger now and more massive, sitting very upright and bearlike on the narrow cushion. His eyes, deepset and shrouded under straggling brows, were of a pale watery blue, and Lock perceived that their oblique regard, now fastened on the passing landscape, was exceedingly alert. He was apparently of great strength, with a barrel-like body and massive arms. The suit he wore was well cut, his linen against the brown of his skin looked exceedingly white, and a heavy gold chain, passing through the second buttonhole of his waistcoat, made a double curve across his wide chest.

“Hot for this time of year,” he said in a deep vibrant voice.

“We’ve had a long drought, and it’s bad for the country.”

“Ye-es, and not a dry heat like I’m used to. Travelled a lot yourself, haven’t you?”

“I was in the Navy,” said Lock, reflecting that this was a thing of the past already.

“Ah, the Navy! Seen a bit of the world, you have. Well, I’ve seen a bit, too—on dry land—too durned dry sometimes.” He gave a sort of snort, full of meaning. “This English drought, they don’t know what drought is.”

He rumbled this out, dismissing the subject, together with a lot of things he could say about water shortage if he wanted to, then began forcing his broad thumb through the hollow of his forefinger with a dry creaking sound.

“Not going to sea again, are you? Had enough, I suppose?”

“It happens I am, it being about all I can do. Lucky to have the chance.”

“Well, I suppose that’s right”—he nodded at the brown fields and shaven Devon hedges; “you’d find it hard to settle down here. Long at sea?”

“Fifteen years.”

“Not much out of a man’s life. At Jutland?”

“Yes.”

“Well, about that time I was chasing some of my German friends—they were friends right enough, too—up country in Africa. Queer feeling that, trying to pot the chaps you’d traded with for years, and they trying to pot you. I guess we didn’t shoot very straight—sometimes. With you fellows at sea it was different, not so intimate. However, that’s all over now.”

He broke off, pushing out his lips and staring at Lock so intently that his eyes seemed to change colour with changing thoughts. Hesitating thus on the doorstep of confidence, he became suddenly significant—a man of striking independence, yet about to ask for—something. Presently he lifted his chin and decision crystallized on his lips.

“Like to do someone a good turn?” he jerked out.

Lock stiffened a little. “That depends, doesn’t it?”

“Ye-es, that’s what I’d have said—in this country. It isn’t money, except that there’s money in it.”

“I’ve got a job,” said Lock.

The man leaned forward, put a big hand on his knee, and gave a deep-throated chuckle.

“Exactly why I’m talking—see? No, that’s ridiculous, you couldn’t see, yet. That’s why I hung round at Exeter till the last second and made sure you were alone. Wanted to talk to you. If you hadn’t a job, you’d be no use to me. Strikes you as queer, doesn’t it? Well, it is queer—queerest thing you’ve ever come up against, I’ll bet. You’ll agree with that if we come to terms. Want to make five hundred pounds?”

It occurred to Lock that the man might be mad, but there was nothing of this in the level gaze of those pale-blue eyes. They were, rather, the eyes of one who, after cold reflection, had come to a decision, and was utterly in earnest. This tentative opening was so deliberate, it carried such assurance, that Lock found himself forced to take it seriously. And the man looked worth the money.

“You say I can make that outside my job?” he demanded.

“I did not: I suggested that because of the job you may make it.”

“And yet do my work as—as it ought to be done?”

“That’s a fact.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Ah—what do you want! You could ask that of a thousand men and get as many different answers, couldn’t you? The thing about what I want is that I can’t tell you until—well, until I feel I’m safe. Oh, no, I’m not sought by the law—you needn’t start up that track, though I see it in your face; and you couldn’t make a cent by giving away what I’m thinking of telling you. Now let’s get down to cases. I’ve been studying you and I’ll take the chance if I have your oath.”

“What oath?”

“That you’ll not reveal to any living soul without my authority a word I say, or that I’m the man who wants help. I’d have supposed you’d guessed that to start with. If you’re going to be the helper—well, right you are; if not, you’ll forget all about it. That’s fair. And what I’ll ask, provided I’m safe, is no more than you’d ask any white man to do for you if you were in the same trouble.”

“Your word on that?” asked Lock, curiously impressed.

“You have it. Call me a liar later if you like; but you won’t.”

“Well, provided it does not affect my loyalty to my job or my employer, you have my oath.”

The stranger nodded slowly, his big mouth taking on an amused curve.

“Navy man puts his job first. I suppose you’re right. Never seen me before, have you?” This with a touch of confidence.

“Not to my knowledge—no—sure I haven’t.”

“Meaning that you’d remember. Well, I didn’t propose you should. Look here; in the last day or two, we’ll say in the last few hours, you’ve heard a good deal about one thing or another, met some new people, eh, and, generally speaking, had a sort of eye-opener. Is that right?”

“What the devil has it to do with you if I have? You told me——”

The big hand went up in expostulation. “Hold your horses. I haven’t asked you anything, have I? I’m just telling you things, and you stop me if I’m wrong.”

“Go on,” said Lock warily.

“That’s better, a lot better. You let me get at what I’ve got to say in my own way. Easier all round. Now I’m going to mention names. You heard, maybe—though I don’t know if you did—about a man called Tarrant. Anyway, if you haven’t, you’re bound to soon. Well,” here the stranger’s face took on a look of cynical satisfaction, “that’s me—I’m Tarrant.”

Lock’s chin gave a galvanic jerk toward his chest. He did not speak. All very ordinary in the carriage—the clickless rhythm of a high-speed train—the Devon country swimming past the windows—the odour of stale tobacco one finds in a third-class smoker. The man opposite had his lips pressed tight, his eyes half closed, and seemed to be enjoying the effect produced.

“It’s good—darned good,” he went on, effusing at the same time every symptom of mental relaxation, “to be able to tell somebody that I’m Tom Tarrant. Haven’t said that for a year. And it’s a queer job to have to quit being yourself and stand aside looking at yourself as though you were some other fellow. Well, if they mentioned me at Uplands they’d be likely to say that I was drowned when fishing off the coast of Ireland. Fishing! I hate fishing. Anyone who knows me—hold on—anyone who knew me—would tell you that.” He slapped his leg and took a long breath. “But, anyway, it seemed the easiest way to work it, so, first, I put a bit of money where I could always get at it. Nothing in this, is there, to affect—how did you put it—your loyalty to your job and—ah—employer?”

Lock shook his head, his brain buzzing. It was all odd, queer, nearly incredible, yet elusively convincing. It seemed, somehow, of a piece with that afternoon, with the two women so strangely and contradictorily assorted, with the incoherency of their plans, with the coming of Jackson, and the sensation, so vivid at the moment, that here was someone destined to be woven into the warp of events. Jackson’s scarcely veiled dubiousness on hearing of Tarrant’s death—his sudden inquiry for the girl, Hope—Mrs. Tarrant’s immediate confusion—and the vague, unfinished—there was no other word for it—finale to the meeting of all four on the lawn of Uplands. Yes, it was all of a piece; and the young man perceived that that meeting was but the introduction to bigger events. Thus it came that as his first surprise dwindled, Lock accepted this new entrant into affairs with something of an appetite. He had established himself as an undoubted factor—perhaps the factor in some impending drama, and now he yielded to a thrill of anticipation. But the thing was to let Tarrant do the talking.

“I’ll go back,” rumbled the deep voice. “One generally begins that way. I’m going to speak about people you know, because they’re at the bottom of it; but you don’t know ’em as I do. You’re new, and I’ve been through it. Just remember that if what I say strikes you as exaggerated. There’s no stop between here and Waterloo, is there?”

“No,” said Lock.

“Well, here goes—sort of voice out of a watery grave, eh? And just for you. I’d call that privileged. I won’t load you up with what doesn’t signify, and start eighteen months ago when I made my second marriage. Haven’t made your first yet, have you?”

“Not on what a grateful country thought I was worth.”

“Then you owe your country a good turn. I’d just got back from—from abroad, and had a bit of money, though not as much as you saw this afternoon.”

“How do you know what I’ve seen?”

“Look here, I’ve got to tell this in my own way, or not at all. So don’t butt in. It’s all arranged as I want you to have it. You bottle up your questions, and I’ll answer ’em seriatim—that’s the word—later on. As I said, I married again. Know much about women? I’ve heard you Navy chaps——”

Lock had to grin at him. “Afraid that’s been left out of me.”

“Afraid! You thank your Maker for it. Women are——” His voice hung in the air, and he stared about the dingy carriage with its faded photographs of Torquay, Exeter Cathedral, and heavily garbed bathing parties at Lyme Regis. “Oh, what’s the use? You spoke about loyalty just now, so I wonder if you’ll think it disloyal for a presumably dead man to talk about his wife. That’s what I’ve got to do. You’ll say, most likely, that it wasn’t loyal to make out that I was drowned; but seeing that you don’t know a damned thing about her, you’d be talking through your hat.

“There are some women,” he went on, ranging back it seemed through a long perspective of personal experiences, “who have a sort of native flame that attracts men like moths to a candle. The men can’t help it; nor, I guess, the women either. You go—you like the heat at first, then you get scorched—and flop. While you’re still flopping, some other moth flutters up in a hell of a hurry. He sees you, but that doesn’t mean anything to him. Well, it was something like that with me and her. Maybe to be fair I ought to say that my daughter Hope lived with me to start with. I’m coming to her later. Anyway, the day before the wedding I bought Uplands, and, as I thought, we settled down there for good. And just here I ought to tell you that my wife also had a daughter. You know that anyway. So there were the makings of either a lot of trouble or a lot of comfort. Well, it wasn’t comfort. You saw Eva, but you didn’t see Hope. If you had, I wouldn’t be here, or supposed drowned.”

He paused for a moment. Lock, rigidly attentive, said nothing. Irrefutably this man was Tarrant, and he must be allowed to lift the curtain of mystery as he saw fit. His way! But how strange that this affair, whatever it was, should revolve round three women—with no hint of a man! And the allusion to Mrs. Tarrant: a flame—that described her—whose native fire might singe many a man. Even Jackson—probably Tarrant had not yet reached the Jackson part of his story—had caught a touch of that flame.

“There was money enough, at least I thought so,” went on Tarrant reflectively, “say a couple of thousand a year. It stood for a good deal of hard slogging on my part. She hadn’t anything—then. Pretty soon she decided that my income wasn’t enough, and wanted to start in on the capital. I wasn’t having any, since that was Hope’s, so she started in on Hope, and made life a sort of merry hell for the girl. Hope never told me, thinking it would take the edge off my marriage. Edge! It was all edge! Then one day she ran away—lit out—and not a sign or word from her since. So now, my friend Mr. Lock, you might——”

“How do you know my name?” asked Lock, startled.

“There’s a committee, isn’t there, in Parliament called Ways and Means? That’s what I am, ways and means. If you have got the means, it’s small bother about the ways. Matter of fact, I was at Southampton yesterday, having a look at Cygnet. I heard my wife had bought her; and, look here, it’s queer to be staring at your wife’s boat and not be safe to set foot on her. I saw you go on board with Lowther—he’s never seen me in his life—so I went into the office and made a few inquiries. You most always get answered if you look as though you had the means. Then I slipped up to Exeter with you, just to make sure. That’s how I know your name, but this yacht-buying business comes later in my story. And if you’ve any questions at this point, I’ll try and clear ’em up.”

“You say your daughter ran away on account of Mrs. Tarrant’s treatment?”

“Nothing else.”

“Then how could she think you could be happy with that sort of wife?”

“You can search me.”

“And if she knew she was coming into your capital later, why should she leave you ignorant of where she was?”

“Plain as print—she thought I’d try and bring her back. She’s my heir, right enough. Now she must know I’m drowned, or supposed to be, but it isn’t exactly conclusive for another six years. Takes seven, doesn’t it, in this country before the supposed drowned is legally good and dead? You’ll have seen by this time that I went on that fishing trip because I was disappointed and fed up and sick of it. I’d lost what I loved most—my girl. I didn’t mean any more to my wife than a dead fly in a saucer of vinegar; and, besides, she’d better expectations.”

“Oh!”

“Uncle of hers—sort of old hermit crab, and as rich as they make ’em. He was on the last lap, and sent for her, and told her he was leaving her everything because she’d never kowtowed to him like the other relations. But he wouldn’t advance her a cent, and she wasn’t to get any of it till he was underground. Well, he finished the lap three months after my fishing expedition, and she got it all—hundreds and thousands of it. So I can’t see that she’s any the worse off for lack of me. Can you? Suppose I go there to-morrow and say, ‘Look here, I’m not drowned—only thought I was,’ what sort of a welcome would there be? You think that over.”

Lock puzzled over the thing. It seemed that the man had impulsively established his own death and thus lost all chance of finding his own daughter. He could not advertise, nor could he, without extreme humiliation, reappear in life. There were queer unrevealed streaks in him, no doubt of that, and his story was almost certainly incomplete, but, taken with what Lock had seen that day at Uplands, it was perfectly coherent. Then Jackson presented himself, another man who wanted to know about Hope. But Jackson’s name must first be introduced by Hope’s father. That was the course of prudence.

“Well,” he said, speaking very carefully, “assuming all this, I don’t quite see where I come in.”

“No, you wouldn’t—at once.” Tarrant leaned forward, an epitome of anxious freedom, so that his big body projected massively over the three-foot space, his face intensely earnest. “But my wife has a pretty good idea where Hope is.”

“How do you know that?”

“Said as much one day, then laughed at me. Now listen! All I want of you on this earth is to let me know, quick, if anything is dropped by her or Eva—she’s a cat, that girl—but you don’t see her claws right away—anything that would enable me to find Hope. Then you get your five hundred. The day I hear from you I come alive again and damn the consequences. Is this asking too much—for a father?”

He had reached his point and sat back, completely disclosed, regarding the young man with eyes in which there moved both challenge and appeal. By his own confession he had manœuvred himself into a position that rendered him helpless. This could be his only excuse for risking all and throwing himself on the aid of a complete stranger.

Pondering what had been said, and putting aside the money part of it, Lock could not but feel that the petition—it was more petition than request—had both reason and justice. Any white man would ask it of another. Nor could he think it likely that at some future time the hiding-place of Hope Tarrant would be revealed to him in confidence. Mrs. Tarrant’s expression when Jackson asked for the girl made that most improbable. So, admitting that there might be angles of the truth which Tarrant had passed over, it seemed reasonable enough to help if one could. The man’s simulated death was not his affair. He was about to speak when Tarrant, whose unwinking gaze had never wavered, made a little guttural sound.

“Y’know, now that you know all, there’s one thing that maybe hasn’t occurred to you. You’ve met me—you’ve got my end of it—and before long you’re bound to discover that Hope isn’t a favourite topic of conversation with my—ah—my widow. So far as concerns that widow and her cat daughter, I’m very comfortably dead—if not exactly buried. That suits her down to the ground.

“Now suppose you get some sort of virtuous jolt—you may think it’s virtue, but it’s just durned foolness—and say to yourself, ‘Here, it’s my duty to tell my employer what I know,’ d’you think she’ll thank you for it? First thing, your job’s a washout. You know too much. Next, and apart from Hope, it’s not many widows who want the departed back after they’ve got used to his absence. You didn’t see any long faces about me at Uplands, I’ll bet. I haven’t mentioned this side of the matter before or it would have sounded as though I’d worked you into a corner and was making a threat. I just mention it now in case it hasn’t occurred to you.”

Lock conceived a sudden respect for the man’s brain. He was right—indubitably right. He knew his ground, had not contradicted himself, and was under no illusions concerning his wife. Mrs. Tarrant seemed more than content with widowhood. After having had little, she now had much, and one could not picture her giving Tarrant any welcome whatever. It was queer that she should have married him at all, and must have been due either to necessity or some passing physical attraction. Her flame for his strength.

“Well,” queried Tarrant with a sort of indulgent good-humour, “we’ll be in Waterloo soon, so how about it? You’ve asked me three questions. Any more?”

“No,” smiled Lock.

“Then here’s one for you. Going on a cruise?”

“That’s what the yacht’s for.”

“Mediterranean—usual places—eh?”

“You’re not so far out.” Lock could see no harm in this.

“Right. And my proposal is accepted: five hundred in any bank you like the day you can tell me where my girl is. It’ll be cash: dead men don’t issue cheques. And not a word to anyone else, that’s understood?”

“On your assurance that every word you’ve told me is true, I agree subject to my stipulations.”

“There we go again! I’ve no reason for telling you what isn’t true, so you’ve got the assurance. As to the stipulations, you hang on to ’em; they’ll make you feel easier, and won’t affect anything. Now one point more. I don’t go round as Tom Tarrant—you’d assume that anyway—but Tom Godfrey. You’ll find me second floor, 127, Dean Street—that’s in Soho, off Old Compton Street. Know it?”

“Italian restaurant quarter near Shaftesbury Avenue?” said Lock, recalling his last leave in London.

“You’ve got it. Here’s my telephone number—it’s not in the book. Godfrey—Tom Godfrey, so put the other name out of your head. Anything more occur to you?”

“No.”

“Not very talkative, are you? Well, that’s all to the good, and sort of helps me. You’ll be busy now for a week or two, and seeing more or less of our mutual friends. Keep your ears open. And, speaking of that cruise, is anyone else going?”

“They said not.”

Tarrant sent the young man an exceedingly expressive smile. It conveyed humour, knowledge, experience of a shrewd worldly kind, a complete readiness for amorous adventure, and just a shade of envy. It suggested that he himself would not object, on this occasion, to change places, that he had no doubt whatever about certain aspects of the cruise, and hoped that Lock would make the most of them. All this in a smile.

“You said that so far you’d left women out, didn’t you?”

Lock nodded.

“Well, just wait and see whether they leave you out. My wife’s a man-eater, and Eva’s a cat. Here’s Waterloo, and we’re strangers, so don’t take any notice of me. So lon’.”

He slipped out of the carriage, took a swift glance up and down the platform, and was instantly lost.