What she saw, and what they saw, spoke eloquently of the engrossed attention with which they had watched the work of destruction being carried on. So absorbed had they been in Bruce Graham's proceedings that, actually without their knowledge, a burglarious entry had been all but effected into the very room in which they were.

There was the proof before them.

The window had been raised, the blind and curtains pushed away, and a man's head and shoulders thrust inside.

When Ella's exclamation called their attention to the intruder's presence, they stared at him, as well they might, for a moment or two with stupefied amazement; the impudence of the act seemed almost to surpass the bounds of credibility. He, on his part, met their gaze with a degree of fortitude, not to say assurance, which was more than a little surprising.

To the fellow's character his looks bore evidence. The buttoning of his coat up to his chin failed to conceal the fact that his neck was bare, while the crushing of a dilapidated billycock down over his eyes served to throw into clearer relief his unshaven cheeks and hungry-looking eyes.

For the space of perhaps thirty seconds they looked at him, and he at them, in silence. Then Jack moved hastily forward.

"You're a cool hand!" he cried.

But Madge caught him by the arm.

"Don't!" she said. "This is the man who stared through the window."

Jack turned to her, bewildered.

"The man who stared through the window? What on earth do you mean?"

"Don't!" she repeated. "I think that Mr. Graham knows this man."

The man himself endorsed her supposition.

"Yes, I'm rather inclined to think that Mr. Graham does."

His voice was not a disagreeable one; not at all the sort of voice which one would have expected from a person of his appearance. He spoke, too, like an educated man, with, however, a strenuous something in his tone which suggested, in some occult fashion, the bitterness of a wild despair.

Seeing that he remained unanswered, he spoke again.

"What's more, if there is a cool hand it's Mr. Graham, it isn't me. I am a poor, starving, police-ridden devil, being hounded to hell, full pelt, by a hundred other devils-but, Bruce Graham, what are you?"

They turned to the man who was thus addressed.

At the moment of interruption he had been levering a strip of wainscot from its place with the aid of the inserted chisel. He still kept one hand upon the handle, holding the hammer with the other, while he drew his body back against the wall as close as it would go, and, with pallid cheeks and startled eyes, he stared at the intruder as if he had been some straggler from the spiritual world. From between his lips, which seemed to tremble, there came a single word-

"Ballingall!"

"Yes, Ballingall! That's my name. And what's yours-cur, hound, thief? By God! there have been people I've used badly enough in my time, but none worse than you've used me."

"You are mistaken."

"Am I? It looks like it. What are you doing here?"

"You know what I'm doing."

"By God! I do-you're right there. And it's because you know I know, that, although you're twice my size, and have got all the respectability and law of England at your back, you stand there shivering and shaking, afraid for your life at the sight of me."

"I am not afraid of you. I repeat that you are mistaken."

"And I say you lie-you are afraid of me, penniless, shoeless, hungry beggar though I am. Your face betrays you; look at him! Isn't there cowardice writ large?"

The man stretched out his arm, pointing to Graham with a dramatic gesture, which certainly did not tend to increase that gentleman's appearance of ease.

"Do you think I didn't see you the other day, knowing that the time was due for me to come out of gaol, trying to screw your courage to the striking point to play the traitor; how at the sight of me the blood turned to water in your veins? Deny it-lie if you can."

"I do not wish to deny it, nor do I propose to lie. I repeat, for the third time, that in the conclusions you draw you are mistaken. Miss Brodie, this is the person of whom I was telling you-Charles Ballingall."

"So you have told them of me, have you? And a pretty yarn you've spun, I bet my boots. Yes, madam, I am Charles Ballingall, lately out of Wandsworth Prison, sent there for committing burglary at this very place. My God, yes! this house of haunting memories of a thousand ghosts! I only came out the day before yesterday, and that same night I committed burglary again-here! And now I'm at it for the third time, driven to it-by a ghost! And, my God! he's behind me now."

A sudden curious change took place in the expression of the fellow's countenance. Partially withdrawing his head, he turned and looked behind him-as if constrained to the action against his will. His voice shrank to a hoarse whisper.

"Is that you, Tom Ossington?"

None replied.

Madge moved forward, quite calm, and, in her own peculiar fashion, stately, though she was a little white about the lips, and there was an odd something in her eyes.

"I think you had better come inside-and, if convenient, please moderate your language."

At the sound of her voice the man turned again, and stared.

"I beg your pardon. Were you speaking to me?"

"I was, and am. Mr. Graham has spoken to me of you, and I am quite certain that in doing so he has told us nothing but the exact and literal truth. In the light of what he has said, I know that I am giving expression to our common feeling in saying that we shall feel obliged to you if you will come in."

The man hesitated, fumbling with his hands, as if nonplussed.

"It's a good many years since I was spoken to like that."

"Possibly it's a good many years since you deserved to be spoken to like that. As a rule, that sort of speech is addressed to us to which we are entitled."

"That's true. By God, it is!"

"I believe I asked you to moderate your language."

"I beg your pardon; but it's a habit-of some standing."

"Then if that is the case, probably the time is come that it should die. Please let it die-if for this occasion only. Must I repeat my invitation, and press you to enter, in face of the eagerness to effect an entrance which it seems that you have already shown?"

Mr. Ballingall continued to exhibit signs of indecision.

"This isn't a trap, or anything of that kind?"

"I am afraid I hardly understand you. What do you mean by a trap?"

"Well" – his lips were distorted by what was possibly meant for a grin-"it doesn't want much understanding, when you come to think of it."

"We ask you to come in. If you accept our invitation you will of course be at liberty to go again whenever you please. We certainly shall make no effort to detain you, for any cause whatever."

"Well, if that's the case, it's a queer start, by-" He seemed about to utter his accustomed imprecation; then, catching her eyes, refrained, adding, in a different tone, "I think I will."

He did, passing first one leg over the sill, and then the other. When the whole of his body was in the room he removed his hat, the action effecting a distinct improvement in his appearance. The departure of the disreputable billycock disclosed the fact that his head was not by any means ill-shaped. One perceived that this had once been an intelligent man, whose intelligence was very far from being altogether a thing of the past. More, it suggested the probability of his having been good-looking. Nor did it need a keen observer to suspect that if he was shaven and shorn, combed and groomed, and his rags were exchanged for decent raiment, that there was still enough of manliness about him to render him sufficiently presentable. He was not yet of the hopelessly submerged; although just then he could scarcely have appeared to greater disadvantage. His clothes were the scourings of the ragman's bag-ill-fitting, torn, muddy. His boots were odd ones, whose gaping apertures revealed the sockless feet within. In his whole bearing there was that indefinable, furtive something which is the hall-mark of the wretch who hopes for nothing but an opportunity to snatch the wherewithal to stay the cravings of his belly, and who sees an enemy even in the creature who flings to him a careless dole. This atmosphere which was about him, of the outcast and the pariah, was heightened by the obvious fact that, at that very moment, he was hungry, hideously hungry. His eyes, now that they were more clearly seen, were wolfish. In their haste to begin their treasure-hunting they had not even waited to take away the tea-things. The man's glances were fastened on the fragments of food which were on the table, as if it was only by an effort of will that he was able to keep himself from pouncing on them like some famished animal.

Madge perceived the looks of longing.

"We are just going to have supper. You must join us. Then we can talk while we are eating. Ella, help me to get it ready. Sit down, Mr. Ballingall, I daresay you are tired-and perhaps you had better close the window. Ella and I shall not be long."

They made a curious trio, the three men, while the two girls made ready. Ballingall closed the window, with an air half sheepish, half defiant. Then placed himself upon a seat, in bolt upright fashion, as if doubtful of the chair's solidity. Jack took up a position in the centre of the hearthrug, so evidently at a loss for something appropriate to say as to make his incapacity almost pathetic-apparently the unusual character of the situation had tied his tongue into a double knot. Graham's attitude was more complex. The portion of the wainscot which he had undertaken to displace not having been entirely removed, resuming his unfinished task, he continued to wrench the boards from their fastenings as if intentionally oblivious of the new arrival's presence.

Nor was the meal which followed of a familiar type. The resources of the larder were not manifold, but all that it contained was placed upon the table. The pièce de resistance consisted of six boiled eggs.

"If you boil all those eggs," Ella declared, when Madge laid on them a predatory hand, "there'll be nothing left in the house for breakfast."

"The man is famished," retorted Madge with some inconsequence. "What does breakfast matter to us if the man is starving." So the six were boiled. And he ate them all. Indeed he ate all there was to eat-devoured would have been the more appropriate word. For he attacked his food with a voracity which it was not nice to witness, bolting it with a complete disregard to rules which suggest the advisability of preliminary mastication.

It was not until his wolf-like appetite was, at least, somewhat appeased by the consumption of nearly all the food that was on the table, that Madge approached the subject which was uppermost in all their thoughts.

"As I was saying, Mr. Ballingall, Mr. Graham has told us of all that passed between you."

At the moment he had a piece of bread in one hand and some cheese in the other-all the cheese that was left. The satisfaction of his appetite seemed to have increased his ferocity. Cramming both morsels into his mouth at once, he turned on her with a sort of half-choked snarl.

"Then what right had he to do that?"

"It seems to me that he had a good deal of right."

"How? Who's he? A lawyer out of a job, who comes and offers me his services. I'm his client. As his client I give him my confidence. Looking at it from the professional point of view only, what right has he to pass my confidence on to any one? – any one! He's been guilty of a dirty and disgraceful action, and he knows it. You know it, you do." He snarled across the board at Graham. "If I were to report him to the Law Society they'd take him off the rolls."

"I question it."

Madge's tone was dry.

"You may question it-but I know what I'm talking about. What use does he make of the confidence which he worms out of me?"

"I wormed nothing out of you." The interruption was Graham's. "Whatever you said to me was said spontaneously, without the slightest prompting on my part."

"What difference does that make? – Then what use does he make of what I said spontaneously? He knows that I am a poor driven devil, charged with a crime which I never committed. I explain to him how it happened that that crime comes to be laid against me, how I've been told that there's money waiting for me in a certain place, which is mine for the fetching, and how, when I went to fetch it, I was snapped for burglary. I'm found guilty of what I never did, and I get twelve months. In this country law and justice are two different things. What does my lawyer-my own lawyer, who pressed on me his services, mind! – do, while I'm in prison for what I never did? He takes advantage of my confidence, and without a word to me, or a hint of any sort, he goes and looks for my money-my money, mind! – on his own account-and for all I know he's got it in his pocket now."

"That he certainly has not."

This was Madge.

"Then it isn't his fault if he hasn't. Can you think of anything dirtier? not to speak of more unprofessional? Why one thief wouldn't behave to another thief like that-not if he was a touch above the carrion. Here have I, an innocent man, been rotting in gaol, think, think, thinking of what I'd do with the money when I did come out, and here was the man who ought to have been above suspicion, and whom I thought was above suspicion, plotting and planning all the time how he could rob me of what he very well knew was the only thing which could save me from the outer darkness of hell and of despair."

Graham motioned Madge to silence.

"One moment, Miss Brodie. You must not suppose, Mr. Ballingall, that because I suffer you to make your sweeping charges against me without interruption, that I admit their truth, or the justice of the epithets which you permit yourself to apply to me. On the contrary, I assert that your statements are for the most part wholly unjustifiable, and that where they appear to have some measure of justification, they are easily capable of complete explanation. Whatever you may continue to say I shall decline to argue with you here. If you will come to my rooms I will give you every explanation you can possibly desire."

"Yes, I daresay, – and take the earliest opportunity of handing me over to the first convenient copper. Unless I'm mistaken, that's the kind of man you are."

Madge caught the speaker by the sleeve of his ragged coat, with a glance at Graham, whose countenance had grown ominously black.

"If you will take my advice, Mr. Ballingall, since it is plain that you know nothing of the mind of man Mr. Graham really is, instead of continuing to talk in that extremely foolish fashion you will listen to what I have to say. The night before last we were the victims of an attempted burglary-"

"I did it-you know I did it. I give myself away-if there's any giving about it. You can whistle for a constable, and give me into charge right off; I'm willing. Perhaps it'll turn out to be the same bobby I handled before, and then he'll be happier than ever."

"I am sorry to learn that you were the burglar-very sorry. My friend, Miss Duncan, and I were alone in the house, a fact of which you were probably aware." That Mr. Ballingall might still be possessed of some remnants of saving grace was suggested by the fact that, at this point, he winced. "Other considerations aside, it was hardly a heroic action to break, at dead of night, into a lonely cottage, whose only inmates were a couple of unprotected girls."

"There was a revolver fired."

"As you say, there was a revolver fired-by me, at the ceiling. Does that tend to strengthen the evidence which goes to show that the deed, on your part, was a courageous one?"

"I never said that it was."

"You are perfectly conscious that we shall not whistle for a policeman, and that we shall not give you into charge. Is it necessary for you to talk as if you thought we should?"

"Am I to be robbed-"

"I fancy that the robbing has not been all upon one side." Mr. Ballingall did not look happier. "The burglar left behind him a scrap of paper-"

"Oh, I did, did I? I wondered where it was."

"At present it is in the possession of the police."

"The devil!"

"You need not be alarmed." Mr. Ballingall had suddenly risen, as if disturbed by some reflection. "That was before we knew by whom we had been favoured. Now that we do know, the paper will not be used in evidence against you-nor the police either. Before handing over that scrap of paper we took a copy of the writing which was on it. That writing was a key to two secret hiding-places which are contained within this house."

"How do you know that?"

"By exercising a little of my elementary common sense. Observe, Mr. Ballingall." Rising from her seat, she crossed to the door. "On that paper which you were so good as to leave behind you it was written, 'Right'-I stand on the right of the door. 'Straight across'-I walk straight across the room. 'Three'-I measure three feet horizontally. 'Four'-and four feet perpendicularly. 'Up'-I push the panel up; it opens, and I find that there is something within. That, Mr. Ballingall, is how I know the paper was a guide to two secret hiding-places-by discovering the first. What is the matter with the man? Has he gone mad?"

The question, which was asked with a sudden and striking change of tone, was induced by the singularity of Mr. Ballingall's demeanour. He had started when Madge took up her position at the door, eyeing her following evolutions speechlessly, breathlessly, as if spellbound. Her slightest movement seemed to possess for him some curious fascination. As she proceeded, his agitation increased; every nerve seemed strained so that he might not lose the smallest detail of all that happened, until when, with dramatic gestures, she imitated the action of striking the panel, raising it, and taking out something which was contained within, he broke into cry after cry.

"My God! – my God! – my God!" he repeated, over and over again.

Covering his face with his hands, as if he strove to guard his eyes against some terrible vision, he crouched in a sort of heap on the floor.

CHAPTER XV
THE COMPANION OF HIS SOLITUDE

When he looked up, it was timidly, doubtfully, as if fearful of what he might see. He glanced about him anxiously from side to side, as if in search of something or some one.

"Tom! – Tom!" he said, speaking it was difficult to say to whom.

He paused, as if for an answer. When none came, he drew himself upright gradually, inch by inch. They noticed how his lips were twitching, and how the whole of his body trembled. He passed his hand over his eyes, as a man might who is waking from a dream. Then he stretched it out in front of him, palm upwards, with a something of supplication in the action which lent pathos to the words he uttered-words which in themselves were more than sufficiently bizarre.

"Do any of you believe in ghosts? – in disembodied spirits assuming a corporeal shape? – in the dead returning from their graves? Or is a man who thinks he sees a ghost, who knows he sees a ghost, who knows that a ghost is a continual attendant of his waking and of his sleeping hours alike-must such a man be in labour with some horrible delusion of his senses? Is his brain of necessity unhinged? Must he of a certainty be mad?"

Not only was such an interrogation in itself remarkable, but more especially was it so as coming from such a figure as Ballingall presented. His rags and dirt were in strange contrast with his language. His words, chosen as it seemed with a nice precision, came from his lips with all the signs of practiced ease. His manner, even his voice, assumed a touch of refinement which before it lacked. In him was displayed the spectacle of a man of talent and of parts encased in all the outward semblance of a creature of the kennel.

Madge, to whom the inquiry seemed to be more particularly addressed, replied to it with another.

"Why do you ask us such a question?"

About the man's earnestness, as he responded, there could be no doubt. The muscles of his face twitched as with St. Vitus' Dance; beads of sweat stood upon his brow; the intensity of his desire to give adequate expression to his thoughts seemed to hamper his powers of utterance.

"Because I want some one to help me-some one, God or man. Because, during the last year and more I have endured a continual agony to which I doubt if the pains of hell can be compared. Because things with me have come to such a pitch that it is only at times I know if I am dead or living, asleep or waking, mad or sane, myself or another."

He pointed to Graham.

"He has told you how it was with me aforetime; how I was haunted-driven by a ghost to gaol. When I was in gaol it was worse a thousandfold-I was haunted, always, day and night. The ghost of my old friend-the best friend man ever had-whom in so many ways I had so blackly and often wronged, was with me, continually, in my cell. Oh for some sign by which I could know that my sins have been forgiven me! – by which I could learn that by suffering I could atone for the evil I have done! Some sign, O Lord, some sign!"

He threw his hands above his head in a paroxysm of passion. As has been said of more than one great tragic actor, in his voice there were tears. As, indeed, there were in the eyes of at least one of those who heard. His manner, when he proceeded, was a little calmer-which very fact seemed to italicise the strangeness of his tale.

"The first day I spent in prison I was half beside myself with rage. I had done things for which I had merited punishment, even of man, and now that punishment had come, it was for something I had not done. The irony, as well as the injustice of it, made me nearly wild. I had my first taste of the crank-which is as miserable, as futile, and as irritating a mode of torture as was ever spewed out of a flesh and blood crank's unhealthy stomach; and I was having, what they called there, dinner, when the cell door opened, and-Tom Ossington came in. It was just after noon, in the broad day. He came right in front of me, and, leaning on his stick, he stood and watched me. I had not been thinking of him, and, a moment before, had been hot with fury, ready to dare or do anything; but, at the sight of him, the strength went out of me. My bones might have been made of jelly, they seemed so little able to support my body. There was nothing about him which was in the least suggestive of anything unusual. He was dressed in a short coat and felt hat, which were just like the coat and hats which he always had worn; and he had in his hand the identical stick which I had seen him carry perhaps a thousand times. If it was a ghost, then there are ghosts of clothes as well as of men. If it was an optical delusion, then there are more things in optics than are dreamt of in our philosophy. If it was an hallucination born of a disordered mind, then it is possible to become lunatic without being conscious of any preliminary sappings of the brain; and it is indeed but an invisible border line which divides the madmen from the sane.

"'Well, Charlie,' he said, in the quiet tones which I had known so well, 'so it's come to this. You made a bit of a mistake in coming when you did to fetch away that fortune of yours.'

"'It seems,' I said, 'as if I had.'

"He laughed-that gentle laugh of his which had always seemed to me to be so full of enjoyment.

"'Never mind, Charlie, you come another time. The fortune won't run away while you're in here.'

"With that, he turned and limped out of the cell; the door seeming to open before him at a touch of his hand, and shutting behind him as noiselessly as it had opened. It was only after he had gone that I realised what it was that I had seen. In an instant I was in a muck of sweat. While I was sitting on my stool, more dead than alive, the door opened again, this time with clatter and noise enough, and a warder appeared. He glared at me in a fashion which meant volumes.

"'Is that you talking in here? You'd better take care, my lad, or you'll make a bad beginning.'

"He banged the door behind him-and he went."

Ballingall paused, to wipe his brow with the back of his hand; and he sighed.

"I made a bad beginning, and, from the warder's point of view, I went from bad to worse. I do not know if the man I had injured has been suffered to torture me before my time, or if, where he is, his nature has changed, and he seeks, in the grave, the vengeance he never sought in life. If so, he has his fill of it-he surely has had his fill of it! – already. It was through him that I was there, and now that I was there he made my sojourn in the prison worse than it need have been. Much worse, God knows.

"That first visitation of his was followed by others. Twice, thrice, sometimes four times a day, he would come to me when I was in my cell, and speak to me, and compel me to answer him; and my voice would be heard without. It became quite a custom for the warder on duty to stand outside my cell, often in the middle of the night, and pounce on me as soon as Tom had gone. The instant Tom went, the warder would come in. Never once did an officer enter while he was actually with me, but, almost invariably, his departure was the signal for the warder to put in his appearance. I don't know how it was, or why it was, but so it was. I would be accused of carrying on a conversation with myself, reported, and punished. As a matter of fact, I was in continual hot water-because of Tom. Not a single week passed from that in which I entered the prison, to that in which I left it, during which I did not undergo punishment of some sort or the other, because of Tom. As a result, all my marks were bad marks. When I left the gaol, so far from receiving the miserable pittance which good-conduct prisoners are supposed to earn, I was penniless; I had not even the wherewithal with which to buy myself a crust of bread.

"A more dreadful form of torture Tom could hardly have invented. A man need not necessarily suffer although he is in gaol. But I suffered. Always I was in the bad books of the officers. They regarded me as an incorrigible bad-conduct man-which, from their point of view, I was. All sorts of ignominy was heaped on me. Every form of punishment I could be made to undergo I had to undergo. I never earned my stripe, nor the right of having a coir mattress with which to cover the bare board on which I was supposed to sleep. I was nearly starved, owing to the perpetually recurring bread and water. And the horrors I endured, the devils which beset me, in that unspeakable dark cell! To me, gaol was a long-drawn-out and ever-increasing agony, from the first moment to the last.

"God knows it was!"

The speaker paused. He stood, his fists clenched, staring vacantly in front of him, as if he saw there, in a mist, the crowding spectres of the past. There seemed to come a break in his voice as he continued. He spoke with greater hesitation.

"Some three months before my sentence was completed, Tom changed his tactics. While I was sleeping-such sleep! – on the bare board which served me as a bed, I'd have a vision. It was like a vision-like a vision, and yet-it was as if I was awake. It seemed as if Tom came to me, and put his arm into mine, and led me out of gaol, and brought me here to Clover Cottage. He'd stand at the gate and say 'Charlie, this is Clover Cottage,' and I'd answer, 'I know it is.' Then he'd laugh-in some way that laugh of his seemed to cut me like a knife. And he'd lead me down the pathway and into the house, to this very room. Though" – Ballingall looked about him doubtfully-"it wasn't furnished as it is now. It was like it used to be. And he'd go and stand by the door, as you did" – this was to Madge-"and he'd say, 'Now, Charlie, pay particular attention to what I am about to do. I'm going to show you how to get that fortune of yours-which you came for once before and went away without. Now observe.'

"Then he'd walk straight across the room, as you did," again to Madge-"and he'd turn to me and say, 'Notice exactly what I'm doing!' Then he'd take a foot rule from his pocket, and he'd measure three feet from where he stood along the floor. And he'd hold up the rule, and say, 'You see-three feet.' Then he'd measure four feet from the floor, and hold out the rule again and say, 'You see, four feet.' Then he'd put his hand against the panel and move it upwards, and it would slide open-and there was an open space within. He'd put his hand into the open space, and take something out; it looked to me like a sheet of paper. And he'd say, 'This is what will give you that fortune of yours-when you find it. Only you'll have to find it first. Be sure you find it, Charlie.'

"And he'd laugh-and, though it was the gentle laugh of his which I had known so well of old, there was something about it which seemed to mock me, and cut me like a whip and make me quiver. He'd take my arm again, and lead me from the house and back to the gaol, and I'd wake to find myself lying on the bare board, alone in the dark cell, crying like a child.

"In the morning, perhaps at dinner-time, he'd come into the cell in the usual way, and ask me:

"'Charlie, do you remember last night?' 'Yes, Tom,' I'd reply, 'I do.' And then he'd go on:

"'Mind you don't forget. It's most important, Charlie, that you shouldn't forget. I'll tell you what you must remember. Take this and write it down.'

"And he'd give me something, my Bible, or my prayer-book, or even the card of rules which was hung against the wall, and a piece of pencil-though where he got that from I never knew, and he'd say, 'Now write what I dictate.'

"And I did, just as you saw it on the paper which I left behind; the first line, 'Tom Ossington's Ghost'-he always made me write that; it was the only allusion he ever made to there being anything unusual about his presence there; and the second line, 'right-straight across-three-four-up.' When I'd written it he'd say:

"'Charlie, mind you take the greatest care of that; don't let it go out of your possession for a moment. It's the guide to that fortune of yours.'