LITMIR.BIZ

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so gentle. The way she was gazing down at me proved that.

      "You speak English?" She asked the simple question in a voice which fell like music on my ears. I had had no notion that the human voice was capable of such delicate modulation. Something in her words, her voice, her look, served to stiffen my backbone, to rouse me from my state of semi-stupor.

      "I not only speak English," I told her, "but I am English." I sat more upright in my chair.

      "English? You are English? How can that be?"

      "Since my father and mother were English, and I was born in England, I do not see how it can help but be."

      "You have lived in Russia?"

      "Never in my life."

      "But you speak Russian?"

      "Not a word."

      She was silent, as if what I had said had deprived her, at least for the moment, of the power of speech. She continued to gaze at me, then turned her head a little round and gazed at the man. He said to her:

      "Where in the name of all that's great did you get him from?"

      "He came out of the house the police were there you see how he is dressed." Then she added something in a language which I did not know. I gathered from what she had just been saying that it might be Russian. He replied to her in the same tongue, and they exchanged half a dozen animated sentences. Then the man said to me, speaking so that I was not certain if he was in jest or earnest.

      "Hark here, young fellow my lad. There seems to be something here which wants a little bit of straightening out. This lady took you to be one person, but it appears that you're another. As she brought you here at some risk and considerable inconvenience to herself, in my motor car, taking it for granted that you were the person she supposed you to be, it looks as if you were here under a sort of false pretence: so perhaps before the sitting continues any longer you'll kindly explain to us just who you are."

      I told him as plainly as I could as I told those ragamuffins who had treated me so scurvily.

      "I am Hugh Beckwith, a clerk in the dried fruit trade, until recently in the employ of Messrs. Hunter and Barnett, of Commercial Buildings, Southwark."

      I had a notion that those two persons were round-eyed with wonder.

      "What does he say?" the lady asked. "What does he mean?"

      I had supposed what I said and what I meant were clear enough; but it seemed that the man thought otherwise.

      "The great Panjandrum only knows! This does beat anything! I've been in some queer situations, but it looks as if I were in the queerest now. You've made a pretty hash of things."

      "Hash! what do you mean by hash? How am I to blame? See how he is dressed!"

      "Yes, there I'll give you best he does look the part. Perhaps you'll explain, Mr. Hugh Beckwith, clerk in the dried fruit trade, how you come to be in that rig-out, and in the house you were in?"

      I did explain. It took me a considerable time they kept interrupting asking questions which I did not always find it easy to answer. My story seemed to amuse the man; he began laughing before I had gone very far, and kept on laughing all the while, as if what I had suffered struck him as funny. He laughed when I told him about the canvas bag which had fallen on my head, about my dented hat, about my reception when I knocked at the door, about the way those scoundrels treated me. When I told of the sandy-haired creature who had put himself into my clothes, and of how I had been forced into the ridiculous garments which I had on instead, he dropped on to a chair, stretched out his legs in front of him, and laughed as if I were the funniest fellow he had ever encountered. I have heard that one man's misfortunes are another man's jest, but I had never appreciated the fact before.

      The lady was not quite so amused, though she also occasionally smiled, and when I was nearly at the end of my narrative she observed:

      "You did look so funny as you came running towards me; if I had not been so concerned for you I should have smiled."

      She smiled then but I forgave her, for her smile added to her charm.

      "I suppose," remarked the man, "you understand all that has happened, Mr. Hugh Beckwith."

      "Understand!" I shouted by that time I was fairly roused. "I understand nothing not one single thing! How can you imagine that I understand?"

      "But you know for whom those gentlemen mistook you, Mr. Beckwith."

      "Know!" Leaning forward I struck with my clenched fist a polished table which was in front of me. "Know! how could I know? If I'd been the greatest villain unhung they could not have treated me worse."

      "I fancy, Mr. Beckwith, that they did mistake you for a person who you might hold is one of the greatest villains still unhung."

      The girl spoke in that unknown language, interrupting him, as if fearing that if he was not careful he might commit himself to statements which he would rather were not made. He replied to her. There was a brisk exchange of words. Plainly a discussion was taking place in which he brought arguments to bear which presently caused her to see the matter from his point of view.

      "I believe, Mr. Hugh Beckwith," she said, "that you are an honest man."

      "I say nothing about that," I told her. "I am as honest as a clerk in the dried fruit trade may be."

      The man roared with laughter.

      "That is as well put," he declared as soon as his mirth permitted, "as you're ever likely to get it. In no line of business, nowadays, can a clerk be honest beyond a certain point."

      "I am of opinion," the lady said, "that you are more honest than you care to admit. It's not a disgrace to be honest."

      "Perhaps," I ventured, "you don't know very much about the dried fruit trade."

      "No," she admitted, "I do not; but I think I do know an honest man when I see him, and I believe I'm looking at one now." As she was looking straight at me then the inference seemed clear; but I still felt that if she had known anything about the dried fruit trade her words would have been more guarded. "At least," she added, "I trust you. You will see how much I trust you." Then she said to the man, "You can tell him all about it."

      "If you take my advice," I interjected, "you will trust no one. I would rather you told me nothing which might affect your interest if it became public."

      "As for being made public, it is public enough already." Then to the man a little dictatorially, as if it were him to obey her, "Tell him."

      The man got up from the chair on which he had been sitting, crossed to a brass rack for holding newspapers and returned towards me carrying two or three in his hand.

      "Am I to gather," he began, "that you would rather have no explanation of the singular manner in which those gentlemen treated you, Mr. Hugh Beckwith? I take it that you at least think it possible that they had reasons for what they did."

      "Infamous reasons!"

      "Infamous if you like that depends on the way in which you look at it. I might prefer to describe them as sufficient. What they did to you they believed themselves to be doing in self-defence. I am not sure that they were not right."

      "What had I done that they need defend themselves from me?"

      "Have you seen a newspaper lately, Mr. Hugh Beck with?"

      "I see two every day, one in the morning and one in the evening. I hold that it is not extravagant to spend sixpence a week on keeping yourself abreast of the news of the world."

      "Soundly put I Many people would not be so ignorant of what is taking place around them if they thought what you think. Do you read either Russian or Polish?"

      "Neither. I am taking lessons in the languages of the countries from which we purchase most of our dried fruits; but so far as I know we purchase nothing from either Poland or Russia."

      "I daresay that is correct; so I will confine myself to what has been published

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