WHEN Mrs Placer first told me that a foreign gentleman had been to see her first-floor set and was coming in on the Tuesday night, I simply nodded my head and said that I was very glad to hear it, and hoped he would be a decent sort of man. I can truthfully declare that, so far from feeling any symptoms of that mysterious presentiment which, we are told, usually heralds a coming evil of supernatural agency, my only sensation was one of pleasure at the prospect of having a companion to share the solitude of my lodgings.

      I was very solitary at that period of my life. It was more than six months since I had left my Berwickshire home, a lad fresh from the enthusiasms of college life, to follow the uncertain calling of a man of letters in London; and if I had found any one thing more difficult of attainment than the production of remunerative work, that thing was the friendship of men of my own position. It may have been due to my Northern cautiousness, or to my Northern roughness of exterior, or perhaps merely to my own feeling of strangeness and reserve; but the fact remains that at that time I could not count one friend in the whole great crowded wilderness in which I lived, and that the evenings which succeeded my laborious days were usually spent in the unrelieved solitude of my own room. True, I was on excellent terms with the buxom Mrs Placer — a model landlady, honest, hard-working, and conscientious beyond one's conceptions of her class; but Mrs Placer's conversation, consisting wholly as it did of elegiac dissertations on her late husband's virtues and of such portion of the vapid gossip of the street as had been filtered over the neighbours' door-steps or distilled through the taciturn lips of the milkman, left much to be desired as an intellectual relaxation. Moreover, the modest street itself in which I lived — a sort of poor relation of Bloomsbury, through which could be traced a quite unacknowledged connection with the purlieus of Gray's Inn Road — was not conducive to the supply of much variety to a monotonous life such as mine. So that I was unfeignedly pleased to hear that the first-floor rooms, which had been so long unlet, were at last to have a tenant, even if that tenant were, as Mrs Placer stated, a "foreign gentleman."

      It was on one Sunday morning that Mrs Placer, pausing for an instant in her interesting description of No. 27's' funeral on the previous day, announced the imminence of the stranger's arrival. On Tuesday evening he came.

      I did not see him for several days; but I heard of him through Mrs Placer. Her daily gossip became intermixed with scraps of information relative to her lodger. His name, I learnt, was Señor Juan Almirez. He was a Spaniard, Mrs Placer thought, or he might be a Portuguese; but he spoke English "just like you or me." As to the luggage he brought, the landlady had never seen such a lot of trumpery. Books of dried flowers, boxes of dried beetles, outlandish weapons that made you tremble to look at them, and grinning heathen images that brought the heart into your mouth; things dead and things alive, things in bottles and things in drawers, stuffed things and things mummified; things on the walls, and things on the mantelpiece, and things piled up in every corner of the room. "You never see such a nasty mess in all your life, sir; you never did, indeed," was Mrs Placer's discontented summary of the lodger's belongings. For all that, she admitted, he was a nice-spoken gentleman and very quiet; and, if it wasn't for the nasty lot of rubbish he brought with him, she wouldn't have a word to speak against him. He went to the Museum every day and stopped until it closed. No one ever visited him; he seemed very lonely; and he smoked incessantly. Such was Mrs Placer's description of my fellow-lodger.

      One night, a week or two after his arrival, he presented himself in my room. My natural reserve had withheld me somehow from appearing to seek his acquaintance, but I was none the less anxious to make it. On the night in question I had heard a knock at the door, and expected the entrance of my landlady. Not hearing the sound of her shuffling footfall and somewhat laboured breathing, I looked up and saw Almirez standing in the doorway. I can picture him to myself now as he stood there against the dark background of the passage, with the light from my lamp shining on his face. A man under middle height, spare, lithe, and muscular, dusky of face and long of arm, with a mass of very slightly grizzled hair brushed back off his broad, protruding forehead. He might from his appearance have been almost any age from twenty-five to fifty; but he was, in fact, I believe, at this time about thirty-eight. He was smiling as he stood in the doorway, with a smile that I never saw absent from his face throughout the five months that I knew him — never but once, and that was the last time that ever I saw the face of Juan Almirez — a smile that lifted the tips of his neatly-trimmed black moustache, and slightly bared the white teeth behind it. A smile that had in it everything that was soft and courteous and gracefully deferential. A smile that was somehow unaccountably at variance with the stern, unyielding scrutiny of his gray eyes. Evidently a man of great mental power, evidently a gentleman in the world's sense of the word, evidently one who had passed long years of his life under a tropical sun. Such was Juan Almirez as I then saw him. He advanced into the room as I rose from my chair, and spoke in a singularly soft voice, that had in it ever so little of a foreign accent.

      "The good Mrs Placer has suggested to me that you would not consider it an intrusion if I ask you to allow me to smoke my evening cigar in your company," he said. "My name is Almirez. I am lonely here in London, and know no one. It would be a great treat to me — if I do not incommode you to enjoy a half-hour of your pleasant society. Nothing could possibly have been said more gracefully; and it was with the utmost cordiality that I invited him to come in and draw his chair towards the fire.

      I will say here frankly, once and for all, that I took a great fancy to Juan Almirez. Whatever occurred afterwards to make me doubt my first opinion of him, whatever I may know (or guess) now as to his diabolical designs upon myself, I must yet confess that there was a charm in the man's manner and conversation, a fascination in his quickness of thought, his brightness of intellect, his fantastic humour, his great knowledge of men and countries, above all, in the happiness of his expressions and the variety of his constantly changing moods, such as I have rarely seen in any other man. that evening I felt the charm of his company Throughout the hour that we spent together growing stronger and stronger upon me, until at last I was listening almost spell-bound to the recital of his anecdotes; and it was with very sincere pleasure that I accepted his invitation to return his visit on the following evening.

      In that brief hour Almirez seemed to have imparted to me the history of his whole life. The only son of a somewhat wealthy landowner in Ecuador, he had been educated in Europe But the regularity and responsibilities of a and brought up to the profession of medicine. profession were irksome to him; and when his father died and left him an orphan, so comfortably provided for as to be free to follow the promptings of his own inclination, he had elected to renounce his professional career and pursue the life of adventure and research for He was at that time barely twenty-four years which he believed Nature had designed him. old; and during the fourteen years that had elapsed since then, he had travelled in many countries, studied nature from many aspects, written several scientific treatises, and accumulated that collection of curiosities which had struck Mrs Placer with so much horror. In the pursuit of his objects nothing had turned or daunted him. For weeks he had camped on the rigorous slopes of an unexplored peak of snow, till the day should break that gave him opportunity for its ascent; for months he had sought a specimen of some all-but unknown plant, nor relinquished his quest until it was rewarded. It was in the spirit of triumph, and not in that of boasting, that he assured me he had never failed. The greater part of his fourteen years of travel had been spent in the continent of his birth — in the sunless forests of the Amazon, on the wind-swept cordilleras of the Andes, in the desolation of the Patagonian pampas. Finally he had come to London, to study, to develop fresh plans, and classify his collections. When he had had enough of civilisation, he would resume his life of vagabondage. This, in brief, was the history of Juan Almirez, as he told it to me that night in snatches of anecdote and narrative and grave retrospect.

      I was punctual in my appointment to visit his rooms on the following evening.

      It was a good-sized room, the first-floor parlour; and Mrs Placer had not exaggerated the untidiness of its contents. Each of the chairs was cumbered with its individual pile of books and papers and wooden collecting-boxes; the mantelpiece had been stripped of all Mrs Placer's treasured prettinesses, and their place usurped by two goodly rows of bottles and jars of spirit, in each of which reposed some gruesome specimen of insect or reptile, or vegetable growth; a heap of oilskin-covered instruments occupied one corner of the room; the opposite side, beneath the windows, was still blocked up with packing-cases, some as yet unopened, some half-emptied of their contents; the air itself tasted dry and heavy and pungent, like the atmosphere of a museum. Almirez was seated at a writing-table, drawn under the chandelier in the middle of the room. As my eyes travelled towards his face, they fell upon something that stood on the table in front of him, something that glittered in the gaslight with the glitter of polished gold. I was too short-sighted to be able to see clearly what it was; but somehow — whether (as I have thought at times) by some sort of instinctive premonition, or whether merely because it was the first distinct object that had caught my eye amid all the confused crowd of articles with which the room was littered — I felt as if I could not take my eyes off it. Even when Almirez had cleared the easiest chair of its haphazard burden, and had drawn his own seat towards the fire, I was still peering curiously at the glittering thing upon the writing-table. He had noticed my attention; and it seemed to amuse him, for his smile became something more natural and more involuntary than was usually the case — a quiet, inscrutable smile, reflecting some humorous thought that would seem to have crossed his brain. Then he took up the glittering thing and placed it in my hands.

      It was a rudely moulded image of some shaggy animal — a camel, as it seemed to me — standing about three inches high, and moulded, to all appearance, out of solid gold. On the left flank, the figure of a noon-day sun, circling a human face, and girt with many radiating beams of light, was deeply carven into the metal. The whole was very brightly polished; but the roughness of the workmanship and the redness of the gold made it appear to be of great age.

      "I deem that to be the greatest of my curiosities," Almirez was saying in his soft voice. 'Not on account of its actual value, you understand, but because of its associations and of the great difficulty which I experienced in obtaining it — and find in keeping it. There is a story — but we need not trouble about that." There was still the same inscrutable smile on his face, as if the humorous thought had not yet quite passed away. "It is of gold, as you will guess," he continued; and it represents a llama — an animal which we are well acquainted with in the land of my birth. It is of ancient Peruvian workmanship. Very quaint, is it not? Very quaint indeed. It is useful to me as a letter-weight; but I value it beyond that. — But you must see some other of my curiosities."

      And in a few minutes my friend was deeply immersed in the exhibition and explanation of the alcoholised treasures on the mantelpiece; while I, for my part, listening to his conversation, had almost forgotten the existence of the golden llama.

THAT night was the first of many pleasant evenings that I spent in Almirez' company. I grew almost as interested in his collections as he himself. I assisted him in his laborious task of arranging and classifying them. We talked together on the subject of them night after night; and the more I saw of him, the stronger his charm of manner grew upon me. I felt myself lucky to have made the friendship of such a man. And so the time drew on, through the winter months and into the early spring.

      And then occurred the first of those incidents, the horror of which is with me still.

      On the evening of the 20th of March — the date has been impressed indelibly on my memory by the events which followed — Almirez came down to my room rather earlier than usual. Strictly speaking, it was my turn to have visited him on that night, for we were very regular in our habit of entertaining each other on alternate days; but he excused his breach of the general custom on the ground that he would be spending the following evening away from home — "a rare circumstance for so lonely a man as myself," he explained, with his charming smile; "but one no less gratifying because it is unexpected" — and so he had desired to enjoy a double allowance of my society that night, by way of compensation.

      Naturally, I was curious to learn the nature of his engagement on the following evening, for during the whole time that I had known him, Almirez had hardly spent one evening away from the lodgings.

      "It is a little surprise," he said — "a dinner to which some gentlemen who are interested in my scientific researches have done me the honour to invite me. I would willingly have had you included in the company, my dear friend, had I been free to choose, for I cannot sufficiently estimate the value of which you have been to me in my work in London; but as I am only a guest — you understand? It cannot be. Still it is very agreeable of the gentlemen; and I am deeply recognisant of the honour they do me. It will be, I fear, a farewell dinner for me," he went on slowly, with a shade of sadness in his voice. "You know the step that I have contemplated for two months past — my return to exile? I feel that it is a step that must soon be taken. This air of London, this confinement, this tameness of life, depraves and weakens me. It robs me of my vigour. Alas! my dear friend, I must go. Not yet! Not yet" — seeing my surprise, perhaps my look of disappointment — "not yet for a week, a month — who knows? But the time has come."

      I don't know how I expressed my regret at his departure. I know that it was very genuine.

      "And that brings me, my dear friend," he continued more gaily, "to a subject on which I wish to converse with you. You know, I feel sure, of what assistance you have been to me; I need not say again how much I am in your debt. But I would wish, if I may, to prove it to you. I would wish, before I go away, to make some little present to you, which should always remind you — No, no; do not interrupt me! I will have my own way! — which should remind you of those winter months that you have known Juan Almirez. My friend, I have not failed to notice how you have taken a fancy to my little Peruvian treasure, my little golden llama. I do not forget how it was the first of all my treasures that ever I showed to you. Will you do me the honour to accept it? Its associations, such as they are, will be heightened in my estimation by its memorial of yourself."

      It was in vain for me to refuse, to plead that, if he must give me anything, it should be something on which he placed less value. Almirez was inflexible. He would take no denial. In the end he gained his point, and went up-stairs to fetch the golden llama.

      He brought it down to me, packed up in a wooden box, and placed it in my hands without a word. He would hear no thanks. He had made up his mind long ago to give it to me, he said, and I should hurt him more grievously than I could imagine by refusing it. "It is true, my dear friend," he repeated, with his quaint smile — "more grievously than you can possibly imagine." To tell the truth, the golden llama had always had a great attraction for me ever since that first night when I had been so much struck by its appearance; and, though I felt reluctant to deprive Almirez of what I knew he valued so highly, I could not but be gratified at the kindness of his thought. To the best of my recollection, Almirez had never been more merry, more lightly jocular, than he was that night. We sat talking together till a late hour; and, when we parted, le referred to the evening of the next day but one, and warned me laughingly not to be late in keeping my appointment to come up to his room.

      I overslept myself the following morning, and did not see Almirez, as I generally did, before he started for the Museum. When I awoke, it was with a racking headache. As the day wore on, my headache grew better; but I fell into a state of restlessness and depression such as I had never before experienced. I had suffered at times from lowness of spirits, it is true the monotony of the life in London, the uncertainty — or, as I sometimes thought, the certain hopelessness — of my elected vocation, the change from the freedom and wildness of my Northern home-life, had all told severely upon my nervous organism; but, looking back upon that time, I feel confident to say that never before nor since were my sufferings so acute, so persistent, so extraordinary in their character, as they were upon this day. I could not work. In vain I sat at my desk and strove to collect my thoughts and brace myself up for a mental effort. In vain I paced the room wearily, hour after hour. In vain I tried to shake off the horrible black phantom of despondency that seemed to be crouching over my head, and squeezing the life out of me with its stifling grip upon my neck. I panted for the open air, for the movement and the company of the streets. In vain! I returned from my hour's walk exhausted, quivering in every nerve, haunted with some strange terror that made me glance fearfully behind me, as I hurried up the empty street, and trembled at the sound of my own footsteps on the echoing pavement. Yet within the house it was still worse. My room — lighted as it was with every illuminant that I had at my disposal — seemed dark and close — darkened by the presence of a myriad of unseen shapes that flitted unceasingly between the light and my aching eyes, gathered in dizzily revolving masses in the corners of the room, whispered to me in thrilling voices that I could understand, although they were unheard. I felt as if I were going mad. I cannot tell now the horrible thoughts that crossed my brain. Presently a strange impression forced itself upon my labouring consciousness. I became aware that my mind was being drawn, slowly, irresistibly, away from myself, as it were, towards the wooden box that still lay upon the table — the box that contained Almirez' gift. It was no ordinary effort of my volition, but something subtle, mysterious, inexpressible. I seemed to be moving under the spell of some awful fascination, that attracted me, in spite of my own conscious aversion, as the bird is drawn towards the serpent's coils. I drew nearer to the table. I opened the box and took out the golden figure. For an instant I experienced a great sense of relief; then, with a sickening revulsion, the seething wave of delirium poured back into my brain. The glittering figure seemed to swell enormously in size; its deep-set eyes glowed like living embers; the sun on its flank scintillated with a thousand dancing lights. As I watched, dumbly, mechanically, I saw the human face that was carven within the sun gather to itself intelligence and expression. An angry frown settled on its brow. I could even fancy that the features moved. Pitiable, horrible as my condition had been before, it was worse now. At last I could bear the horror of it no longer. A wild desire to rid myself of the hateful image came over me. Without pausing for thought or reasoning, with only a frantic effort of the will that seemed to burst the bonds of the spell that held me, I snatched up the figure, thrust it back into the box, and hurried up-stairs to Almirez' room. The room was in darkness. Hastily I set down the box on the corner of the table nearest to the door, and fled away down the stairs, as if an evil spirit was behind me.

      When I got back to my own room it was just past nine o'clock. The fact that I was sufficiently master of my senses to look at the clock and gather the time from it somewhat reassured me. As a matter of fact, I felt greatly relieved by the strange thing that I had done. Now that I had made that supreme effort of my will, now that the box and its contents had been removed elsewhere, the room itself seemed less sombre, the air seemed less stifling, the voices ceased to ring in my ears. I sat down to argue with myself — a little nervously at first, it must be confessed — on the subject of these ridiculous fancies of mine. The longer I argued, the more I became convinced of their absurdity. I even laughed drowsily to myself in sheer pity for my own weakness. A delicious sensation of restfulness, of relief, of relaxation after extreme tension, stole through my limbs and overpowered me. Gradually I yielded myself up to sleep, and slept with all the soundness of utter exhaustion.

      The first sound that I was conscious of was the rattle of a latchkey in the street-door. I heard it dimly in the midst of my dreams, and knew that Almirez had come home. He let himself in very quietly, closed the street-door after him, and advanced with noiseless steps down the passage. I was conscious that he stood awhile outside the door of my room — how long he waited, whether for minutes or only seconds, I cannot say and I could hear the sound of his steady breathing close against the panels. Then he turned back again and began to mount the stairs. Up to this time I was still but half awake; and it was as the incidents in a dream, rather than as the product of my waking senses, that I was conscious of what I have just related. The shutting of Almirez' door on the floor above first roused me to actual wakefulness. It was some seconds later still before I began to consider how extraordinary, how ungrateful, how utterly inexplicable he would consider my conduct in returning his gift as I had done without a word of explanation. Grudgingly — for my limbs were stiff and my eyes heavy with sleep — I rose from my chair and prepared to go up-stairs. What should I say to him? How should I account for my ridiculous behaviour? I hesitated. Why not postpone the explanation until the morning, when my wits would be more active and I should have had more time for consideration? I looked at the clock. It was within a few minutes of midnight. That decided me. Almirez was probably as tired as I was. He might never notice the box upon the table. At any rate I would not do any thing that night. And so, with the drowsiness still heavy upon me, I tumbled into bed and slept until the morning.

      I have often wondered since, with a strange, sinking horror, what might have happened then, what sight might have met my eyes, had I obeyed my first impulse to follow Almirez to his room.

      I was aroused, when the white light of the spring morning was already streaming into my room, by a rapid knocking at the door. Mrs Placer wanted to see me. Immediate, if I pleased. There was a tremble in her voice, an urgent haste telling of some unusual agitation, that made my dressing a very rapid matter. When I emerged from my room, Mrs Placer was standing close to the door with a scared-looking face.

      "If you please, sir," she began very rapidly, "I'm afraid as Mr Almirez have been took ill sudden. Leastways, there's something wrong with him. His bed have not been slep in; for, him not answering when I knocked him up, I made so bold as just to look in. And, sir, if you please, when I peeped into his sitting-room, there was him sitting in a chair and looking that queer, sir, you can't think; and never turned his head, though I spoke to him. I got frightened, sir, to see him so, and thought I'd run down to you; and, if you please, sir, would you mind just stepping up to see if there's anything the matter with the poor gentleman?"

      Telling Mrs Placer to go for a doctor, I ran up the staircase. I had an awful, undefined misgiving that told me something had happened. What it was I dared not ask myself; but I knew.

      The room up-stairs was still dark; for the curtains were drawn across the windows, as they had been left the night before, and the daylight only crept through the gaps in thin, glimmering streaks that fell along the carpet. Keeping my face steadily turned away from something that lay in a chair beside the table, I walked across the room and drew back one of the heavy curtains with a rattle. The light poured into the darkened room, and I turned round.

      Almirez was lying back in the chair, his arms hanging limply from the shoulders. A hideous dark flush suffused his brow; his cheeks were puffed and livid. The smile the constant, graceful smile, that seemed part of his identity — was gone at last, banished by the stern rigidity of death. His purple, swollen lips were drawn back tightly over the shining teeth, the teeth themselves slightly gaping in the ghastly semblance of a laugh. His wide-open eyes, with all the look of concentrated horror that was conveyed by the unnaturally dilated pupils, were staring sightlessly at a little wooden box that was upon the table beside him — the box that still contained the figure of the golden llama — its lid removed and the paper wrappings scattered over the table. Beside the box stood a stoppered bottle labelled Chloroform; and a shattered glass was lying on the floor beneath the chair, where it had fallen from the nerveless fingers of the dead man.

IN due course there was an inquest upon the body of Juan Almirez. Mrs Placer, the doctor whom she had summoned and who had attended within a few minutes of my discovery of the body, and myself were the only witnesses. I repeated what I knew of the history of the dead man, deposed to the fact of his dining out on the night previous to his death with some scientific friends, and related (so far as I was able) the circumstances of his coming in a few minutes before midnight and going upstairs to his room. He was not, to my knowledge, in any difficulties or embarrassment. On the contrary, he had always appeared to be of a peculiarly cheerful temperament and in easy pecuniary circumstances. I recalled the details of his lively conversation with me two days before his death, when he had discussed his plans for the future and made the appointment with me for the night of the twenty-second. In answer to a question put to me by one of the jury, I was quite certain that he was alone when I heard him come in and go up-stairs. If there had been any one with him I should undoubtedly have noticed the sound of the additional footsteps. That concluded my examination. Mrs Placer's evidence, which followed, was mainly formal. The doctor deposed that the appearances of the body were consistent with poisoning by chloroform. Death had probably taken place about an hour or an hour and a half before he saw the deceased. It was impossible, however, to say with certainty when the fatal dose had been taken, as the deceased would no doubt lie in a state of stupor for many hours before death ensued. Taking into consideration the reported cases on the subject and the probable quantity of chloroform that had been swallowed, he should imagine that the poison must have been taken very shortly after midnight, if not still earlier. He did not think it possible that the chloroform could have been administered to the deceased against his will. It was conceivable that he might have taken it accidentally — as, for instance, if he had been in a state of intoxication at the time. Upon the whole, however, he had no hesitation in saying that he believed it to be a case of suicide.

      The inquest was then adjourned, in order that the police might make inquiries for the relations of the deceased and ascertain with whom he dined on the night immediately before his death.

      On its resumption it appeared that the history which Almirez had related to me was substantially correct. He was well known as a traveller and a man of science. His books, published from time to time, had attracted considerable attention. At the same time he would seem to have been a man who had made but few friends; and apparently he had no living relations, either in Ecuador or in Europe. Further, the police reported that they had been utterly unable to discover of whom the party of gentlemen who had entertained Almirez at dinner had consisted, or where any such dinner had taken place. On the other hand, a waiter at a Soho restaurant had been met with who strongly believed Almirez to have been a man who had dined at one of his tables on the night of the twenty-first, sat there smoking for some little time afterwards, and finally left about eight o'clock, after making inquiries as to the pieces which were being performed at the neighbouring theatres. The witness had taken particular notice of the gentleman, he said, because he seemed in such good humour and remembered the waiter so handsomely.

      This strange piece of evidence (which I, for one, had no doubt was based upon a mistake of identity) concluded the investigation; and the jury, after a somewhat lengthy deliberation, returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased had committed suicide, but that there was no evidence on which they could determine his state of mind at the time of the occurrence.

      During the interval of the adjournment an incident had occurred as to which I cannot but express my deep regret at the course which I was tempted to take. It must be remembered in my extenuation that I was suffering severely at the time from the shock of Almirez' death; but I feel only too keenly how inadequate an excuse that must seem for conduct which (I must confess) was prompted for the most part by motives of sheer cowardice. How terrible a punishment my weakness must surely have brought upon me, but for the action of another person, will appear hereafter.

      Immediately after Almirez' death a will had been discovered among his papers, dated a few months back, and appointing as his executors a certain well-known scientist and myself. By this will he devoted the whole of his property, his collections, and his unpublished manuscripts in specified shares to various museums and other scientific institutions. It was during the examination of Almirez' belongings, with a view to the settlement of this distribution, that my co-executor came across the box containing the golden llama. Some one — I know not whom — had readjusted the lid, and inside the box there still lay the card which Almirez had placed there when he gave it into my hands: "For my dear and valued friend Angus Macpherson. A farewell gift." My colleague instantly showed it to me, with the remark that poor Almirez had evidently desired to make me a parting present — a strong proof, he said, that his death had been premeditated. In that instant I took the step which I do not attempt to defend. I felt that it was impossible for me to explain the true state of the facts; I shrank shame-facedly from a confession of my weakness on that night; moreover, I really desired to have something that had belonged to my dead friend, and argued that it could do no harm to retake that which he had already given to me. With hardly a compunction I accepted that view of the situation which was presented to me, and acknowledged that it did seem exceedingly probable that Almirez had wished me to have the golden llama. In that same hour I again became its possessor.

      I will say in justice to myself that it was not long before I became keenly sensible of the wrong that I had done in concealing my original renunciation of the gift; but it was too late then to explain the matter. As time wore on, moreover, I began to consider that, reprehensible as my conduct had certainly been, no great harm could come of it after all. I conceived a great fancy for the little squat image; I liked to have it on the table in front of me when I wrote; my unreasoning terror of it was a thing of the past; more than all, it reminded me of the dead man whom I had so dearly esteemed. And so nearly a year passed away from that night when Almirez had taken his own life; and meanwhile I worked hard and profited (I trust) by my opportunities, and began to advance a little at last in the exercise of my calling.

      It was about three weeks before the anniversary of Almirez' death, so far as I can remember, that I became conscious of a relapse into low spirits. I fell into a habit of dwelling by day upon the mystery of his death, dreaming of the livid dead face, as it lay back, sunken among the scarlet cushions, with painful iteration during the livelong hours of the night, recalling to myself again and again with horrible distinctness the details of that dreadful day. It was in vain that I laughed at my nervous folly; it was in vain that I tried to smother the vague dread with which I looked forward to the twenty-first day of March. At length — about the middle of the month — I decided to try the effect of a change of my surroundings; and, telling Mrs Placer that she might expect me back again in a fortnight's time, I shifted my quarters to apartments in a quiet street in Kennington, where the broad roll of the misty river and a couple of miles of jostling house-tops lay between me and the scene of Juan Almirez' death.

      There could be no doubt about the benefit that was wrought in me by the change. In one respect alone I regretted it — and that respect the character of my landlady. Miss M'Rae was as slovenly as Mrs Placer had been neat; as untrustworthy as Mrs Placer had been honest; as habitually intoxicated as Mrs Placer had been rigidly sober. It took me but little time to discover these characteristics. Under other circumstances I should probably have changed my lodgings yet once more; but, as it was, I decided to remain in my present quarters until the end of my fortnight's seclusion.

      All went well with me till within two or three days of the twenty-first. Then my old unreasoning terrors began to return to me. Still I was able to keep them within bounds, and it was with tolerable easiness of mind that I awaited the recurrence of the fatal day. I had determined how I should employ it. I was going to take a long country walk, to distract my thoughts by exercise, by the moving scenery, by the freshness and sweetness of the earth in its spring-time. I was going to tire myself out, to creep home to Kennington at the close of the day, and to rise the next morning with all my follies and my fancies shaken out of me, and my faculties braced up to encounter a fresh day's work. Such was the resolve that I had formed.

      The day turned out to be all that I could desire. As I strode through the crowded streets that led towards the suburban rusticity of southern London, the sun was shining brightly in a limpid, cloudless sky, the morning air was crisp, and pure, and livening. As I entered at last into the solitude of the green fields and windy commons that the builder's hand had not then reached, all Nature seemed joyous with the promise of approaching summer. The birds were twittering gaily from the trees, the fair green buds were bursting from their sheaths, the air was filled with an indefinable sense of life and growth and hopefulness. Confronted by such scenes, my despondency could not but yield. How many miles I walked that day I dare not say; I have only a vague idea that for hour after hour I tramped along, luxuriating in the brisk exercise and unwonted freedom, and that it was only when the sun was already low in the pale sky, and the smokedome of London hung like a tiny distant cloud, that at last, after a hearty meal at a wayside inn, I turned my steps towards home. My expedient had proved completely successful, and I felt not a little self-satisfied in having mastered my foolish forebodings. True, as twilight fell on the broad white road, and the chilly wind of evening rose and swept over the bare fields, I experienced some slight return of my uneasiness; but it quickly passed away, and, when I drew once more within the region of the gas-lit streets, I was feeling only the comfortable exultation of a man who is well satisfied with his day's work.

      It was past ten o'clock when I reached the door of my lodgings. I had stopped on the outskirts of London to get some supper; and my intention was to go straight to bed — for I was very tired — and so sleep off the effects of my long walk.

      I was stumbling up the narrow stairs, which were but dimly lighted by the gas-jet above the street-door, when I almost fell against the figure of Miss M'Rae. She was standing back in the darkest corner of the staircase, where it turned abruptly to the right — standing back so motionless and so close against the wall, that it seemed strangely as though she had wished me to pass her unnoticed in the shadow. As I paused momentarily before passing on, she moved out somewhat into the light that fell from the flickering gas-jet, and I saw that her face was flushed and puffy. There was an odd look, half of fear and half of insolence, in her shifting eyes. Miss M'Rae had been drinking.

      I had already passed her on the stairs when she spoke to me.

      "I was just going to step out round the corner, to get a bit of something for breakfast," she said thickly, "if you don't mind being left alone in the 'ouse."

      The maid-of-all-work slept at her own home, a few streets distant.

      "Very well, Miss M'Rae," I answered. "Don't be longer than you can help. I am going straight to bed now. I shan't sit up."

      She made no answer, but her eyes followed me up the staircase. My last impression, as I shut the door of my bedroom, was of a sodden face turned upwards in the gas-light and of those drunken eyes watching me to my room.

·       ·       ·       ·      ·

      It seemed to me that I had slept but a few minutes, when I was awakened by a loud and continuous knocking at the street-door. Evidently Miss M'Rae had loitered on her errand; and it became my duty to go down-stairs and see who the imperious visitor might be. Î must confess, however, that the duty was so repugnant to me that I waited for some minutes before I stirred, hoping in vain that I should hear the rattle of Miss M'Rae's key in the keyhole and the husky tones of Miss M'Rae's voice speaking in the hall below. At last, as the knocking became more and more persistent, I tumbled wrathfully out of bed, and huddled on a portion of my clothes. What was my surprise, when I glanced at my watch before leaving the room, to see that it was nearly two o'clock! Miss M'Rae must have been gone for close upon four hours.

      A gruff voice saluted me as I opened the street-door, and a draught of cold air ran up the passage.

      "Well, I 'ope I've been kept long enough standing here?" the voice said. "'Eavy sleepers, seemingly, in this 'ouse?"

      "Who are you?" I demanded, somewhat savagely, for I certainly thought the grievance was not wholly on his side.

      "Does a party of the name of M'Rae live here?" the voice went on, without heeding my question.

      In the same instant, however, the owner of the voice answered it satisfactorily by stepping into the doorway, where I could see him more distinctly. It was a constable.

      "Yes," I said, "Miss M'Rae lives here. What do you want with her?"

      "Nothing with 'er, sir," the man replied more civilly. "We only wanted to find out if the address was correct. That's all. — Might I ask who you are, sir?"

      "Certainly," I said, and I told him my name. "I am lodging here," I added. "Miss M'Rae is the landlady."

      "Oh, indeed, sir? Then I think as 'ow you'll 'ave to look out for new lodgings in the morning."

      The man's impudence astounded me. "Why?" I said shortly.

      "Because the party of the name of M'Rae 'as gone and drowned herself," he answered.

      "Drowned herself?"

      "Yes, sir, drowned herself! — Was seen 'anging about Vauxhall Bridge shortly after eleven-thirty P.M. in a state of intoxication. Was cautioned, and told to go 'ome. Shortly after, a splash was 'eard, and on a boat being put off, the body was recovered. The address here was found on 'er. — I'll be coming round again in the morning," he added after a pause, as he turned away from the door. "Good-night, sir."

      "Good-night."

      What was there in these awful midnight hours of the twenty-first of March that was fatal to those around me? Was it a mere coincidence? If not, what direful agency was at work? Asking myself these questions, I staggered up the stairs and wandered into my study. Sleep was banished from my eyes for that night at any rate. I felt unnaturally, horribly wide-awake. Mechanically I lit the gas, and sat down at my writing-table. As I did so, my eyes fell on something that was unfamiliar — a blank space at the corner of the table where my letter-weight had stood. The golden llama was gone.

THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN
LLAMA.

CHAPTER IV. — THE NARRATIVE.

SEARCH as I would, I could find no trace of the golden llama. It had been in its place on my writing-table on the previous morning, when I started for my long walk. Of that I felt assured. How and when and by whom had it been removed? That it was valuable — valuable as mere bullion, apart from its antiquarian interest — I knew full well; but who was there, knowing of its existence and of its value, who should come to the lodgings in Kennington to steal it from my writing-table? No one had visited me in my new quarters. It was the general impression, I believe — and I had not attempted to remove it — that I had gone into the country for a few weeks' holiday. Who was there, then, who should have stolen the golden llama?

      Gradually, but irresistibly, the conviction forced itself upon me that the thief could be no other than Miss M'Rae herself. Her demeanour that night, when I encountered her on the stairs, her avoidance of me, her evident fright, and the boldness with which she sought to cover it — all spoke to me of guilt. True, she was intoxicated; but was that sufficient in itself to account for the strangeness of her behaviour? Too late, I regretted the carelessness with which I had exposed my priceless treasure to the eyes of one whom I had already discovered to be untrustworthy.

      I attended the inquest on the body of my late landlady in the hope that some clew might be dropped in the course of the inquiry which would lead me to the recovery of that which I had lost. I followed all the evidence — it was but scanty — with minute care, plied the witnesses (after the inevitable verdict of self-destruction had been hurriedly pronounced) with further questions bearing on the point I had in view; but all my investigation was fruitless. The unfortunate woman had been seen loitering in the neighbourhood of a pawnbroker's shop, an hour or two before her death, had been seen, in fact, gazing through the open shop-door — so much I ascertained; but my anxious inquiry at the shop in question was met with the reply that nothing resembling my missing property had been offered in pledge on that night.

      And so the second tragedy passed away and was buried, like its victim, in the common, nameless grave of the Forgotten; and I went back once more to take up my abode in the house where the golden llama had first encountered my sight.

      I had resigned all hope of seeing it again. The police had made inquiries; a description of it had been circulated all was of no avail. At last the idea occurred to me of inserting an advertisement in the daily papers. I had but little hope that it would bring me tidings of the missing object; but I felt that even its insertion would be a satisfaction to me.

      Within a couple of days it appeared — a brief, tersely-worded advertisement, addressed to "pawnbrokers and others," offering a handsome reward to any one who should give me information of the whereabouts of an ancient gilt figure (which I described) supposed to represent a llama, which had been taken from a house in Southampton Terrace, Kennington, on or about the twenty-first of March.

      On the very day of its publication it brought me a visitor.

      He was announced to me by Mrs Placer as "a gentleman calling himself Professor Pardoe — an elderly gentleman, if you please, sir — who wants to see you not very particular; but would be glad of a minute, if you could spare it, sir." On my acquiescence, he was shown into the room. The professor was a little, stout man, with snow-white hair that curled over the collar of his frock-coat, a very ruddy face, and twinkling gray eyes that beamed benignantly through gold-rimmed spectacles. They beamed all the more, I daresay, because he felt some awkwardness in the nature of his visit.

      He began by profusely apologising for it.

      "I trust I do not interrupt you at a busy moment, my dear sir? It is only an instant that I need detain you. My mission is very trivial — all too trivial, I fear, to justify my intrusion. At the same time, I could not deny myself the pleasure of satisfying a somewhat unwarrantable curiosity respecting an advertisement which appeared above your name in this morning's Times."

      My attention was riveted in an instant.

      "Your name is not unknown to me," my voluble visitor continued, "although I have never had the pleasure of conversing with you. It was brought before my notice some twelve months since in a very lamentable connection — in connection with the proceedings relative to the death of my dear friend Almirez."

      "You knew Señor Almirez?" I ejaculated. In the same instant his name came back to me. Almirez had spoken more than once of Professor Pardoe, a friend and somewhat of a rival of his in his earlier days of travel, since become a scientific writer of some note.

      "Undoubtedly! I was sure that I could not be mistaken. Your name was familiar to me at once. It was this coincidence — the coincidence of the person who had lost this curious object, described in the advertisement, being the friend of my friend — that led me to pay you this very impertinent and intrusive visit. And now, my dear sir, I am going to be still more impertinent. I am going to ask you some questions."

      And the stout little gentleman leaned back comfortably in his chair, beaming upon me with benign effulgence.

      "In the first place, I am going to ask you, was this given to you by Almirez? Of course it was! I can see it by your face. Could you describe it to me? I have the advertisement here" — touching his pocket — "but could you give me any further particulars about the 'gilt figure supposed to represent a llama?' I ask with a purpose."

      What his purpose could possibly be, I was at a loss to imagine; but his manner of asking the questions was so unaffected, so entirely free from being merely inquisitive or aggressive, that I willingly entered into a fairly minute description of the golden llama. As I proceeded, the professor's genial face began to assume a puzzled, wondering look, and his eyes turned musingly towards the floor. When I had finished he spoke again.

      "Was this in Almirez' possession at the time of his death, can you tell me? or had he —— Believe me, my dear sir," he broke off suddenly, into a tone of great earnestness, "these are no idle questions. There is, there may be, some mischief in this matter, some terrible mystery that you and I can hardly dream of. I cannot tell yet. It may all depend upon your answer to my question — was this image in Almirez' possession on the day of his death?"

      I told him everything — told him how Almirez had given it to me, how I had returned it to his room, how it had been found after his death. For some moments after I had finished speaking, the professor sat quite still, his face clouded over with some great brooding trouble, his lips murmuring inarticulately.

      "Strange, strange!" I heard him mutter.

      At last he roused himself.

      "How did you come to lose it?" he said simply. "What happened?"

      It was soon told. I had lost it — had it stolen from my rooms — on the anniversary of Almirez' death. I could only suspect my landlady, whom I had already found out to be untrustworthy. On the night when the golden llama disappeared, she had left the house in a strange manner, and some hours afterwards, apparently in a fit of drunken remorse, she had thrown herself into the Thames.

      As I mentioned the fact of Miss M'Rae's tragic death, the professor sprang up from his chair excitedly.

      "A second suicide!" he almost shouted. "And on the same day!"

      What could his conduct mean? Somewhat irritably, I am afraid, I asked him to explain himself. He was pacing up and down the room, with his brows knit and his hands clasped nervously behind him. Suddenly he paused in his walk and turned towards me; but, in place of answering my question, he asked me yet another.

      "You have heard nothing of this thing since — do not know where it is now?" he asked.

      Very decidedly I answered in the negative, and then repeated my former question, but for some time it met with no response. Gradually, however, the professor's stride slackened; his hands loosened and dropped to his sides; and at last he seated himself once more in the chair opposite my own and fixed his eyes searchingly upon my face.

      "What I am about to confide to you, my dear sir," he began, "is but suspicion; but suspicion so striking, so positive, that to my mind at least it has the force of certainty. Were it not so, I would have kept silence. I have told you that I was a friend of Juan Almirez. Month after month in days gone by we have lived together in the same hunting-camp or been engaged together on the same expedition. I was his senior by many years; yet I was able to admire to the full his impetuous energy, his indomitable fixity of purpose. I have told you also that I was immediately struck by the coincidence that you, a friend of Almirez, had lost the golden figure of which you have given me a description. I will tell you now that that description answers minutely to the description of an ancient sacred symbol which was stolen from the natives of a little Peruvian village in Sierra at a time when Almirez and I were pursuing historical researches in the neighbourhood. Further, that Almirez was strongly suspected — though at the time I thought unjustly — of being the thief."

      The professor paused, and I intervened in defence of my dead friend.

      "You will allow me to say that your conclusion seems a trifle hasty? There is nothing, I take it, very distinctive or peculiar in the figure given to me by Almirez. Why, then, should you assume against him so readily that he could be guilty of such an act?"

      "You are right, my dear young sir," the professor replied blandly. "There is nothing very distinctive about it. There may be — I daresay there are a dozen or more of such figures in existence, all of which answer more or less to the description of the stolen image. But there were other reasons — reasons depending on matters which you have disclosed to me in the course of our conversation this afternoon — which led me irresistibly to form the assumption which you so deprecate. Almirez had a special motive for desiring to possess himself of this particular thing. There was a curious tale that was told of it by the natives, a curious superstition attaching to it, that roused all his passion for the acquisition of strange and wonderful objects. How strong was his desire to possess himself of it — to test the truth of the superstition, as he grimly said — I know from conversation that I have held with him; I know also how high a price he offered for it, and how the natives, in horror at the suggestion, refused his overtures. The tale was this. Long years ago, in the evil days that followed the Spanish conquest and the death of Francisco Pizarro, a band of Spanish brigand-soldiers burst into the little village. It was the morning of the great festival of the spring equinox, and all the folk were gathered in the Temple of the Sun. Thither the soldiers ran. It was the old tale of quest for hidden booty, of outraged Christianity whose indignation could only be appeased by gold. They seized the priest, as he stood offering sacrifice, and demanded that the idolatrous treasure of the temple should be given up to them. But no treasure was to be found — perhaps it had gone towards the ransom of the Inca or been plundered in an earlier raid — and, refusing to disclose any hiding-place of wealth, the aged priest was put to the torture. In the extremity of his anguish he pointed out to his tormentors the spot where the sole remaining treasure of the temple lay buried, but added, so they say, these fateful words: 'In whose hand shall be found the sacred llama of the Sun, by his hand shall he fall this day!' The soldiers unearthed the treasure; and, enraged at its meanness, they put the priest to death. Then, the story goes, they fell to gaming; and the captain, who had taken possession of the treasure, lost heavily and slew himself before nightfall. What happened to the sacred llama in the long years that followed is unrecorded; but in our days at least it had come back into the possession of the natives of the village, who, though nominally Christians, retained much unacknowledged sympathy with their ancient worship. Along with the sacred figure a superstition had survived — the superstition that it should prove fatal to its owner, whosoever he might be, on the day of the spring equinox. Accordingly, it had always been the custom in the early days of March for a procession to go forth, bearing the golden llama, to the site of the ancient temple of the Sun, and there with much ceremony to inter it among the ruins; nor was it disinterred or touched again until the month of March was passed over. It was during one of these periods of its interment (when, as I have said, Almirez and I were camping in the neighbourhood) that it was stolen. When the day arrived on which it should be exhumed, the procession mounted the steep path that led to the ruined temple; but the men returned horror-struck. The ground had been newly broken and the sacred figure removed. There were circumstances undoubtedly which pointed to Almirez as having been the guilty man; but I refused to believe it. I can only say now that my belief has suffered change."

      Towards the close of the professor's long speech a horrible idea had been shaping itself within my mind.

      "Do you mean to say that you believe Almirez' death — in any way" — I began.

      "Who shall say?" he replied. "We know the facts. Who will be so bold as to draw the inference from them? And yet his death, the death of your landlady — both on the same day, both on the day of the spring equinox — both dead by their own hand! Of course one can advance arguments: his superstitious terror, confronted suddenly on that night of all nights by the object which he thought he had safely disposed of; her guilty shame, weighing her down with the intolerable sense of crime and the instant fear of detection. It may have been So. One hopes it may have been so. And yet, my dear sir, fool or lunatic as you may think me, I will freely confess to you that my mind will know no ease until this accursed image has been once more returned to a position where its fateful influence can wreak no harm."

·       ·       ·       ·      ·

      Years have rolled by, and I have heard no more of it. Many months since Professor Pardoe was laid in an honoured grave. I remain the sole witness of the strange facts that I have related. Whether I really believe in the professor's ghastly explanation, I hardly know myself; but I know that it is a relief to me to think, and to believe, that the rolling tide of the river, when it closed that night over the head of the unhappy woman, buried for ever in its sludgy bed the mystery of the golden llama.