“Had you reason to suspect any cardiac trouble, Doctor McMurdoch?” asked Harley.
Doctor McMurdoch, a local practitioner who had been a friend of Sir Charles Abingdon, shook his head slowly. He was a tall, preternaturally thin Scotsman, clean-shaven, with shaggy dark brows and a most gloomy expression in his deep-set eyes. While the presence of his sepulchral figure seemed appropriate enough in that stricken house, Harley could not help thinking that it must have been far from reassuring in a sick room.
“I had never actually detected anything of the kind,” replied the physician, and his deep voice was gloomily in keeping with his personality. “I had observed a certain breathlessness at times, however. No doubt it is one of those cases of unsuspected endocarditis. Acute. I take it,” raising his shaggy brows interrogatively, “that nothing had occurred to excite Sir Charles?”
“On the contrary,” replied Harley, “he was highly distressed about some family trouble, the nature of which he was about to confide to me when this sudden illness seized him.”
He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch, wondering how much he might hope to learn from him respecting the affairs of Sir Charles. It seemed almost impertinent at that hour to seek to pry into the dead man’s private life.
To the quiet, book-lined apartment stole now and again little significant sounds which told of the tragedy in the household. Sometimes when a distant door was opened, it would be the sobs of a weeping woman, for the poor old housekeeper had been quite prostrated by the blow. Or ghostly movements would become audible from the room immediately over the library—the room to which the dead man had been carried; muffled footsteps, vague stirrings of furniture; each sound laden with its own peculiar portent, awakening the imagination which all too readily filled in the details of the scene above. Then, to spur Harley to action, came the thought that Sir Charles Abingdon had appealed to him for aid. Did his need terminate with his unexpected death or would the shadow under which he had died extend now? Harley found himself staring across the library at the photograph of Phil Abingdon. It was of her that Sir Charles had been speaking when that mysterious seizure had tied his tongue. That strange, fatal illness, mused Harley, all the more strange in the case of a man supposedly in robust health—it almost seemed like the working of a malignant will. For the revelation, whatever its nature, had almost but not quite been made in Harley’s office that evening. Something, some embarrassment or mental disability, had stopped Sir Charles from completing his statement. Tonight death had stopped him.
“Was he consulting you professionally, Mr. Harley?” asked the physician.
“He was,” replied Harley, continuing to stare fascinatedly at the photograph on the mantelpiece. “I am informed,” said he, abruptly, “that Miss Abingdon is out of town?”
Doctor McMurdoch nodded in his slow, gloomy fashion. “She is staying in Devonshire with poor Abingdon’s sister,” he answered. “I am wondering how we are going to break the news to her.”
Perceiving that Doctor McMurdoch had clearly been intimate with the late Sir Charles, Harley determined to make use of this opportunity to endeavour to fathom the mystery of the late surgeon’s fears. “You will not misunderstand me, Doctor McMurdoch,” he said, “if I venture to ask you one or two rather personal questions respecting Miss Abingdon?”
Doctor McMurdoch lowered his shaggy brows and looked gloomily at the speaker. “Mr. Harley,” he replied, “I know you by repute for a man of integrity. But before I answer your questions will you answer one of mine?”
“Certainly.”
“Then my question is this: Does not your interest cease with the death of your client?”
“Doctor McMurdoch,” said Harley, sternly, “you no doubt believe yourself to be acting as a friend of this bereaved family. You regard me, perhaps, as a Paul Pry prompted by idle curiosity. On the contrary, I find myself in a delicate and embarrassing situation. From Sir Charles’s conversation I had gathered that he entertained certain fears on behalf of his daughter.”
“Indeed,” said Doctor McMurdoch.
“If these fears were well grounded, the danger is not removed, but merely increased by the death of Miss Abingdon’s natural protector. I regret, sir, that I approached you for information, since you have misjudged my motive. But far from my interest having ceased, it has now as I see the matter become a sacred duty to learn what it was that Sir Charles apprehended. This duty, Doctor McMurdoch, I propose to fulfil with or without your assistance.”
“Oh,” said Doctor McMurdoch, gloomily, “I’m afraid I’ve offended you. But I meant well, Mr. Harley.” A faint trace of human emotion showed itself in his deep voice. “Charley Abingdon and I were students together in Edinburgh,” he explained. “I was mayhap a little strange.”
His apology was so evidently sincere that Harley relented at once. “Please say no more, Doctor McMurdoch,” he responded. “I fully appreciate your feelings in the matter. At such a time a stranger can only be an intruder; but”—he fixed his keen eyes upon the physician—“there is more underlying all this than you suspect or could readily believe. You will live to know that I have spoken the truth.”
“I know it now,” declared the Scotsman, solemnly. “Abingdon was always eccentric, but he didn’t know the meaning of fear.”
“Once that may have been true,” replied Harley. “But a great fear was upon him when he came to me, Doctor McMurdoch, and if it is humanly possible I am going to discover its cause.”
“Go ahead,” said Doctor McMurdoch and, turning to the side table, he poured out two liberal portions of whiskey. “If there’s anything I can do to help, count me at your service. You tell me he had fears about little Phil?”
“He had,” answered Harley, “and it is maddening to think that he died before he could acquaint me with their nature. But I have hopes that you can help me in this. For instance”—again he fixed his gaze upon the gloomy face of the physician—“who is the distinguished Oriental gentleman with whom Sir Charles had recently become acquainted?”
Doctor McMurdoch’s expression remained utterly blank, and he slowly shook his head. “I haven’t an idea in the world,” he declared. “A patient, perhaps?”
“Possibly,” said Harley, conscious of some disappointment; “yet from the way he spoke of him I scarcely think that he was a patient. Surely Sir Charles, having resided so long in India, numbered several Orientals among his acquaintances if not among his friends?”
“None ever came to his home,” replied Doctor McMurdoch. “He had all the Anglo-Indian’s prejudice against men of colour.” He rested his massive chin in his hand and stared down reflectively at the carpet.
“Then you have no suggestion to offer in regard to this person?”
“None. Did he tell you nothing further about him?”
“Unfortunately, nothing. In the next place, Doctor McMurdoch, are you aware of any difference of opinion which had arisen latterly between Sir Charles and his daughter?”
“Difference of opinion!” replied Doctor McMurdoch, raising his brows ironically. “There would always be difference of opinion between little Phil and any man who cared for her. But out-and-out quarrel—no!”
Again Harley found himself at a deadlock, and it was with scanty hope of success that he put his third question to the gloomy Scot. “Was Sir Charles a friend of Mr. Nicol Brinn?” he asked.
“Nicol Brinn?” echoed the physician. He looked perplexed. “You mean the American millionaire? I believe they were acquainted. Abingdon knew most of the extraordinary people in London; and if half one hears is true Nicol Brinn is as mad as a hatter. But they were not in any sense friends as far as I know.” He was watching Harley curiously. “Why do you ask that question?”
“I will tell you in a moment,” said Harley, rapidly, “but I have one more question to put to you first. Does the term Fire-Tongue convey anything to your mind?”
Doctor McMurdoch’s eyebrows shot upward most amazingly. “I won’t insult you by supposing that you have chosen such a time for joking,” he said, dourly. “But if your third question surprised me, I must say that your fourth sounds simply daft.”
“It must,” agreed Harley, and his manner was almost fierce; “but when I tell you why I ask these two questions—and I only do so on the understand ing that my words are to be treated in the strictest confidence—you may regard the matter in a new light. ‘Nicol Brinn’ and ‘Fire-Tongue’ were the last words which Sir Charles Abingdon uttered.”
“What!” cried Doctor McMurdoch, displaying a sudden surprising energy. “What?”
“I solemnly assure you,” declared Harley, “that such is the case. Benson, the butler, also overheard them.”
Doctor McMurdoch relapsed once more into gloom, gazing at the whiskey in the glass which he held in his hand and slowly shaking his head. “Poor old Charley Abingdon,” he murmured. “It’s plain to me, Mr. Harley, that his mind was wandering. May not we find here an explanation, too, of this idea of his that some danger overhung Phil? You didn’t chance to notice, I suppose, whether he had a temperature?”
“I did not,” replied Harley, smiling slightly. But the smile quickly left his face, which became again grim and stern.
A short silence ensued, during which Doctor McMurdoch sat staring moodily down at the carpet and Harley slowly paced up and down the room; then:
“In view of the fact,” he said, suddenly, “that Sir Charles clearly apprehended an attempt upon his life, are you satisfied professionally that death was due to natural causes?”
“Perfectly satisfied,” replied the physician, looking up with a start: “perfectly satisfied. It was unexpected, of course, but such cases are by no means unusual. He was formerly a keen athlete, remember. ‘Tis often so. Surely you don’t suspect foul play? I understood you to mean that his apprehensions were on behalf of Phil.”
Paul Harley stood still, staring meditatively in the other’s direction. “There is not a scrap of evidence to support such a theory,” he admitted, “but if you knew of the existence of any poisonous agent which would produce effects simulating these familiar symptoms, I should be tempted to take certain steps.”
“If you are talking about poisons,” said the physician, a rather startled look appearing upon his face, “there are several I might mention; but the idea seems preposterous to me. Why should any one want to harm Charley Abingdon? When could poison have been administered and by whom?”
“When, indeed?” murmured Harley. “Yet I am not satisfied.”
“You’re not hinting at—suicide?”
“Emphatically no.”
“What had he eaten?”
“Nothing but soup, except that he drank a portion of a glass of water. I am wondering if he took anything at Mr. Wilson’s house.” He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch. “It may surprise you to learn that I have already taken steps to have the remains of the soup from Sir Charles’s plate examined, as well as the water in the glass. I now propose to call upon Mr. Wilson in order that I may complete this line of enquiry.”
“I sympathize with your suspicions, Mr. Harley,” said the physician dourly, “but you are wasting your time.” A touch of the old acidity crept back into his manner. “My certificate will be ‘syncope due to unusual excitement’; and I shall stand by it.”
“You are quite entitled to your own opinion,” Harley conceded, “which if I were in your place would be my own. But what do you make of the fact that Sir Charles received a bogus telephone message some ten minutes before my arrival, as a result of which he visited Mr. Wilson’s house?”
“But he’s attending Wilson,” protested the physician.
“Nevertheless, no one there had telephoned. It was a ruse. I don’t assume for a moment that this ruse was purposeless.”
Doctor McMurdoch was now staring hard at the speaker.
“You may also know,” Harley continued, “that there was an attempted burglary here less than a week ago.”
“I know that,” admitted the other, “but it counts for little. There have been several burglaries in the neighbourhood of late.”
Harley perceived that Doctor McMurdoch was one of those characters, not uncommon north of the Tweed, who, if slow in forming an opinion, once having done so cling to it as tightly as any barnacle.
“You may be right and I may be wrong,” Harley admitted, “but while your professional business with Sir Charles unfortunately is ended, mine is only beginning. May I count upon you to advise me of Miss Abingdon’s return? I particularly wish to see her, and I should prefer to meet her in the capacity of a friend rather than in that of a professional investigator.”
“At the earliest moment that I can decently arrange a meeting,” replied Doctor McMurdoch, “I will communicate with you, Mr. Harley. I am just cudgelling my brains at the moment to think how the news is to be broken to her. Poor little Phil! He was all she had.”
“I wish I could help you,” declared Harley with sincerity, “but in the circumstances any suggestion of mine would be mere impertinence.” He held out his hand to the doctor.
“Good-night,” said the latter, gripping it heartily. “If there is any mystery surrounding poor Abingdon’s death, I believe you are the man to clear it up. But, frankly, it was his heart. I believe he had a touch of the sun once in India. Who knows? His idea that some danger threatened him or threatened Phil may have been merely—” He tapped his brow significantly.
“But in the whole of your knowledge of Sir Charles,” cried Harley, exhibiting a certain irritation, “have you ever known him to suffer from delusions of that kind or any other?”
“Never,” replied the physician, firmly; “but once a man has had the sun one cannot tell.”
“Ah!” said Harley. “Good-night, Doctor McMurdoch.”
When presently he left the house, carrying a brown leather bag which he had borrowed from the butler, he knew that rightly or wrongly his own opinion remained unchanged in spite of the stubborn opposition of the Scottish physician. The bogus message remained to be explained, and the assault in the square, as did the purpose of the burglar to whom gold and silver plate made no appeal. More important even than these points were the dead man’s extraordinary words: “Fire-Tongue”—“Nicol Brinn.” Finally and conclusively, he had detected the note of danger outside and inside the house; and now as he began to cross the square it touched him again intimately.
He looked up at the darkened sky. A black cloud was moving slowly overhead, high above the roof of the late Sir Charles Abingdon; and as he watched its stealthy approach it seemed to Paul Harley to be the symbol of that dread in which latterly Sir Charles’s life had lain, beneath which he had died, and which now was stretching out, mysterious and menacing, over himself.
At about nine o’clock on the same evening, a man stood at a large window which overlooked Piccadilly and the Green Park. The room to which the window belonged was justly considered one of the notable sights of London and doubtless would have received suitable mention in the “Blue Guide” had the room been accessible to the general public. It was, on the contrary, accessible only to the personal friends of Mr. Nicol Brinn. As Mr. Nicol Brinn had a rarely critical taste in friendship, none but a fortunate few had seen the long room with its two large windows overlooking Piccadilly.
The man at the window was interested in a car which, approaching from the direction of the Circus, had slowed down immediately opposite and now was being turned, the chauffeur’s apparent intention being to pull up at the door below. He had seen the face of the occupant and had recognized it even from that elevation. He was interested; and since only unusual things aroused any semblance of interest in the man who now stood at the window, one might have surmised that there was something unusual about the present visitor, or in his having decided to call at those chambers; and that such was indeed his purpose an upward glance which he cast in the direction of the balcony sufficiently proved.
The watcher, who had been standing in a dark recess formed by the presence of heavy velvet curtains draped before the window, now opened the curtains and stepped into the lighted room. He was a tall, lean man having straight, jet-black hair, a sallow complexion, and the features of a Sioux. A long black cigar protruded aggressively from the left corner of his mouth. His hands were locked behind him and his large and quite expressionless blue eyes stared straight across the room at the closed door with a dreamy and vacant regard. His dinner jacket fitted him so tightly that it might have been expected at any moment to split at the seams. As if to precipitate the catastrophe, he wore it buttoned.
There came a rap at the door.
“In!” said the tall man.
The door opened silently and a manservant appeared. He was spotlessly neat and wore his light hair cropped close to the skull. His fresh-coloured face was quite as expressionless as that of his master; his glance possessed no meaning. Crossing to the window, he extended a small salver upon which lay a visiting card.
“In!” repeated the tall man, looking down at the card.
His servant silently retired, and following a short interval rapped again upon the door, opened it, and standing just inside the room announced: “Mr. Paul Harley.”
The door being quietly closed behind him, Paul Harley stood staring across the room at Nicol Brinn. At this moment the contrast between the types was one to have fascinated a psychologist. About Paul Harley, eagerly alert, there was something essentially British. Nicol Brinn, without being typical, was nevertheless distinctly a product of the United States. Yet, despite the stoic mask worn by Mr. Brinn, whose lack-lustre eyes were so unlike the bright gray eyes of his visitor, there existed, if not a physical, a certain spiritual affinity between the two; both were men of action.
Harley, after that one comprehensive glance, the photographic glance of a trained observer, stepped forward impulsively, hand outstretched. “Mr. Brinn,” he said, “we have never met before, and it was good of you to wait in for me. I hope my telephone message has not interfered with your plans for the evening?”
Nicol Brinn, without change of pose, no line of the impassive face altering, shot out a large, muscular hand, seized that of Paul Harley in a tremendous grip, and almost instantly put his hand behind his back again. “Had no plans,” he replied, in a high, monotonous voice; “I was bored stiff. Take the armchair.”
Paul Harley sat down, but in the restless manner of one who has urgent business in hand and who is impatient of delay. Mr. Brinn stooped to a coffee table which stood upon the rug before the large open fireplace. “I am going to offer you a cocktail,” he said.
“I shall accept your offer,” returned Harley, smiling. “The ‘N. B. cocktail’ has a reputation which extends throughout the clubs of the world.”
Nicol Brinn, exhibiting the swift adroitness of that human dodo, the New York bartender, mixed the drinks. Paul Harley watched him, meanwhile drumming his fingers restlessly upon the chair arm.
“Here’s success,” he said, “to my mission.”
It was an odd toast, but Mr. Brinn merely nodded and drank in silence. Paul Harley set his glass down and glanced about the singular apartment of which he had often heard and which no man could ever tire of examining.
In this room the poles met, and the most remote civilizations of the world rubbed shoulders with modernity. Here, encased, were a family of snow-white ermine from Alaska and a pair of black Manchurian leopards. A flying lemur from the Pelews contemplated swooping upon the head of a huge tigress which glared with glassy eyes across the place at the snarling muzzle of a polar bear. Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon the same shelf as Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess of the thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish goddess Derceto, at Ascalon.
Arrowheads of the Stone Age and medieval rapiers were ranged alongside some of the latest examples of the gunsmith’s art. There were elephants’ tusks and Mexican skulls; a stone jar of water from the well of Zem-Zem, and an ivory crucifix which had belonged to Torquemada. A mat of human hair from Borneo overlay a historical and unique rug woven in Ispahan and entirely composed of fragments of Holy Carpets from the Kaaba at Mecca.
“I take it,” said Mr. Brinn, suddenly, “that you are up against a stiff proposition.”
Paul Harley, accepting a cigarette from an ebony box (once the property of Henry VIII) which the speaker had pushed across the coffee table in his direction, stared up curiously into the sallow, aquiline face. “You are right. But how did you know?”
“You look that way. Also—you were followed. Somebody knows you’ve come here.”
Harley leaned forward, resting one hand upon the table. “I know I was followed,” he said, sternly. “I was followed because I have entered upon the biggest case of my career.” He paused and smiled in a very grim fashion. “A suspicion begins to dawn upon my mind that if I fail it will also be my last case. You understand me?”
“I understand absolutely,” replied Nicol Brinn. “These are dull days. It’s meat and drink to me to smell big danger.”
Paul Harley lighted a cigarette and watched the speaker closely the while. His expression, as he did so, was an odd one. Two courses were open to him, and he was mentally debating their respective advantages.
“I have come to you to-night, Mr. Brinn,” he said finally, “to ask you a certain question. Unless the theory upon which I am working is entirely wrong, then, supposing that you are in a position to answer my question I am logically compelled to suppose, also, that you stand in peril of your life.”
“Good,” said Mr. Brinn. “I was getting sluggish.” In three long strides he crossed the room and locked the door. “I don’t doubt Hoskins’s honesty,” he explained, reading the inquiry in Harley’s eyes, “but an A1 intelligence doesn’t fold dress pants at thirty-nine.”
Only one very intimate with the taciturn speaker could have perceived any evidence of interest in that imperturbable character. But Nicol Brinn took his cheroot between his fingers, quickly placed a cone of ash in a little silver tray (the work of Benvenuto Cellini), and replaced the cheroot not in the left but in the right corner of his mouth. He was excited.
“You are out after one of the big heads of the crook world,” he said. “He knows it and he’s trailing you. My luck’s turned. How can I help?”
Harley stood up, facing Mr. Brinn. “He knows it, as you say,” he replied, “and I hold my life in my hands. But from your answer to the question which I have come here to-night to ask you, I shall conclude whether or not your danger at the moment is greater than mine.”
“Good,” said Nicol Brinn.
In that unique room, at once library and museum, amid relics of a hundred ages, spoil of the chase, the excavator, and the scholar, these two faced each other; and despite the peaceful quiet of the apartment up to which as a soothing murmur stole the homely sounds of Piccadilly, each saw in the other’s eyes recognition of a deadly peril. It was a queer, memorable moment.
“My question is simple but strange,” said Paul Harley. “It is this: What do you know of ‘Fire-Tongue’?”
If Paul Harley had counted upon the word “Fire-Tongue” to have a dramatic effect upon Nicol Brinn, he was not disappointed. It was a word which must have conveyed little or nothing to the multitude and which might have been pronounced without perceptible effect at any public meeting in the land. But Mr. Brinn, impassive though his expression remained, could not conceal the emotion which he experienced at the sound of it. His gaunt face seemed to grow more angular and his eyes to become even less lustrous.
“Fire-Tongue!” he said, tensely, following a short silence. “For God’s sake, when did you hear that word?”
“I heard it,” replied Harley, slowly, “to-night.” He fixed his gaze intently upon the sallow face of the American. “It was spoken by Sir Charles Abingdon.”
Closely as he watched Nicol Brinn while pronouncing this name he could not detect the slightest change of expression in the stoic features.
“Sir Charles Abingdon,” echoed Brinn; “and in what way is it connected with your case?”
“In this way,” answered Harley. “It was spoken by Sir Charles a few moments before he died.”
Nicol Brinn’s drooping lids flickered rapidly. “Before he died! Then Sir Charles Abingdon is dead! When did he die?”
“He died to-night and the last words that he uttered were ‘Fire-Tongue’—” He paused, never for a moment removing that fixed gaze from the other’s face.
“Go on,” prompted Mr. Brinn.
“And ‘Nicol Brinn.’”
Nicol Brinn stood still as a carven man. Indeed, only by an added rigidity in his pose did he reward Paul Harley’s intense scrutiny. A silence charged with drama was finally broken by the American. “Mr. Harley,” he said, “you told me that you were up against the big proposition of your career. You are right.”
With that he sat down in an armchair and, resting his chin in his hand, gazed fixedly into the empty grate. His pose was that of a man who is suddenly called upon to review the course of his life and upon whose decision respecting the future that life may depend. Paul Harley watched him in silence.
“Give me the whole story,” said Mr. Brinn, “right from the beginning.” He looked up. “Do you know what you have done to-night, Mr. Harley?”
Paul Harley shook his head. Swiftly, like the touch of an icy finger, that warning note of danger had reached him again.
“I’ll tell you,” continued Brinn. “You have opened the gates of hell!”
Not another word did he speak while Paul Harley, pacing slowly up and down before the hearth, gave him a plain account of the case, omitting all reference to his personal suspicions and to the measures which he had taken to confirm them.
He laid his cards upon the table deliberately. Whether Sir Charles Abingdon had uttered the name of Nicol Brinn as that of one whose aid should be sought or as a warning, he had yet to learn. And by this apparent frankness he hoped to achieve his object. That the celebrated American was in any way concerned in the menace which had overhung Sir Charles he was not prepared to believe. But he awaited with curiosity that explanation which Nicol Brinn must feel called upon to offer.
“You think he was murdered?” said Brinn in his high, toneless voice.
“I have formed no definite opinion. What is your own?”
“I may not look it,” replied Brinn, “but at this present moment I am the most hopelessly puzzled and badly frightened man in London.”
“Frightened?” asked Harley, curiously.
“I said frightened, I also said puzzled; and I am far too puzzled to be able to express any opinion respecting the death of Sir Charles Abingdon. When I tell you all I know of him you will wonder as much as I do, Mr. Harley, why my name should have been the last to pass his lips.”
He half turned in the big chair to face his visitor, who now was standing before the fireplace staring down at him.
“One day last month,” he resumed, “I got out of my car in a big hurry at the top of the Haymarket. A fool on a motorcycle passed between the car and the sidewalk just as I stepped down, and I knew nothing further until I woke up in a drug store close by, feeling very dazed and with my coat in tatters and my left arm numbed from the elbow. A man was standing watching me, and presently when I had pulled round he gave me his card.
“He was Sir Charles Abingdon, who had been passing at the time of the accident. That was how I met him, and as there was nothing seriously wrong with me I saw him no more professionally. But he dined with me a week later and I had lunch at his club about a fortnight ago.”
He looked up at Harley. “On my solemn word of honour,” he said, “that’s all I know about Sir Charles Abingdon.”
Paul Harley returned the other’s fixed stare. “I don’t doubt your assurance on the point, Mr. Brinn,” he acknowledged. “I can well understand that you must be badly puzzled; but I would remind you of your statement that you were also frightened. Why?”
Nicol Brinn glanced rapidly about his own luxurious room in an oddly apprehensive manner. “I said that,” he declared, “and I meant it.”
“Then I can only suppose,” resumed Harley, deliberately, “that the cause of your fear lies in the term, ‘Fire-Tongue’?”
Brinn again rested his chin in his hand, staring fixedly into the grate.
“And possibly,” went on the remorseless voice, “you can explain the significance of that term?”
Nicol Brinn remained silent—but with one foot he was slowly tapping the edge of the fender.
“Mr. Harley,” he began, abruptly, “you have been perfectly frank with me and in return I wish to be as frank with you as I can be. I am face to face with a thing that has haunted me for seven years, and every step I take from now onward has to be considered carefully, for any step might be my last. And that’s not the worst of the matter. I will risk one of those steps here and now. You ask me to explain the significance of Fire-Tongue” (there was a perceptible pause before he pronounced the word, which Harley duly noticed). “I am going to tell you that Sir Charles Abingdon, when I lunched with him at his club, asked me precisely the same thing.”
“What! He asked you that so long as two weeks ago?”
“He did.”
“And what reason did he give for his inquiry?”
Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. “Let me think,” he replied. “I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar, Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am that man.”
Silence fell again, and Paul Harley, staring down at Nicol Brinn, realized that this indeed was the most hopelessly mystifying case which fate had ever thrown in his way. This millionaire scholar and traveller, whose figure was as familiar in remote cities of the world as it was familiar in New York, in Paris, and in London, could not conceivably be associated with any criminal organization. Yet his hesitancy was indeed difficult to explain, and because it seemed to Harley that the cloud which had stolen out across the house of Sir Charles Abingdon now hung threateningly over those very chambers, he merely waited and wondered.
“He referred to an experience which had befallen him in India,” came Nicol Brinn’s belated reply.
“In India? May I ask you to recount that experience?”
“Mr. Harley,” replied Brinn, suddenly standing up, “I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“I have said so. But I’d give a lot more than you might believe to know that Abingdon had told you the story which he told me.”
“You are not helping, Mr. Brinn,” said Harley, sternly. “I believe and I think that you share my belief that Sir Charles Abingdon did not die from natural causes. You are repressing valuable evidence. Allow me to remind you that if anything should come to light necessitating a post-mortem examination of the body, you will be forced to divulge in a court of justice the facts which you refuse to divulge to me.”
“I know it,” said Brinn, shortly.
He shot out one long arm and grasped Harley’s shoulder as in a vice. “I’m counted a wealthy man,” he continued, “but I’d give every cent I possess to see ‘paid’ put to the bill of a certain person. Listen. You don’t think I was in any way concerned in the death of Sir Charles Abingdon? It isn’t thinkable. But you do think I’m in possession of facts which would help you find out who is. You’re right.”
“Good God!” cried Harley. “Yet you remain silent!”
“Not so loud—not so loud!” implored Brinn, repeating that odd, almost furtive glance around. “Mr. Harley—you know me. You’ve heard of me and now you’ve met me. You know my place in the world. Do you believe me when I say that from this moment onward I don’t trust my own servants? Nor my own friends?” He removed his grip from Harley’s shoulder. “Inanimate things look like enemies. That mummy over yonder may have ears!”
“I’m afraid I don’t altogether understand you.”
“See here!”
Nicol Brinn crossed to a bureau, unlocked it, and while Harley watched him curiously, sought among a number of press cuttings. Presently he found the cutting for which he was looking. “This was said,” he explained, handing the slip to Harley, “at the Players’ Club in New York, after a big dinner in pre-dry days. It was said in confidence. But some disguised reporter had got in and it came out in print next morning. Read it.”
Paul Harley accepted the cutting and read the following:
NICOL BRINN’S SECRET AMBITIONSMILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN WHO WANTS TO SHOOTNIAGARA!
Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati, who is at present in New York, opened his heart to members of the Players’ Club last night. Our prominent citizen, responding to a toast, “the distinguished visitor,” said:
“I’d like to live through months of midnight frozen in among the polar ice; I’d like to cross Africa from east to west and get lost in the middle. I’d like to have a Montana sheriff’s posse on my heels for horse stealing, and I’ve prayed to be wrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe to see if I am man enough to live it out. I want to stand my trial for murder and defend my own case, and I want to be found by the eunuchs in the harem of the Shah. I want to dive for pearls and scale the Matterhorn. I want to know where the tunnel leads to—the tunnel down under the Great Pyramid of Gizeh—and I’d love to shoot Niagara Falls in a barrel.”
“It sounds characteristic,” murmured Harley, laying the slip on the coffee table.
“It’s true!” declared Brinn. “I said it and I meant it. I’m a glutton for danger, Mr. Harley, and I’m going to tell you why. Something happened to me seven years ago—”
“In India?”
“In India. Correct. Something happened to me, sir, which just took the sunshine out of life. At the time I didn’t know all it meant. I’ve learned since. For seven years I have been flirting with death and hoping to fall!”
Harley stared at him uncomprehendingly. “More than ever I fail to understand.”
“I can only ask you to be patient, Mr. Harley. Time is a wonderful doctor, and I don’t say that in seven years the old wound hasn’t healed a bit. But to-night you have, unknowingly, undone all that time had done. I’m a man that has been down into hell. I bought myself out. I thought I knew where the pit was located. I thought I was well away from it, Mr. Harley, and you have told me something tonight which makes me think that it isn’t where I supposed at all, but hidden down here right under our feet in London. And we’re both standing on the edge!”
That Nicol Brinn was deeply moved no student of humanity could have doubted. From beneath the stoic’s cloak another than the dare-devil millionaire whose crazy exploits were notorious had looked out. Persistently the note of danger came to Paul Harley. Those luxurious Piccadilly chambers were a focus upon which some malignant will was concentrated. He became conscious of anger. It was the anger of a just man who finds himself impotent—the rage of Prometheus bound.
“Mr. Brinn!” he cried, “I accept unreservedly all that you have told me. Its real significance I do not and cannot grasp. But my theory that Sir Charles Abingdon was done to death has become a conviction. That a like fate threatens yourself and possibly myself I begin to believe.” He looked almost fiercely into the other’s dull eyes. “My reputation east and west is that of a white man. Mr. Brinn—I ask you for your confidence.”
Nicol Brinn dropped his chin into his hand and resumed that unseeing stare into the open grate. Paul Harley watched him intently.
“There isn’t any one I would rather confide in,” confessed the American. “We are linked by a common danger. But”—he looked up—“I must ask you again to be patient. Give me time to think—to make plans. For your own part—be cautious. You witnessed the death of Sir Charles Abingdon. You don’t think and perhaps I don’t think that it was natural; but whatever steps you may have taken to confirm your theories, I dare not hope that you will ever discover even a ghost of a clue. I simply warn you, Mr. Harley. You may go the same way. So may I. Others have travelled that road before poor Abingdon.”
He suddenly stood up, all at once exhibiting to his watchful visitor that tremendous nervous energy which underlay his impassive manner. “Good God!” he said, in a cold, even voice. “To think that it is here in London. What does it mean?”
He ceased speaking abruptly, and stood with his elbow resting on a corner of the mantelpiece.
“You speak of it being here,” prompted Harley. “Is it consistent with your mysterious difficulties to inform me to what you refer?”
Nicol Brinn glanced aside at him. “If I informed you of that,” he answered, “you would know all you want to know. But neither you nor I would live to use the knowledge. Give me time. Let me think.”
Silence fell in the big room, Nicol Brinn staring down vacantly into the empty fireplace, Paul Harley standing watching him in a state of almost stupefied mystification. Muffled to a soothing murmur the sounds of Piccadilly penetrated to that curtained chamber which held so many records of the troubled past and which seemed to be charged with shadowy portents of the future.
Something struck with a dull thud upon a windowpane—once—twice. There followed a faint, sibilant sound.
Paul Harley started and the stoical Nicol Brinn turned rapidly and glanced across the room.
“What was that?” asked Harley.
“I expect—it was an owl,” answered Brinn. “We sometimes get them over from the Green Park.”
His high voice sounded unemotional as ever. But it seemed to Paul Harley that his face, dimly illuminated by the upcast light from the lamp upon the coffee table, had paled, had become gaunt.