All things that we ordained festival

Turn from their office to black funeral;

Our instruments to melancholy bells;

Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;

And all things change them to the contrary.

Romeo and Juliet.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood in a finely wooded street before an open gateway guarded by a policeman. Showing his badge, he passed in, and entered a long and slightly curved driveway. As he did so, he took a glance at the house. It was not as pretentious as he expected, but infinitely more inviting. Low and rambling, covered with vines, and nestling amid shrubbery which even in winter gave it a habitable air, it looked as much the abode of comfort as of luxury, and gave — in outward appearance at least — no hint of the dark shadow which had so lately fallen across it.

The ceremonies had been set for three o’clock, and it was now half past two. As Sweetwater reached the head of the driveway, he saw the first of a long file of carriages approaching up the street.

“Lucky that my business takes me to the stable,” thought he. “What is the coachman’s name? I ought to remember it. Ah — Zadok! Zadok Brown. There’s a combination for you!”

He had reached this point in his soliloquy (a bad habit of his, for it sometimes took audible expression) when he ran against another policeman set to guard the side door. A moment’s parley, and he left this man behind; but not before he had noted this door and the wide and hospitable verandah which separated it from the driveway.

“I am willing to go all odds that I shall find that verandah the most interesting part of the house,” he remarked, in quiet conviction, to himself, as he noted its nearness to the stable and the ease with which one could step from it into a vehicle passing down the driveway.

It had another point of interest, or, rather the wing had to which it was attached. As his eye travelled back across this wing, in his lively walk towards the stable, he caught a passing glimpse of a nurse’s face and figure in one of its upper windows. This located the sick chamber, and unconsciously he hushed his step and moved with the greatest caution, though he knew that this sickness was not one of the nerves, and that the loudest sound would fail to reach ears lapsed in a blessed, if alarming, unconsciousness.

Once around the corner, he resumed a more natural pace, and perceiving that the stable-door was closed but that a window well up the garden side was open, he cast a look towards the kitchen windows at his back, and, encountering no watchful eye, stepped up to the former one and peered in.

A man sat with his back to him, polishing a bit of harness. This was probably Zadok, the coachman. As his interest was less with him than with the stalls beyond, he let his eye travel on in their direction, when he suddenly experienced a momentary confusion by observing the head and shoulders of Hexford leaning towards him from an opposite window — in much the same fashion, and certainly with exactly the same intent, as himself. As their glances crossed, both flushed and drew back, only to return again, each to his several peep-hole. Neither meant to lose the advantage of the moment. Both had heard of the grey horse and wished to identify it; Hexford for his own satisfaction, Sweetwater as the first link of the chain leading him into the mysterious course mapped out for him by fate. That each was more or less under the surveillance of the other did not trouble either.

There were three stalls, and in each stall a horse stamped and fidgeted. Only one held their attention. This was a mare on the extreme left, a large grey animal with a curious black patch on its near shoulder. The faces of both men changed as they recognised this distinguishing mark, and instinctively their eyes met across the width of the open space separating them. Hexford’s finger rose to his mouth, but Sweetwater needed no such hint. He stood, silent as his own shadow, while the coachman rubbed away with less and less purpose, until his hands stood quite still and his whole figure drooped in irresistible despondency. As he raised his face, moved perhaps by that sense of a watchful presence to which all of us are more or less susceptible, they were both surprised to see tears on it. The next instant he had started to his feet and the bit of harness had rattled from his hands to the floor.

“Who are you?” he asked, with a touch of anger, quite natural under the circumstances. “Can’t you come in by the door, and not creep sneaking up to take a man at disadvantage?”

As he spoke, he dashed away the tears with which his cheeks were still wet.

“I thought a heap of my young mistress,” he added, in evident apology for this display of what such men call weakness. “I didn’t know that it was in me to cry for anything, but I find that I can cry for her.”

Hexford left his window, and Sweetwater slid from his; next minute they met at the stable door.

“Had luck?” whispered the local officer.

“Enough to bring me here,” acknowledged the other.

“Do you mean to this house or to this stable?”

“To this stable.”

“Have you heard that the horse was out that night?”

“Yes, she was out.”

“Who driving?”

“Ah, that’s the question!”

“This man can’t tell you.”

A jerk of Hexford’s thumb in Zadok’s direction emphasised this statement.

“But I’m going to talk to him, for all that.”

“He wasn’t here that night; he was at a dance. He only knows that the mare was out.”

“But I’m going to talk to him.”

“May I come in, too? I’ll not interrupt. I’ve just fifteen minutes to spare.”

“You can do as you please. I’ve nothing to hide — from you, at any rate.”

Which wasn’t quite true; but Sweetwater wasn’t a stickler for truth, except in the statements he gave his superiors.

Hexford threw open the stable-door, and they both walked in. The coachman was not visible, but they could hear him moving about above, grumbling to himself in none too encouraging a way.

Evidently he was in no mood for visitors.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” he called out, as their steps sounded on the hardwood floor.

Hexford sauntered over to the stalls. Sweetwater stopped near the doorway and glanced very carefully about him. Nothing seemed to escape his eye. He even took the trouble to peer into a waste-bin, and was just on the point of lifting down a bit of broken bottle from an open cupboard when Brown appeared on the staircase, dresse............