It was convenient, at times--that conversational gift of his. For he'd contradict himself so often in the course of half-an-hour that you'd begin to wonder if the truth hadn't slipped into the mess by accident.

It seems it actually did. Though it took me ten years to discover just where.

He was fond of telling us who he was. But it seemed that he was so many people that one got to feel that it didn't matter over-much which particular one of them he might happen to be. One night when we'd been having a little euchre, and he'd had a bottle or so of Bourbon, and lost, and wanted to play on the nod, and we wouldn't have it, he started clearing his mind of what he thought of us. And he told us he was an English n.o.bleman; one of the greatest English n.o.blemen; and that his yearly income was in the neighbourhood of a million dollars.

As he'd been a Russian banker a little earlier in the evening, and an Australian squatter a bit ahead of that, and two or three other things besides, we didn't think his tale was good enough to play for owings on. If I'd taken interest enough in what he said I'd have asked him what n.o.bleman he was. Then I might have been in front of Mr. Smith.

Four years afterwards--six years ago--I married. It was all done in a week. So quick that I haven't got used to it yet. When I remember I'm married I brace myself, and a sort of shudder of wonder goes right through my bones. One promise I made to myself when I stood with her before the registrar--and to myself I always keep my word. That I'd keep her out of the mud in which I live, and move, and have my being.

Whenever I've gone home to her I've left everything that wasn't clean outside. So that to this hour she's as simple as on the day on which I married her; and that's saying something; and she hasn't found me out.

It's the queerest thing in the world to know that there's some one thinks you're good.

This encounter with Mr. John Smith is likely to cause a complication.

As my life was already such an intricate piece of machinery, it didn't seem as if there was room for many more complications. But when he would have it that I was the Marquis of Twickenham, my thoughts flew back to that master of lies who was so like me, and who would have it that he was an English n.o.bleman. It was something to wake from a thirty days' sleep--with occasional intervals for exercise and refreshment--to find oneself a Marquis. That interview with Mr. Smith at the York did tickle me. So I was a Marquis; and as a Marquis I was to die, for his benefit--and a thousand pounds. I'm a fool; we're all fools; but I'm not the kind of fool who can't see things when they're shown him. When he began to talk like that, I saw the infinite possibilities of the position in a flash. I'd had a go at some pretty big things in my time, but never at anything within a good few miles of this. The first thing was to die, and then---- Why then, we'd see.

And so probably would Mr. Smith.

I died. I've died before, for money. Same as I've slept for thirty days. But it's not a pleasing pastime. Not the kind of thing I should recommend to any gentleman who's looking for some agreeable occupation with which to fill up his spare time. Especially when you have to ready yourself for it in two or three hours, as I had then. By the time you are ready you feel as if it was going to be a case of genuine death at last. I know I did. Then I had got up the game so thoroughly that I had to cling on to life by my eyelids.

The show was artistically a success; though, while it lasted, I kept thinking of the Chinaman from whom I'd learnt the trick. For reasons of his own--most of them connected with the police--that ingenious yellow terror was constantly finding it convenient to slip his cable.

Once, as I'd cause for knowing, he slipped it so well that it parted for ever. As I lay that Monday afternoon, with the various members of the n.o.ble house of Twickenham standing by my bed of suffering, the memory of that Chinaman came back more clearly than I liked, and I devoutly hoped that I wasn't going to follow his example. It had been my original intention to prolong the agony, and to keep on dying for a day or two. There were a good many little hints I wanted to pick up from the members of my family. But the agony turned out to be so very real that the idea of prolonging it didn't appeal to me one little bit. So we had to part before we'd really met; and I had to postpone, until after my death, the acquirement of the information I stood so much in need of.

It was not surprising that the old fossil of a doctor announced that I was dead; for I had done the thing so extremely well, and was in such a state of collapse, that I myself wasn't sure I wasn't.

My experiences, on that occasion, by no means terminated with my decease. It's an odd sensation to be 'laid out' by a lady of a certain age and peculiar habits. It's a funny thing to be measured for your coffin. It's a still funnier one to be placed inside it. And it was when I was placed inside it that one of the not least difficult and delicate parts of the game began.

I've often thought that there's something to be said for an Irish wake, besides the pleasing opportunity it gives for the consumption of Irish whisky. And still more for the custom which obtains of never leaving a corpse alone until it's underground. From my point of view.

For if they hadn't left me alone I'd have been in a trifling fix. Mr.

Smith's idea was that he should appear upon the scene before the undertaker's men, that I there and then should come to life, and that we should screw down the lid upon an empty coffin. But apart from the fact that I didn't trust Mr. Smith, not half as far as I could see him, that notion of his was worth just nothing. He hadn't allowed for the absence of my weight from that elegant chest. They'd have to be a rummy lot of undertakers' men who couldn't tell, even when they were dead drunk, an empty coffin from a full one. But as I'd made arrangements of my own for supplying the deficiency I didn't trouble to go into details with Mr. Smith. As things turned out, from every point of view, it was just as well I had.

I took with me to Cortin's Hotel my double. There were only two men in the world who ever knew of its existence. I'm one; the other's dead.

Real dead; and not for money. He was a Frenchman named Petion--Edward Petion. He was a modeller in wax. He had been attached to a waxworks museum in Paris; where, I fancy, propriety according to English notions was not the strongest point. That had been before I made his acquaintance. At the time I knew him the only thing to which he was attached was absinthe. The bonds of that attachment were never relaxed. He was penniless. And though he required no food he did want drink. With that I provided him on condition that he made my double.

And he did.

It was made on the principle of a lay figure, with flexible limbs; and in every respect was an exact copy of the great original--so far, that is, as the means available permitted. The result altogether exceeded my expectations. It was my weight to an ounce. And when it was lying down, with its eyes closed, not the keenest observer, standing at a little distance--unless he had some prior cause of his own for doubt--would suspect that it wasn't me, especially when the light was a little bad. In support of that statement I need only mention that the public--and even my own manager--has stared at it when it was inside a gla.s.s frame without entertaining the faintest suspicion of the subst.i.tution which had taken place. With one accord they imagined themselves to be looking at me.

This was the double which I had taken with me to Cortin's Hotel. And when the time came that I judged myself to have had enough of being cribbed and cabined in that elegant example of the undertaker's art, I just got out of it, placed the garments in which I was attired on Myself No. 2, and laid him comfortably to rest in the position I had recently quitted. That any one would detect the change, without entering on a closer examination than in such a case was likely, I knew from experience was in the highest degree improbable.

My intention was, when Mr. Smith did arrive, to come out of my hiding-place, tell him what I had done, and so render detection practically impossible. But, as it happened, the fact that the undertakers' men came first introduced a new factor into the situation. They made no bones about the matter. Only one fellow glanced at the corpse, and his one remark was to the effect that 'the old chap looks pretty fresh.' Without any waste of time they proceeded to put on the lid. I could not help reflecting, as I viewed the proceedings, that it was just as well that things weren't what they seemed.

Just as they had got the last screw home, Mr. Smith did arrive. I was curious to know what would happen now. Practically nothing happened.

He let them walk off with the coffin, in the full belief that I was its contents, without moving so much as a finger to save me from the living death to which he supposed me to be doomed. Beyond doubt his intention was to murder, and so rid himself of the unfortunate wretch whom he had incited to conspiracy. I had a queer shivery-shakery feeling as I thought of the fate I had escaped. I also reflected that, although he didn't know it, he had put another card into my hand.

Hardly had he left the room, than I followed him down the stairs--not as my own proper self, but as a bearded individual who they probably imagined, in the confusion, was one of the guests of the house.

I bought a portmanteau, together with the necessary clothes with which to fill it, crossed town in a cab, and, as Mr. Leonard, took rooms in a highly respectable house in Clifford Street, Dalston. There, while maturing my plan of campaign, I watched the issue of events. I wasn't going to die and be buried for a mere monkey, as, in course of time, Mr. Smith would learn. In trying murder he'd given the game away, and not only so, had destroyed, for ever, his own peace of mind. I knew the kind of man he was. There are plenty like him. You probably see one when you look in the gla.s.s. To cut some one's throat is the shortest way out of heaps of holes into which one gets. It is only what some call conscience, and others blue funk, which stays one's hand. It wasn't the cutting of the throat which he objected to, but what came after. He'd be glad enough to have me boarded up, and out of the way, for ever and a day. But I'd lay odds that there'd come times when he'd hear me talking to him out of that box; and at those times he'd not be happy. It's a nasty moment when the man you dropped comes out of the hole into which you shovelled him to whisper in your ear.

He'd worry a good deal about the man he'd buried alive, being, unless I erred, of a worrying nature; and then, when he'd had about enough of worrying, the live man would come unburied; and that, so far as he was concerned, would be a finisher. The remainder of the proceedings wouldn't be of much interest to him.

During the next few days I saw in some of the papers that the Marquis of Twickenham had died. They didn't all of them come out with the news together. It appeared that there had been something of a private character about that deathbed. It seemed to me that the family wanted to hush the matter up. But nowadays when the British Press has got to make a living out of anything or everything, hushing-up's not easy.

The funeral was quite private. The interment took place in the family vault at Cressland in the presence of only a few members of the family. I wondered if Mr. Smith was one of them. After the funeral was over I bet his thoughts wandered Cressland way oftener than he quite liked.

Then there was more about it in the society papers.

I fancy the late Marquis wasn't altogether a credit to his family.

There were some funny stories and hints galore. This was a pity--because it would have been my desire to have figured as a man of unblemished character. I always have had aspirations towards the stainless life. Odd how difficult it is to attain to one's ideal.

Every time I've been some one else he's been a scamp. And it really did look as if this British n.o.bleman was going to turn out to be the worst egg in the basket.

But there were alleviations. I'm not denying it. They were alleviations of a good and solid kind. That aristocrat at San Francisco hadn't been far out when he talked of his million dollars a year. I made some roundabout inquiries in the proper quarter, and learned that there were acc.u.mulations in the neighbourhood of a million sterling awaiting the Marquis's going home. That was apart from the annual income. The property had been carefully nursed, and those seven figures represented savings only. That's what it is to have a reasonably honest man of business. I do like honesty in another man. A million! If I could only get hold of that I wouldn't worry about the income for a year or two.

This was going to be a bigger thing even than I'd supposed. What kind of an idiot that San Francisco ruffian could have been was beyond my fathoming. I've had a few deals with sample idiots, but he was too much in the wholesale. I took it that he'd cut and run because, happening to be one of nature's blackguards, he'd done something, or perhaps two or three somethings, which didn't smell altogether sweet in the nostrils of the good. If he'd only had his character to live upon, that would have been reason enough. But seeing that there was somebody else's money, in truckfulls, the fact that that was all he had got was just the reason why he should keep hard by.

The members of the Twickenham family would find that the head of the house had changed; mercifully. Time had worked the usual wonders; we'll call it time. The days of his prodigality were at an end; relatively, let us say. And he wasn't anything near the fool he used to be. Also, certain members of the family would find that he'd developed quite a novel strain of generosity.

There sometimes is a motive for crime--though a sufficient motive is not by many chalks as indispensable a criminal property as wise folk like to think. Plenty do evil for the love of doing it. I've tried both. I've found doing evil quite as amusing as doing good. Often more. Even when you don't get any pull out of it when it's done. It's the sporting instinct in a man. When a man tells me that he's fond of sport, I know that there's more significance in his words than he himself supposes. But in the case of Mr. John Smith the motive was pretty plain. The Marquis had better be dead than keep away from his sorrowing family. You could have an occasional cut at him if you knew where he was; you couldn't if he was the Lord knows where. In his absence the law looked after his interests; cuts--except by the law itself--were barred. And there were so many who wanted one--including Mr. John Smith. So it was necessary that the Marquis should die, in order that he might have a cut at his successor.

If I had only understood what he was driving at from the first, things might have been arranged in quite a different way. I might have said:

'You're quite right, Douglas, my boy. I'm the long-lost Twickenham.

Your recognition of me does you the greatest credit. Ask no questions, and you'll be surprised to find how, in certain directions, my character's developed. If the blessed lot of you were starving, I'm the man to fill your hungry bellies. How many of you are there? Six?

What do you say to five thousand a year apiece; and, say, fifteen thousand down to clear off backwardations? You shall have my bond for it; my bond, my boy. It shall be a first charge on my estate. Ah! in the school of experience one learns what it is to be wise.'

And then perhaps I might have winked. Yet I don't know. Under such circ.u.mstances with a man like Smith a wink might be a mistake. He's one of those who like to pretend that you believe, and that he believes, that t-h-e-f-t spells straight as a die. No winking for him.

It turns up the right place in the dictionary with too much of a rush.

Anyhow we might have arranged matters right along. I could have entered into the possession of my ancestral estates straight away, and we'd all have been as happy as the day was long. But that's where the trouble is; the mistakes you make at first, through ignorance, they're hard to repair. Sometimes bitter hard.

As things were, the game was going to be a lot more difficult, both for me and Smith. Though Smith, just at present, didn't know. In the first place I should have to learn, with a quant.i.ty of surprise which was on so large a scale as to be altogether beyond the power of words to describe, how he'd been deluded by a two-faced scoundrel. I didn't die. 'No. The Marquis is alive. My dearest dears, I'm he! That wasn't the head of the house of Twickenham you saw sink to rest. Certainly not! The tears you shed--I didn't notice any, but there might have been a leakage--were all clean thrown away. The gentleman you have boxed up--well, I shouldn't be surprised if they had to open the coffin to find out who he was.' When they did find out I'd laugh. I wonder if Smith would join me. Anyhow he'd have the straight griffin that if he wasn't on my side trouble for him was only beginning.

Recognise the rightful Marquis, debts would be paid, and there'd be a nice little yearly income. Be too nastily inquisitive, and it would be clearly shown to Mr. Smith that he was the kind of felon with whom the law is rarely gentle.

Now it's an odd thing that the chief difficulty which confronted me was one of which most men would have thought nothing at all. I'd a wife and children. They're possessions of which plenty of men would be glad to get relieved. I didn't happen to be one of them. I've tried all sorts of things. I've had plenty of money. I've been in some queer corners of the world, and seen some queer capers, and done them. There are games I can play, at which no man can hold his own with me; nor yet begin. But there's only one thing which doesn't taste nasty in my mouth. And that's my wife. She's the only thing I ever came across that was quite worth having; and, my G.o.d, she is. It's a complete ill.u.s.tration of life's little ironies that I should have been the man to have got her; for though she doesn't know it, inside and out we're as unlike each other as the poles are far asunder. During the last six years it had been one of my chief ends and aims not to let her find it out. And she hadn't--to that hour.

Now what was going to happen? In this game which I was starting on, where did she come in?

If I'd laid myself out to play it on different lines from the first, she might have been the Marchioness of Twickenham. Jimmy, when his turn came, might have been a peer of the realm. And yet I didn't know.

That would have been to have smirched her with my brush. If I ever was bowled out, which was a prospect I always had to face, they'd possibly try to make out, and would certainly think, that she'd been in the know with me. That would be as death to Mary.

The more I thought it over the more it seemed to me that that c.o.c.k wouldn't fight. Apart from the fact that I meant, as the Marquis of Twickenham, to disavow all connection with Mr. Montagu Babbacombe, who had behaved so basely in deluding Mr. Howarth, it was obvious to me that it would still be the better policy to keep Mary out of my ditches, and without the knowledge of their existence. I always had lived, as all men do, and, I suppose, most women, a double, treble, or quadruple life, as circ.u.mstances required. For a little arrangement of that sort, in the future, I should be better placed than ever. I only had to remove the lady from Little Olive Street, and ask her to acquaint no one with her new address. She need never know me as anything but James. As the Marquis I should be ent.i.tled to my little eccentricities; his lordship always had indulged in them. And after an absence of fifteen years, no one could cavil if I still continued to disappear whenever the humour took me. Mr. and Mrs. Merrett would have a better time together than they had ever had before.

CHAPTER XXII

A MARQUIS IN FACT

Since the Marquis of Twickenham was alive I thought it would be just as well to announce the fact in the grand style. So one morning, having arrived at the conclusion that it was about time that the announcement should be made, I paid up what was owing for those rooms in Clifford Street, Dalston, had my portmanteau put on the top of a cab, and having put myself inside, drove off to Twickenham House in St. James's Square. It was a good horse, and as it took me along as a horse ought to, from the tingle at the tips of my fingers, and the tickle at the b.a.l.l.s of my feet, which made me feel I'd like to do something high-toned in the way of fancy dancing, I knew that I was going to enjoy myself.

Cab stopped; I stepped out, overpaid cabby, got in some work on the knocker and the bell. Door opened and there was a young six-footer, in a lovely livery, beautiful silk stockings, and with a teaspoonful of flour on his manly head, looking down at me. I just walked past him as if he wasn't there, tipped my thumb over my shoulder and remarked,

'Luggage.'