Produced by Al Haines [Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: He could picture in the next box Cydonia's golden head at just the same angle and in between the narrow velvet curtains barely separating the pair. _See page 93_.] THE MAN WITH THE DOUBLE HEART BY MURIEL HINE (MRS. SIDNEY COXON) LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN : : MCMXIV COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. TO MY MOTHER Some starlit garden grey with dew Some chamber flushed with wine and fire What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire? --_W. L. Henley_. THE MAN WITH THE DOUBLE HEART PART I "Flower o' the broom Take away love and our earth is a tomb!" --_R. Browning_. CHAPTER I The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom. The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees and, shuddering, pressed against the high London buildings which faded away indistinctly into the blackened sky. From thence ragged pennons went busily fluttering South to be caught in the draught of the traffic in noisy Oxford Street, where hoarse and confusing cries were blent with the rumble of wheels in all the pandemonium of man at war with the elements. The air was raw and sooty, difficult to breathe, and McTaggart, already irritable with the nervous tension due to his approaching interview, his throat dry, his eyes smarting as he peered at the wide crossing, started violently as the horn of an unseen motor sounded unpleasantly near at hand. "Confound the man!" he said, in apology to himself and stepped back quickly onto the narrow path as a shapeless monster with eyes of flame swung past, foiled of its prey. "A nice pace to go on a day like this!" And here something struck him sharply in the rear, knocking his hat forward onto the bridge of his nose. "What the...!" he checked his wrath with a sudden shamefaced laugh as he found his unseen adversary to consist of the square railings. Somewhere down Wigmore Street a clock boomed forth the hour. A quarter to twelve. McTaggart counted the strokes and gave a sigh of relief not unmixed with amusement: the secret congratulation of an unpunctual man redeemed by an accident from the error of his ways. Wedging his hat more firmly down on his head, he dared again the black space before him, struck the curb on the opposite side and, one hand against the wall, steered round the corner and up into Harley Street.