"The suggestion, after all, came from him, and I am merely improving on it. . . . This continent has started a small heat-wave--the first of the summer. Now Farrell, who perspires freely, tells me that he doesn't mind any amount of heat, so that it isn't accompanied by noise: but noise and heat combined drive him crazy. I had myself noted that while the tall buildings here excited no curiosity in him, he acted as the veriest rubberneck under the clang and roar of the overhead trains; and the din of Broadway, he confessed, gave him vertigo after the soft tide of traffic that moves broad and full-- 'strong without rage, without o'erflowing full'--down Tottenham Court Road, embanked with antique furniture or colourable imitations.

"He made this confession to me in the _entr'acte_ of a silly vaudeville, to witness which we had been carried by an elevator some sixteen storeys and landed on a roof crowded with palms and funny people behaving like millionaires. In the _entr'acte_ the band sank its blare suddenly to a sort of 'Home, Sweet Home'

adagio, and after a minute of it Farrell put up a hand, covering his eyes, and I saw the tears welling--yes, positively--between his fingers. He's sentimental, of course.

"I asked what was the matter? He turned me a face like poor Susan's when at the thrush's song she beheld:"

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide And a river flow on through the vale of Cheapside.

He said pitiably that he wanted--that he wanted very much--to go home; and gave as his reason that New York was too noisy for him. . . . A sudden notion took me at this. 'If that's the trouble,' I answered, 'one voice in this city shall cease its small contribution to the din. . . . We will try,' I said, 'the sedative of silence.'

"For three days now I have been applying this treatment.

At breakfast, luncheon, dinner; in the street, at the theatre; I sit or walk with him, saying never a word, silent as a shadow.

He desires nothing so little, I need not tell you. In the infernal din of this town he looks at me and would sell his soul for the sound of an English voice--even his worst enemy's.

It is torture, and he will break down if I don't give him a holiday. The curious part of it is that, under this twist of the screw, he has apparently found some resource of pluck.

He doesn't entreat, though it is killing him with quite curious rapidity. I must give him a holiday to-morrow."

I piece it out from later letters that from New York they harked out and harked back, to and from various excursions--quite ordinary ones.

I might, if it were worth while, construct the itinerary; but it would take a lot of useless labour and yield nothing of importance.

If Farrell, under this careful slackness of pursuit, had made a bolt for Texas or Alaska, the chronicle just here might be worth reciting.

But he didn't, and it isn't. Buffalo--Long Island--Newport--and, in one of Jack's letters, Chicago for farthest West--occur in a miz-maze fashion. It is obvious to me that during these months Farrell, kept on the run, ran like a hare (and a pretty tame one); that twice or thrice he headed back for New York, and was headed off.

I pa.s.sed over each letter, as it came, to Jimmy, It was over some later letter, pretty much like the one I've just read to you, that Jimmy, frowning thoughtfully, put the sudden question, "I say, Otty, are we fond enough of him to start on another wild-goose chase?--to America this time, and together?"

"Jack's my best friend, of course," I answered after a moment.

"You don't tell me--" and here I broke off, for he was eyeing me queerly.

"The Professor is, or was, a pretty good friend of mine," said he.

"But you hesitated a moment. Why? . . . Oh, you needn't answer: I'll tell you. When I asked, 'Are you so fond of him?' for a moment--just for a flash--you hadn't Jack Foe in your mind, but Farrell."

"Well, that's true," I owned. "I'm pretty angry with Jack: he's playing it outside the touch-line, in my opinion. Except that I detest cruelty, Farrell's nothing to me, of course."

"I wonder," Jimmy mused. "Sometimes, when I'm thinking over this affair--but let us confine ourselves to the Professor. He's in some danger, if you think _that_ worth the journey. They shoot pretty quick in the States, and they don't value human life a bit as we value it in England: or so I've always heard. If it's true--and it would be rather interesting to run across and find this out for oneself--one of these days Farrell will be pushed outside _his_ touch-line--outside the British conventions in which he lives and moves and has his poor being--and a second later the Professor will get six pellets of lead pumped into him."

"Oh, as for that," said I, "Jack must look after himself, as he's well able to. When a man takes to head-hunting, it's no job for his friends to save him risks."

"Glad you look at it so," said Jimmy. "Then, so far as the Professor's concerned, it's from himself we're not protecting him, just now?"

"Or from the self which is not himself," I suggested.

"That's better," Jimmy agreed, and again fell a-musing. "Sometimes I think we might get closer to it yet". . . But he did not supply the definition. After half-a-minute's brooding he woke up, as it were, with a start. "Could you sail this next week?" he asked.

Well, we sailed, five days later; and there is no need to say more of this trip than that it panned out a fiasco worse than my first.

At New York we beat up the police; and, later on, worried Mulberry Street and the great detective service for which the city is famous.

Police and detectives availed us nothing. I knew that by the same mail which brought his latest letter to me, Foe had drawn 600 pounds on Norgate; and Norgate had dispatched the money without delay, five days ahead of us. The address was a hotel at the then fashionable end of Third Avenue. There we found their names on the register.

Plain sailing enough. Farrell had left, as we calculated (the detectives helping us), on the day the money presumably arrived, and at about six in the evening; Foe some fifteen or sixteen hours later.

And, with that, we were up against a wall. Not a trace could be discovered of either from the moment he had walked out of the hotel.

Farrell, having paid his bill, had walked out, carrying a small handbag (or 'grip,' as the porter termed it), leaving a portmanteau behind, with word that he would return next day and fetch it.

We were allowed to examine the portmanteau. It contained some shirts and collars and two suits of clothes, but no clue whatever--not a sc.r.a.p of paper in any of the pockets. Foe had departed leisurably next morning, with his slight baggage.

Our detective (to do him justice) did his best to earn his money.

He carefully traced out and doc.u.mented the movements of the two travellers from one to another of the various addresses I was able to supply: and he handed in a report, which attested not only his calligraphy but a high degree of professional zeal. It corresponded with everything I knew already and decorated it with details which could only have been acc.u.mulated by conscientious research. They tallied with--they corroborated--they substantiated--they touched up--the bald facts we already knew. But they did not advance us one foot beyond the portals of the Flaxman Building Hotel, out of which Farrell and Foe had walked, at fifteen hours' interval, and walked straight into vacancy.

In short, Jimmy and I sailed for home, a fortnight later, utterly beaten.

Now I'm telling the story in my own way. A novelist, who knew how to work it, would (I'm pretty sure) keep up the mystery just about here.

But I'm going to put in what happened, though I didn't hear about it until two years later.

What happened was that, one evening, Jack drove Farrell too far, and over a trifle. Without knowing it, too, he had been teaching Farrell to learn cunning. They were back in New York and (it seems almost too silly to repeat) seated in a restaurant, ordering dinner.

Jack held the _carte du jour_: the waiter was at his elbow; Farrell sat opposite, waiting. For some twenty-four hours--that is, since their return to New York City--Jack had chosen to be talkative.

Farrell was even encouraged to hope that he had broken the spell of his hatred, and that the next boat for England might carry them home in company and forgiving. Just then the devil put it into Jack to resume his torture. He laid down the card and sat silent, the waiter still at his elbow. "Well, what shall it be?" asked Farrell, a trifle faintly. Jack, like the Tar-Baby, kept on saying nothing.

The waiter looked about him, and fetched back his attention politely.

"What shall it be?" Farrell repeated. Then, as Jack stared quietly at the table, not answering, "Go and attend to the next table," said he to the man. "You can come back in three minutes." The waiter went. "Now," said Farrell, laying down the napkin he had unfolded, "are you going to speak?"

Foe picked up the card again and studied it.

"Yes or no, d.a.m.n you?" demanded Farrell. "Here and now I'll have an end to this monkeying--Yes, or no?" he cried explosively.

Foe pointed a finger at the chair from which Farrell had sprung up.

"I won't!" protested Farrell, and wrenched himself away. "Here's the end of it, and I'm shut of you!"

He dragged himself to the door. Foe, still studying the card through his gla.s.ses, did not even trouble to throw a glance after him.

Once in the street, Farrell felt his chain broken: he hailed a cab, and was driven off to his hotel. There he packed, paid his bill, and vanished with his grip into the night, leaving his portmanteau behind with a word that he would return for it.

Foe had taught him cunning.

He bethought him of Renton, an old foreman of his; a highly intelligent fellow, who had come out to New York, some years before, to better himself, and had so far succeeded that he now controlled and practically owned a mammoth furnishing emporium--The Home Circle Store--in Twenty-Third Street. Farrell was pretty sure of the address; because Renton, who had long since taken out his papers of naturalisation, regularly remembered his old employer on Thanksgiving Day and sent him a report of his prosperity, mixed up with no little sentiment. To this Farrell had for some years responded with a note of his good wishes, cordial, but brief and businesslike. Of late, however, this acknowledgment, though still punctual, had tended to express itself in the form of a Christmas-card.

Farrell confirmed his recollection of the address by checking it in the Telephone Book, and paid a call on the Home Circle Store next afternoon, while Foe was enjoying a siesta in that state of la.s.situde which (as I've told you) almost always in one or other of the men followed their crises of animosity.

Renton was unaffectedly glad to see Farrell. "Well, Mr. Farrell," he said, as they shook hands, "well, _sir!_ If this isn't a sight for sore eyes! And--when I've been meaning, every fall, to step across home and see your luck--to think that it should be you first dropping in upon me!" He rushed Farrell up and down elevators, over floor after floor of his great establishment, perspiring (for the afternoon was hot), swelling with hospitality and pardonable pride. "And when we've done, sir, I must take you to my little place up town and make you acquainted with Mrs. Renton. She's not by any means the least part of my luck, sir. She'll be all over it when I present you, having so often heard tell--You've aged, Mr. Farrell! And yet, in a way, you haven't. . . . You were putting on waist when I saw you last, and now you're what-one-might-call in good condition--almost thin. Yes, sir, I heard about your poor lady . . . I wrote about it, if you remember. Sudden, as I understand? . . . But if you look at it in one way, that's often for the best: and in the midst of life-- You'll be taking dinner with us. That's understood."

"Look here, Ned," Farrell interrupted. "It's done me good to shake you by the hand and see you so flourishing. But I've looked you up because--well, because I'm in a tight place, and I wonder if you could anyways help."

"Eh?" Renton pulled up and looked at him shrewdly. "What's wrong?

Nothing to do with the old firm, now, surely? . . . I get the London _Times_ sent over, and your last Shareholders' Meeting was a perfect Hallelujah Chorus. Why, you're quoted--"

Now you'll know Farrell, by this time, for a man of his cla.s.s--and a pretty good cla.s.s it is, in England, when all's said and done; for a man of the sort that resents a suspicion on his business about as quickly as he'd resent one on his private and domestic honour-- perhaps even a trifle more smartly. His business, in short, _is_ the first home and hearth of his honour. So Farrell cut in, very quick and hot,--

"If my business were only twice as solid as yours, Ned Renton, I might be worrying you about it. . . . There, don't take me amiss!

. . . I've come to trouble you about myself. Fact is, I'm in a hole. There's a man after me; and I want you to get me out of this place pretty quick and without drawing any attention more than you can avoid."

"O-oh!" said Renton, rubbing his chin, and looking serious. "And what about the lady?"

"There's no woman in this," Farrell a.s.sured him. "No, Ned; nor the trace of one."

"That's curious," said Renton, still reflective. "You being a widower, I thought, maybe . . . But as between friends, you'll understand, I'm not asking."