Ch. 6: Hard As Nails - Page 2

object to their thus occupying their leisure with chronological research.

If they feel at all baffled by the difficulties of the problem, I will give them an additional 'light': Since that year there has been no weather like it.

Answers may be sent to the Puzzle Editor of Truth.

Day by day Philippa grew better and better. This appears to be the usual result, of excessively seasonable weather acting on a constitution previously undermined by bigamy, murder, and similar excesses.

I spare all technical summary of the case, sufficient to say that this was one of the rare instances in which the mind, totally unhinged, is restored to its balance by sixty drops of laudanum taken fasting, with a squeeze of lemon, after violent exercise on an empty stomach.

The case is almost unique; but, had things fallen out otherwise, this story could never have been got ready in time to romp in before the other Christmas Annuals.

Matters would have become really too complicated!

As Philippa recovered, it became more and more evident even to the most dilatory mind that the sooner she left the scene of her late unrehearsed performance the better.

The baronet had not yet been missed--indeed, he never was missed, and that is one of the very most remarkable points in the whole affair.

When he did come to be missed, however, he would naturally be sought for in the neighbourhood of the most recent and attractive of his wives.

That wife was Philippa.

Everything pointed to instant flight.

But how was I to get Philippa to see this? Ex hypothesi she knew nothing of the murder. On the other hand, all her pure, though passionate nature would revolt against sharing my home longer than was necessary. But would not the same purity prevent her from accompanying me abroad?

Brother and sister we had called ourselves but Philippa had never been the dupe of this terminology.

Besides, was not her position, in any case, just a little shady?

An idea now occurred to me for the first time. Many men would long ere now have asked their mothers to chaperon them. It flashed across me that I had a mother.

He who says 'mother' says 'chaperon.'

I would take my Philippa to my mother. Philippa was now completely convalescent.

I can only attribute my lingering to the sense of fatality that all things would come round and be all square.

Love I had laid aside till I could see my way a little clearer in the certainly perplexing combination of circumstances. Nevertheless, Philippa, I say it advisedly, seemed to me a good deal more pure and innocent than when we first met. True, she had been secretly married to a man under a name which she knew to be false.

True, she had given birth to a baby whose later fate remains a mystery even to this day. True, her hands were stained with the blood of Sir