The Bottomless Well story

The Bottomless Well story 

 The Bottomless Well

In an oasis, or green island, in the red and yellow seas of sand that 

stretch beyond Europe toward the sunrise, there can be found a rather 

fantastic contrast, which is none the less typical of such a place, since 

international treaties have made it an outpost of the British occupation. 

The site is famous among archaeologists for something that is hardly a 

monument, but merely a hole in the ground. But it is a round shaft, like 

that of a well, and probably a part of some great irrigation works of 

remote and disputed date, perhaps more ancient than anything in that 

ancient land. There is a green fringe of palm and prickly pear round the 

black mouth of the well; but nothing of the upper masonry remains 

except two bulky and battered stones standing like the pillars of a 

gateway of nowhere, in which some of the more transcendental 

archaeologists, in certain moods at moonrise or sunset, think they can 

trace the faint lines of figures or features of more than Babylonian 

monstrosity; while the more rationalistic archaeologists, in the more 

rational hours of daylight, see nothing but two shapeless rocks. It may 

have been noticed, however, that all Englishmen are not archaeologists. 

Many of those assembled in such a place for official and military purposes 

have hobbies other than archaeology. And it is a solemn fact that the 

English in this Eastern exile have contrived to make a small golf links out 

of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortable clubhouse at one end of 

it and this primeval monument at the other. They did not actually use this 

archaic abyss as a bunker, because it was by tradition unfathomable, and 

even for practical purposes unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into 

it might be counted most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered 

round it in their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of 

them had just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazing 

somewhat moodily into the well. 

Both the Englishmen wore light clothes and white pith helmets and 

puggrees, but there, for the most part, their resemblance ended. And 

they both almost simultaneously said the same word, but they said it on 

two totally different notes of the voice. 

"Have you heard the news?" asked the man from the club. "Splendid." "Splendid," replied the man by the well. But the first man pronounced the 

word as a young man might say it about a woman, and the second as an 

old man might say it about the weather, not without sincerity, but 

certainly without fervor. 

And in this the tone of the two men was sufficiently typical of them. The 

first, who was a certain Captain Boyle, was of a bold and boyish type, 

dark, and with a sort of native heat in his face that did not belong to the 

atmosphere of the East, but rather to the ardors and ambitions of the 

West. The other was an older man and certainly an older resident, a 

civilian official--Horne Fisher; and his drooping eyelids and drooping light 

mustache expressed all the paradox of the Englishman in the East. He 

was much too hot to be anything but cool. 

Neither of them thought it necessary to mention what it was that was 

splendid. That would indeed have been superfluous conversation about 

something that everybody knew. The striking victory over a menacing 

combination of Turks and Arabs in the north, won by troops under the 

command of Lord Hastings, the veteran of so many striking victories, was 

already spread by the newspapers all over the Empire, let alone to this 

small garrison so near to the battlefield. 

"Now, no other nation in the world could have done a thing like that," 

cried Captain Boyle, emphatically. 

Horne Fisher was still looking silently into the well; a moment later he 

answered: "We certainly have the art of unmaking mistakes. That's where 

the poor old Prussians went wrong. They could only make mistakes and 

stick to them. There is really a certain talent in unmaking a mistake." 

"What do you mean," asked Boyle, "what mistakes?" 

"Well, everybody knows it looked like biting off more than he could chew," 

replied Horne Fisher. It was a peculiarity of Mr. Fisher that he always said 

that everybody knew things which about one person in two million was 

ever allowed to hear of. "And it was certainly jolly lucky that Travers 

turned up so well in the nick of time. Odd how often the right thing's been 

done for us by the second in command, even when a great man was first 

in command. Like Colborne at Waterloo." 

"It ought to add a whole province to the Empire," observed the other. "Well, I suppose the Zimmernes would have insisted on it as far as the 

canal," observed Fisher, thoughtfully, "though everybody knows adding 

provinces doesn't always pay much nowadays." 

Captain Boyle frowned in a slightly puzzled fashion. Being cloudily 

conscious of never having heard of the Zimmernes in his life, he could 

only remark, stolidly: 

"Well, one can't be a Little Englander." 

Horne Fisher smiled, and he had a pleasant smile. 

"Every man out here is a Little Englander," he said. "He wishes he were 

back in Little England." 

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm afraid," said the younger 

man, rather suspiciously. "One would think you didn't really admire 

Hastings or--or--anything." 

"I admire him no end," replied Fisher. "He's by far the best man for this 

post; he understands the Moslems and can do anything with them. That's 

why I'm all against pushing Travers against him, merely because of this 

last affair." 

"I really don't understand what you're driving at," said the other, frankly. 

"Perhaps it isn't worth understanding," answered Fisher, lightly, "and, 

anyhow, we needn't talk politics. Do you know the Arab legend about that 

well?" 

"I'm afraid I don't know much about Arab legends," said Boyle, rather 

stiffly. 

"That's rather a mistake," replied Fisher, "especially from your point of 

view. Lord Hastings himself is an Arab legend. That is perhaps the very 

greatest thing he really is. If his reputation went it would weaken us all 

over Asia and Africa. Well, the story about that hole in the ground, that 

goes down nobody knows where, has always fascinated me, rather. It's 

Mohammedan in form now, but I shouldn't wonder if the tale is a long 

way older than Mohammed. It's all about somebody they call the Sultan Aladdin, not our friend of the lamp, of course, but rather like him in 

having to do with genii or giants or something of that sort. They say he 

commanded the giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and 

higher above all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said 

when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel 

were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old 

Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven-- a mere 

trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise above it, and 

go on rising for ever and ever. And Allah cast him down to earth with a 

thunderbolt, which sank into the earth, boring a hole deeper and deeper, 

till it made a well that was without a bottom as the tower was to have 

been without a top. And down that inverted tower of darkness the soul of 

the proud Sultan is falling forever and ever." 

"What a queer chap you are," said Boyle. "You talk as if a fellow could 

believe those fables." 

"Perhaps I believe the moral and not the fable," answered Fisher. "But 

here comes Lady Hastings. You know her, I think." 

The clubhouse on the golf links was used, of course, for many other 

purposes besides that of golf. It was the only social center of the garrison 

beside the strictly military headquarters; it had a billiard room and a bar, 

and even an excellent reference library for those officers who were so 

perverse as to take their profession seriously. Among these was the great 

general himself, whose head of silver and face of bronze, like that of a 

brazen eagle, were often to be found bent over the charts and folios of 

the library. The great Lord Hastings believed in science and study, as in 

other severe ideals of life, and had given much paternal advice on the 

point to young Boyle, whose appearances in that place of research were 

rather more intermittent. It was from one of these snatches of study that 

the young man had just come out through the glass doors of the library 

on to the golf links. But, above all, the club was so appointed as to serve 

the social conveniences of ladies at least as much as gentlemen, and Lady 

Hastings was able to play the queen in such a society almost as much as 

in her own ballroom. She was eminently calculated and, as some said, 

eminently inclined to play such a part. She was much younger than her 

husband, an attractive and sometimes dangerously attractive lady; and 

Mr. Horne Fisher looked after her a little sardonically as she swept away 

with the young soldier. Then his rather dreary eye strayed to the green 

and prickly growths round the well, growths of that curious cactus formation in which one thick leaf grows directly out of the other without 

stalk or twig. It gave his fanciful mind a sinister feeling of a blind growth 

without shape or purpose. A flower or shrub in the West grows to the 

blossom which is its crown, and is content. But this was as if hands could 

grow out of hands or legs grow out of legs in a nightmare. "Always adding 

a province to the Empire," he said, with a smile, and then added, more 

sadly, "but I doubt if I was right, after all!" 

A strong but genial voice broke in on his meditations and he looked up 

and smiled, seeing the face of an old friend. The voice was, indeed, rather 

more genial than the face, which was at the first glance decidedly grim. It 

was a typically legal face, with angular jaws and heavy, grizzled 

eyebrows; and it belonged to an eminently legal character, though he was 

now attached in a semimilitary capacity to the police of that wild district. 

Cuthbert Grayne was perhaps more of a criminologist than either a lawyer 

or a policeman, but in his more barbarous surroundings he had proved 

successful in turning himself into a practical combination of all three. The 

discovery of a whole series of strange Oriental crimes stood to his credit. 

But as few people were acquainted with, or attracted to, such a hobby or 

branch of knowledge, his intellectual life was somewhat solitary. Among 

the few exceptions was Horne Fisher, who had a curious capacity for 

talking to almost anybody about almost anything. 

"Studying botany, or is it archaeology?" inquired Grayne. "I shall never 

come to the end of your interests, Fisher. I should say that what you 

don't know isn't worth knowing." 

"You are wrong," replied Fisher, with a very unusual abruptness, and even 

bitterness. "It's what I do know that isn't worth knowing. All the seamy 

side of things, all the secret reasons and rotten motives and bribery and 

blackmail they call politics. I needn't be so proud of having been down all 

these sewers that I should brag about it to the little boys in the street." 

"What do you mean? What's the matter with you?" asked his friend. "I 

never knew you taken like this before." 

"I'm ashamed of myself," replied Fisher. "I've just been throwing cold 

water on the enthusiasms of a boy." 

"Even that explanation is hardly exhaustive," observed the criminal 

expert. "Damned newspaper nonsense the enthusiasms were, of course," 

continued Fisher, "but I ought to know that at that age illusions can be 

ideals. And they're better than the reality, anyhow. But there is one very 

ugly responsibility about jolting a young man out of the rut of the most 

rotten ideal." 

"And what may that be?" inquired his friend. 

"It's very apt to set him off with the same energy in a much worse 

direction," answered Fisher; "a pretty endless sort of direction, a 

bottomless pit as deep as the bottomless well." 

Fisher did not see his friend until a fortnight later, when he found himself 

in the garden at the back of the clubhouse on the opposite side from the 

links, a garden heavily colored and scented with sweet semitropical plants 

in the glow of a desert sunset. Two other men were with him, the third 

being the now celebrated second in command, familiar to everybody as 

Tom Travers, a lean, dark man, who looked older than his years, with a 

furrow in his brow and something morose about the very shape of his 

black mustache. They had just been served with black coffee by the Arab 

now officiating as the temporary servant of the club, though he was a 

figure already familiar, and even famous, as the old servant of the 

general. He went by the name of Said, and was notable among other 

Semites for that unnatural length of his yellow face and height of his 

narrow forehead which is sometimes seen among them, and gave an 

irrational impression of something sinister, in spite of his agreeable smile. 

"I never feel as if I could quite trust that fellow," said Grayne, when the 

man had gone away. "It's very unjust, I take it, for he was certainly 

devoted to Hastings, and saved his life, they say. But Arabs are often like 

that, loyal to one man. I can't help feeling he might cut anybody else's 

throat, and even do it treacherously." 

"Well," said Travers, with a rather sour smile, "so long as he leaves 

Hastings alone the world won't mind much." 

There was a rather embarrassing silence, full of memories of the great 

battle, and then Horne Fisher said, quietly:

 "The newspapers aren't the world, Tom. Don't you worry about them. 

Everybody in your world knows the truth well enough." 

"I think we'd better not talk about the general just now," remarked 

Grayne, "for he's just coming out of the club." 

"He's not coming here," said Fisher. "He's only seeing his wife to the car." 

As he spoke, indeed, the lady came out on the steps of the club, followed 

by her husband, who then went swiftly in front of her to open the garden 

gate. As he did so she turned back and spoke for a moment to a solitary 

man still sitting in a cane chair in the shadow of the doorway, the only 

man left in the deserted club save for the three that lingered in the 

garden. Fisher peered for a moment into the shadow, and saw that it was 

Captain Boyle. 

The next moment, rather to their surprise, the general reappeared and, 

remounting the steps, spoke a word or two to Boyle in his turn. Then he 

signaled to Said, who hurried up with two cups of coffee, and the two 

men re-entered the club, each carrying his cup in his hand. The next 

moment a gleam of white light in the growing darkness showed that the 

electric lamps had been turned on in the library beyond. 

"Coffee and scientific researches," said Travers, grimly. "All the luxuries of 

learning and theoretical research. Well, I must be going, for I have my 

work to do as well." And he got up rather stiffly, saluted his companions, 

and strode away into the dusk. 

"I only hope Boyle is sticking to scientific researches," said Horne Fisher. 

"I'm not very comfortable about him myself. But let's talk about 

something else." 

They talked about something else longer than they probably imagined, 

until the tropical night had come and a splendid moon painted the whole 

scene with silver; but before it was bright enough to see by Fisher had 

already noted that the lights in the library had been abruptly 

extinguished. He waited for the two men to come out by the garden 

entrance, but nobody came. 

"They must have gone for a stroll on the links," he said. "Very possibly," replied Grayne. "It's going to be a beautiful night." 

A moment or two after he had spoken they heard a voice hailing them out 

of the shadow of the clubhouse, and were astonished to perceive Travers 

hurrying toward them, calling out as he came: 

"I shall want your help, you fellows," he cried. "There's something pretty 

bad out on the links." 

They found themselves plunging through the club smoking room and the 

library beyond, in complete darkness, mental as well as material. But 

Horne Fisher, in spite of his affectation of indifference, was a person of a 

curious and almost transcendental sensibility to atmospheres, and he 

already felt the presence of something more than an accident. He collided 

with a piece of furniture in the library, and almost shuddered with the 

shock, for the thing moved as he could never have fancied a piece of 

furniture moving. It seemed to move like a living thing, yielding and yet 

striking back. The next moment Grayne had turned on the lights, and he 

saw he had only stumbled against one of the revolving bookstands that 

had swung round and struck him; but his involuntary recoil had revealed 

to him his own subconscious sense of something mysterious and 

monstrous. There were several of these revolving bookcases standing 

here and there about the library; on one of them stood the two cups of 

coffee, and on another a large open book. It was Budge's book on 

Egyptian hieroglyphics, with colored plates of strange birds and gods, and 

even as he rushed past, he was conscious of something odd about the 

fact that this, and not any work of military science, should be open in that 

place at that moment. He was even conscious of the gap in the well-lined 

bookshelf from which it had been taken, and it seemed almost to gape at 

him in an ugly fashion, like a gap in the teeth of some sinister face. 

A run brought them in a few minutes to the other side of the ground in 

front of the bottomless well, and a few yards from it, in a moonlight 

almost as broad as daylight, they saw what they had come to see. 

The great Lord Hastings lay prone on his face, in a posture in which there 

was a touch of something strange and stiff, with one elbow erect above 

his body, the arm being doubled, and his big, bony hand clutching the 

rank and ragged grass. A few feet away was Boyle, almost as motionless, 

but supported on his hands and knees, and staring at the body. It might 

have been no more than shock and accident; but there was something ungainly and unnatural about the quadrupedal posture and the gaping 

face. It was as if his reason had fled from him. Behind, there was nothing

but the clear blue southern sky, and the beginning of the desert, except 

for the two great broken stones in front of the well. And it was in such a 

light and atmosphere that men could fancy they traced in them enormous 

and evil faces, looking down. 

Horne Fisher stooped and touched the strong hand that was still clutching 

the grass, and it was as cold as a stone. He knelt by the body and was 

busy for a moment applying other tests; then he rose again, and said, 

with a sort of confident despair: 

"Lord Hastings is dead." 

There was a stony silence, and then Travers remarked, gruffly: "This is 

your department, Grayne; I will leave you to question Captain Boyle. I 

can make no sense of what he says." 

Boyle had pulled himself together and risen to his feet, but his face still 

wore an awful expression, making it like a new mask or the face of 

another man. 

"I was looking at the well," he said, "and when I turned he had fallen 

down." 

Grayne's face was very dark. "As you say, this is my affair," he said. "I 

must first ask you to help me carry him to the library and let me examine 

things thoroughly." 

When they had deposited the body in the library, Grayne turned to Fisher 

and said, in a voice that had recovered its fullness and confidence, "I am 

going to lock myself in and make a thorough examination first. I look to 

you to keep in touch with the others and make a preliminary examination 

of Boyle. I will talk to him later. And just telephone to headquarters for a 

policeman, and let him come here at once and stand by till I want him." 

Without more words the great criminal investigator went into the lighted 

library, shutting the door behind him, and Fisher, without replying, turned 

and began to talk quietly to Travers. "It is curious," he said, "that the 

thing should happen just in front of that place." "It would certainly be very curious," replied Travers, "if the place played 

any part in it." 

"I think," replied Fisher, "that the part it didn't play is more curious still." 

And with these apparently meaningless words he turned to the shaken 

Boyle and, taking his arm, began to walk him up and down in the 

moonlight, talking in low tones. 

Dawn had begun to break abrupt and white when Cuthbert Grayne turned 

out the lights in the library and came out on to the links. Fisher was 

lounging about alone, in his listless fashion; but the police messenger for 

whom he had sent was standing at attention in the background. 

"I sent Boyle off with Travers," observed Fisher, carelessly; "he'll look 

after him, and he'd better have some sleep, anyhow." 

"Did you get anything out of him?" asked Grayne. "Did he tell you what 

he and Hastings were doing?" 

"Yes," answered Fisher, "he gave me a pretty clear account, after all. He 

said that after Lady Hastings went off in the car the general asked him to 

take coffee with him in the library and look up a point about local 

antiquities. He himself was beginning to look for Budge's book in one of 

the revolving bookstands when the general found it in one of the 

bookshelves on the wall. After looking at some of the plates they went 

out, it would seem, rather abruptly, on to the links, and walked toward 

the old well; and while Boyle was looking into it he heard a thud behind 

him, and turned round to find the general lying as we found him. He 

himself dropped on his knees to examine the body, and then was 

paralyzed with a sort of terror and could not come nearer to it or touch it. 

But I think very little of that; people caught in a real shock of surprise are 

sometimes found in the queerest postures." 

Grayne wore a grim smile of attention, and said, after a short silence: 

"Well, he hasn't told you many lies. It's really a creditably clear and 

consistent account of what happened, with everything of importance left 

out." 

"Have you discovered anything in there?" asked Fisher. "I have discovered everything," answered Grayne. 

Fisher maintained a somewhat gloomy silence, as the other resumed his 

explanation in quiet and assured tones. 

"You were quite right, Fisher, when you said that young fellow was in 

danger of going down dark ways toward the pit. Whether or no, as you 

fancied, the jolt you gave to his view of the general had anything to do 

with it, he has not been treating the general well for some time. It's an 

unpleasant business, and I don't want to dwell on it; but it's pretty plain 

that his wife was not treating him well, either. I don't know how far it 

went, but it went as far as concealment, anyhow; for when Lady Hastings 

spoke to Boyle it was to tell him she had hidden a note in the Budge book 

in the library. The general overheard, or came somehow to know, and he 

went straight to the book and found it. He confronted Boyle with it, and 

they had a scene, of course. And Boyle was confronted with something 

else; he was confronted with an awful alternative, in which the life of one 

old man meant ruin and his death meant triumph and even happiness." 

"Well," observed Fisher, at last, "I don't blame him for not telling you the 

woman's part of the story. But how do you know about the letter?" 

"I found it on the general's body," answered Grayne, "but I found worse 

things than that. The body had stiffened in the way rather peculiar to 

poisons of a certain Asiatic sort. Then I examined the coffee cups, and I

knew enough chemistry to find poison in the dregs of one of them. Now, 

the General went straight to the bookcase, leaving his cup of coffee on 

the bookstand in the middle of the room. While his back was turned, and 

Boyle was pretending to examine the bookstand, he was left alone with 

the coffee cup. The poison takes about ten minutes to act, and ten 

minutes' walk would bring them to the bottomless well." 

"Yes," remarked Fisher, "and what about the bottomless well?" 

"What has the bottomless well got to do with it?" asked his friend. 

"It has nothing to do with it," replied Fisher. "That is what I find utterly 

confounding and incredible." "And why should that particular hole in the ground have anything to do 

with it?" 

"It is a particular hole in your case," said Fisher. "But I won't insist on 

that just now. By the way, there is another thing I ought to tell you. I said 

I sent Boyle away in charge of Travers. It would be just as true to say I 

sent Travers in charge of Boyle." 

"You don't mean to say you suspect Tom Travers?" cried the other. 

"He was a deal bitterer against the general than Boyle ever was," 

observed Horne Fisher, with a curious indifference. 

"Man, you're not saying what you mean," cried Grayne. "I tell you I found 

the poison in one of the coffee cups." 

"There was always Said, of course," added Fisher, "either for hatred or 

hire. We agreed he was capable of almost anything." 

"And we agreed he was incapable of hurting his master," retorted Grayne. 

"Well, well," said Fisher, amiably, "I dare say you are right; but I should 

just like to have a look at the library and the coffee cups." 

He passed inside, while Grayne turned to the policeman in attendance and 

handed him a scribbled note, to be telegraphed from headquarters. The 

man saluted and hurried off; and Grayne, following his friend into the 

library, found him beside the bookstand in the middle of the room, on 

which were the empty cups. 

"This is where Boyle looked for Budge, or pretended to look for him, 

according to your account," he said. 

As Fisher spoke he bent down in a half-crouching attitude, to look at the 

volumes in the low, revolving shelf, for the whole bookstand was not 

much higher than an ordinary table. The next moment he sprang up as if 

he had been stung. 

"Oh, my God!" he cried. Very few people, if any, had ever seen Mr. Horne Fisher behave as he 

behaved just then. He flashed a glance at the door, saw that the open 

window was nearer, went out of it with a flying leap, as if over a hurdle, 

and went racing across the turf, in the track of the disappearing 

policeman. Grayne, who stood staring after him, soon saw his tall, loose 

figure, returning, restored to all its normal limpness and air of leisure. He 

was fanning himself slowly with a piece of paper, the telegram he had so 

violently intercepted. 

"Lucky I stopped that," he observed. "We must keep this affair as quiet as 

death. Hastings must die of apoplexy or heart disease." 

"What on earth is the trouble?" demanded the other investigator. 

"The trouble is," said Fisher, "that in a few days we should have had a 

very agreeable alternative--of hanging an innocent man or knocking the 

British Empire to hell." 

"Do you mean to say," asked Grayne, "that this infernal crime is not to be 

punished?" 

Fisher looked at him steadily. 

"It is already punished," he said. 

After a moment's pause he went on. "You reconstructed the crime with 

admirable skill, old chap, and nearly all you said was true. Two men with 

two coffee cups did go into the library and did put their cups on the 

bookstand and did go together to the well, and one of them was a 

murderer and had put poison in the other's cup. But it was not done while 

Boyle was looking at the revolving bookcase. He did look at it, though, 

searching for the Budge book with the note in it, but I fancy that Hastings 

had already moved it to the shelves on the wall. It was part of that grim 

game that he should find it first. 

"Now, how does a man search a revolving bookcase? He does not 

generally hop all round it in a squatting attitude, like a frog. He simply 

gives it a touch and makes it revolve." 

He was frowning at the floor as he spoke, and there was a light under his 

heavy lids that was not often seen there. The mysticism that was buried deep under all the cynicism of his experience was awake and moving in 

the depths. His voice took unexpected turns and inflections, almost as if 

two men were speaking. 

"That was what Boyle did; he barely touched the thing, and it went round 

as easily as the world goes round. Yes, very much as the world goes 

round, for the hand that turned it was not his. God, who turns the wheel 

of all the stars, touched that wheel and brought it full circle, that His 

dreadful justice might return." 

"I am beginning," said Grayne, slowly, "to have some hazy and horrible 

idea of what you mean." 

"It is very simple," said Fisher, "when Boyle straightened himself from his 

stooping posture, something had happened which he had not noticed, 

which his enemy had not noticed, which nobody had noticed. The two 

coffee cups had exactly changed places." 

The rocky face of Grayne seemed to have sustained a shock in silence; 

not a line of it altered, but his voice when it came was unexpectedly 

weakened. 

"I see what you mean," he said, "and, as you say, the less said about it 

the better. It was not the lover who tried to get rid of the husband, but--

the other thing. And a tale like that about a man like that would ruin us 

here. Had you any guess of this at the start?" 

"The bottomless well, as I told you," answered Fisher, quietly; "that was 

what stumped me from the start. Not because it had anything to do with 

it, because it had nothing to do with it." 

He paused a moment, as if choosing an approach, and then went on: 

"When a man knows his enemy will be dead in ten minutes, and takes 

him to the edge of an unfathomable pit, he means to throw his body into 

it. What else should he do? A born fool would have the sense to do it, and 

Boyle is not a born fool. Well, why did not Boyle do it? The more I thought 

of it the more I suspected there was some mistake in the murder, so to 

speak. Somebody had taken somebody there to throw him in, and yet he 

was not thrown in. I had already an ugly, unformed idea of some 

substitution or reversal of parts; then I stooped to turn the bookstand myself, by accident, and I instantly knew everything, for I saw the two 

cups revolve once more, like moons in the sky." 

After a pause, Cuthbert Grayne said, "And what are we to say to the 

newspapers?" 

"My friend, Harold March, is coming along from Cairo to-day," said Fisher. 

"He is a very brilliant and successful journalist. But for all that he's a 

thoroughly honorable man, so you must not tell him the truth." 

Half an hour later Fisher was again walking to and fro in front of the 

clubhouse, with Captain Boyle, the latter by this time with a very buffeted 

and bewildered air; perhaps a sadder and a wiser man. 

"What about me, then?" he was saying. "Am I cleared? Am I not going to 

be cleared?" 

"I believe and hope," answered Fisher, "that you are not going to be 

suspected. But you are certainly not going to be cleared. There must be 

no suspicion against him, and therefore no suspicion against you. Any 

suspicion against him, let alone such a story against him, would knock us 

endways from Malta to Mandalay. He was a hero as well as a holy terror 

among the Moslems. Indeed, you might almost call him a Moslem hero in 

the English service. Of course he got on with them partly because of his 

own little dose of Eastern blood; he got it from his mother, the dancer 

from Damascus; everybody knows that." 

"Oh," repeated Boyle, mechanically, staring at him with round eyes, 

"everybody knows that." 

"I dare say there was a touch of it in his jealousy and ferocious 

vengeance," went on Fisher. "But, for all that, the crime would ruin us 

among the Arabs, all the more because it was something like a crime 

against hospitality. It's been hateful for you and it's pretty horrid for me. 

But there are some things that damned well can't be done, and while I'm 

alive that's one of them." 

"What do you mean?" asked Boyle, glancing at him curiously. "Why 

should you, of all people, be so passionate about it?" 

Horne Fisher looked at the young man with a baffling expression. "I suppose," he said, "it's because I'm a Little Englander." 

"I can never make out what you mean by that sort of thing," answered 

Boyle, doubtfully. 

"Do you think England is so little as all that?" said Fisher, with a warmth 

in his cold voice, "that it can't hold a man across a few thousand miles. 

You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's 

practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You 

talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a 

triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has 

gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had 

left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad 

enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's 

no earthly English interest to serve, and all hell beating up against us, 

simply because Nosey Zimmern has lent money to half the Cabinet. It's 

bad enough that an old pawnbroker from Bagdad should make us fight his 

battles; we can't fight with our right hand cut off. Our one score was 

Hastings and his victory, which was really somebody else's victory. Tom 

Travers has to suffer, and so have you." 

Then, after a moment's silence, he pointed toward the bottomless well 

and said, in a quieter tone: 

"I told you that I didn't believe in the philosophy of the Tower of Aladdin. 

I don't believe in the Empire growing until it reaches the sky; I don't 

believe in the Union Jack going up and up eternally like the Tower. But if 

you think I am going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, 

like the bottomless well, down into the blackness of the bottomless pit, 

down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have 

sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were 

blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime 

Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, not if Woodville and Carstairs 

had shares in twenty swindling mines. If the thing is really tottering, God 

help it, it mustn't be we who tip it over." 

Boyle was regarding him with a bewilderment that was almost fear, and 

had even a touch of distaste. "Somehow," he said, "there seems to be something rather horrid about 

the things you know." 

"There is," replied Horne Fisher. "I am not at all pleased with my small 

stock of knowledge and reflection. But as it is partly responsible for your 

not being hanged, I don't know that you need complain of it." 

And, as if a little ashamed of his first boast, he turned and strolled away 

toward the bottomless well.

End