The Silver Bullet. Fergus Hume

       CHAPTER I

      THE HOUSE IN THE PINE WOOD

      "We had better lie down and die," said Robin peevishly. "I can't go a step further," and to emphasise his words he deliberately sat.

      "Infernal little duffer," growled Herrick. "Huh! Might have guessed you would Joyce." He threw himself down beside his companion and continued grumbling. "You have tobacco, a fine night, and a heather couch of the finest, yet you talk as though the world were coming to an end."

      "I'm sure this moor never will," sighed Joyce, reminded of his cigarettes, "we have been trudging it since eight in the morning, yet it still stretches to the back-of-beyond. Hai!"

      The pedestrians were pronouncedly isolated. A moonless sky thickly jewelled with stars, arched over a treeless moor, far-stretching as the plain of Shinar. In the luminous summer twilight, the eye could see for a moderate distance, but to no clearly defined horizon; and the verge of sight was limited by vague shadows, hardly definite enough to be mists.

      The moor exhaled the noonday heats in thin white vapour, which shut out from the external world those who nestled to its bosom. A sense of solitude, the brooding silence, the formless surroundings, and above all, the insistence of the infinite, would have appealed on ordinary occasions to the poetical and superstitious side of Robin's nature. But at the moment, his nerves were uppermost. He was worn-out, fractious as a child, and in his helplessness could have cried like one. Herrick knew his friend's frail physique and inherited neurosis: therefore he forebore to make bad worse by ill advised sympathy. Judiciously waiting until Joyce had in some degree soothed himself with tobacco, he talked of the common-place.

      "Nine o'clock," said he peering at his watch; "thirteen hour's walking. Nothing to me Robin, but a goodish stretch to you. However we are within hail of civilization, and in England. A few miles further we'll pick up a village of sorts no doubt. One would think you were exploiting Africa the way you howl."

      He spoke thus callously, in order to brace his friend; but Joyce resented the tone with that exaggerated sense of injury peculiar to the neurotic. "I am no Hercules like you Jim," he protested sullenly; "all your finer feelings have been blunted by beef and beer. You can't feel things as I do. Also," continued Robin still more querulously, "it seems to have escaped your memory, that I returned only last night from a two day's visit to Town."

      "If you _will_ break up your holiday into fragments, you must not expect to receive the benefit its enjoyment as a whole would give you. It was jolly enough last week sauntering through the Midlands, till you larked up to London, and fagged yourself with its detestable civilization."

      Joyce threw aside his cigarette and nervously began to roll another. "It was no lark which took me up Jim. The letter that came to the Southberry Inn was about--her business."

      "Sorry old man. I keep forgetting your troubles. Heat and the want of food make me savage. We'll rest here for a time, and then push on. Not that a night in the open would matter to me."

      Joyce made no reply but lying full length on the dry herbage, stared at the scintillating sky. At his elbow, Herrick, cross-legged like a fakir, gave himself up to the enjoyment of a disreputable pipe. The more highly-strung man considered the circumstances which had placed him where he was.

      Two months previously, Robin Joyce had lost his mother, to whom he had been devotedly attached: and the consequent grief had made a wreck of him. For weeks he had shut himself up in the flat once brightened by her presence to luxuriate in woe. He possessed in a large degree that instinct for martyrdom, latent in many people, which searches for sorrow, as a more joyous nature hunts for pleasure. The blow of Mrs. Joyce's death had fallen unexpectedly, but it brought home to Robin, the knowledge--strange as it may sound--that a mental pleasure can be plucked from misfortune. He locked himself in his room, wept much, and ate little; neglected his business of contributor to several newspapers, and his personal appearance. Thus the pain of his loss merged itself in that delight of self-mortification, which must have been experienced by the hermits of the Thebiad. Not entirely from religious motives was the desert made populous with hermits in the days of Cyril and Hypatia.

      Herrick did not realize this transcendental indulgence, nor would he have understood it, had he done so. Emphatically a sane man, he would have deemed it a weakness degrading to the will, if not a species of lunacy. As it was, he merely saw that Robin yielded to an unrestrained grief detrimental to his health, and insisted upon carrying him off for a spell in the open air. With less trouble than he anticipated, Robin's consent was obtained. The mourner threw himself with ardour into the scheme, selected the county of Berks as the most inviting for a ramble; and when fairly started, showed a power of endurance amazing in one so frail.

      Jim however being a doctor, was less astonished than a layman would have been. He knew that in Joyce a tremendous nerve power dominated the feebler muscular force, and that the man would go on like a blood-horse until he dropped from sheer exhaustion. The collapse on the moor did not surprise him. He only wondered that Robin had held out for so many days.

      "But I wish you had not gone to London," said Herrick pursuing aloud this train of thought.

      "I had to go," replied Joyce not troubling to query the remark. "The lawyer wrote about my poor mother's property. In my sorrow, I had neglected to look after it, but at Southberry Junction feeling better, thanks to your open air cure, I thought it wise to attend to the matter."

      Then Joyce went on to state with much detail, how he had caught the Paddington express at Marleigh--their last stopping place--and had seen his lawyer. The business took some time to settle; but it resulted in the knowledge that Joyce found himself possessed of five hundred a year in Consols. "Also the flat and the furniture," said Robin, "so I am not so badly off. I can devote myself wholly to novels now, and shall not have to rack my brains for newspaper articles."

      Herrick nodded over a newly-filled pipe. "Did you sleep at the flat?"

      "No, I went up on Tuesday as you know, and slept that night at the Hull Hotel, a small house in one of the Strand side streets. Last night, I joined you at Southberry."

      "And it is now Thursday," said Herrick laughing. "How particular you are as to detail Robin.

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