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If . . . Then
Oxford Studies in Digital Politics
Series Editor: Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Communication in the Centre
for Research in Communication and Culture and the Department of Social Sciences,
Loughborough University
Using Technology, Building Democracy:
Digital Campaigning and the
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and Power
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The Only Constant Is Change: Technology,
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Tweeting to Power: The Social Media
Revolution in American Politics
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The Digital Origins of Dictatorship
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Digital Cities: The Internet and the
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Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits
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Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State
in the Digital Age
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Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics
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The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion
in the Social Media Age
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Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age
Jennifer Stromer-Galley
News on the Internet: Information and Citizenship
in the 21st Century
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in a Networked Age
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Networked Publics and Digital
Contention: The Politics of Everyday
Life in Tunisia
Mohamed Zayani
 If . . . Then
ALGOR ITHMIC POWE R A ND P OL I TIC S

TA I N A B U C H E R

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bucher, Taina, author.
Title: If . . . then : algorithmic power and politics / Taina Bucher.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Includes
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Identifiers: LCCN 2017054909 (print) | LCCN 2018008562 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190493042 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190493059 (Epub) |
ISBN 9780190493035 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190493028 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Information technology—Social aspects. | Information
society—Social aspects. | Algorithms—Social aspects. | Big data—Social aspects. |
Artificial intelligence—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HM851 (ebook) | LCC HM851 .B798 2018 (print) |
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LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054909

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 Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1. Introduction: Programmed Sociality 1

2. The Multiplicity of Algorithms 19

3. Neither Black Nor Box: (Un)knowing Algorithms 41

4. Life at the Top: Engineering Participation 66

5. Affective Landscapes: Everyday Encounters with Algorithms 93

6. Programming the News: When Algorithms Come to Matter 118

7. Conclusion: Algorithmic Life 149

Notes 161
Bibliography 175
Index 195

  v
 Acknowledgments

I enjoyed writing this book. The initial idea behind this book started taking shape as
a dissertation at the University of Oslo, but soon evolved into something else en-
tirely, as most things do. I therefore owe a sense of gratitude toward all the efforts I
put into my PhD project. Memories of past struggles greatly lessened the burden of
undertaking and writing my first book. The encouragement and the generosity of
series editor Andrew Chadwick and editor Angela Chnapko at Oxford University
Press were also huge contributions to that end, as well as fundamental in developing
this project. Thanks to both of you for believing it would make a valuable contribu-
tion to the Oxford Studies in Digital Politics series. The book is a product of various
encounters with people, things, and places. It was written in the libraries, offices,
homes and cafés of Copenhagen, Oslo, Berlin, and New York. Writing allowed me
to explore these places in new ways. I’d also like to acknowledge the sunlight, coffee,
sounds, views, connectivity, and solitude that these places helpfully offered. The
University of Copenhagen has provided a rich academic community, and I am
grateful to all my colleagues at the Centre for Communication and Computing for
the intellectual discussions and support. Thanks to Shannon Mattern for hosting
me at the New School in New York for my sabbatical. A number of people have pro-
vided valuable feedback on the book as it emerged: Anne-Britt Gran, Michael Veale,
Angèle Christin, Ganaele Langlois, and Fenwick McKelvey. Thanks for your in-
sightful comments. My appreciation also goes to all people involved in the editorial
process, copyediting, transcription services, and to all the anonymous referees
whose work and critical remarks have greatly improved the final product. There are
countless other scholars and students met at conferences and seminars to thank as
well for their keen interest in my work and their astute suggestions. I hope a collec-
tive word of thanks will be accepted. This book also benefited from insightful inter-
views and conversations with media leaders, producers, and social media users. I am
grateful to all the people who generously agreed to be interviewed and for giving up
their time to help me understand the world of algorithms a bit better.

  vii
viii Acknowledgments

Fragments of this text have been previously published, but are all freshly milled
here. Chapter 4 takes parts from “Want to be on the top?” (New Media & Society).
Chapter 5 builds on pieces from “The algorithmic imaginary” (Information, Commu­
nication & Society) and chapter 6 has adapted sections from “Machines don’t have
instincts” (New Media & Society). Probably there are many more fragments to be
acknowledged, but the boundaries of a text are never easily delineated. Chapter 5
and 6 also benefited from financial support from the Digitization and Diversity
project funded by the Research Council of Norway. Thanks to friends and family for
their patience and support, and especially to my mom who never forgot to mention
that there is more to life than writing a book. More than anyone I am grateful to
Georg Kjøll for his unconditional love, superb editorial skills, music playlists, daily
home-cooked dinners, and companionship; you make living and writing so much
fun each and every day.
If . . . Then
1
Introduction
Programmed Sociality

Let us for a moment consider the following scenario: Copenhagen on a rainy

November day. The semester is coming to a close. Students and professors alike are
stressed, but it is nonetheless a sociable time of the year. Conference trips, essays
to be graded, dinner plans, and Christmas presents in the pipeline. In other words:
buying plane tickets, surfing the Web for restaurant tips, streaming music, coordi-
nating dinner plans with friends, shopping for Christmas gifts, preparing lectures,
watching a movie after work. Besides describing a random day in an academic life,
all these activities imply using the Internet. I found some cheap tickets using a meta-
search engine, discovered a nice restaurant through a collaborative filtering system,
listened to a music playlist suggested to me by a music-streaming site, bought a gift for
my mother at an online designer store, chatted with friends on a social-networking
site to find a suitable time for a pre-Christmas dinner, and, finally, watched an episode
of my favorite TV series on a movie-streaming site.
It is not just a story about the good life of a Scandinavian academic. It suggests a
life deeply entwined with media. Following media theorist Mark Deuze (2012), we
might say that life is not only lived in and through media but in and through specific
types of media. What these activities have in common is a high degree of interaction
with algorithmic media, media whose core function depends on algorithmic opera-
tions. This book starts from the premise that life is not merely infused with media
but increasingly takes place in and through an algorithmic media landscape. Key to
this premise is the notion of the co-production of social life, practices, and technol-
ogy. While people interact with specific media companies and platforms, these plat-
forms interact with people as well. Users do not simply consult websites or talk to
their friends online. Social media and other commercial Web companies recommend,
suggest, and provide users with what their algorithms have predicted to be the most
relevant, hot, or interesting news, books, or movies to watch, buy, and consume.
Platforms act as performative intermediaries that participate in shaping the worlds
they only purport to represent. Facebook is not simply a social networking site that

  1
2 I F . . . THEN

lets users “connect with friends and the world around you.”1 As media scholar José
van Dijck has argued, “Social media are inevitably automated systems that engineer
and manipulate connections” (2013: 12). By the same token, Netflix is not a website
that lets users “see what’s next and watch anytime, cancel anytime.”2 It can’t be seen
as a neutral platform that merely queries its vast database about a user’s request to
show the movies they explicitly want to watch. Relying on vast amounts of data,
Netflix algorithms are used to analyze patterns in people’s taste, to recommend
more of the same. Popularity is not only a quantifiable measure that helps compa-
nies such as Facebook and Netflix to determine relevant content. User input and the
patterns emerging from it are turned into a means of production. What we see is no
longer what we get. What we get is what we did and that is what we see. In the case
that Netflix suggests we watch House of Cards, it is largely a matter of consumers get-
ting back their own processed data. When the show was released in 2013 it quickly
became a cornerstone for data-driven programming, the idea that successful busi-
ness decisions are driven by big data analytics.
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this form of data-driven media
production. After all, it seems, many people enjoy watching the show. The interest-
ing and potentially troubling question is how reliance on data and predictive analyt-
ics might funnel cultural production in particular directions, how individual social
media platforms code and brand specific niches of everyday life (van Dijck, 2013: 22).
Starting from the basic question of how software is shaping the conditions of every-
day life, this book sets out to explore the contours and implications of the question
itself. In what ways can we say that software, and more specifically algorithms, shape
everyday life and networked communication? What indeed, are algorithms and
why should we care about their possible shaping effects to begin with?
Let us quickly return to my rainy November day. While chatting with friends on
Facebook about the pre-Christmas dinner, two rather specific ads appeared on the
right-hand side of my Facebook news feed. One was for a hotel in Lisbon, where I
was going to travel for the conference, and the other was for a party dress. How did
Facebook know about my upcoming trip, or that I had just bought my mother a
Christmas gift from that shop? My musings were only briefly interrupted by one of
my friends asking me about a concert I had recently been to. She had seen a picture
I posted on Facebook from the concert a few days earlier. My other friend won-
dered, why hadn’t she seen the picture? After all, as she remarked, she checks her
Facebook feed all the time. While these connections might be coincidental, their
effects are not incidental. They matter because they affect our encounters with the
world and how we relate to each other. While seeing ads for party dresses in a festive
season might not appear strange, nor missing a picture posted from a concert for
that matter, such programmed forms of sociality are not inconsequential. These mo-
ments are mediated, augmented, produced, and governed by networked systems
powered by software and algorithms. Understood as the coded instructions that a
computer needs to follow to perform a given task, algorithms are deployed to make
 P rog ram m e d S ocial it y 3

decisions, to sort and make meaningfully visible the vast amount of data produced
and available on the Web. Viewed together, these moments tell the story of how
our lives are networked and connected. They hint at the fundamental question
of who or what has power to set the conditions for what can be seen and known
with whatever possible effects. To address this important question, this book
­proposes to consider the power and politics of software and algorithms that con-
dense and construct the conditions for the intelligible and sensible in our current
media environment.
The ideas of power and politics I have in mind are both very broad, yet quite spe-
cific. For one, this book is not going to argue that algorithms have power. Sure, algo-
rithms are powerful, but the ways in which this statement holds true cannot simply
be understood by looking at the coded instructions telling the machine what to do.
Drawing on the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s (1982; 1977) understanding
of power as exercised, relational and productive, I intend to show how the notion of
“algorithmic power” implies much more than the specific algorithm ranking e.g. a
news feed. What I am going to argue is that the notion of algorithmic power may not
even be about the algorithm, in the more technical sense of the term. Power always
takes on many forms, including not only the ways in which it is exercised through
computable instructions, but also through the claims made over algorithms. As such,
we might say that algorithmic systems embody an ensemble of strategies, where
power is immanent to the field of action and situation in question. Furthermore, fol-
lowing Foucault, power helps to produce certain forms of acting and knowing, ulti-
mately pointing to the need for examining power through the kinds of encounters
and orientations algorithmic systems seem to be generative of.
Neither are the “politics” of this book about politics with a capital P. I will not be
discussing parliamentary politics, elections, campaigns, or political communication
in the strictest sense. Rather, politics is understood in more general terms, as ways of
world-making—the practices and capacities entailed in ordering and arranging dif-
ferent ways of being in the world. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology
Studies (STS), politics here is more about the making of certain realities than taking
reality for granted (Mol, 2002; Moser, 2008; Law, 2002). In chapter 2 I will de-
scribe this form of politics of the real, of what gets to be in the world in terms of an
“ontological politics” (Mol, 2002). In ranking, classifying, sorting, predicting, and
processing data, algorithms are political in the sense that they help to make the
world appear in certain ways rather than others. Speaking of algorithmic politics in
this sense, then, refers to the idea that realities are never given but brought into
being and actualized in and through algorithmic systems. In analyzing power and
politics, we need to be attentive of the way in which some realities are always
strengthened while others are weakened, and to recognize the vital role of non-­
humans in co-creating these ways of being in the world. If . . . Then argues that algo-
rithmic power and politics is neither about algorithms determining how the social
world is fabricated nor about what algorithms do per se. Rather it is about how
4 I F . . . THEN

and when different aspects of algorithms and the algorithmic become available to
specific actors, under what circumstance, and who or what gets to be part of how
algorithms are defined.

Programmed Sociality
Increasingly, we have come to rely on algorithms as programmable decision-makers
to manage, curate, and organize the massive amounts of information and data avail-
able on the Web and to do so in a meaningful way. Yet, the nature and implications
of such arrangements are far from clear. What exactly is it that algorithms “do” and
what are the constitutive conditions necessary for them to do what they do? How
are algorithms enlisted as part of situated practices, and how do they operate in dif-
ferent settings? How can we develop a productive and critical inquiry of algorithms
without reducing it to a question of humans versus the machine?
Let’s begin a tentative answer with a conceptual understanding of how software
induces, augments, supports, and produces sociality. Here, I suggest the concept of
programmed sociality as a helpful heuristic device. Through this we might study
algorithmic power and politics as emerging through the specific programmed ar-
rangements of social media platforms, and the activities that are allowed to take
place within those arrangements. Facebook and other software systems support and
shape sociality in ways that are specific to the architecture and material substrate of
the medium in question. To do justice to the concept of programmed sociality, it is
important to highlight that it does not lead us down a pathway of technological de-
terminism. In using the term “programmed,” I draw on computer scientist John von
Neumann’s notion of “program,” for which the term “to program” means to “assem-
ble” and to “organize” (Grier, 1996: 52). This is crucial, as it frames software and
algorithms as dynamic and performative rather than as fixed and static entities.
Regarding “sociality,” I refer to the concept of how different actors belong together
and relate to each other. That is, sociality implies the ways in which entities (both
human and non-human) are associated and gathered together, enabling interaction
between the entities concerned (Latour, 2005). To be concerned with programmed
sociality is to be interested in how actors are articulated in and through computa-
tional means of assembling and organizing, which always already embody certain
norms and values about the social world. To exemplify how algorithmic media
prescribe certain norms, values, and practices, let me describe how programmed
sociality plays out in the specific context of Facebook, by focusing on friendships as
a particularly pertinent form of being together online.
As Facebook has become an integral part of everyday life, providing a venue for
friendships to unfold and be maintained, it is easy to forget just how involved
Facebook is in what we often just take to be interpersonal relationships. Everything
from setting up a profile and connecting with other users to maintaining a network
 P rog ram m e d S ocial it y 5

of friends entails an intimate relation with the software underlying the platform
itself. As van Dijck has pointed out, “what is important to understand about social
network sites is how they activate relational impulses” (2012: 161). It is important
to understand that relationships are activated online, but also how and when they
are activated: by whom, for what purpose, and according to which mechanisms.
With nearly two billion users, many of whom have been members of the plat-
form for many years, most people have long forgotten what it felt like to become a
member, how they became the friend that Facebook wanted them to be. Upon first
registering with the site, the user is instantly faced with the imperative to add friends.
Once a user chooses to set up an account, he is immediately prompted to start filling
in the personal profile template. Users’ identities need to be defined within a fixed
set of standards to be compatible with the algorithmic logic driving social software
systems. If users could freely choose what they wish to say about themselves, there
would be no real comparable or compatible data for the algorithms to process and
work with. Without this orderly existence as part of the databases, our connections
would not make much sense. After all, “data structures and algorithms are two halves
of the ontology of the world according to a computer” (Manovich, 2001: 84).
Being part of databases means more than simply belonging to a collection of data. It
means being part of an ordered space, encoded according to a common scheme
(Dourish, 2014). As Tarleton Gillespie (2014) points out, data always need to be
readied before an algorithm can process them. Categorization is a powerful mech­
anism in making data algorithm-ready. “What the categories are, what belongs in
a category, and who decides how to implement these categories in practice, are all
powerful assertions about how things are and are supposed to be” (Bowker and Star, in
Gillespie, 2014: 171). The template provided by Facebook upon signing in constitutes
only one of many forms of categorization that help make the data algorithm-ready.
The politics of categorization becomes most pertinent in questions concerning
inclusion and exclusion. The recurring conflicts over breastfeeding images and
Facebook’s nudity-detection systems—comprising both algorithms and human
managers—represent a particularly long-lasting debate over censorship and platform
policies (Arthur, 2012). The politics of categorization is not just a matter of restricting
breastfeeding images but one that fundamentally links database architecture and
algorithmic operations to subjectification.
To understand how sociality is programmed—that is, how friendships are pro-
grammatically organized and shaped, let us consider the ways in which the platform
simulates existing notions of friendship. As theorists of friendship have argued,
shared activity and history are important aspects of considering someone a friend
(Helm, 2010). Simulating and augmenting the notion of a shared history, Facebook
provides several tools and techniques dedicated to supporting memory. As poorly
connected or unengaged users pose a threat to the platform’s conditions of exist-
ence, programming reasons for engagement constitutes a key rationale from the
point of view of platforms. On Facebook, connecting users to potential friends
6 I F . . . THEN

p­ rovides the first step in ensuring a loyal user base, because friendships commit.
Functioning as a memory device, algorithms and software features do not merely
help users find friends from their past, they play an important part in maintaining
and cultivating friendships, once formed. As such, a variety of features prompt users
to take certain relational actions, the most well-known being that of notifying users
about a friend’s birthday. While simulating the gesture of phatic communication
represented in congratulating someone on his or her birthday, the birthday-­
reminder feature comes with an added benefit: The birthday feature is the most
basic way of making users return to the platform, by providing a concrete suggestion
for a communicative action to be performed. As I’ve described elsewhere, platforms
like Facebook want users to feel invested in their relationships, so they are continu-
ally coming up with new features and functionalities that remind them of their
social “obligations” as friends (Bucher, 2013).
While the traditional notion of friendship highlights the voluntary and dura-
tional aspects of becoming friends and becoming friends anew (Allan, 1989), the
software, one may claim, functions as a suggestive force encouraging users to connect
and engage with the people in ways that are afforded by and benefit the platform.
From the point of view of critical political economy, sociality and connectivity are
resources that fuel the development of new business models. Platforms do not acti-
vate relational impulses in an effort to be nice. Ultimately, someone benefits finan-
cially from users’ online activities. This is, of course, a familiar story and one that
many scholars have already told in illuminating and engaging ways (see Andrejevic,
2013; Couldry, 2012; Fuchs, 2012; Gehl, 2014; Mansell, 2012; van Dijck, 2013).
From the perspective of companies like Facebook and Google, but also from the
perspective of legacy news media organizations (discussed in chapter 6), algorithms
are ultimately folded into promises of profit and business models. In this sense, a
“good” and well-functioning algorithm is one that creates value, one that makes better
and more efficient predictions, and one that ultimately makes people engage and
return to the platform or news site time and again. The question then becomes:
What are the ways in which a platform sparks enough curiosity, desire, and interest
in users for them to return?
The subtle ways of software can, for example, be seen in the manner in which
Facebook reminds and (re)introduces users to each other. When browsing through
my Facebook news feed it is almost as if the algorithm is saying, “Someone you
haven’t spoken to in five years just liked this,” or, “This person whom you haven’t
heard from in ages, suddenly seems to be up to something fun.” Somehow, I am
nudged into thinking that these updates are important, that I should pay attention
to them, that they are newsworthy. Rather than meaning that friendships on
Facebook are less than voluntary, my claim is that the ways in which we relate to
each other as “friends” is highly mediated and conditioned by algorithmic systems.
People we do not necessarily think about, people we might not remember, or people
we might not even consider friends continue to show up on our personalized news
 P rog ram m e d S ocial it y 7

feeds, as friend suggestions, in birthday reminders, and so forth. While it is often

difficult to recognize how Facebook “actively steers and curates connections” (van
Dijck, 2013: 12), moments of everyday connectivity provide a glimpse into the
ways in which the effects of software might not necessarily feel as incidental as they
might appear to be.
The programmed sociality apparent in Facebook is about more than making
people remember friends from their past with the help of friend-finding algorithms.
From the very beginning, a friendship is formed and the friendship is “put to test.”
From a political economic standpoint, this is very important, as not every friend-
ship is equally valuable. Some relations are more “promising” and “worthwhile”
than others. With more friends than the news feed feature allows for, friendships are
continuously monitored for affinity and activity, which are important measures for
rendering relations visible. Friendships in social media are programmed forms of
sociality precisely because they are continuously measured, valued, and examined
according to some underlying criteria or logic. As this book will show in more detail,
the news feed algorithm plays a powerful role in producing the conditions for the
intelligible and sensible, operating to make certain users more visible at the expense
of others. The Facebook news feed displays an edited view of what one’s friends are
up to, in an order of calculated importance with the most important updates at top
of the feed. Every action and interaction connected to Facebook, be it a status
update, comment on someone’s photo, or “like button” clicked, may become a story
on someone’s news feed. Not every action, however, is of equal importance, nor is
every friend for that matter. Friendships are put to test, because friendships need to
be nurtured and maintained to stand the “test of time.” Algorithms decide which
stories should show up on users’ news feeds, but also, crucially, which friends.
Rachel, a 24-year-old journalist from New York City, whom I interviewed for this
book about her perceptions of algorithms, exclaimed that “Facebook ruins friend-
ships.” With more than seven hundred friends, Rachel says that she is constantly
taken aback by all the information and people Facebook seems to be hiding from
her feed:

So, in that sense, it does feel as if there is only a select group of friends I in-
teract with on the social network, while I’ve practically forgotten about the
hundreds of others I have on there. An example of this is a friend from high
school, who liked one of my posts a few weeks back. I’d totally forgotten
she was even on Facebook until she liked it and we started chatting.

Rachel’s experience is reminiscent of what I mean by programmed sociality, the

notion that social formations and connections are algorithmically conditioned and
governed by the sociotechnical and political-economic configurations of specific
media platforms. Rachel’s worry about Facebook ruining friendship should also
remind us that algorithms need to be understood as powerful gatekeepers, playing
8 I F . . . THEN

an important role in deciding who gets to be seen and heard and whose voices are
considered less important. Programmed sociality, then, is political in the sense that
it is ordered, governed, and shaped in and though software and algorithms. If we
want to consider everyday life in the algorithmic media landscape, we need to pay
attention to the ways in which many of the things we think of as societal—including
friendship—may be expressed, mediated and shaped in technological designs and
how these designs, in turn, shape our social values. As we will see throughout the
book, such considerations, however, do not stop with values in design, but exceed
the purely technical (whatever that is taken to mean) in important ways.
A key argument of this book is that the power and politics of algorithms stems
from how algorithmic systems shape people’s encounters and orientations in the
world. At the same time, I claim that this shaping power cannot be reduced to code.
Specifically, I argue for an understanding of algorithmic power that hinges on the
principle of relational materialism, the idea that algorithms “are no mere props for
performance but parts and parcel of hybrid assemblages endowed with diffused
­personhood and relational agency” (Vannini, 2015: 5). Thus, it is important to
­acknowledge that while we start with the question of how software and algorithms
shape sociality by looking at materiality in the more conventional sense as “proper-
ties of a technology,” the answer cannot be found in these properties alone, but
rather the ways in which programmed sociality is realized as a function of code,
people, and context.

Computable Friendships
The concept of friendship provides an apt example for the understanding of pro-
grammed sociality and algorithmic life, because it shows the discrepancies between
our common-sense notions of friendship and the ways in which friendship becomes
embedded in and modeled by the algorithmic infrastructures. Friendships are
deeply rooted in the human condition as a fundamental aspect of being together
with other people, and which is always already contested based on cultural and his-
torical contexts. Traditionally, friendship has been thought of as an exclusive social
relation, a private and intimate relation between two persons (Aristotle, 2002;
Derrida, 2005; Hays, 1988). For this reason, true friendship has been regarded
as something that one cannot have with many people at the same time, simply
­because it requires time to build, nurture, and maintain. Compared to Aristotle’s
conception of friendship as something rather precious that one cannot have with
many people at once (Aristotle, 2002), Facebook seems to promote the completely
opposite idea.
The way the platform puts friendships at the center of a business model is no
­coincidence, of course, and is probably one of the core reasons Facebook has
evolved into an unprecedented media company during the past decade. In a patent
 P rog ram m e d S ocial it y 9

application filed by Facebook concerning the People You May Know (PYMK) fea-
ture, no doubt is left as to the value of friendships for Facebook: “Social networking
systems value user connections because better-connected users tend to increase
their use of the social networking system, thus increasing user-engagement and
­corresponding increase in, for example, advertising opportunities” (Schultz et al.,
2014). Software intervenes in friendships by suggesting, augmenting, or encourag-
ing certain actions or relational impulses. Furthermore, software is already implicated
in the ways in which the platform imagines and performs friendships. Contrary to the
notion that “friendship clearly exists as a relation between individuals”
(Webb, 2003: 138), friendship on Facebook exists as a relation between multiple
actors, between humans and non-humans alike. As Facebook exemplifies in another
patent document:

[T]he term friend need not require that members actually be friends in
real life (which would generally be the case when one of the members is a
business or other entity); it simply implies a connection in the social net-
work. (Kendall and Zhou, 2010: 2)

The disconnect between how members usually understand friendship and the ways
in which Facebook “understands” friendship becomes obvious in the quote above.
According to Facebook, a user can be “friends” with a Facebook page, a song, a
movie, a business, and so on. While it might seem strange to consider a movie
a friend, this conception of friendship derives from the network model of the Web
in which users and movies are considered “nodes” in the network and the relation-
ship that exists between them an “edge” or, indeed, a friend. Indeed, “the terms
‘user’ and ‘friend’ depend on the frame of reference” (Chen et al. 2014). It is exactly
the different and sometimes conflicting frames of reference that are of interest in
this book. A core contention is that media platforms and their underlying software
and infrastructures contain an important frame of reference for understanding soci-
ality and connectivity today. If we accept that software can have a frame of reference,
a way of seeing and organizing the world, then what does it mean to be a friend
on Facebook or, more precisely, what are friends for, if seen from the perspective of
the platform?
Facebook friendships are, above all, computable. In an age of algorithmic media,
the term algorithmic, used as an adjective, suggests that even friendships are now
subject to “mechanisms that introduce and privilege quantification, proceduraliza-
tion, and automation” (Gillespie, 2016a: 27). Measuring the performance of indi-
viduals and organizations is nothing new, though. As sociologists Espeland and
Sauder (2007) suggest, social measurements and rankings have become a key driver
for modern societies during the past couple of decades. According to philosopher
Ian Hacking, “society became statistical” through the “enumeration of people and
their habits” (1990: 1). Hacking connects the emergence of a statistical society to
Another random document with
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"I only began it in May," he said, "during a fit of insomnia. My mind
was full of scorpions, like Macbeth's, and I think I should have gone
mad if I had not summoned those shadows from the unseen world,
and set myself to anatomize them. It is a bitter book, a story of Fate's
worst irony; and in a better period of English literature—in the day of
Scott, or Dickens and Thackeray—it would have stood no chance of
being widely read. But we have changed all that. This is the day of
cruel books. Most of us have turned our pens into scalpels. And I
think this story of mine is cruel enough to hit the public taste."
"There is nothing that touches your life or mine in it?" Grace asked,
with a touch of alarm.
"No, no, no; not one thought. I wrote it while I was trying to forget
you—and trying still harder to forget myself. The shadows that move
in it bear not the faintest resemblance to you or me. It is a sordid
book, a study of human meanness, and the misery that dull minds
make for themselves: pale-grey miseries that gradually draw to a
focus and deepen to blood-red tragedy. But it has one redeeming
feature—one really good man—a city missionary, humbly born, plain,
self-educated, but a Christ-like character. I should have burnt the
book unfinished but for him. He came to my relief when my story and
I were sinking into a slough of despond."
"You talk as if the web were not of your weaving, as if you had no
power over the figures that move in it."
"I have no such power, Grace. They come to me as mysteriously as
the shadows in a dream, and their spell is strong. I cannot create
them; and I cannot change them."
She wanted him to read his story to her before it was printed; but this
was just the one thing he could not do. He could not imagine himself
reading his own words.
"It would make me hate my work," he said. "Every clumsy phrase,
every banal word, would leap out of the page and gibber at me as I
read. I will bring you the first copy fresh from the press, and when
you have read it you shall tell me afterwards whether I am ever to
write another story."
"You shall write another, and another, and go on writing," she
answered gaily. "You will give me a second world, a world peopled
with strange or lovely creatures—villains as colossal as Milton's
Satan, heroines as innocent as his Eve. My life in the world of your
imagining will be almost as intense as your own. You will give me a
second existence, better than the everyday world. You will tell me
about your dream-people, won't you, Arthur, as they spring into life?"
"The fear is that I shan't be able to refrain from talking of them, to the
other half of my soul."
"You cannot weary the other half by much talking."
"Do you think not? I can imagine a husband's art becoming an
unspeakable bore to his wife."
"Not if she loves him and loves his art."
"Ah, there's the rub."
Lady Perivale was recalled from the shadow-world of the novelist by
the substantial apparition of John Faunce, who arrived unannounced
on a sultry afternoon, and found her sitting in the garden with Mr.
Haldane and Miss Rodney, at a table strewn with all the new
magazines and some of the old poets, in those miniature editions
that so lend themselves to being carried about and not read.
"I thought I might venture to call without notice," said Faunce, "as I
have some rather important news for your ladyship."
"Indeed!"
"A libel—a most audacious libel," said Faunce, taking a paper from
his pocket.
"Where? where? What paper?" Grace and Sue exclaimed excitedly.
"Strange to say, in a society paper of most respectable character,
though of a somewhat limited circulation," replied Faunce; "a paper
which, to my knowledge, has never offended in this manner until now
—the Bon Ton and Cricket Review, a journal printed at Kennington,
and mostly circulated in the South of London."
He handed the paper to Lady Perivale, who turned the leaves
hurriedly, too agitated to read a line for the first few minutes.
It was an eminently proper paper—a paper that told of dances at
Tooting, private theatricals at Norwood, and At Homes at Tulse Hill, a
paper that described dresses and millinery, and gave receipts for
cornflower creams and jellies made without wine, for cleaning kid
gloves and making golden hair-dye. Pages were devoted to the
Oval, and other pages to school cricket. There was the usual short
story of the ultra-smart world. There was a Denmark Hill celebrity at
home. There was everything nice and proper that a Society paper
should have; and there, amidst all this respectability—like a hideous
wen upon a handsome face—appeared three atrocious paragraphs
about Lady Perivale's tête-à-tête tour with Colonel Rannock; the first
setting forth the surprise of the lady's friends on meeting her
travelling alone with a man of dubious character; the second
debating whether the freedom of fin-de-siècle manners would not
permit of any lady travelling with any gentleman without causing
scandal; the third, of a somewhat grosser tone, winding up with a
couplet from Pope:
"Nor Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove,
No, make me mistress to the man I love."
"It's abominable!" cried Grace, flushing crimson, and throwing down
the paper in a rage.
"And you tell me I'm not to horsewhip the scoundrel who wrote that!"
said Haldane, who had read the paragraphs over her shoulder.
"I do—most decidedly," answered Faunce, edging away from him
with an involuntary movement. "We wanted a libel—a gross libel—
and we've got it. We are going to bring an action against the
proprietor of the Bon Ton, but we are not going to put ourselves in
the wrong by assaulting him first. No, sir, we shall proceed against
the proprietor, editor, and printer of the Bon Ton, and we shall ask for
exemplary damages."
"Damages!" exclaimed Grace. "Do you suppose I want the
loathsome creature's money?"
"Why not make it a criminal suit, and send him to prison?" asked
Haldane.
"I think not, sir. Her ladyship's solicitors, Messrs. Harding, have gone
into the matter with me, and we are agreed that a criminal action is
not advisable."
"How does this thing happen to appear so long after the circulation
of the scandal?"
"Ah! that's the question," said Faunce, blandly. "You see, fashionable
gossip takes a considerable time to cross the Thames and filter
down to Tooting. The proprietor—and editor—lives at Tooting, and I
dare say, to his mind, the slander appeared a novelty. I'm glad he
didn't get hold of it sooner, for we should not have been prepared to
deal with the case as we are now."
Miss Rodney had picked up the Bon Ton, and was reading the
paragraphs with a frowning brow.
"How can you look at that atrocious stuff?" cried Grace, snatching
the paper from her and rolling it into a ball for her poodle, who
rushed across the lawn with it and then laid himself down and
proceeded to tear it into shreds with his paws and teeth.
"It's lucky that isn't the only copy in existence, Lady Perivale," said
Faunce.

CHAPTER XIII.
"They draw a nourishment
Out of defamings, grow upon disgraces;
And, when they see a virtue fortified
Strongly above the battery of their tongues,
Oh, how they cast to sink it!"
One of the most interesting cases in the Law Courts that winter was
Perivale v. Brown Smith, a claim of £10,000 damages on account of
a gross libel published in a paper of which the defendant was editor
and proprietor.
Brown Smith pleaded justification, and it was said that he was going
to make a good fight, and that he would produce witnesses who had
met the lady and gentleman on their travels as Mr. and Mrs. Randall.
The case came on late in November, when there were a good many
people in town, staying for the weeks before Christmas, or passing
through; and the court was packed with smart clothes and well-
known faces. Conspicuous among these curious impertinents were
two well-known figures in the little world of Belgravia and Mayfair:
Lady Morningside, whose ample person, clothed in black satin and
chinchilla, filled a considerable space on the privileged seats; and
the spare and wiry form of "the most honourable," her husband, a
man whose weather-beaten countenance, trim whiskers and keen
eye, cut-away coat and Bedford cords, indicated the indomitable
sportsman.
Eye-glasses and opera-glasses glittered across the fog, and the
point to which they were chiefly directed was the figure of Lady
Perivale, in a neat black gown, with cape and toque of Russian
sable, seated in the well of the court, with Arthur Haldane sitting
beside her.
There was much whispering among the eye-glasses about the lady
and her companion.
"She is as handsome as ever," said one; "I was told she had gone off
dreadfully. Rather audacious to bring this action, ain't it?"
"Rather a dangerous move, I should think."
"Oh! she's got Sir Joseph Jalland. He always wins when there's a
pretty woman to orate about. You'll see, he'll make the jury shed
tears."
"What odds will you give me against that fat man in the corner being
the first to weep?"
"Hush! It's going to begin."
Mr. Waltham, Sir Joseph's junior, opened the pleadings in an
undertone, which sent all the picture-hats distracted. They thought
they were losing the fun. And then a thrill ran round the Court as Sir
Joseph Jalland rose in his might, adjusted his pince-nez, trifled with
the leaves of his brief, and then slowly began to unfold his case. The
deep, grave voice made all the aigrets shiver, and every lorgnette
and binocular was turned to him.
"This greatly injured lady—this lady, whose life of blameless purity,
life spent in an exalted sphere—in the sheltered haven of a
congenial marriage, this lady whose spotless character should have
shielded her from the lightest breath of slander, has been made a
target for the salaried traducer of a venomous rag that calls itself a
newspaper, and has been allowed to drivel its poisonous paragraphs
week after week, secure in its insignificance, and a disgrace to the
Press to which it pretends to belong," flinging down the South
London Bon Ton on the desk before him, with a movement of
unutterable loathing, as if his hand recoiled instinctively from the foul
contact. "She has been made the subject of a slander so futile, so
preposterous, that one marvels less at the malice of the writer than
at his imbecility. A woman of gentle birth and exalted position,
hemmed round and protected by all those ceremonial ramparts that
are at once the restraint and privilege of wealth and social status, is
supposed to have roamed the Continent with her paramour, braving
public opinion with the brazen hardihood of the trained courtesan."
This and much more, in its proper place and sequence, did Sir
Joseph's deep voice give to the listening ears of the Court, before he
summoned his first witness, in the person of the plaintiff, Grace
Perivale.
Her evidence was given in a steady voice and with perfect self-
control.
"Did you ever travel on the Continent with Colonel Rannock?"
"Never."
"Were you in Corsica in the January of this year?"
"No."
"Or in Algiers in February?"
"No."
"Will you be so good as to say where you were living during January
and February last?"
"I was at my villa near Porto Maurizio from November last year until
the beginning of April in this year."
Sir Joseph had no more questions to ask. The defendant's counsel
exercised his right to cross-examine the witness, who stood facing
the Court, calm and proud, but deadly pale.
"Were these paragraphs in the—er"—looking at his brief—"Bon Ton,
the first you had heard of a scandal associating your name with
Colonel Rannock's, Lady Perivale?" he asked blandly.
"It was the first time such a scandal had appeared in print."
"But the scandal was not unfamiliar to you?"
"No."
"You had heard of it before?"
"Yes."
"On several occasions?"
"I was told that such a thing had been said."
"And that your friends believed it?"
"Not one!" the witness answered indignantly. "No friend of mine
believed one word of the story!"
She flushed and paled again as she spoke. She shot one involuntary
glance towards the man who was so much more than a friend, and
who had almost believed that slander.
"You will admit, I think, Lady Perivale, that the story had been
common talk for a long time before this society journal got hold of
it?"
"I know nothing about common talk."
"That will do, Lady Perivale," said the counsel.
Lady Perivale's butler and maid were the next witnesses.
They had been with their mistress at Porto Maurizio from November
to April, during which period she had never been absent from the
villa for twenty-four hours.
The defendant's counsel cross-examined both witnesses, and made
a praiseworthy—but unsuccessful—attempt to cast ridicule and
doubt upon the two old servants, whom he tried hard to place before
the jury as overpaid and venal hirelings, willing to perjure themselves
to any extent for their employer. He gratified his professional vanity
by letting off two or three forensic bon-mots, and succeeded in
raising a laugh or two at the expense of the country-bred Abigail and
the dignified London butler; but the endeavour to weaken their
testimony was an ignominious failure.
"That, my lord, would complete my case," said Sir Joseph Jalland,
"were it not essential that the falsehood and the folly of the slander in
this scurrilous rag," striking the Bon Ton with his open hand, "should
be stamped out at once and for ever; and in order that this may be
effectually done—to prove indubitably that Lady Perivale was not
with Colonel Rannock during his Continental wanderings last winter,
I shall produce the person who was with him."
Miss Kate Delmaine stepped into the box, admirably dressed, like
Lady Perivale, in a black cloth gown, and wearing a sable toque
almost of the same fashion. A murmur of surprise ran round the
Court, an excited whispering and twittering, which the usher
hastened to suppress.
Seen in that November gloom, the witness looked like Grace
Perivale's double.
Kate Delmaine! There were some among the wigs and gowns, and
some among the smart audience who remembered her in her brief
career, a girl of startling beauty, whose dazzling smile had beamed
across the footlights at the Spectacular Theatre for a season or two.
They had seen, admired, and forgotten her. She rose before them
like the ghost of their youth.
"Will you tell me where you were living last February, Miss
Delmaine?" Sir Joseph began quietly, when her carmine lips had
hovered over the Book: "from the 7th to the 25th?"
"I was at the Mecca Hotel, in Algiers."
"Alone?"
"No. Colonel Rannock was with me."
"You were in Corsica and in Sardinia before that, I believe?"
"Yes."
"Also with Colonel Rannock?"
"Yes."
"In what capacity were you travelling with him?"
The phrase produced a faint titter, and the younger of the smart
young ladies became suddenly occupied with their muffs and lace
handkerchiefs.
"We were travelling as Mr. and Mrs. Randall, if that's what you want
to know!" Miss Delmaine replied, with a look that challenged the
Court to think the worst of her.
"That is precisely what I want to know. You were going about with
Colonel Rannock as his wife—under the nom de guerre of Randall?"
"Yes."
"Good! Pray, Miss Delmaine, can you tell me where Colonel
Rannock is at this present time?"
The witness had given her evidence in an agitated and angry
manner from the beginning. The bloom on her cheeks was hectic,
and not rouge, as the smart young women thought. Her eyes were
unnaturally bright, splendid eyes, that flashed angry fire. She had
stood up boldly in her place, defying the world's contempt; but it
seemed as if the effort had been too much for her. She looked
distractedly round the court, turned white as ashes, and fell in a dead
faint, before she had answered the counsel's question, which was
irrelevant, and might not have been allowed.
There was the usual rush with glasses of water and smelling-salts,
and the witness was carried out of court.
The Court then adjourned for luncheon. The picture-hats all waited,
sniffed salts and eau de Cologne, nibbled chocolates, hungry, and
yawning for want of air, but determined to see it out.
There was bitter disappointment for the curious impertinents when,
on the judge returning to his seat, Sir Joseph Jalland informed his
lordship that Mr. Brown Smith had offered an ample apology for the
offensive article in his paper, and that his client had no desire to
continue the action in a vindictive manner.
The judge highly approved of this course.
"If Lady Perivale brought this action in order to clear her character of
a most unmerited aspersion, she has been completely successful,
and can afford to be lenient," said his lordship, with feeling.
The defendant was to publish his apology, both in his own paper and
such other papers as Sir Joseph should name. He was to destroy
every number of his paper still unsold, and to call in any numbers
remaining in the hands of the retail trade, and was further to give one
hundred guineas to any charitable institution selected by the plaintiff.
Only to Lady Perivale's solicitors and to Mr. Faunce was it known
that the defendant would not be out of pocket either by this hundred
guineas, or for the costs of the action, against which a considerable
sum had been paid into his banking account by Mr. Faunce, before
the libel—written by that very Faunce, in collaboration with one of the
ladies who did the Bon Ton gossip—appeared in Mr. Brown Smith's
popular journal.
Faunce had said there would be a libel when it was wanted, and
Faunce, who was an old friend of Brown Smith's, had produced the
libel. Nobody was any the worse, and Society was deeply humiliated
at discovering how cruelly it had misjudged a charming member of
its own privileged body. Lady Morningside and her husband made
their way to Lady Perivale directly the judge left his seat, and the old
Marquis, with an old-fashioned gallantry that recalled "Cupid"
Palmerston, bent over Grace's ungloved hand and kissed it: a
demonstration that thrilled the smart hats and eye-glasses.
Cards and letters of friendly congratulation poured in upon Lady
Perivale at Grosvenor Square that evening—letters from the people
who had cut her, making believe that the aloofness had been all on
her side.
"And now, dear, after this plucky assertion of yourself, I hope you are
not going to shut yourself from your old friends any more. It has been
so sad to see No. 101 empty all the season, and not even to know
where you were to be found," concluded one of those false friends.
Grace flung the letters into her waste-paper basket with angry scorn.
"To think people can dare to pretend they did not know I was in town,
when I drove in the park nearly every day!" she exclaimed.
"I hope you are satisfied, madam," said Faunce, when he called
upon Lady Perivale the day after the trial.
No one had seen Faunce in court, though Faunce had seen and
heard all that happened there. His work had been finished before the
case came on, and the family solicitors in Bedford Row took all the
credit of the successful result, and congratulated Lady Perivale upon
their acumen in retaining Sir Joseph Jalland.
"I hope you are satisfied, madam," Faunce said modestly, when he
called in Grosvenor Square, in response to Lady Perivale's request.
"I am more than satisfied with your cleverness in bringing the
wretched business to an issue," she said; "and now all I hope is that
I may be able to forget it, and that I shall never hear Colonel
Rannock's name again."
"I hope you will not, madam—not in any unpleasant connection,"
Faunce answered gravely.
"I must refer you for your professional charges to my lawyers, Mr.
Faunce," pursued Grace. "But I must beg you to accept the enclosed
as a token of my sincere gratitude for the trouble you have taken,
and as a souvenir of your success." She handed him an envelope.
"I assure you, Lady Perivale, I do not require anything beyond the
ordinary payment for my time and trouble."
"Oh, but you must take this, to please me," she answered. "I want
you to remember that I value your services at more than their
professional price."
She gave him her hand at parting, as she had given it at the end of
their first interview, and he thought more of that cordial handshake
than of her present, which he found to be a cheque for £500.
In the third week in December there was a very quiet wedding at St.
George's, Hanover Square, a marriage which was celebrated at half-
past eight o'clock in the morning, and at which the only witnesses
were Susan Rodney and Mr. George Howard, newly returned from
Pekin—a wedding so early and so quiet as to escape the most
invincible of the society paragraphists, the insatiable pens that had
been writing about this very marriage as an imminent event.
The bride's dark-grey cloth gown, sable-bordered travelling-cloak,
and black chip hat offered no suggestion of wedding raiment. The
breakfast was a parti carré in the dining-room at Grosvenor Square;
and the married lovers were able to leave Charing Cross at eleven
by the Continental Express without provoking any more notice from
the crowd than the appearance of a beautiful woman, perfectly
dressed for the business in hand, and leading the most perfect thing
in brown poodles, must inevitably attract. The honeymooners were
established at their hotel in Cairo before the paragraphists had wind
of the marriage.

CHAPTER XIV.
"But now with lights reverse the old hours retire,
And the last hour is shod with fire from hell.
This is the end of every man's desire."
During the four months which had elapsed since Faunce's first visit
to Kate Delmaine, alias Mrs. Randall, the detective had contrived to
keep an observant eye upon the lady; but he had not succeeded in
arriving on a more friendly footing with her, although he had obliged
her on several occasions with a small advance on account of the
promised reward.
He had called three or four times at the lodging-house in the dingy
street near the Thames, and she had received him civilly. He had
detected a lurking anxiety under the assumed lightness of her
manner—a carking care, that seemed to him of some deeper nature
than the need of money, or the sense of having fallen upon evil days.
He would not have been surprised to see her depressed and out of
spirits; but he was at a loss to understand that ever-present anxiety,
and that nervous irritability which seemed allied with fear.
He remarked to her, in a friendly way, on the state of her nerves, and
advised her to see a doctor. He urged her to live well, and to take the
utmost care of herself, to which end he was liberal with those ten-
pound notes on account.
"I want you to look your best when you appear in court," he said, "to
show that you are every bit as handsome a woman as Lady
Perivale."
"He always said I was," she answered, with a sigh.
"Colonel Rannock? He knew and admired you before he ever saw
Lady Perivale, didn't he, now?" asked Faunce, who, for reasons of
his own, was very anxious to make her talk of Rannock; but she
answered curtly—
"Whether he did or whether he didn't, it's no business of yours."
The gloomy look had come back to her face; and Faunce was more
and more convinced that, whatever her anxiety was, it was in some
way connected with Colonel Rannock.
He had brought Rannock's name into the conversation whenever he
could, and with an artful persistence, and the name had always a
depressing influence. She spoke of him reluctantly, and she seldom
spoke of him dry-eyed. Once she spoke of him in a past tense. It
could be no common fate that had left such aching memories.
Without actually "shadowing" the lady during this interval, he had
contrived to keep acquainted with her movements and associations,
and he had discovered that almost her only visitor was the man
whom he had seen on that first day—the man who had opened the
door, glanced into the room, and hurried away at sight of a stranger.
Even this person was not a frequent visitor, but he called at irregular
hours, which indicated a friendly footing.
It had not taken Faunce very long to identify this person as an
individual well-known to the patrons of the prize-ring—a pugilist
called Bolisco, who had been one of Sir Hubert Withernsea's
protégés, and had often sat at meat and drink in the very much
mixed society in the Abbey Road. Bolisco had been at the zenith of
his renown ten years ago, when Withernsea was burning that brief
candle of his days which had guttered into the grave before he was
thirty; but the pugilist's reputation had considerably declined since
then. He had been beaten ignominiously in three or four public
encounters, had seen his star go down before younger and steadier
men, and was no longer good for anything better than a glove-fight
at a second-rate tavern. One of those glove-fights had ended fatally
for Bolisco's opponent; and there had been some among the
lookers-on who accused him of brutal roughness towards a weaker
man, which had resulted in death. No blame had attached to Bolisco
in the opinion of the coroner's jury; but the patrons of the Fancy had
given him the cold shoulder since that unlucky accident, which had
happened more than a year ago.
In the course of that semi-shadowing Faunce had found out some
details of Kate Delmaine's life during the last half-year. He found that
she had occupied the shabby first-floor in Selburne Street since the
beginning of March, that she had come there straight from "abroad,"
and that her trunks were covered with foreign labels—Ajaccio,
Algiers, Marseilles, Paris, Calais. She had arrived with a great load
of personal luggage, fine clothes, and other portable property, the
greater part of which had been gradually made away with. She
would go out in a cab with a large cardboard box, and come home
half an hour afterwards on foot, having left box and contents at a
pawnbroker's in the King's Road.
Betsy, the sixteen-year-old maid-of-all-work, from whom Faunce
derived most of his information, had been a close observer of the
first-floor lodger, and was pleased to impart her knowledge and her
impressions to the amiable Faunce.
Mrs. Randall was very down-hearted, Betsy told him, and would sit
and cry for the hour together. Did she drink? Well, only a brandy-
and-soda now and then, but she used to stick a needle into her arm
that made her sleepy, and she would lie on the sofa all the afternoon
and evening sometimes, like a dead thing. The girl had heard her
moan and groan in her sleep when she took her a cup of tea in the
morning, and she would wake with a frightened look, and stare about
her "wild-like," as if she didn't know where she was.
Had she many visitors?
None, except the dark gentleman with the broken nose; and he did
not come very often, or stay long. They had words sometimes—very
high words—and once, in one of their quarrels, she went into
hysterics, and was "regular bad," and screamed at him like a lunatic.
The missus had been obliged to go upstairs to her, and tell her she
wouldn't stand such goings-on any longer. She'd have to clear out if
she couldn't behave like a lady.
All this to hear did Mr. Faunce seriously incline; and he now began to
do a little shadowing on Mr. Bolisco's account.
He knew that in all probability he was wasting his time; but the old
hunter's instinct of the Scotland Yard days was upon him, and he
wanted to know what ailed Kate Delmaine over and above the
natural depression of a woman of her class out of luck.
He had provided for her comfort, had been to her as a guardian
angel, as the time for her appearance in Court drew near. He had
advised her how to dress the part, and had ascertained what Lady
Perivale was going to wear, in order that Mrs. Randall's costume
should in some degree resemble hers. He had gone to Regent
Street on the day before the case came on, and bought a fur toque,
after the fashion of Lady Perivale's sable.
"It is only a paltry bit of skunk," Mrs. Randall declared
contemptuously, after she had blown the fur about and examined it
with a depreciatory scrutiny; but when she put it on before the cloudy
looking-glass in her parlour she owned to being pleased with herself.
"I wonder if you believe I was once a handsome woman," she said to
Faunce.
"I know you are a handsome woman now, and that you've only to
take a little more care of yourself to be as handsome as ever you
were," he answered gravely, being a kind-hearted man and really
sorry for her.
"That's skittles!" she answered. "I've come to the end of my tether.
I've nothing to live for, and I'm sick of wishing I was dead, for it don't
come off. And I don't want to kill myself; that's too cheap. I hate the
idea of an inquest, and 'The deceased was once known as this,' and
'The deceased was once t'other.' I'm a lady, Mr. Faunce, and I loathe
being magged about in the newspapers."

Now that Lady Perivale's action had ceased to be a nine days'

wonder, and the lady herself was a happy wife, travelling by easy
stages towards the land of ancient monuments and modern
amusements, pyramids and golf links, Sphinxes and croquet,
colossal sepulchres of unknown Pharaohs, and monster hotels with
unknown tariffs; now that he had accomplished his task and had
been handsomely rewarded, it might seem that John Faunce's
interest in Grace Perivale's double would cease and determine.
Strange to say that interest grew rather than diminished, and he
contrived to see his little friend, the lodging-house slavey, once or
twice a week, and so to be informed of all Mrs. Randall's
proceedings; indeed, his love of detail led him to ask Betsy for an old
blotting-book of the first-floor lodger's, which had been flung upon
the dustheap, and which the girl had retrieved from that foul
receptacle for the sake of its picture cover.
"Most people collect something," he told Betsy; "my fancy is old
blotting-paper."
"Well, I never did!" exclaimed the damsel. "I know many as collecks
postage-stamps, but I never heerd as blotting-paper was valuable!"
"It is, Betsy—sometimes," in token of which Mr. Faunce gave her a
crown piece for the ragged book, with its inky impress of Mrs.
Randall's sprawling penmanship.
Faunce had paid his witness the balance of the promised reward,
£120, in bank-notes, the evening after the trial, and he was prepared
to hear she had taken wing.
Surely with a sum of money in hand she would leave that dismal
street, and hurry away to some more attractive locality. To Paris,
perhaps, to buy fine clothes, and flaunt her recovered beauty in the
Bois; or to Monte Carlo, to try her luck at the tables. It was in the
character of such a woman to squander her last hundred pounds as
freely as if she had an unlimited capital behind it.
She had talked of leaving her lodgings, the little handmaiden Betsy
told him, but it hadn't come off. She had given a week's notice, and
then had cut up rough when the missus took a lady and gentleman
to look at the rooms. She wasn't going to be chucked out like a stray
dog, she'd go when she wanted, and not before.
"I don't believe she'll never go," Betsy said, with a wise air. "She ain't
got it in her to make up her mind about nothink. She sits in the easy-
chair all day, smokin' cigarettes and readin' a novel, or lays on the
sofa, and seems only half awake. And of a evening she gets dreadful
low. She says she hates the house, and won't sleep another night in
it, and yet when morning comes she don't offer to go. And then,
she's that under his thumb that if he say she's not to leave, go she
won't."
"You mean the dark gentleman?" said Faunce.
"Of course I do. There ain't any other as I knows on."
"Do you think she is—attached—to the dark gentleman?"
"I know she's afraid of him. I've seen her turn white at his step on the
stairs, and she's always upset after he's been to our place, and sits
and cries as if her heart was breaking. There, I do feel sorry for her!
She's a real good sort. She give me this here hat," added the slavey,
tossing her beplumed and bejewelled head. "It was bought in the
Harcade, and it ain't been worn above half a dozen times, only the
sea-water damaged it a bit when she was travelling."
So sincere and deep-rooted was Faunce's interest in Mrs. Randall,
that he took considerable pains to follow the movements of her friend
Mr. Bolisco, whom he tracked to his lair in a sporting public-house at
Battersea—an old, tumble-down building in a shabby street close to
the river, a house that had once been a respectable roadside inn,
and had once been in the country.
Faunce took some note of the famous prize-fighter's habits, which
were idle and dissolute, and of his associates, who belonged to the
lowest order, the ragged fringe of rascality that hangs upon the edge
of the sporting world. It was sad to think that so disreputable an
acquaintance could dominate the life of a fine, high-spirited creature
like Kate Delmaine. But, much as he was interested in a beautiful
woman, who was travelling on that dismal journey which is called
"going to the dogs," Mr. Faunce felt that his evening walks with
Betsy, and his occasional look in at the Gamecock at Battersea—
that sporting rendezvous where Mr. Bolisco had his "diggings,"—
were so much dilettante trifling, and mere waste of time. His work in
relation to Kate Delmaine was finished; and whatever mystery there
might be in her life, mystery involving even a crime, it was no
business of his to investigate it.
Somewhat reluctantly, therefore, like a baffled hunter who turns from
the dubious trail of the beast he has been pursuing, Mr. Faunce
discontinued his visits to Chelsea, and went no more, in his
character of a well-to-do idler interested in the prize-ring, to the
public-house across Battersea Bridge.
"I must be getting a regular amateur," he told himself, "if I can't have
done with a case when my work is finished."
Christmas came as a pleasant diversion, and during that jovial
season Faunce deserted his rooms in Essex Street, forgot that he
was a detective, and remembered that he was a citizen and a
husband. The turkey and beef, the pudding and mince-pies did credit
to Mrs. Faunce's judgment, and the skill of an unpretentious cook,
who did not scorn to bare her robust arms to the elbow, and
hearthstone the doorstep before she fried the morning rasher.
The catering had been Mr. Faunce's own work. It was his falcon
glance that had detected the finest Norfolk turkey in a row of
eighteen-pounders, the ripest York ham out of a score of good ones.
The champagne which he bought for his guests, the ten-year-old
Scotch whisky which he drank himself, were all of the best, and the
villa at Putney had the air of plenteous comfort in a small space
which pervades a well-found ship.
With his wife sitting opposite to him, and an old friend on either side,
Faunce enjoyed the harmless pleasures of social intercourse, and
cleared his mind of crime and mystery, and did not go back to his
office in Essex Street until the general holiday was over, and the
flavour of Christmas had faded out of the atmosphere.
It was on the day after his return to everyday life that Faunce
received a message from Scotland Yard, bidding him go there
immediately on important business, a summons that he made haste
to obey, since many of those cases which had afforded him
profitable occupation within the last few years had come to him by
the recommendation of his old chiefs in the Criminal Investigation
Department.
He found one of those chiefs seated in his private room, engaged in
conversation with a short, stout gentleman of middle age and
pleasing countenance, who looked like a soldier—fair-haired,
intelligent, and fussy.
"This is Mr. Faunce, Major Towgood," said the chief.
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Faunce!" exclaimed the
Major, in a breathless way, bouncing up from his chair, wanting to
shake hands with Faunce, and suppressing the desire with a
backward jerk; "and if Mr. Faunce," turning to the chief, "can do
anything to set my poor mother-in-law's mind at rest about that
scapegrace of hers, I shall be very grateful—on my wife's account,
don't you know. Personally, I shouldn't be sorry to know he had gone
under for good."
"Major Towgood is interested in the fate of a Colonel Rannock, his
connection by marriage, who has not been heard of for some time."
"Not since last March, early in the month—sold his sticks—and
started for the Yukon River," interjected Major Towgood again
breathlessly, and with his eyes opened very wide.
"Colonel Rannock's disappearance—if it can be called a
disappearance—has caused considerable anxiety to his widowed
mother——"
"Women are such forgiving creatures, don't you know," interrupted
the Major. "Talk of seventy times seven! There ain't any combination
of figures that will express a mother's forgiveness of a prodigal son."
"And I have told Major Towgood," pursued the chief, with a shade of
weariness, "that I can highly recommend you for an inquiry of that
sort, and that if Colonel Rannock is to be found above ground—or
under ground—you will find him."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"And now, my dear Towgood, I don't think I can do any more for you."
Major Towgood jumped up and bustled towards the door. But he
wasn't gone yet. His gratitude was overpowering; and the chief had
to back him out of the room, politely, but decisively.
"You are just the man we want, Faunce," said the Major, as they
walked down a long corridor that led to the staircase. "Your Chief has
told me all about you—you were in the Bank of England case, he
said, and the Lady Kingsbury case—and—ever so many more
sensation trials—and now you're on your own hook—which just suits