heard "The Black
Mass" played by anyone else; indeed, I am not aware that it was ever
published. But had it been we should rarely hear it. Like Locke's music
to "Macbeth" it bears an unpleasant reputation; to include it in any
concert programme would be to court disaster. An idle superstition,
perhaps, but there is much naivete in the artistic temperament.

Men detested Tcheriapin, yet when he chose he could win over his
bitterest enemies. Women followed him as children followed the Pied
Piper; he courted none, but was courted by all. He would glance aside
with those black, slanting eyes, shrug in his insolent fashion, and
turn away. And they would follow. God knows how many of them
followed--whether through the dens of Limehouse or the more fashionable
salons of vice in the West End--they followed--perhaps down to Hell. So
much for Tcheriapin.

At the time when the episode occurred to which I have referred, Dr.
Kreener occupied a house in Regent's Park, to which, when his duties at
the munition works allowed, he would sometimes retire at week-ends.
He was a man of complex personality. I think no one ever knew him
thoroughly; indeed, I doubt if he knew himself.

He was hail-fellow-well-met with the painters, sculptors, poets, and
social reformers who have made of Soho a new Mecca. No movement in
art was so modern that Dr. Kreener was not conversant with it; no
development in Bolshevism so violent or so secret that Dr. Kreener could
not speak of it complacently and with inside knowledge.

These were his Bohemian friends, these dreamers and schemers. Of this
side of his life his scientific colleagues knew little or nothing, but
in his hours of leisure at Regent's Park it was with these dreamers
that he loved to surround himself rather than with his brethren of the
laboratory. I think if Dr. Kreener had not been a great chemist he would
have been a great painter, or perhaps a politician, or even a poet.
Triumph was his birthright, and the fruits for which lesser men reached
out in vain fell ripe into his hands.

The favourite meeting-place for these oddly assorted boon companions
was the doctor's laboratory, which was divided from the house by a
moderately large garden. Here on a Sunday evening one might meet the
very "latest" composer, the sculptor bringing a new "message," or
the man destined to supplant with the ballet the time-worn operatic
tradition.

But while some of these would come and go, so that one coul