"Oh!" cried Betty, with an overwhelming rush of sympathy, and took the almost nerveless member into the intimate fellowship of her two warm, exquisitely sensitive palms. Do you remember my speaking of the supreme distinction of her handclasp; how it seemed to fit so perfectly?

Yes, it was undeniably evident that the spirit of Fielding Thaneford was striving desperately to rend its clayey envelope, and deliver its message in terms intelligible to mortal senses. But surely the vehicle was wanting; it could not be. And then, quite certainly, I knew that something had been transmitted through the mediumship of that intimate handclasp. Betty's eyes grew luminous as stars; she whispered some words too low for me to hear. "Is that it?" she concluded. The fast glazing eyes said yes, as plainly as lips could have uttered the word.

What had happened? Suddenly the spark of life behind the monstrous masque that had been Fielding Thaneford's face had disappeared; quite as when the wind extinguishes the candle in a paper lantern. Betty turned to me in a rain of tears. "He is gone," she murmured.

Strange! that I of all men should be the one to compose Fielding Thaneford's hands upon his breast and close his sightless eyes. But life's obligations are none the less imperative that they are unforeseen. The man lying dead upon the bed had never spoken a single word to me; indeed our glances had met but once, and then had instantly fallen away. How could we be other than eternally alien, and yet these final offices to our common mortality had fallen to my hand. And it was still short of a month since the messenger of fate had brought me the invitation to attend the funeral services of my kinsman, Francis Graeme.

Miss Davenport came back from her walk, and a.s.sumed charge of affairs with her accustomed efficiency. I offered to do the telephoning to John Thaneford, but Betty determined that the announcement ought to come from her. Just before dinner he drove over, and remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. None of us saw him, but he had the grace to leave a brief word of thanks to Betty for the profusion of white carnations that she had insisted on cutting and arranging with her own hands.

Late that evening Betty came to me on the library terrace where I sat smoking innumerable cigarettes. "You know he tried to tell me something at the end," she said.

"Yes."

"All he could manage was just the slightest possible pressure of the hand. A succession of numbers then."

"Do you want to tell me what the numbers were?"

"Of course. They were 1-4-2-4-8. I am sure I got them correctly."

"Not much to be made out of that," I commented.

"No, but I feel certain that he meant something by the message, something of importance."

"To whom?"

"How can anyone say? Will you write the figures down, so that there can be no possibility of my forgetting."

I pulled out my note-book, and inscribed the unintelligible formula: 1-4-2-4-8. The resolution of the problem naturally intrigued me, and the obvious first line of approach was the application of the old Russian "knock" system in which each letter is identified with its numerical position in the alphabetical sequence. I explained the theory to Betty, and she was all eagerness for me to try it out. It took but a moment or two to replace the numbers by their corresponding letters; for example, the figure 1 stands for A, the first letter of the alphabet, and the figure 4 represents the fourth letter or D. The complete series read: A-D-B-D-H.

"Not even a vowel to juggle with," I said ruefully. "Blinder than ever, I should say."

"But it does mean something," returned Betty stoutly. "And some day we shall know."

Chapter X

_I Receive an Ultimatum_

Fielding Thaneford was buried three days later in S. Saviour's churchyard. As relatives, even in remote degree, we were bound to attend the services, and also to be present at the interment. For Betty it was an ordeal, the reopening of a half-closed wound, and I could feel her hand tremble as it lay in the crook of my arm, the grave yawning at our feet. In my capacity as Hildebrand of the "Hundred" I was already her official protector, and I was looking forward to the establishment of a relationship infinitely nearer and dearer. Even now I think she sensed what was in my mind and heart; but, after all these emotional upheavals, there must be a decent interval for a new adjustment to the facts of life--compensation, as the mathematical formula has it. The mutual understanding had already been established, and the flower of our future happiness would be all the lovelier for that we did not seek to force its bourgeoning.

As the funeral party withdrew from the burial enclosure, John Thaneford presented himself.

"I shall be going away Sat.u.r.day," he began, fixing his eyes exclusively on Betty's face.

"Do you mean for a visit?" she inquired.

"I don't quite know," he evaded. "But I dare say the 'Court' will be shut up indefinitely."

"I am sorry for that."

"Are you going to be at home within an hour or so? There is something I have to say to you. Now then, I won't be put off by made-up excuses," he added, seeing that Betty hesitated.

"Come any time after five," she answered. He stood aside, and we pa.s.sed on.

After luncheon I went down to the lower reach of the Whippany where we were preparing to install a small electric power and storage plant.

Presently, I saw a familiar figure walking over from the house--Chalmers Warriner.

"Just got back from New York last night," he explained, "and thought I'd run over and see you all. So the old man died?"

We talked generally on the events of the last fortnight; then I went more particularly into the circ.u.mstances attendant upon Fielding Thaneford's last hours, and Warriner listened attentively. The series of numbers which Betty had obtained from the dying man plainly appealed to his imagination, but he agreed with me that neither the numbers themselves nor their alphabetical equivalents offered any intelligible clue. "Of course he wanted to put over some message," he mused, "and he trusted to Betty's intuition to make things plain."

Betty, instead of Miss Graeme! Really, I hadn't been aware that Warriner was on so intimate a footing at the "Hundred." But of course it was all right; Warriner was older, by at least ten years, than either Betty or myself, and he probably looked on himself as a sort of elder brother to the entire household. I tried to recall if Betty was accustomed to call him by his Christian name. But I could not remember ... it was none of my business ... what difference anyway could it make.

Unconsciously I had yielded to the slight pressure of Warriner's hand upon my arm. He led me away from the noisy gang of negroes working on the projected dam and power-house; presently we were within sight of one of the farm barns. The great double doors were open, but the distance was full half a mile, and nothing within the structure was discernible.

Warriner unwrapped the slender parcel that he was carrying, and produced what looked very much like an old-fashioned spy gla.s.s, only of most unusual length. "And that's just what it is," he said, divining my thought. "Except that I have replaced the object gla.s.s with the lens I picked up the other day at Thaneford's crow's-nest on Sugar Loaf."

"Go on."

"I told you that there seemed to be some extraordinary optical properties in that piece of gla.s.s. I tried it out in my own laboratory, and got certain results. Then, when I was in Baltimore, I had Carter of Johns Hopkins check me up with his more complete apparatus. Some rather astonishing conclusions."

"How so?"

"Well, you've probably heard of the telephoto lens--a sort of long distance microscope, to use very colloquial language. I have seen telephoto pictures of the Matterhorn, taken five or six miles away, in which you could make out the actual geologic texture of the rocks.

"But, of course, there must be plenty of light on the object to get clear definition. On the same principle, one can stand inside a room and see everything outdoors with perfect distinctness. It's a very different thing, trying to look into a room from without. The visibility is low, as they say, and you don't get much."

"Yes, I understand that."

"Again there are optical lenses specially designed to make the most of poor illumination. A familiar example is the sailor's night-gla.s.s.

"You guess what I'm coming to. This particular lens has the telephoto range, and, at the same time, it works with the minimum of illumination.

Never saw anything like it before, and it would be worth a fortune in the binocular field."

"Show me."

Chalmers Warriner rested the long gla.s.s on a fence post, ranged it on the open door of the barn nearly three thousand yards away, and did some preliminary focussing and other adjustments. He took a look, and then invited me to do the same.

It was truly marvellous! It seemed as though I were standing on the very threshold of the barn and looking inside. I recognized Adam Lake, the field foreman, working on the engine of a small tractor. In the background, Zack was oiling a set of harness. The details were astoundingly distinct.