It is inconceivable that I should have misjudged a man so utterly as I misjudged James.

That is the latent factor at the root of my problem. The innate rottenness, the cardiac villainy of James Orlebar Cloyster.

In a measure it was my own hand that laid the train which eventually blew James' hidden smoulder of fire into the blazing beacon of wickedness, in which my friend's Satanic soul is visible in all its lurid nakedness.

I remember well that evening, mild with the prelude of spring, when I evolved for James' benefit the System. It was a device which was to preserve my friend's liberty and, at the same time, to preserve my friend's honour. How perfect in its irony!

Margaret Goodwin, mark you, was not to know he could afford to marry her, and my system was an instrument to hide from her the truth.

He employed that system. It gave him the holiday he asked for. He went into Society.

Among his acquaintances were the Gunton-Cresswells, and at their house he met Eva. Whether his determination to treat Eva as he had treated Margaret came to him instantly, or by degrees I do not know. Inwardly he may have had his scheme matured in embryo, but outwardly he was still the accomplished hypocrite. He was the soul of honour--outwardly.

He was the essence of sympathetic tact as far as his specious exterior went. Then came the 27th of May. On that date the first of James Orlebar Cloyster's masks was removed.

I had breakfasted earlier than usual, so that by the time I had walked from Rupert Court to Walpole Street it was not yet four o'clock.

James was out. I thought I would wait for him. I stood at his window.

Then I saw Margaret Goodwin. What features! What a complexion! "And James," I murmured, "is actually giving this the miss in baulk!" I discovered, at that instant, that I did not know James. He was a fool.

In a few hours I was to discover he was a villain, too.

She came in and I introduced myself to her. I almost forget what pretext I manufactured, but I remember I persuaded her to go back to Guernsey that very day. I think I said that James was spending Friday till Monday in the country, and had left no address. I was determined that they should not meet. She was far too good for a man who obviously did not appreciate her in the least.

We had a very pleasant chat. She was charming. At first she was apt to touch on James a shade too frequently, but before long I succeeded in diverting our conversation into less uninteresting topics.

She talked of Guernsey, I of London. I said I felt I had known her all my life. She said that one had, undeniably, one's affinities.

I said, "Might I think of her as 'Margaret'?"

She said it was rather unconventional, but that she could not control my thoughts.

I said, "There you are wrong--Margaret."

She said, "Oh, what are you saying, Mr. Eversleigh?"

I said I was thinking out loud.

On the doorstep she said, "Well, yes--Julian--you may write to me--sometimes. But I won't promise to answer."

Angel!

The next thing that awakened me was the coming of James.

After I had given him a suitable version of Margaret's visit, he told me he was engaged to Eva. That was an astounding thing; but what was more astounding was that James had somehow got wind of the real spirit of my interview with Margaret.

I have called James Orlebar Cloyster a fool; I have called him a villain. I will never cease to call him a genius. For by some marvellous capacity for introspection, by some incredible projection of his own mind into other people's matters, he was able to tax me to my face with an attempt to win his former _fiancee's_ affections. I tried to choke him off. I used every ounce of bluff I possessed. In vain. I left Walpole Street in a state approaching mental revolution.

My exact feelings towards James were too intricate to be defined in a single word. Not so my feelings towards Eva. "Hate" supplied the lacuna in her case.

Thus the month began.

The next point of importance is my interview with Mrs.

Gunton-Cresswell. She had known all along how matters stood in regard to Eva and myself. She had not been hostile to me on that account. She had only pointed out that as I could do nothing towards supporting Eva I had better keep away when my cousin was in London. That was many years ago. Since then we had seldom met. Latterly, not at all.

Invitations still arrived from her, but her afternoon parties clashed with my after-breakfast pipe, and as for her evening receptions--well, by the time I had pieced together the various component parts of my dress clothes, I found myself ready for bed. That is to say, more ready for bed than I usually am.

I went to Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in a very bitter mood. I was bent on trouble.

"I've come to congratulate Eva," I said.

Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell sighed.

"I was afraid of this," she said.

"The announcement was the more pleasant," I went on, "because James has been a bosom friend of mine."

"I'm afraid you are going to be extremely disagreeable about your cousin's engagement," she said.

"I am," I answered her. "Very disagreeable. I intend to shadow the young couple, to be constantly meeting them, calling attention to them.

James will most likely have to try to a.s.sault me. That may mean a black eye for dear James. It will certainly mean the police court. Their engagement will be, in short, a succession of hideous _contretemps_, a series of laughable scenes."

"Julian," said Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell, "hitherto you have acted manfully toward Eva. You have been brave. Have you no regard for Eva?"

"None," I said.

"Nor for Mr. Cloyster?"

"Not a sc.r.a.p."

"But why are you behaving in this appallingly selfish way?"

This was a facer. I couldn't quite explain to her how things really were, so I said:

"Never you mind. Selfish or not, Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell, I'm out for trouble."

That night I had a letter from her. She said that in order to avoid all unpleasantness, Eva's engagement would be of the briefest nature possible. That the marriage was fixed for the twelfth of next month; that the wedding would be a very quiet one; and that until the day of the wedding Eva would not be in London.

It amused me to find how thoroughly I had terrified Mrs.

Gunton-Cresswell. How excellently I must have acted, for, of course, I had not meant a word I had said to that good lady.

In the days preceding the twelfth of June I confess I rather softened to James. The _entente cordiale_ was established between us. He told me how irresistible Eva had been that night; mentioned how completely she had carried him away. Had she not carried me away in precisely the same manner once upon a time?

He swore he loved her as dearly as--(I can't call to mind the simile he employed, though it was masterly and impressive.) I even hinted that the threats I had used in the presence of Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell were not serious. He thanked me, but said I had frightened her to such good purpose that the date would now have to stand. "You will not be surprised to hear," he added, "that I have called in all my work. I shall want every penny I make. The expenses of an engaged man are hair-raising. I send her a lot of flowers every morning--you've no conception how much a few orchids cost. Then, whenever I go to see her I take her some little present--a gold-mounted umbrella, a bicycle lamp, or a patent scent-bottle. I'm indebted to you, Julian, positively indebted to you for cutting short our engagement."

I now go on to point two: the morning of the twelfth of June.

Hurried footsteps on my staircase. A loud tapping at my door. The church clock chiming twelve. The agitated, weeping figure of Mrs.

Gunton-Cresswell approaching my hammock. A telegram thrust into my hand. Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell's hysterical exclamation, "You infamous monster--you--you are at the bottom of this."