“For a week we
have all pulled in the same boat, and we’ve got to know each other as
people never do in the quiet days of peace. We’ve learned to appreciate
each other, and we’ve learned to appreciate each other’s nations. There’s the Colonel here stands for Germany. And Father Pierre is for
France. Then there’s the Professor for America. Ralston and I are
Britishers. Then there’s the ladies, God bless ’em! They have been
angels of mercy and compassion all through the siege. I think we should
drink the health of the ladies. Wonderful thing—the quiet courage, the
patience, the—what shall I say?—the fortitude, the—the—by George, look
at the Colonel! He’s gone to sleep, too—most infernal sleepy weather.”
His glass crashed down upon the table, and he sank back, mumbling and
muttering, into his seat. Miss Sinclair, the pale mission nurse, had
dropped off also. She lay like a broken lily across the arm of her
chair. Mr. Patterson looked round him and sprang to his feet. He passed
his hand over his flushed forehead. “This isn’t natural, Jessie,” he cried. “Why are they all asleep? There’s Father Pierre—he’s off too. Jessie, Jessie, your mother is cold. Is it sleep? Is it death? Open the windows! Help! help! help!” He
staggered to his feet and rushed to the windows, but midway his head
spun round, his knees sank under him, and he pitched forward upon his
face. The young girl had also sprung to her feet. She looked round her with
horror-stricken eyes at her prostrate father and the silent ring of
figures. “Professor Mercer! What is it? What is it?” she cried. “Oh, my God, they
are dying! They are dead!”

The old man had raised himself by a supreme effort of his will, though
the darkness was already gathering thickly round him. “My dear young lady,” he said, stuttering and stumbling over the words,
“we would have spared you this. It would have been painless to mind and
body. It was cyanide. I had it in the caviare. But you would not have
it.”

“Great Heaven!” She shrank away from him with dilated eyes. “Oh, you
monster! You monster! You have poisoned them!”

“No, no! I saved them. You don’t know the Chinese. They are horrible. In
another hour we should all have been in their hands. Take it now,
child.” Even as he spoke, a burst of firing broke out under the very
windows of the room. “Hark! There they are! Quick, dear, quick, you may
cheat them yet!” But his words fell upon deaf ears, for the girl had
sunk back senseless in her chair. The old man stood listening for an
instant to the firing outside. But what was that? Merciful Father, what
was that? Was he going mad? Was it the effect of the drug? Surely it was
a European cheer? Yes, there were sharp orders in English. There was the
shouting of sailors. He could no longer doubt it. By some miracle the
relief had come after all. He threw his long arms upwards in his
despair. “What _have_ I done? Oh, good Lord, what have I done?” he
cried. *       *       *       *       *

It was Commodore Wyndham himself who was the first, after his desperate
and successful night attack, to burst into that terrible supper-room. Round the table sat the white and silent company. Only in the young girl
who moaned and faintly stirred was any sign of life to be seen. And yet
there was one in the circle who had the energy for a last supreme duty. The Commodore, standing stupefied at the door, saw a grey head slowly
lifted from the table, and the tall form of the Professor staggered for
an instant to its feet. “Take care of the caviare! For God’s sake, don’t touch the caviare!” he
croaked. Then he sank back once more and the circle of death was complete. THE JAPANNED BOX


It _was_ a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque
and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I
lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But I
am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained—well, as I tell you
the story you will learn what I gained. I don’t know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns,
but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have left
the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and
everything is stone—stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone for
the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the heart of
a great nation. It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and
thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was a
widower—his wife had died three years before—and he had been left with
these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I
was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an
engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But, there—I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe
Place! It was a very, very old house, incredibly old—pre-Norman, some of it—and
the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since long before
the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I came there,
those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling stones, the smell
as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting plaster of the aged
building. But the modern wing was bright and the garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl inside it and such a
show of roses in front. Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of us
in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time
four-and-twenty and as pretty—well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is
now—myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, a
dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man, who
acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our meals
together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library. Sometimes
he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he
did not. For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six feet three inches
in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic face,
brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian beard,
and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they had been
carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes,
proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your pity and yet dared you
to show it. His back was rounded with study, but otherwise he was as
fine a looking man of his age—five-and-fifty perhaps—as any woman would
wish to look upon.