I AM an unromantic man, and I have never been blessed — or shall I say cursed? — with very much imagination. Early in my career I accepted the fact that in life it is the unexpected which most frequently happens, and therefore I never devoted much of my leisure to anticipations of the future, and I never brooded or worried over the past, because I looked upon that as sheer waste of time.

       I was happy and contented with my lot. I had had a comparatively uneventful yesterday; I was enjoying a comfortable and prosperous to-day; and I had sufficient confidence in to-morrow to leave myself unreservedly in its hands.

       I had my business to attend to in the daytime, and it was a business which showed a handsome margin of profit at the end of every year, when the balance-sheet was made out and sent to my partner, who had long since retired from active share in the direction of the concern. He was many years my senior, and had only one son, an eccentric young fellow who was always taking up some new craze or other, and who would have been about as much use in the wholesale poultry business as a balloonist in a submarine diving operation.

       Having the entire control of the business, it necessarily required my constant personal attention, and every weekday morning, with rare exceptions, I left home before five o'clock for Leadenhall Market, where my firm had carried on business as poultry salesmen for close upon half a century. My father and my present sleeping partner had founded the firm, and my share had come to me by inheritance at my father's death, some few years previous to the date at which this narrative commences.

       Perhaps it was the early rising coupled with the matter-of-fact surroundings of Leadenhall Market that had prevented me ever developing the imaginative faculty. It was the profitable nature of the poultry business, undoubtedly, which made me so contented with my lot in life and prevented me speculating on the future.

       It was not only on my business circumstances that I had reason to congratulate myself, but on my domestic circumstances also. I had the most charming wife that a man could desire to grace a substantial, well-built, elegantly furnished house, with large garden in the rear, conveniently situated within easy distance of the City, with which the neighbourhood was connected by admirable train, tram, and omnibus services.

       The services were not of much use to me at five a.m., but they were there, and I did not feel their lack of matutinal activity because I drove myself to and from the market in fine weather in my own dogcart, and was driven in bad weather in my own brougham.

       You can picture me pretty well to yourselves now; a healthy, prosperous poultry salesman of regular habits, five-and-thirty years of age, inclined to be stout, without a care in the world, and blessed with a charming and amiable wife of eight-and-twenty, and no children; fond of pottering about in the garden after business hours, and nowhere so happy as in my own easy-chair after dinner, with my wife opposite to me, a cigar in my mouth, and a nice, quiet, soothing book with a simple plot and plenty of moral sentiment open on my knee. If the book conduced to the forty winks which it was my invariable custom to take about eight o'clock, all the better. Having pictured me thus, you will agree with me that I was the last man in the world who could have reasonably expected to find himself suddenly mixed up in a domestic romance of melodramatic intensity.

       But the romance came.

       The 1st of December was my wife's birthday. According to custom, we celebrated this event by inviting my mother-in-law to dine with us. On this occasion there was an extra guest, my partner's son, Mr. Lancelot Silverthorne. My wife's mother was a quiet, rather melancholy old lady, who lived in Yorkshire, and only came to town twice a year. Her winter visit was generally timed so that she spent her daughter's birthday with us. She never stayed at our house, although frequently pressed to do so, but took rooms at an old-fashioned hotel near King's Cross railway station.

       I had met my wife some four years previously at a Scarborough hotel, where she and her mother — a widow were staying for the benefit of the old lady's health. I was taking my autumn holiday, and finding Miss Ormthwaite a charming, unaffected girl, I had gradually fallen in love with her. Before my month's holiday had expired I had progressed so well that I was her accepted suitor. Some months later, at Christmas time, I went down to Leeds, where the Ormthwaites resided in a pretty little house about a mile out of the town, and we were married. There was no romance about either the courtship or the wedding, but we were genuinely attached to each other in our quiet way, and I had never regretted my choice. Lucinda Ormthwaite was a most agreeable sweetheart, and Lucinda Smith was the most agreeable of wives. She was, I understood, a lady by birth. I knew that she was highly educated, and she had evidently been accustomed to the surroundings of wealth and position. But she accepted me — plain John Smith — my poultry business, and my five o'clock in the morning departures from home, without a murmur, and our married life was one of perfect peace and mutual regard.

       Our little birthday dinners had always been quite uneventful family affairs, but on this occasion the presence of Mr. Lancelot Silverthorne led to an entirely new departure.

       The son of my sleeping partner had as his latest craze taken up the subject of hypnotism. To me the word had never suggested anything but the experiments I had occasionally witnessed in small halls, where young men of eccentric appearance had eaten candles and drunk lamp oil at the bidding of the lecturer, who had put them to sleep by passing his hands across their faces and touching; their eyelids with his thumbs. I had always believed that the entire business was humbug, and I was very much astonished when Mr. Silverthorne assured us that it was a great scientific fact.

       He had, it seems, himself developed the hypnotic power, and after dinner he offered to put my wife into an hypnotic trance. I objected to anything of the sort. I didn't want my wife to do anything so undignified as to eat candles or to drink paraffin oil. He then invited my wife and my mother-in-law to come to his chambers one day and witness some experiments which he was making with certain "subjects" he had secured; but I shook my head, and the invitation was politely declined.

       The old lady, however, seemed interested. She put many questions. Why had Mr. Silverthorne imagined that my wife would be a subject? Was it true that in the hypnotic condition subjects could see things that were hidden from ordinary vision?

       Mr. Silverthorne replied by giving details of many interesting s&eeacute;ances at which he had assisted. It was a fact, he assured us, that crime had even been discovered by hypnotic agency, and in one of the great hospitals of Paris a famous doctor had hypnotised a patient, and compelled her to "reconstitute" the scene of a terrible murder which had for years been a mystery, and had completely baffled the French detectives. My mother-in-law accepted everything as gospel — and so, apparently, did my wife. I shrugged my shoulders, and began to feel drowsy. The subject was beyond me, and having dined well, and having a busy day before me on the morrow at the market, I had no desire to bother my brains with other people's crimes, or with experiments which, if genuine, I considered an impious attempt to encroach upon the domain of a Higher Power.

       It was with great difficulty I prevented myself from yawning, and I was greatly relieved when soon after ten my mother-in-law said it was time for her to go, and Mr. Silverthorne offered to escort her as far as her hotel. When our guests had left I and my wife retired for the night. The next morning I left my house at five o'clock. My wife was fast asleep. One of the maidservants had given me my cup of tea, and would, as usual, go back to bed again until eight o'clock, my wife being a late riser. I had got about a mile from home when I recollected that I had left in another coat an important business communication which it was necessary I should have with me that morning at the market. I told my man to drive back as quickly as possible, let myself in with a latchkey, and went quietly upstairs to my bedroom.

       To my intense astonishment, I found my wife had evidently risen and dressed herself and gone downstairs. I looked about in the rooms, but failed to find her. I opened her wardrobe door and found that the sealskin jacket she was in the habit of wearing was no longer there. She had evidently gone out. But where on earth could-she be going at that hour of the morning?

       I have explained that I, have no imagination; I did not, therefore, try to think out any solution of the mystery. T concluded that my wife would tell me all about it when I 'returned that afternoon. I found my letter and wen off to the market.

       But when I returned, to my great surprise my wife never mentioned the subject. I asked her if I disturbed her when I went out that morning. She replied, "No, dear; not at all." That worried me. There was certainly something she wished to conceal from me. I would have asked her point-blank where she had gone to when I came back that morning, but as she wished to keep me in the dark she might easily have replied that sh3 didn't feel very well, and went out for a walk, and I should have been as wise as before.

       So I determined to keep my own counsel and find out for myself.

       For the first time in my married life, I felt unhappy. My wife had a secret from me. However, I tried my best to disguise my feelings, and the evening passed in the ordinary way.

       But that night I wrote a line to my manager telling him not to expect me until later than usual, and the next morning I left home at five o'clock, but dismissed the brougham half-way, saying I would walk. As soon as the brougham was out of sight I set out to walk back. It was six when I let myself in. My wife was not in her room. I couldn't wait in the house for her return, because I wished to find out for myself, if possible, what was going on, and avoid giving my wife an opportunity of telling a story to pacify me.

       Nearly opposite our house was one which was to let. There was no one in it. The keys were at the house agent's, and had to be applied for. I went outside, and seeing that no one was about, I climbed over the wall, got into the garden, and then lifted the little trap-door let into the garden gate to enable a servant to see who was outside before opening it; and I set myself to watch my own premises.

       In about an hour — shortly after seven o'clock — my wife returned and let herself in. The servants would not be up. She would, I presumed, go upstairs to bed again, and no one in the house would know that its mistress had left it and returned to it secretly.

       As soon as I had seen her go in I scaled the garden wall, walked to the railway station, and caught a workman's train to the city.

       I was now in a state of complete bewilderment. Several times during the day I asked myself if I was dreaming, or if this unpleasant romance, this "penny novelette" mystery, had really come suddenly into my commonplace existence.

       I felt that it was entirely out of place in the career of a prosperous poultry salesman, and I bitterly resented it.

       But I still kept my own counsel, and having made arrangements which would allow my business to be carried on for a time in my absence, I determined to devote myself to this mysterious affair.

       I knew that it was entirely out of my line, so I went to a firm of private inquiry agents, of whose honesty and straightforwardness I had heard through a salesman in the market who had employed them in divorce proceedings, and I got them to take the matter up for me. All I asked them to do was to ascertain where the lady who left my house early in the morning went to. Immediately their detective had ascertained, he was to come to me at a certain spot about a quarter of a mile from my home, where I would wait for him.

.       .       .       .       .       .      .

       It was eight o'clock, and a foggy December morning, when the detective made his first communication.

       Immediately upon my departure my wife had left the house and had gone into a square some little distance away, where a four-wheeled cab was waiting. Inside the cab was a tall, military-looking man of about sixty, clean-shaven, handsome, and with iron-grey hair. Directly my wife" had entered the cab it had driven rapidly away. The detective had then returned to keep watch on the house. The cab had come back to the corner of our road, which was a very quiet one, about half an hour afterwards. My wife had got out of it, walked rapidly to the house, and let herself in.

       The information horrified me. I could not suspect my wife of any wrong, and yet what honest motive could she have in meeting another man at an hour when no one was about, and when she knew that her absence from home would be unnoticed?

       At the earnest request of the detective, who told me that the only possible way to master the mystery would be for me to conceal my suspicions, I agreed to ask my wife no questions. But the restraint was intolerable. I could not sit opposite her evening after evening, lie by her side night after night, and pretend to feel towards her as I always had done.

       When for several days the detective had nothing to report, my wife not having left the house, and all attempts to trace the cabman having failed (the detective had not been able to get near enough to take the number in the bad light of a December morning, for fear of attracting observation), I began to feel seriously ill. I was no longer able to attend properly to my business; my sleep was feverish and unrefreshing; and my home had grown hateful to me. A fortnight before Christmas the detective suggested that I should make my ill-health an excuse and go away. He believed that my absence would bring things to a climax. I agreed, for I was really glad to get away from everything and everybody. I told my wife that I was going for a sea voyage with a friend. To my surprise, she offered no objection, although she quite understood I could not be back until after Christmas. I felt sure that she was really glad to think that I should be out of the way; and with a heavy heart I left home, ostensibly to take a trip to Algiers. But instead of going to Algiers I went only as far as Southampton, and there awaited the course of events.

.       .       .       .       .       .      .

       It was the afternoon of the 24th of December. Up till then all the news I had had from London was that my wife had ceased to leave home early in the morning. It was conjectured that in some way she had got an idea that her early excursions had attracted attention. She now went out after nightfall. Her mother had left the hotel at King's Cross, and was living in the house with her. But my wife went out alone and still met the same man, now in one part of London, now in another. No doubt existed in her mind that I was abroad, as by arrangement a cable had been sent from Algiers in my name announcing my safe arrival.

       My wife and this man met only in the street. They walked along conversing anxiously together, and then separated, and my wife returned home.

       On the afternoon of the 24th I received a telegram from the agent. "Return to town at once. Meet me Waterloo. Wire train." A prey to feverish anxiety, but experiencing a feeling of relief that at last I was about to learn something definite, I reached Waterloo about eight o'clock in the evening.

       The agent met me, and explained that he had summoned me because he had managed to overhear the words exchanged by my wife and the mysterious man when they parted the previous evening. He was to come to the house on Christmas Day, at five in the afternoon.

       "I wired you," said the agent, "because you alone can obtain admission while he is there. I could only watch outside until the man left. You can enter, take everybody by surprise and learn the truth."

       "What do you suspect?" I said. "Have you any clue to what it means?"

       "None," was the reply. "It is the most mysterious affair in which I was ever engaged."

       I passed a night of sleepless torture at the hotel to which I proceeded, and soon after eight I rose and went out into the street.

       It was Christmas morning, a day of loving hearts reunited, of family rejoicings, and of peace and good-will; but to me it was as that morning must be to the unhappy wretch who is to be taken from his cell to learn the fate that is in store for him. What should I learn this Christmas Day? What sort of meeting would it be between myself and the woman I loved? What should I have to look forward to for the rest of my life when this Christmas Day had reached its close?

       As I paced the lonely streets in the sharp clear morning air a feeling of intense despair took possession of me. I began to despise myself for the part I was playing. Looking back at the deceit I myself had practised, I wondered how I had ever allowed myself to be persuaded to act so mean a part. I ought to have faced my wife boldly long ago and demanded an explanation, and let the result at once shape my future course.

       But it was too late to go back now, and I must go through with the odious comedy to the end, however terrible that end might be.

       Shortly before five I joined my agent in a spot agreed upon, close to my home, but well out of sight.

       To my intense astonishment, the first person we saw admitted to my residence was my partner's son, Mr. Lancelot Silverthorne. He drove up in a cab, rang the bell, and when the door was opened he assisted to alight from the cab a pale-faced, delicate-looking woman of about thirty.

       A quarter of an hour later a handsome, military-looking elderly man came slowly up the road. This, the detective informed me, was the man my wife had been in the habit of meeting.

       He was admitted. The question then was how long I was to wait until I entered my own house and asked for a key to the mystery.

       The detective suggested that I should wait for an hour, as some of the visitors — my partner's son, for instance, and the young woman — might leave.

       "But Mrs. Ormthwaite," I said, "she will still be there. My wife and this man cannot be alone together — she is there?"

       "I have not seen her for some days; she may be ill in bed," replied my companion. "The visit of those two other people may be an accidental one."

       We waited over half an hour, and then my impatience got the better of me. It was nearly six o'clock. The blinds had been drawn down, and the lights in the front rooms showed through them. "Go now," said the detective.

       I had taken my latch-key away, and had it with me now.

       I went quietly up the steps, leaving the agent to keep watch outside and stop the man if he should try to leave hurriedly.

       I let myself in, and found everything quiet. The servants were probably downstairs in the kitchen. The door at the top of the stairs was closed. The hall gas had not been lighted.

       In the drawing-room, which was opposite the dining-room, on the ground-floor — mine being a double-fronted house — I could hear the sound of voices. I held my breath and listened. Lancelot Silverthorne was speaking.

       "She's off now," her said; "turn the lights out."

       Instantly the light disappeared from under the doorway, and there was intense silence.

       An idea occurred to me. I opened the door softly, until it was a "little ajar. Peering through the crevice into the room, dimly lighted by, a fire which had burnt down to a dull glow, I saw my wife gazing intently at the figure of a woman, who was apparently asleep in an arm-chair. Close by the woman stood Mr. Silverthorne. On a sofa at the far end of the room sat Mrs, Ormthwaite, eagerly bending forward. There was no one else in the room. I looked in vain for the elderly man I had seen enter an hour ago.

       Silverthorne began to speak slowly, with a peculiar decisive intonation.

       "It is Christmas Day," he said, addressing the sleeping figure. "Carry your mind back to Christmas Day seven years ago."

       A sound like a deep sigh escaped from the lips of the woman.

       "You are travelling with a mesmerist as, clairvoyant. You are his subject, and he mesmerises you. You are staying at an inn near Leeds, where you are to perform on the fallowing day. Robert Morton is with you now."

       The sleeping figure raised her hands and cried, "Go — go away! Don't come near me!"

       "This man Morton has a strange influence over you?"

       "Yes, yes; he can make me do what he chooses. Ah! take me away from him! Take me away!"

       "In the afternoon you go out with him for a walk in the country. When it is getting dusk you pass a wood. You hear a man and a woman. Morton pulls you aside with him among the trees, and you listen.

       "The man upbraids the woman, and tells her that he will no longer allow her to blackmail him. He has given her money for years and years, and it has all been squandered in drink. She has made him pay for the folly of his youth all through his manhood, but he will not be followed and molested by her any longer.

       "The woman is mad with drink, and she threatens that unless he gives her money she will come into his house, where his wife and daughter are, and where his guests are assembled to spend Christmas Day, and she will tell them all that she was his mistress years ago, and create a disturbance.

       "The man, evidently warned of her coming, is prepared for it, and at last gives her twenty pounds in gold; and she moves away. He watches her, and then leaves the wood hurriedly — and — and"

       The sleeping woman shuddered, and uttered a cry of terror.

       "And then she is killed by some one. Her body lies in the wood. The next morning Robert Morton goes to the gentleman, whose name he has heard the woman utter in her rage, and tells him that he was in the wood with you — that you both heard the quarrel, and saw him strike the woman with a heavy stick, and beat her about the head with it until she was dead. He repeats the conversation and the demand for money, but offers for a price to hold his tongue and to silence you. The gentleman protests his innocence, but is terribly nervous. He gives Morton money, hardly knowing what to do for the best, and fearing that he may be connected with this tragedy by this man's evidence and yours. Later on Morton writes to him again for money, and received it in an envelope addressed in a woman's hand. He finds that his victim has gone abroad, and he blackmails the wife, who fears for her husband to be dragged into the affair, after his foolish flight has lent colour to the charge."

       "You never saw the gentleman again?"

       "No, no; I never saw him again."

       "But you can see the murder — the cowardly murder in the wood that Christmas Day. You can see the murderer — as he beats the life out of the drunken woman?"

       "Yes, yes. I can see him! I can see! And I dare not move; I am helpless; I see it all!"

       "But it is not the man Morton accused?"

       "No, no! It is Morton himself! The brute! the coward! The woman is drunk; she staggers! then he comes behind her and strikes her till she falls, and snatches the gold from her. She clutches at his coat, and holds him, attempting to cry out. He strikes her hard again and again, until she lies quite still; and then — oh, let me go! for God's sake let me go!"

       The woman trembled violently, and sobbed hysterically in her sleep.

       Watching the scene, I was almost hypnotised myself. I forgot that my wife was there. It was all like some wild dream.

       At that moment Silverthorne came towards the door. I moved back, and stood bewildered against the wall of the hall. Silverthorne went across and opened the dining-room door. "Come," he said. From the room there emerged the elderly man I had seen enter my house. He followed Silverthorne into the drawing-room, and the door was pushed to.

       "Now," I heard Silverthorne say, "I will wake her. When I say 'Now' strike a match and light the gas lamps quickly."

       There was silence for a minute or two, then Silverthorne cried "Now."

       The light shone suddenly under the door, as Silverthorne exclaimed, "Woman, you have confessed that the man who murdered Jane Hexham was Robert Morton. Do you recognise this, man?"

       The woman uttered a wild cry, and I heard a sound of tearful voices.

       I pushed the door wide open in my excitement.

       The woman was at the knees of the elderlv man. Mrs. Ormthwaite was in his arms, and my wife, the tears streaming down her face, was looking towards them, and exclaimed, "Thank God! father — at last — at last!"

       Suddenly her eyes fell upon me. With a little dazed cry, half of terror, half of joy, she threw out her arms towards me, and I rushed forward in time to catch her as she swooned and fell.

.       .       .       .       .       .      .

       That evening, as we sat round the table, too excited, all of us, to do justice to the time-honoured Christmas fare, my newly-found father-in-law explained everything to me.

       Terrified at the undoubted evidence against him, he had fled the country and gone to Australia, it being given out to account for his absence that he had purchased land there, and had gone to look after it.

       The body of the woman was found in the wood, but, the secret of Mr. Ormthwaite's former connection with her being unknown, no one dreamt of associating him with the crime.

       But he was afraid to come back. He felt that by going away he had made the story of his blackmailer more plausible than ever. But at last anxiety to see his wife and daughter brought him back secretly to England.

       He found out that the man had gone on still drawing money from Mrs. Ormthwaite for a time, but later the demands had ceased. He had left the woman, who was earning her living by acting as a subject to hypnotic experimentalists. It was this knowledge that led my wife and her mother to take an intense interest in Mr. Silverthorne's theory of hypnotism. Eventually they made a confidant of him, told him the whole story, and he conceived the idea of getting the woman to the house under pretence of giving a private hypnotic séance.

       My wife had met her father secretly for two reasons. She did not want to distress me by telling me that he was a fugitive accused of murder, and she was terrified lest, if he went about openly during the day, he might by accident be recognised by some one. She did not go to his lodging for fear she might be followed and a link established. Her father himself was anxious to avoid being seen as much as possible, not knowing what information the police might have had given them.

       The unhappy woman who had kept Robert Morton's secret for so many years, terrified at her own share in it, having assured us that the man Morton had died some months ago, we agreed to take no further steps in the matter, but let the ghastly tragedy be forgoten.

       I confessed my doubts and my deceit to my wife, and she forgave me; and the agent, having been suitably rewarded, assured me that I could rely on his discretion.

       That Christmas morning had been the unhappiest of all my life; that Christmas night was the happiest, for it left me with a load of care lifted from my heart, and the knowledge that my dear wife had that day seen the one great sorrow that had clouded her happy wifehood removed for ever.