



Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the
Hathi Trust (The Ohio State University)










Transcriber's Notes:
   1. Page scan source:
   https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435001496009;
   (The Ohio State University)






THE SILVER BULLET






---------------------------
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE SILENT HOUSE IN PIMLICO
THE BISHOP'S SECRET
THE CRIMSON CRYPTOGRAM
THE GOLDEN WANG-HO
THE TURNPIKE HOUSE
A TRAITOR IN LONDON
WOMAN--THE SPHINX
THE JADE EYE

----------------------------
John Long, Publisher, London






THE SILVER BULLET


BY
FERGUS HUME



London
John Long
13 & 14 Norris Street, Haymarket






THE SILVER BULLET




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