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Ean spoke little to me of these people when they were gone. I felt quite happy that he made no mention of the daughter, Joan. Very foreign to his usual habits, however, he was constantly to and fro between our house and London; and I observed, not without some uneasiness, that he had become a little nervous. This was the more remarkable because he has always been singularly fearless and brave, and ready to risk his own life for others upon the humblest call. At first I thought that he must be out of health, and would have had Dr. Wilcox over to see him; but he always resents my attempts to coddle him (as he calls it), and so I forbore, and tried to find another reason.

There is no one quicker than a sister who loves to detect those ailments of the heart from which no man is free; but I had become convinced by this time that Ean cared nothing for Joan Fordibras, and that her absence abroad was not the cause of his disquietude. Of other reasons, I could name none that might be credibly received. Certainly, money troubles were out of the question, for I know that Ean is very rich. We had at Deepdene none of those petty parochial jealousies which are the cause of conflict in certain quarters. Our lives were quiet, earnest, and simple. What, then, had come to my brother? Happy indeed had I been if I could have answered that question.

The first thing that I noticed was his hesitation to leave me alone at the Manor. For the first time for some years, he declined to attend the annual dinner of his favourite club, the Potters.

“I should not be able to catch the last train down,” he said one morning at breakfast; “impossible, Harriet. I must not go.”

“Why, whatever has come to you, Ean?” said I. “Are you getting anxious about poor old me? My dear boy, just think how often I have been alone here.”

“Yes, but I don’t intend to leave you so much in future. When the reasons make themselves known to me, they shall be known to you, Harriet. Meanwhile, I am going to live at home. The little Jap stops with me. He is coming down from town to-day, so I hope you will make arrangements for him.”

He spoke of his Japanese servant Okyada, whom he brought from Tokio with him three years ago. The little fellow had served him most faithfully at his chambers in the Albany, and I was not displeased to have him down in Suffolk. Ean’s words, however, troubled me greatly, for I imagined that some danger threatened him in London, and a sister’s heart was beating already to discover it.

“Cannot you tell me something, Ean?”

He laughed boyishly, in a way that should have reassured me.

“I will tell you something, Harriet. Do you remember the bronze pearls that were stolen from my flat in Paris more than three years ago?”

“Of course, Ean; I remember them perfectly. How should I forget them? You don’t mean to say⁠——”

“That I have recovered them? No—not quite. But I know where they are.”

“Then you will recover them, Ean?”

“Ah, that is for to-morrow. Let Okyada, by the way, have the room next to my dressing-room. He won’t interfere with my clothes, Harriet. You will still be able to coddle me as much as you please, and, of course, I will always warm the scissors before I cut my nails in winter.”

He was laughing at me again—a little unjustly, perhaps, as I have always believed that influenzas and rheums come to those who allow anything cold to touch the skin—but this is my old womanish fancy, while Ean is not altogether free himself from those amiable weaknesses and fads which take some part in all our lives. He, for instance, must have all his neckties of one colour in a certain drawer; some of his many clothes must go to the press upon one day and others upon the next. He buys great quantities of things from his hosier, and does not wear one half of them. I am always scolding him for walking about the grounds at night in his dress clothes; but he never does so without first warming his cloth cap at the fire, if it be winter. I make mention of these trifles that others may understand how little there is of real weakness in a very lovable, manly, and courageous character. Beyond that, as the world knows well, Ean is one of the greatest linguists and most accomplished scholars in all Europe.

Now, had I been clever, I should have put two and two together and have foreseen that what Ean really feared was another attempt upon the wonderful collection of rare jewels he has made—a collection the existence of which is known to very few people, but is accounted among the most beautiful and rare in the country. Ean keeps his jewels—at least he kept them until recently—in a concealed safe in his own dressing-room, and very seldom was even I permitted to peep into that holy of holies. Here again some eccentricity of a lovable character is to be traced. My brother would as soon have thought of wearing a diamond in his shirt front as of painting his face like an Indian; but these hidden jewels he loved with a rare ardour, and I do truly believe that they had some share in his own scheme of life. When he lost the bronze pearls in Paris, I know that he fretted like a child for a broken toy. It was not their value—not at all. He called them his black angels—in jest, of course—and I think that he believed some of his own good luck went with them.

This was the state of things in the month of May when Okyada, the Japanese, came from London and took up his residence at the Manor. Ean told me nothing; he never referred again to the subject of his lost pearls. Much of his time was spent in his study, where he occupied himself with the book he was writing upon the legends of the Adriatic. His leisure he gave to his motor and his observatory.

I began to believe that whatever anxiety troubled him had passed; and in this belief I should have continued but for the alarming events of which I now write. And this brings me to the middle of the summer—to be exact, the fifteenth day of June in the year 1904.

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Ean, I remember, had come in from a little trip to Cambridge about five o’clock in the afternoon. We had tea together, and afterwards he called his servant, Okyada, to the study, and they were closeted there almost until dinner time. In the drawing-room later on, Ean proved to be in the brightest of spirits. He spoke, among other things, of some of his deserted hobbies, and expressed regret that he had given up his yacht.

“I’m getting old before my time, Harriet,” he said. “The pantaloon and slippered stage is a tragedy for thirty-three. I think I shall get another boat, sister. If you are good, I will take you to the Adriatic again.”

I promised to be very good; and then, laughing together, we chatted of the old days in Greece and Turkey, of our voyages to South America, and of sunny days in Spain. I had never seen him brighter. When we went to bed he kissed me twice, and then said such an extraordinary thing that I could not help but remember it:

“Okyada and I will be working late in the observatory,” he said; “there may be one or two men about assisting us. Don’t be afraid if you hear a noise, Harriet. You will know it’s all right, and that I am aware of it.”

Now, Ean is so very frank with me usually, looks me so straight in the face, and tells me so plainly what he means, that his evident attempt to conceal something from me upon this occasion, his averted gaze and forced manner, could not but awake my just curiosity. I did not press him at the moment, but in my own room I thought much upon it all, and was quite unable to sleep. Books were of no help to me, nor did my habitual self-composure help me. Recalling his words, and trying to fit a meaning to them, I went more than once to my window and looked out over the pleasure garden beneath it. Deepdene, as many know, is an old Tudor mansion with three sides of its ancient quadrangle still standing. My own rooms are in the right-hand wing; the pleasure garden is below them, and beyond its high wall is the open park which rims right down to the Bury road. Let me ask anyone what my feelings should have been, when chancing to look out over the garden at one o’clock that morning I saw, as plainly as my eyes have ever seen, the figures of three men crouching beneath the wall and evidently as fearful of discovery as I was of their presence.