the character of that other person could move about unrecognised among your friends, what lessons you might learn!"

"I suspect," I murmured, "that they would for the most part be lessons of a decidedly unpleasant kind."

"Carry the idea a step further. Think of the possibilities of a dual existence. Think of living two distinct and separate lives. Think of doing as Robinson what you condemn as Brown. Think of doubling the parts and hiding within your own breast the secret of the double; think of leading a triple life; think of leading many lives in one-of being the old man and the young, the husband and the wife, the father and the son."

"Think, in other words, of the unattainable."

"Not unattainable!" Moving away from the mantel-shelf, she raised her hand above her head with a gesture which was all at once dramatic. "I have attained!"

"You have attained-to what?"

"To the multiple existence. It is the secret of the mask. I told myself some years ago that it ought to be possible to make a mask which should in every respect so closely resemble the human countenance that it would be difficult, if not impossible, even under the most trying conditions, to tell the false face from the real. I made experiments. I succeeded. I learnt the secret of the mask. at that."

Look

She took a leather-case from her pocket. Abstracting its contents she handed them to me. I was holding in my hand what seemed to me to be a preparation of some sort of skin-gold-beaters' skin, it might have been. On one side it was curiously, and even delicately, painted. On the other side there were fastened to the skin some oddly shaped bosses or pads. The whole affair, I suppose, did not weigh half an ounce. While I was examining it Mrs. Jaynes stood looking down at me.

"You hold in your hand," she said, "the secret of the mask, Give it to me."

I gave it to her. With it in her hand she disappeared into the room beyond. Hardly had she vanished than the bedroom door reopened, and an old lady came out.

"My daughter begs you will excuse her." She was a quaint old lady, about sixty years of age, with silver hair, and the corkscrew ringlets of a bygone day. "My daughter is not very ceremonious, and is so wrapt up in what she calls her experiments that I sometimes tell her that she is wanting in consideration. While she is

making her preparations perhaps you will allow me to offer you a cup of tea."

The old lady carried a canister in her hand, which, apparently, contained tea. A tea-service was standing on a little side-table. A kettle was singing on the hob. The old lady began to measure out the tea into the teapot.

"We always carry our own tea with us. Neither my daughter nor I care for the tea which they give you in hotels."

I meekly acquiesced. To tell the truth I was a trifle bewildered. I had had no idea that Mrs. Jaynes was accompanied by her mother. Had not the old lady come out of the room immediately after the young one had gone into it I should have suspected a trick-that I was being made the subject of experiment with the mysterious "mask." As it was, I was more than half-inclined to ask her if she was really what she seemed to be. But I decided—as it turned out most unfortunately-to keep my own counsel and to watch the sequence of events. Pouring me out a cup of tea, the old lady seated herself on a low chair in front of the fire.

"My daughter thinks a great deal of her experiments. I hope you will not encourage her. She quite frightens me at times. She says such dreadful things."

I sipped my tea and smiled.

"I don't think there is much cause for fear."

"No cause for fear when she tells one that she might commit a murder; that a hundred thousand people might see her do it, and that not by any possibility could the crime be brought home to her!" "Perhaps she exaggerates a little."

"Do you think that she can hear?"

The old lady glanced round in the direction of the bedroom door.

"You should know better than I. Perhaps it would be as well to say nothing which you would not like her to hear."

"But I must tell someone.

dream she had."

It frightens me. She says it is a

"I don't think, if I were you, I would pay much attention to a dream."

The old lady rose from her seat. I did not altogether like her manner. She came and stood in front of me, rubbing her hands, nervously, one over the other. She certainly seemed considerably disturbed.

"She came down yesterday from London, and she says she dreamed that she tried one of her experiments-in the train."

"In the train !"

"And in order that her experiment might be thorough she robbed a man."

"She robbed a man !"

"And in her pocket I found this."

The old lady held out my watch and chain! It was unmistakable. The watch was a hunter. I could see that my crest and monogram were engraved upon the case. I stood up. The strangest part of the affair was that when I gained my feet it seemed as though something had happened to my legs-I could not move them. Probably something in my demeanour struck the old lady as strange. She smiled at me.

"What is the matter with you?

she exclaimed.

"That is my watch and chain."

Why do you look so funny?"

"Your watch and chain-yours! Then why don't you take them ?" She held them out to me in her extended palm. She was not six feet from where I stood, yet I could not reach them. My feet seemed glued to the floor.

I was

"I-I cannot move. Something has happened to my legs." "Perhaps it is the tea. I will go and tell my daughter." Before I could say a word to stop her she was gone. fastened like a post to the ground. What had happened to me was more than I could say. It had all come in an instant. I felt as I had felt in the railway carriage the day before-as though I were in a dream. I looked around me. I saw the teacup on the little table at my side, I saw the flickering fire, I saw the shaded lamps ; I was conscious of the presence of all these things, but I saw them as if I saw them in a dream. A sense of nausea was stealing over me-a sense of horror. I was afraid of I knew not what. I was unable to ward off or to control my fear.

I cannot say how long I stood there-certainly some minuteshelpless, struggling against the pressure which seemed to weigh upon my brain. Suddenly, without any sort of warning, the bedroom door opened, and there walked into the room the young man who before dinner had visited me in my own apartment, and who yesterday had travelled with me in the train. He came straight across the room, and, with the most perfect coolness, stood right in front of me. I could see that in his shirt-front were my studs. When he raised his hands I could see that in his wristbands were my links. I could see that he was wearing my watch and chain. He was actually holding my watch in his hand when he addressed me.

VOL. CCLXXIII.

NO. 1944.

PP

"I have only half a minute to spare, but I wanted to speak to you about-Mary Brooker. I saw her portrait in your room-you remember? She's what is called a criminal lunatic, and she's escaped from Broadmoor. Let me see, I think it was a week to-day-and just about this time-no, it's now a quarter to nine; it was just after nine." He slipped my watch into his waistcoat pocket. "She's still at large, you know. They're on the look-out for her all over England, but she's still at large. They say she's a lunatic. There are lunatics at Broadmoor, but she's not one. She's no more a lunatic than you or I!"

He touched me lightly on the chest. Such was my extreme disgust at being brought into physical contact with him that even before the slight pressure of his fingers my legs gave way from under me, and I sank back into my chair.

"You're not asleep?"

"No," I said, "I'm not asleep."

Even in my stupefied condition I was conscious of a desire to leap up and take him by the throat. Nothing of this, however, was portrayed upon my face. Or, at any rate, he showed no sign of being struck by it.

"She's a misunderstood genius, that's what Mary Brooker is. She has her tastes and people do not understand them. She likes to kill to kill! One of these days she means to kill herself, but in the meantime she takes a pleasure in killing others."

Seating himself on a corner of the table at my side, allowing one foot to rest upon the ground, he swung the other in the air. "She's a bit of an actress, too. She wanted to go upon the stage, but they said that she was mad. They were jealous, that's what it She's the finest actress in the world. Her acting would deceive the devil himself-they allowed that even at Broadmoor. But she only uses her powers for acting to gratify her taste-for killing. It was only the other day she bought this knife."

was.

He took, apparently out of the bosom of his vest, a long, glittering, cruel-looking knife.

"It's sharp. Feel the point-and the edge."

He held it out towards me. I did not attempt to touch it. It is probable that I should not have succeeded even if I had attempted.

"You won't? Well, perhaps you're right. It's not much fun killing people with a knife. A knife's all very well to use for cutting them up afterwards, but she likes to do the actual killing with her own hands and nails. I shouldn't be surprised if, one of these days, Perhaps to-night. It is a long time since she killed anyone, and she is hungry. Sorry I can't stay. But this day

she were to kill you.

week she escaped from Broadmoor as the clocks had finished striking nine, and it only wants ten minutes, you see."

He looked at my watch—even holding it out for me to see.

"Good night!"

With a careless nod he moved across the room, holding the glittering knife in his hand. When he reached the bedroom door he turned and smiled. Raising the knife, he waved it towards me in the air. Then he disappeared into the inner room.

I was again alone-possibly for a minute or more; but this time it seemed to me that my solitude continued only for a few fleeting seconds. Perhaps the time went faster because I felt, or thought I felt, that the pressure on my brain was giving way; that I only had to make an effort of sufficient force to be myself again and free. The power of making such an effort was temporarily absent, but something within seemed to tell me that at any moment it might return. The bedroom door-that door which, even as I look back, seems to have been really and truly a door in some unpleasant dream-reopened. Mrs. Jaynes came out. With rapid strides she swept across the room. She had something in her right hand which she threw upon the table. "Well," she cried, "what do you think of the secret of the mask? "The secret of the mask?"

Although my limbs were powerless throughout it all, I retained to a certain extent the control of my own voice.

"See here, it is such a little thing." She picked up the two objects which she had thrown upon the table. One of them was the preparation of some sort of skin which she had shown to me before. "These are the masks. You would not think that they were perfect representations of the human face-that masterpiece of creative artand yet they are. All the world would be deceived by them as you have been. This is an old woman's face, this is the face of a young man." As she held them up I could see, though stiil a little dimly, that the objects which she dangled before my eyes, as she said, were veritable masks. "So perfect are they, they might have been skinned. from the fronts of living creatures. They are such little things, yet I have made them with what toil. They have been the work of years, these two, and just one other. You see nothing satisfied me but perfection. I have made hundreds to make these two. People could not make out what I was doing. They thought that I was making toys. I told them that I was. They smiled at me. They thought that it was a new phase of madness. If that be so, then in madness there is more cool, enduring, unconquerable resolution than in all your sanity. I meant to conquer, and I did. Failure did not dishearten I went straight on. I had a purpose to fulfil; I would have

me.