Branch Line to Benceston by Sir Andrew Caldecott

Branch Line to Benceston

1

Although to know Adrian Frent was not necessarily to like him, he interested me from the very first. If his life contained much of the ordinary, the manner of his death was very far out of it; the biographical portion of these notes is therefore by way of preface to the mystery of his end.

I had lived at Brensham for two years before the Garden City Company showed any intention of extending Ruskin Road. So long as it remained a cul-de-sac the peace of my bachelor homestead would remain undisturbed, for beyond it lay only a wilderness of weed and bramble between the road's end and the Bren river. I watched therefore with misgiving a gradual clearing by the Company's roadmen of this barren strip and the construction by them of a gravel track down its centre. But I need not have worried, for a bridging of the Bren on a purely residential thoroughfare was quite beyond the Company's financial resources, and the sole purpose of the extension was to afford access to a vacant building lot on the side opposite to me and nearer to the river. On this quickly arose 'Brenside' and into it as first tenant moved Adrian Frent.

My first glimpse of him was during a reconnaissance made by me along the river bank for that very purpose. What would be the looks of a man whom I might have to live next to for long years naturally aroused my curiosity. Nor was my first impression unfavourable. I saw a man of nearly six feet, clean-shaven, oval-faced, dark-haired, well-knit and smartly tailored. Without hesitation I made up my mind to call as soon as he was comfortably settled in.

I did so some ten days later and found him very pleased to be doing host in his new house. Brenside had been wisely planned to provide one really large room, on the window side of which stood an Erard grand piano on glass castors. In front lay a large Persian rug, on whose beautiful and expensive expanse none of the surrounding leathered chairs were allowed to impinge. The pictures on the walls were all of religious subjects, though not pertaining to the same religion. They included a coloured print of the Sistine Madonna, a silver-point drawing of the Hermes of Praxiteles, a rather wishy-washy sketch in water colour of the Buddha, and an enlarged photograph of Hindu frescoes in the Ajanta Caves. There were two large bookcases, one containing books whose titles I could not see from the chair into which Frent beckoned me, and the other largely filled by bound volumes of the Railway Magazine. Immediately above them was a scale model of a locomotive protected by an oblong glass frame.

This miniature engine and the magazines offended my aesthetic sensibility by their incongruity with the other furnishings, and made me curious to ascertain the nature of the books in the other case. Finding excuse in a draught from the window I soon transferred myself to a nearer seat whence my eye fell on a representative and well-bound collection of English classics, both in prose and poetry. The only exceptions were gathered on a shelf to themselves and might be categorised under the title borne by the largest of them, which was Herbs, Simples, Drugs and Poisons.

Frent caught my inquisitive glance. 'One of my many hobbies,' he explained. 'I grow them, you know. That's why I've chosen a place by the river. I lost a lot of valuable stuff last year at Tenford during the August drought. I'm going to make the garden here a herbalist's paradise; you must drop in occasionally and see how it's getting on. I've got my eye on the small greenhouse as a future laboratory. I not only grow the plants but I make them into medicines. I always make my own insecticides and the vermifuges for my dogs. They're in the kennel now, under treatment; come along and see them.' Leading me out by a side door he introduced me to two liver-coloured dachshunds in one of the outhouses. They were almost offensively affectionate, after the nature of their breed. 'I adore dogs,' he said. I was glad that he did not see me wince, but I hate men to use the word 'adore': it is woman's property.

Business men on their daily trek from Brensham to the City have a choice of three trains. The 8.47 runs you through to Cripplegate and is uncomfortably crowded. The 8.59 has a slightly superior clientèle but lands you at St Euston's Cross, midway between east and west, whence it is necessary to proceed by Underground. The 9.15, similarly bound, is patronised only by such as are in positions to determine for themselves their times of arrival and departure. It was in this third train that I met Frent next morning, and thereby placed him in the category of employer rather than of employee. Nor was my inference at fault, as I learned from his conversation on the way up. He was a partner in the firm of Frent, Frent & Saxon Limited, Music Publishers of 2 3 Great Penchester Street. His father, who had died last year, had left him in joint managership with Paul Saxon; whom indeed I remembered, somewhat indistinctly, as a fellow member of the Junior Camisis before its absorption by the older University Clubs.

It did not take me long, listening to Frent's talk, to realise that here was a case of a business house being very much divided against itself. To put the matter in a nutshell, Adrian was musically a severe classicist while Saxon was crazy on jazz. Each had, I gathered, in his own line brought grist to the common mill. Frent had at the unlimited expense of an aunt of the composer, who contributed also a frontispiece, published in album form Julian Grinley's 'Twelve Dream Pieces for Pianoforte'. Saxon undoubtedly struck a good bargain when he acquired publishing rights over a Jazz series which included such astonishing 'hits' as 'Gioconda' and 'Bendigo'. The pity of it was that each, while sharing in it, grudged the other his success.

Daily travelling in the same compartment Frent and I soon found ourselves on terms of acquaintance that bordered on intimacy. This was because I was glad to find him interesting and he glad to find someone whom he interested. I derived entertainment even from his knowledge of locomotives and running schedules and, acquiring the jargon of the initiate, was soon speaking of the permanent way as 'the road' and of signals being 'on' or 'off instead of up and down. His tales of railway history especially appealed to me, and (after he had pointed out the gas works siding which leaves the main line just north of Ponsden Priory as being all that now remains of an aborted London, Middlehampton and East Coast Railway) I often found my eyes straying from my evening paper, as we jerked over the junction points, towards the heavy gates that closed the siding against the main line of which it had been intended to form a most important branch. In moments of despondency the tale of this siding would appear to me as an allegory of what had happened to so many pet projects of my own scheming!

2

I forget the exact date of Frent's coming to Brenside, but it was at the beginning of March. On the 17th April poor old Miss Lurgashall of Rosedene, Hesseltine Road, was trapped in her bedroom and burned to death when the house took fire from defects in the electrical insulation. Rosedene and Brenside had been designed by the same architect and in both plans the front and back stairs occupied respectively the fore and rear of the middle section of the building. This arrangement, comparing it to a central flue, the coroner described as a death-trap. A criticism so characteristic of a Coroner's obiter dicta naturally passed unheeded by hundreds of people whose houses were on a similar plan: but not by Adrian Frent.

'What are you going to do about your stairs?' he asked me.

'Nothing,' I replied, 'and you?'

'I'm having a fire escape put in from the box room next to my bedroom.'

'That'll cost you something!'

'Oh! not much. All one needs is a trap-door and a length of rope. We used to have several of them at my prep. school. In case of emergency one lifts the trap, throws down the rope and swarms down it hand over hand. Cheap and easy! I'm a bit of a carpenter, as you know, and I cut the trap-door yesterday. Now all that remains to do is to get a rope.'

'You'll need a staple to fix it to,' I pointed out; 'and that means a hole through the wall and a plate.'

'Oh! I know of an odd job man who'll fix that up for me in no time and at very small charge. I strongly advise you to follow my example.'

I have recorded the above conversation for the reason (as well as for another which will appear later) that it well illustrates a basic defect in Frent's character. He was always starting things without consideration of their full implications and dropping them when he ran up against difficulties. In the present instance the example which he bade me follow was never set, for neither staple nor rope eventuated. He just forgot about them. It was the same story with his piano playing: he had excellent taste and touch, but I have seldom known him to play a piece right through. As soon as he came to a tricky passage he would break off with a 'sorry, I'm out of practice!' I suspected, however, that he had never been in practice, for he hated drudgery and all his activities lacked perseverance and system. Take, for instance, the death of his dachshunds, the cause of which he never revealed to me. The Vet., however, did. They had been poisoned by draughts out of a wrong bottle! How a man who prided himself on concocting his own insecticides and vermifuges could have been so careless passed my comprehension. Nor did the loss of these pets cause him any observable sorrow. I sometimes wondered in fact whether he did not derive a greater pleasure from the artistic little headstones that he had placed over their graves than any that the dogs ever afforded him while alive.

As these sentences flow from my pen I am conscious that they become increasingly critical of Adrian Frent. This is not from any desire on my part to play the role of dissecting moralist, but because my portrait of the man cannot be rendered faithful or lifelike without painting in the shadows. He certainly suffered no qualms himself about personal criticisms, for his daily conversations with me became more and more charged with venom against 'the Klaxon' as he now insisted on calling his partner. His outbursts would indeed have been wearisome but for the many amusing turns of phrase and fancy with which he embellished them. Nevertheless, my conscience would sometimes accuse me of abetting slander; and by way of appeasing it I argued to myself that, by allowing Frent to blow off steam, I was preventing the accrual to his animosity of any explosive quality that might be generated by enforced repression.

As the summer wore on we dropped in frequently at each other's houses, and I was privileged to see the burgeoning of the Herbalist's Paradise. These were his words, not mine; for a meaner collection of disreputable weeds could be hardly imagined: The only lasting memory of my inspection of it is of his telling me that what I still continue to call 'Deadly Nightshade' is neither Nightshade nor deadly. The so-called laboratory in the little greenhouse was equally unimpressive; indeed it reminded me of nothing so much as the pitiful messes that children will make out of leaves and berries to serve as 'pretence food' in their toy dinner services. I could not but remember the sad end of those two dachshunds and found myself viewing the disarray of bottles, tins and saucers with mounting distaste. Frent perhaps discerned these thoughts. 'Come along indoors,' he said, 'and I will play you the March Funèbre out of that Beethoven Sonata.' The movement contains no really difficult passages and he did it justice. It little occurred to me that it was the last thing that I should hear him play.

3

September the fourteenth is my birthday, and I am able to set that date with certainty against the events that follow. I had lunched at his club with my brother Gerald and, taking the afternoon off, made to catch the three-thirty at St Euston's Cross. I had hardly settled down in a corner seat before, to my surprise, in got Frent. I had never known him take so early a train before, and the fuss that he was in made me ask the reason.

'I'm through for good with Saxon,' he explained, 'and we shall have to dissolve partnership. I just hate him and all his works; and he knows it and trades on it. All our publications are now on his side of the show. I simply have to agree to everything he demands in order to get him out of my room. He knows how I loathe whistling and humming, but he hums or whistles his filthy jazz the whole working day, blast him! He rubs it in too about my daily bread being buttered with croon and swing. That "Lulu on the Lilo" tune is the rottenest stuff the house has ever published; and yet it's netted us some three hundred quid already. Tainted money I call it!'

At this point Frent thumped his despatch case into the luggage rack, and stood over me while he continued: 'and now this morning he comes and leans over my desk, breathing his beastly 'flu into my very nostrils. He knows well enough how prone I am to colds and how careful I have to be to avoid infection. And then to cap it all, he asks me to lend him my quack sniffle cure, as he thinks it funny to call it: Well, he asked for it and he's got it: I hope it chokes him!'

'As your worm mixture did the dachshunds,' I laughingly interposed.

Frent slowly sat down and scowled at me. It was the first time that I had made him angry. 'Can't you let me forget those damned dogs?' he snapped; and then added self-pityingly, 'what I need is a rest and a change of scene. Saxon's put all my nerves on edge.'

As the train glided out of the gloom of the roofed terminus into unimpeded daylight I was shocked to see Frent's face. It was lined, drawn and grey: an ugly yellow-grey. The man was patently unwell.

'I'm sorry, old man,' I said sympathetically. 'If I were you I would take a long week-end and run down to the seaside.'

'That's a good idea,' he muttered, and for the next quarter of an hour made a show of reading the evening paper, though his attention appeared far from concentrated on it.

The rolling-stock used on the three-thirty consists chiefly of old six-wheelers, and progress became bumpy as we gained speed. After rattling through Ponsden Priory station the carriage gave a bigger jolt than usual over the siding junction and something fell tinkling on to the floor. Frent's pince-nez, always precariously perched, had been jerked off his nose and I waited for him to pick them up. He remained however stock still with fingers outspread on his knees, staring down at the paper which had fallen over his feet. He looked so dazed and helpless that stooping forward myself I picked up the pince-nez and handed them up to him. After regarding them curiously for a few moments he lifted his eyes questioningly to mine and said, 'Thank you, sir: but are you sure they're mine'

'They were on your nose a moment ago!'

'Ah! Were they? I had forgotten. You must excuse me, but everything seems suddenly to have gone out of my head. It's quite extraordinary. For instance, your face seems familiar to me and I feel sure that we must have met each other before: but at the moment I've entirely forgotten your name. I'm so sorry.'

Not only Frent's face but the impersonal note in his voice, as though he were repeating a lesson, startled and distressed me. I felt relieved somehow that there was no third person in the compartment to overhear his conversation. He was undoubtedly seized by some sudden illness and consequent abnormality, and it must devolve on me to get him home to Brenside safely and without incident. It is strange how in emergency one sometimes finds the policeman element in one's character taking charge and directing operations. It was so now; for I heard myself addressing Frent in a calm and custodial manner that surprised me.

'My name is Johnson and yours is Frent,' I said. 'We live next to each other in Ruskin Road, Brensham, which is the next stop. You have been working too hard and worrying too much, and as a result your brain has gone temporarily on strike. But don't you bother about that. Go on reading your paper' (I picked it up for him) 'and when we reach Brensham I'll see you home and call in the doctor. He'll soon put you right again.'

Frent received my remarks with a passive and childlike acceptance and, save that I experienced an uncomfortable sensation of walking with a somnambulist, we reached Brenside without trouble. Having explained to the parlourmaid that her master had been taken ill I got him to lie down on a sofa and rang up Dr Jameson.

The latter was round within five minutes, and having looked at Frent and taken his pulse, he peremptorily and monosyllabically enjoined 'bed'. A telephone enquiry of the Brensham District Nursing Guild elicited that Nurse Margison was immediately available, and in less than half an hour she had Frent and Brenside in her charge.

'Let's drop in at your place, and I'll prescribe for you too,' said Jameson as we walked away. 'You must have had an anxious time getting that fellow home.'

He joined with me in taking his own prescription: it was 'a stiff one'.

4

Frent lay in bed five days before recovery. He was described by Miss Margison as an ideal patient; which meant that he slept most of the time, asked no questions and did whatever she told him.

It was on the second or third day that I read in my morning paper of Paul Saxon's death from influenza. The attack, a severe one, had been aggravated by acute gastric complications and had terminated, fatally, in pneumonia. Frent's fulminations against his partner had led me to envisage a Philistine of the Philistines. I was surprised therefore to read in the obituary notice of a distinguished academic career and of his identity with Publics' in the Bi-monthly Review, whose articles on art and literature I always enjoyed and admired.

I was permitted to visit Frent at the very outset of his recovery. His first request was indeed that he might see me. Considering that he might be said to have lost his self for several days I found him almost incongruously self-possessed. Before him lay a letter from Lyster, his Company's manager, reporting the circumstances of Saxon's death.

'How extremely annoying of him,' Frent complained, 'to die just when the doctor orders me a holiday. I simply must clear up the mess he will have left and it will take several weeks. All the same I shall have to run down to Benceston for a few days before long.'

'Benceston?' I queried.

Frent's face suddenly showed again (it may have been due to a reflection of sunset glow on the ceiling) the same deep lines and yellow-grey colour that had worried me in the train.

'I don't know what made me say Benceston,' he continued; 'any seaside resort would do; but I feel that I must get a whiff of the sea. By the way Saxon's funeral was this afternoon: I hope they didn't jazz the Dead March.'

The last words were those of a cad but, in consideration for Frent's state, I let them pass and the conversation slipped into generalities. For some reason, however, he gave me the impression of trying to drag our talk round to some subject from which, as soon as he had manoeuvred it into proximity, he veered away in distaste. It was an unpleasant sensation, and after half an hour or so I made as though to take my departure by asking whether I might send him over anything to read.

'Have you by any chance got a book called The Bad Lands?' he replied.

'I'm afraid not: but I remember reading a short story under that name: by John Metcalfe, I think.'

Frent seemed quite excited.

Was it about a fellow being in two places at the same time, and doing something criminal in one of them while he thought he was doing something good in the other?'

'I don't think,' I protested, 'that the author would appreciate such a crude summary! The tale was extraordinarily well and carefully written.'

'And, in the light of modern conceptions of space and time, very likely a true one!'

'What on earth do you mean, Frent?'

'I mean that space can get kinks and double back over and under itself. Of course you know all that.'

'I most certainly do not, and I'm perfectly certain that you don't either. You must have been reading some such tosh as Einstein Without Tears or Brainfood for the Brainless. You had far better stick to your old Railway Magazines.'

'I know far more, Johnson, than you guess and than I wish. Some day, perhaps, I'll try to explain: but not now. Au revoir! and many thanks for coming round.'

I had recently purchased in five large volumes a series of maps of the counties of Great Britain with combined index. On reaching my house I went straight to the study and, taking down the index from its shelf, looked up 'Benceston'. My suspicions were not relieved. There was no such place.

5

I never met Frent again in the train after his recovery. This was because he changed his route and travelled from Wentlow, for East Brensham, to King's Pancras. This involved him in a mile and a half walk morning and evening; which, as being conducive to his good health, he gave as a reason for the change. His looks however belied the explanation. His condition indeed caused Dr Jameson and myself increasing anxiety; and my uneasiness was aggravated by his point blank refusal to consult Jameson professionally or to call in any other doctor. It was reassuring therefore when he informed us that a cousin, Gilbert Frent-Sutton, was coming to live with him.

This cousin, he told us, was a Fellow of All Saints and a recognised authority on the Middle Ages. He did not tell us, but we soon found out, that his cousin was also to be identified with Frent-Sutton the old Camford rugger blue. From the moment he arrived we recognised in him a man who would stand no nonsense; and we therefore felt happier about Frent, who was already in visible danger of going all to pieces unless he had somebody to help to keep him together.

A week or so after Frent-Sutton's arrival the doctor and I were invited by telephone to drop in together at Brenside and have a drink. At the gate we were met by Frent-Sutton.

'Before we go in,' he said, 'I owe you both an explanation. Adrian refuses, Doctor, to call you in professionally; but I got him to ask you round (using you, Johnson, as a sort of decoy) for a drink. The important thing is that, having attended him after his collapse, you should see him now and observe his present condition. It needs tackling at once. He has never told you yet about his delusions, though he suspects Johnson of having inferred their peculiar nature. Tonight he has promised to make a clean breast of them, and I fancy that you will find them important from the medical standpoint.'

We went in and, sitting in a half-circle round the fire, began our drinks over the usual small talk. Frent-Sutton was, however, a believer in getting to grips with a job quickly and broke in early with a request that Adrian would tell us all about his Benceston business. 'Tell us everything, old man: right from the very beginning when your father and old Saxon held the stage.'

'I'll try,' responded Frent, not at all averse to becoming the centre of our interest, 'and I'll make it as short as I can. Our firm's name, you know, is Frent, Frent and Saxon; and that is because when my father turned the show into a limited liability company he kept a third share for himself and reserved a second third for me (against the day when I should have grown up and proved my business capacity), while he allowed his manager, old Saxon, to take up the remaining third share.

'Old Saxon's boy and myself were unfortunately of the same age, and wherever my father sent me—to Heathcote, Winchingham and Oxbridge—old Saxon must needs send Paul. He dogged my footsteps everywhere and at both schools, and later at the Varsity, he excelled me both in games and work. My parents took shame from my inferiority and perpetually upbraided me with letting them down. As a result I grew to hate Paul and detested him the more for a desire on his part to fraternise.

'Finally we entered into the firm's business simultaneously; I to be my father's greatest disappointment and Paul to be his right-hand man and, at old Saxon's death, his energetic partner. Paul also inherited money from an aunt, and my father, in appreciation of his work, allowed him 'to purchase the share in the business which he had earmarked for me. On my father's death, therefore, I had only the one-third share in the business which I inherited from him against Paul's two. Frent, Frent and Saxon had become in reality Saxon, Saxon and Frent. I was permanently number two to my life's enemy; and during every day and hour of our partnership my hatred for him proliferated. It possessed my whole being.

'I don't very often go to church, but I had done so on the Sunday preceding my collapse in the train; and it was the parson's sermon that brought home to me the full significance of my hatred. He was preaching on sins of intention and quoted that text about a man committing fornication in his heart if he looks upon a woman lasciviously. The same logic, the parson pointed out, applies to the other commandments. Many people might regard themselves as pretty safe against a breach of the sixth; but we must remember that anybody who allowed his imagination to dwell on how much nicer things would be if only so-and-so were out of the way had already committed murder in his heart. I at once realised this to be true. I was murdering Paul daily: and, quite clearly, it was my duty both to him and myself that I should cut adrift from our partnership.

'Nevertheless, I delayed doing it, fearing the explanation which Saxon would demand and the loss of employment in which it must land me. This delay added further fuel to my hate. You will remember, Johnson, how, in the train that day, you joked about the possibility of the cold cure which I had lent to Saxon proving as deadly as the dose that killed my dogs. That jest of yours brought me, with a jerk, bang up against the actuality that I had, in passing the bottle to Saxon, thought how easy and pleasant it would have been to hand over some poisonous mixture, if any such had been to hand. I tried to keep my mind off this memory by reading the paper, but without success, and then endeavoured to concentrate on other thoughts. Johnson knows my fondness for railway history and I had told him how an important railway project had ended ignominiously in a gasworks siding. I forced myself now to imagine what would have been the route of the abortive London, Middlehampton and East Coast Railway and what might have been the livery of its rolling stock. While my thoughts were being directed along these lines, we rattled through Ponsden Priory and, to my momentary surprise, I felt the train, instead of carrying straight on over the points, swing right-handed towards the siding. I say "momentary surprise" because, within a few seconds, it seemed perfectly right and natural to me that we should be travelling eastwards. I noticed the monogram, L.M. & E.C.R. on the antimacassars opposite and, above them, two pictures of Bencestonon-Sea and one of Bellringers Cliff. The scenery through which we were passing was also familiar, and I knew that before reaching Benceston the train would stop at Latteridge Junction to pick up passengers.

'I also had a certain foreboding that among the passengers we should pick up would be Paul Saxon. And so it turned out. As the train glided in, I spotted him out of the corner of my eye and surreptitiously watched him enter a compartment three doors off from mine.

'At Benceston West he got out, and I heard him tell a uniformed porter from Fotheringham Hotel to take up his suitcase.

'That gave me my cue. I journeyed on to the East Station and took up my quarters at the Porchester. Paul and I, therefore, had a good three miles between us and ample space in which to avoid each other.

'This, however, was not to be. Walking, next day, along the summit of Bellringers Cliff, I suddenly heard a whistling of that filthy tune, "Lulu on the Lilo", followed by a loathesomely hearty "By Jove! How are we? Fancy meeting you up here! I say, what a magnificent view of the sea one gets!" He stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing seaward. I took a hurried look to right and left. We were alone. Striking him from behind, on both shoulder blades, I caused him to overbalance and fall forward. I was alone. My heart thumped with the joy of quick decision and prompt execution. Glancing at my wrist watch, I saw that it was a quarter to three. I started singing, and was just about to peer over the edge, in order to see if Saxon's body had fallen on the rocks above or below tide-level, when a a large hand grabbed me by the arm and swung me round so that I faced inshore. My aggressor was a man of over six feet and broad in proportion.

'"I will see you to the Police Station," he said, "and, mind you, no tricks! Give me your right hand." I suppose that I fainted, for everything seemed to go misty and black, and the next thing of which I became conscious was lying in bed, here in this house.

'Now you three persons listening to my story have doubtless relegated this Benceston part of it to the realm of dreamland; and that was my intention also. In order to prevent any recurrence of the stimuli that led to the nightmare I gave up travelling to London via Ponsden and used the other line to King's Pancras. In doing so I forgot that I had returned from Benceston not by train, but in a faint or swoon; and I soon learned to my horror that this process was reversable. During the past few weeks I have re-visited Benceston many times in trance or swoon. I have stood my trial there for murder and heard sentence of death pronounced on me. The Governor of Benceston Prison has told me that my execution takes place tomorrow morning at eight. Give me a brandy, Gilbert.

'Thank you; that's better. Now I want all three of you to be here at that time tomorrow morning to protect me, and I will tell you why. I have noticed that things which happen at Benceston can simultaneously take place here, if in a different manner. For example, Saxon died from pneumonia at the same instant as I thrust him over Bell-ringers Cliff. The exact time of his death is one of the first things I ascertained after my return to work. Lyster had been at the deathbed. I have no doubt that punctually tomorrow morning, as the clock strikes eight, whatever it is that corresponds to me in Benceston will be hanged. Therefore you must agree to be here with me at that hour. I can see that you think me mad: but if you will do what I ask, I promise you that at five minutes past eight tomorrow you will find me sane and sensible beyond all doubt. Whatever it be at Benceston that shares my identity and usurps my consciousness will have been killed by then and myself set free. Do promise, therefore, to come without fail.'

Frent directed a beseeching look at each of us in turn, and each nodded his assent.

On our way home Jameson was, for him, unusually communicative.

'I shall have to get Hasterton on to this case. Frent may think that tomorrow morning will see the end of his delusions; but he is wrong. I know these symptoms, and there cannot be a sudden end to them.'

Nevertheless, there was.

6

The doctor called for me next morning, and at ten minutes to eight we walked across to Brenside.

On entering the hall, I was surprised to see the hands of the large chiming clock registering seven fifty-five.

'That clock's fast,' I said to Frent-Sutton as he came out of the drawing-room, followed by his cousin, to meet us.

'Oh, no! it can't be. Adrian's been on to the Exchange twice this morning. That's Greenwich time all right.'

For a man who, in his own apprehension, stood in danger of imminent death, Frent struck me as unexpectedly calm and collected. He bade us take chairs facing the clock, and we must have looked a strange group as we sat watching the dial. The tick of the pendulum acquired unusual sonority owing to our silence: a silence dictated for three of us by our consciousness of the fatuity of the whole proceeding.

A click and a cluck, followed by a whirring of small wheels, heralded the chimes, and I saw Frent dig his fingers into the leathered arm of his chair. The interval between the chimes and the hour gong seemed interminable; but, at last, the eight strokes droned out—and, as we had foreseen, nothing whatever happened.

'And now you chaps must celebrate my release! Thanks ever so much for seeing me through. We can't very well have whisky at this hour though! Gilbert, tell Ada to bring coffee quickly, while I dash upstairs and get a handkerchief.'

Both cousins had thus left the room when Jameson exclaimed suddenly: 'What's that?'

'What's what?'

'Listen!'

The morning breeze made them faint; but we heard unmistakably the chimes of Brensham parish church; and then the distant boom of the great hour bell.

Simultaneously, there came from almost above our heads a noise of rending, a cry, a crash, and, nearer to us still, a dull, heavy thud.

We rushed down the back passage, where we ran into Frent-Sutton as he hurried out from the pantry. In the wooden ceiling above us gaped a yard-square hole, and immediately below lay the ruin of a trap-door, with hinges torn from the supporting joist. It was Frent's fire-escape. Over what was close beside it the Doctor now leaned, and, having lifted one end, laid it gently back.

'Finish!' he said; 'broken neck.' And then, looking on the broken door beside him and up at the hole above, he added: 'Amateur carpentry and unseasoned wood! A fatal combination.'

'But why on earth,' I interjected, 'should he have gone into the box room?'

'And why,' murmured Frent-Sutton, 'should be have set that clock fast? He insisted on ringing up for the time and doing it himself!'

'Possibly,' Dr Jameson rose from his examination, 'they may know the answers to those questions in Benceston!' Possibly.