CHAPTER XXX.
JOAN TELLS HER STORY.
And we are Homeward Bound.
Mr. Bob Sawyer, I believe, expressed his opinion upon a famous occasion that there was no medicine in all the world half so efficacious or so infallible as rum punch—to which axiom he added the rider that if any man had ever failed to derive benefits from this nectar, it was because he had not taken enough of it. Such a doctrine, for my part, I find incontrovertible. There is no cure for an overdose of cold water so swift and certain as the remedy the excellent Robert has prescribed. There is assuredly none so rarely declined or so readily sampled by the patient.
I am an exceedingly strong man—and, despite the assertions of my dear sister Harriet, my constitution is of iron. No common exercise tires me; I can walk all day and be the better for my walk at bed-time. I have swum five miles in the sea on two occasions, and defied all the faculty after a wetting more times than I care to remember. If it be foolish to boast overmuch of such a catalogue of physical merits, I set them down here that I may speak of the hours following upon my rescue with that brevity they deserve, and spare the reader any pedantic account of them.
It had been Okyada’s hand which dragged me from the sea, and Larry himself who steered the boat which discovered me. Despite the fog, that lynx-eyed captain of mine had dogged every movement of the Diamond Ship, had stood so close to her throughout the adventure that he could sometimes have tossed a biscuit to her decks. When the rabble chased me to the bridge, his keen ear had detected the commotion. He heard me leap for my life, and guessed instantly the nature of the situation which drove me to this extremity. His express commands had kept the long boat in the sea from the beginning, and in the sea she swam when I had most need of her. They told me afterwards that a crew had manned her and was away before you could have counted twenty. It must have been so, as the outcome shows.
Now, these good fellows, dragging their prize by the head and the heels as seamen will in bursts of nautical ecstasy, bundled me into the boat and the blankets almost by one and the same movement; and rowing swiftly to the yacht, they fought their way through the little knot of anxious men, and had me rubbed down like a dog and safely in my own bed almost before I realised that they were my friends at all, or that their vigilance had saved me from the sea. For my own part, I suffered them as one suffers a man who insists upon an exhibition of his goodwill and is not to be repulsed. I had no pain, be it said, no sense of weakness, no symptom either of exhaustion or of extreme cold. Whatever emotion agitated me was chiefly the emotion of friendship, and of the sure knowledge that Joan Fordibras was on the ship, that she moved and breathed near by me, and, with God’s help, would remain my prisoner to the end of my days. For, be assured that, despite old Timothy, who roared for the hot water and the lemons in a voice that could have been heard in the truck, little Joan had taken as proud command of that cabin five minutes after I entered it as any commander of a ship who hoists his pennant at Portsmouth. Nor had anyone the right to drive her thence or to take that place she occupied so gracefully.
How gentle is a woman’s hand in the hour of our misfortunes; how unmatched her sympathy and unwearying her patience! These old truths we know as copybook maxims, and yet there are few who understand them truly until illness is their master and captivity their lot. I was not ill—bed was no proper place for me—and yet I lay there watching Joan, afraid almost to speak, wistful of her care, gratitude as surely in my heart as though this had been a house of sickness, and she had been its ministering angel! How silently, how deftly, she moved! There was grace in every movement I thought, grace and sweetness and light. And she was my Joan of Dieppe again. The shadow of the Valley House no longer dwelt upon her childish face.
I suppose it would have been early in the new day when Joan took charge of me, and old Timothy brewed the punch and Larry came and went from the cabin to the bridge as a man full of anxieties, and yet in some sense content that it should be so. These foolish nurses of mine had so far told me nothing, nor did they hear me talking with equanimity. An immersion in the sea is often regarded by a sailor, of all men, as a dreadful tragedy. Few of this trade can swim, nor does a sailor ever look upon the water as other than an enemy. So now Larry would have kept me to my bed, smothered in blankets, and dosed like an old salt with Timothy’s rum. It is little wonder that I became almost angry at their solicitude.
“Why do you do all this, Joan?” I asked her, when half an hour of it had passed. “Am I a child to be petted and spoiled because its pinafore is wet? Tell Captain Larry that I am coming up to the bridge. You cannot suppose that I shall be content to lie here now. Tell him I am coming up at once. It is nonsense to make such a fuss.”
Joan shook her head as though, thus early, she had come to despair of me.
“Only a man would talk like that,” she exclaimed, and then—“only a man would be so ungrateful.”
“I demur to the charge. You set a great crowd of bullies on me to hold me down by violence, and then talk of ingratitude! Do you not see, my dear girl, that I must know what is going on? How can I lie here when there is so much uncertainty—when so many things may happen? Please do as I tell you, and let Captain Larry know at once.”
She came and stood by my bedside, and touching my fingers for an instant with her own—a gesture which thrilled me as though some strange current of a new life burned in my veins—she said very quietly:—
“There is nothing happening, Dr. Ean. If you went up to the bridge, you would see nothing but the fog. That is what Mr. McShanus is looking at now—at the fog and the punch bowl. We cannot see the others—we shall never see them again, I hope.”
It was calmly said, and yet what a tale of woe it voiced: days of her own agony among the ruffians, intolerable hours of suffering and distress! I thought her then one of the bravest of women—I think so to this hour.
“Joan,” I said, “how did you come here? Where did Okyada find you? I have thought much about it, and I believe that I know. But you must tell me yourself. You hid in one of the boats, did you not—one of the three boats the men lowered when they wished me to go on board this yacht. I thought it must be so. There was no other way.”
She had seated herself by this time in a girlish attitude at the foot of my bunk, her feet swinging together as though to express a sense of her indifference; her hands clasped, her eyes avoiding mine as though she feared I would read the whole truth therein.
“You were a wizard always, Dr. Ean. My father, that is General Fordibras, said so—Mr. McShanus thinks it, and so does Captain Larry. Yes, it was in the last of the boats that I hid myself. I saw them lower it, and then when they all got into the first two I climbed down from the gangway and hid myself under the tarpaulin. Have you ever been really afraid, Dr. Ean—afraid for an instant of something which seems to be worse than your thoughts can imagine? Well, I have been afraid like that ever since Mr. Imroth took me on the ship—afraid in a way I cannot tell you—yes, so afraid that I would lie for hours, and shut all sights and sounds from my ears, and pray that the day would find me dead. I tell you now that you may not speak to me of it again—I could not bear it—God knows I could not.”
For an instant, and an instant only, her courage failed her, and, burying her face in her hands, she wept like a child. Herein I think she gave expression to that pent-up anguish she had so long supported silently and alone. I did not seek to comfort her, did not answer a word to her piteous entreaty. The circumstances of her rescue must, in the end, be their own answer to her fears, I thought.
“We will not speak of it, Joan,” I said gently. “It was a clever thought to hide yourself in the boat, and I wonder it occurred to you. Of course I should have been disappointed if I had been wrong. Directly they told me that you were not on the ship, I guessed that you had jumped down into one of the neglected boats, and that Okyada would find you there. That is a fellow who reads my mind more clearly than I can read it myself. He is the true wizard. We must keep Okyada always with us when we go back to the old home in England, Joan. I would not lose him for all the riches on your Diamond Ship and more. Yes, indeed, we must never part with Okyada.”
This was said with some meaning, and Joan Fordibras would have been unworthy of the cleverness with which I credited her had the intent of it failed. She understood me instantly—I knew that it would be so.
“I must go to Paris,” she rejoined with a dignity inseparable from such an answer. “General Fordibras will be waiting for me there. I must go to him, Dr. Ean. It was never his intention to send me on the ship—no, I will do him the justice to say that. They tricked me into going—Mr. Imroth and those with him. My father would have taken me back to America. He promised me that the day I went to Valley House. I believe that he was in earnest—he has never told me a lie.”
“A point in his favour and one of the best. Then it was the Jew who took you away that night my friends saved me! I should have thought of that. I should have guessed as much.”
Insensibly, you will see, I had been leading her to tell me the whole story of her life since we had been separated at Valley House. Her determination to go to Paris I found worthy of her attitude since the beginning; her loyalty to this arch-villain, Fordibras, remained amazing in its consistency. After all, I remembered, this man had shown her some kindness, and, in a sense, had acted a father’s part toward her. I did not believe that he had intended deliberately to brand her with the crimes his agents had committed. That had been the Jew’s work—the work of a man who was the very keystone of this stupendous conspiracy. I could not blame Joan because she had the wit to see it.
“You will remember that it was after dinner, Dr. Ean, and I had gone up to my room,” she said, replying to my question. “I had been there perhaps half an hour when the old servant, who used to wait on me, came up and said that my father was waiting for me in the gardens. I ran down at once, and followed her to the mountain gate, which the General alone made use of. There I met the negro, who said that I must accompany him to the observatory which is on the cliffs, as you know. I did not suspect anything; why should I? My father was often at the observatory with Mr. Imroth, and I imagined that they had some good news for me. That was a child’s thought, but I am not ashamed of it. No sooner had we passed the tunnel than two of the sailors ran up from the cliff road and told us that the General had gone on board the yacht, and that I must follow him. It was a trick, of course. The yacht was waiting for me, but the General was not on board her. I was helpless in their hands, and we sailed that night to join theEllida——”
“TheEllida! So that is the name of their ship. The Hebrew is a bit of a sage, it appears. Was not theEllidathe ship of Frithjof in the fable, and did not it understand every word he spoke? A clever hit. They would name him for a Norwegian and neglect to be suspicious. I see the point of it, and admit his sagacity. He took you with him, not meaning any harm to you, but principally to frighten me. Well, Joan, I should not have been frightened, but it would be untrue to tell you that I have so much sense. There are hours when most men lose their courage. I lost mine entirely upon the night when they signalled a message concerning you. If I had been somebody else, I should have seen at once that it was mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. You, I suppose, were comfortably in your cabin sleeping meanwhile. That is generally the story—one of two in a frenzy of anxiety, and the other quietly sleeping. Let us say no more about it. The circumstances will never recur, I trust, if we live for a thousand years—an unnecessary piece of emphasis, young as my Joan is.”
I had brought a smile to her face now, and she began to tell me many things about the Jew’s ship which, otherwise, I am convinced, would never have been told at all. There were thirty-two so-called passengers on board, she said, eleven of them women—and a crew, as she heard, of fifty hands. The smallness of this did not surprise me. Here was a ship which rarely went into port, a great hulk floating in the waste of the Atlantic—what need had she of men? The fellows idled about the deck all day, as Joan confessed, and at night there were scenes passing all words to describe.
“We lived as you live in the great hotels in London. Ships came to us frequently from England and America, and supplied us with all that was necessary. Mr. Imroth rarely saw anyone, but the others played cards all day, and when they did not play cards they quarrelled. Then at night all the cabins would be lighted up, and there would be dancing and singing and dreadful scenes until daybreak. While Mr. Imroth was on the ship I saw very little of it all. He made me keep my cabin, and he was right to do so. When he left us, it was very different. I remember that a young Russian fell in love with me the first day I went on deck—there were others of whom I cannot speak, and moments I shall never forget. Mr. Ross was very kind, but he had not Mr. Imroth’s influence with the men. When he came on board, Mr. Imroth sailed for the Brazils, and the mutiny began. Some of the men wished to go ashore; there were others who would have waited for their companions who were coming out from Europe on a relief ship. Then one night the alarm was given that your yacht had arrived and was watching us. Mr. Imroth had told the men all about you, and when you were sighted, I believe they thought that there were other ships with you, and that their end had come. From that night it was one long scene of terror and bloodshed. I lived—I cannot tell you of it, Dr. Ean; you would never believe what I have seen and heard.”
I told her that I could well understand what had happened. When rogues fall out and there are women among them, then, assuredly, do men lose the image of their humanity, and take upon them that of devils. The scenes upon the ship must have defied all measured description. I could imagine the shrieks of women, the oaths and fury of the beaten criminals, the terror of the seamen, the long nights of drunkenness and debauch, the fury of combat—above all the rage and madness against the man who had contrived all this. What would my life have been worth amongst these men if I had gone aboard them before the battle had been lost or won, or the hour of their extremity had arrived. That little Joan herself had escaped the more awful penalty remained a wonder of the night. I could but be sensible of a gratitude to the providence of Almighty God which had saved her—from what a fate!
“I must teach you to forget it, Joan,” I said; “the homelands of England will help you to blot out these memories. It is too early yet to say exactly what course we must take; we have so much to learn and the time is short. But we are homeward bound now, and never again will there be a home for me where little Joan is not. That is what I have to say to you to-night. There will be sunshine to-morrow, Joan, and we will see the new day together. The world could give me no greater happiness.”
She did not answer me. I knew that she was thinking of the sorrow of her own life, and telling herself that she could never be my wife until the mystery of her birth and infancy were mine to judge. And this was the malice of it—that the men who could solve that mystery were criminals both, fleeing from justice, and as likely to seek a meeting with me as to vaunt before the world the story of their crimes.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE END OF THE DIAMOND SHIP.
Dr. Fabos turns his Eyes toward England.
I suppose that I slept a few hours at the dead of night; but certainly I was awake again shortly after the sun had risen, and upon the bridge with Larry, as curious a man as any in the southern hemisphere that morning. Remember in what a situation I had left the Diamond Ship, the problems that remained unsolved upon her decks, the distress of her crew, the trials and judgments that awaited them ashore, the sure death prepared for them upon the high seas. All this the fog had veiled from our reckoning last night; but the day dawned clear and sunny; the curtain had been lifted; the whole picture stood there asking our pity, and in some measure our gratitude. Had we any longer a duty toward the honest men yonder—if honest men there could by any possibility be; or did other claims call us imperiously back to England and our homes, to tell the story where all the world might hear it? These were the questions which Larry and I discussed together, as we stood on the bridge that sunny morning and focussed our glasses upon the distant ship. Should we abandon her or return? Frankly, I knew not where our duty lay. The problem presented possibilities so awful that I shrank from them.
“There are women aboard there, Larry,” I would say.
And he would answer as often:—
“There are men aboard here, sir, with wives and little children waiting for them at home.”
“We could stand by them, Larry,” I put it to him. “If they come to reason, we should do all that is humanly possible for their wounded, and those who are deserving our pity.”
“You cannot stand by them, sir—you have not a pound of coal to waste. Mr. Benson says he will have all his work cut out to get us to the Azores as it is. We shall look pretty if we imitate them and drift about here till Doomsday. And we haven’t any music on board, sir. We must go dancing to our own complaints. Have you thought of that, doctor?”
“God knows,” said I mournfully. “There they are, sickness and fever and death on board—women at the mercy of ruffians, the ship drifting helplessly, the dock waiting for them in any honest port, little chance of making any port at all. What is a seaman to do—where does his simple duty lie? Answer those questions, and I will begin to agree with you. We are men and must play a man’s part. Tell me, I repeat, where our duty lies and we will do it.”
I will do Larry the justice to say that when he had made up his mind upon a given course, he rarely turned from it. His own crew were justly dearer to him than any ship-load of criminals drifting in an unmanageable hulk upon the Atlantic Ocean. And the logic of his case was, I suppose, unanswerable.
“Doctor,” he said, “if your brother lay dying, would you call first upon him or the son of your neighbour who had hurt himself running away from the police? You ask me where our duty lies, and I’ll tell you in a word. It lies to Miss Joan first of all—to see that the shadow of this trouble never falls upon her childish face again. And after that, it is a duty to the brave men who have served you so well, to them and their homes and those who are dear to them. Yonder ship is as well off as we are, and in many ways better. She is now in the track of mail steamers bound to the Argentine, and will quickly fall in with help. If you board her again, they will cut your throat for a certainty, and try to board us when that is done. Leave them to the justice of Almighty God. Their destiny is in other hands. That is wisdom and duty together.”
I knew that he was right, and yet I will confess that I surrendered to his judgment with reluctance. There is an unwritten law of the sea that no sailor in distress shall be deserted, however just or merited his fate may be. We could take the honest fellows from the ship, I would persist, and do all humanly possible for those who were sick. It would be a reproach to me afterwards, I feared, a memory of a day neither altogether glorious nor altogether merciful. As to the great hulk herself, my glass showed her decks clearly, but did not discover any signs of life upon them. Just as I had left her drifting at the mercy of wind and current, so now did she lie sagging in the troughs of the rollers, a piteous spectacle of impotency and despair. The very sails upon her masts were torn and ragged as though long neglected by a seaman’s hand. No smoke issued from her funnel; the boats had been taken up; I could espy no commander upon her bridge nor discern that brisk grouping of the hands upon the fo’castle which bespeaks a voyage. She might have been a phantom ship, a sea vision conjured up by dreamers—and such I could almost believe her.
“At least, Larry,” said I, “we will take another look at her if you please. Miss Joan is sleeping, I imagine. She will know nothing of this, and the men are not to suppose that I am unmindful of what I owe to them. Let us learn, if we can, what is happening over yonder—then we shall turn homewards with lighter hearts. Even our miserly Benson will not tell me that we have not coal enough for such a diversion.”
He had no reasonable objection to offer to this—and, to be plain, our very course must carry us in some such direction. We had stood by the ship all night, and she lay now upon our port-bow, distant, perhaps, two miles from us on a spirited sea which tumbled before a fresh westerly wind that would be half a gale presently. As we drew nearer, the pictures, which a good telescope had revealed to me, were not belied. I could now make out a few hands at the fo’castle hatch; there was a solitary figure by the taffrail, and two or three more about the main deck. Nowhere, however, did any evidences of activity appear. Had I not seen the afflicted with my own eyes, dressed their wounds and heard their woful complaints, it would have been impossible to credit the burden of human anguish which that vast derelict must carry. That such a ship could now do us any mischief seemed beyond all belief incredible. None the less, the fact must be recorded that we were still some half a mile from her when she fired a gun at us, and a shell fell idly into the sea not a hundred yards from our foremast. Nor was this all, for a second report immediately rang out from her decks, and a great flame of fire leapt up above them, though no shell followed after, nor could the quickest eye detect the path of any shot.
“Larry,” I said, “that is what I have been expecting all along. The breach of one of their guns is blown out. I wonder how many lives it has cost?”
“But you are not going on board to see, sir?”
“Indeed, no. Their shot has answered all my questions. It is homeward bound now, Larry—full speed ahead as soon as you will—and God help any innocent man if there be such over yonder.”
His rejoinder was the bell ringing out loudly in our engine-room below. To the quartermaster he cried in a captain’s sharp voice: “One point starboard,” and was answered, “One point starboard it is.” I perceived that we had altered our course almost imperceptibly, and were now steering almost direct to the north-east, which must bring us to the islands of the Azores, and the coal we needed so sorely. If there were any regrets, one man alone suffered them and remained silent. It had been so much my own emprise from the beginning; I had hoped so much, dared so much, feared so much, because of it, that this silent flight from the scene, this abandonment of the quest, this abject submission to our necessity could be accounted no less than a personal humiliation which must remain with me whatever the subsequent achievement.
I had set out to drag the Jew to justice. A voice ironical reminded me that Valentine Imroth was free and ashore, that he mocked my knowledge, and might yet outwit a sullen police. The great house of crime he had erected must be pulled down for a season; but who would say that it would not be rebuilt upon a foundation of human credulity more sure, and to be relied upon, than any he had yet discovered? I had not brought this arch-villain to justice; I knew nothing of the confederates he had upon the high seas, of the ships which befriended him, it may be of other refuges as safe and unnamed as this vast hulk now sinking below the horizon and disappearing from my view. And what was this but failure, failure as complete as any in the history of the police I had derided—a failure which no circumstances could atone, no explanations justify? Such were my reflections—such the thoughts that came to me as the great ship faded from my vision, downward to the nether world where the voices of the lost should welcome her, and the spirits of the damned give her greeting.
Long I stood there, my eyes upon the horizon, my vision enchained by the void as though a voice must come to me from the unknown and say “This is the truth; this is the hour.” We were alone on the waste of waters now: a brave ship running homeward to the cities and the cottages of England; a ship that carried stout hearts and merry men; upon whose decks the prattle of little children might in fancy be heard, their childish forms uplifted, their young lips kissed. From all this joy I stood apart. What had home to give, what were the shores of England to me if I might not find there the love and confidence of my little Joan?
Not as a child but as a woman had she spoken last night when she said—“Tell me the story of my life and I shall have the right to listen to you.” There could be no rest for me, no thought of man’s love for her until the record proved her not the daughter of General Fordibras, but his victim. I had been conscious of this from the beginning, but the inevitability of it recurred to me now when the great ship had disappeared from my ken, and all my hopes seemed to sink with her. To win Joan’s love I must snatch her secret from a rogue’s keeping, carry it triumphantly to her, and so write it that all the world might read. God alone knew how such a task as this might be accomplished. I wonder not that its very magnitude appalled me.
And so the new day waxed old, and found me still alone, my eyes upon the void; my heart heavy with the burden I must carry. The great sea had spoken and I had heard her voice and bowed to the destiny of her judgments. Let the land now answer me—that land for which my friends yearned as exiles, who have heard a call from home and answered it with tears of gladness because their faces are toward the light.
CHAPTER XXXII.
WE HEAR OF THE JEW AGAIN.
Once More in London.
I am not one of those who touch the posts by Temple Bar with that rare delight which betrays the true-blue Londoner. Foreign scenes are ever a safer tonic to me than any fret and striving of our own cities; and gladly as I turn to London sometimes, it is rarely that I do not quit her shadows with a greater pleasure. Perhaps I am conscious of a subtle change creeping upon her, and destroying much of her charm. To me she seems as the great growing child which has lost its strength in the act. Vast beyond all belief, her energies are perceptibly weakening. She is no longer an example to the provinces; they do not imitate her fashions, and are ready to scoff at her pretensions. The old London of the gloomy theatres, the narrow, dirty streets, the London of Simpson’s and Evans’, and the decent supper rooms, was a thousand times more romantic a city in my eyes than this County Council Babylon, with its raucous prophets and its perpetual cant of moralities. Let the blame be on my head which dares to think such treason. I am lonely in wide streets, and the gospel of modernity depresses me.
Unrepentant, I write these lines, and yet they can conjure up for me a vision of London so desired that all the years will never blot it from my memory. I had been in England two months then. A littered writing table in my private sitting-room at a great Strand hotel bore witness to my activities—an untasted elixir in a wineglass by my side spoke of a woman’s anxieties and of her devotion. Certainly my dear sister Harriet had sufficiently impressed upon these people the necessity of treating all carpets and curtains by an antiseptic process, and the profound wisdom of warming the interiors of those hats which subsequently were to adorn the heads of males. Her debates with a German Prince in command, neither understanding the tongue of the other, were a little protracted, and not always without heat. She was determined that I should not cut my finger-nails with unaired scissors, and convinced that the only way of saving me from the troubles which beset the path of my indifference lay in the frequent administration of advertised tonics, and a just sampling of the whole of them. I suffered her and was happy. Is it not something that there should be one woman in all the world who lives for us a life so wholly unselfish that no thought of her own needs ever enters into it?
To my dear sister, then, be this well-earned tribute paid. Doubly fortunate, I might write down another name and spare no encomiums. Joan Fordibras, my little Joan of Dieppe and the sunshine, was with us in the hotel, and no less a slave of mine than the other. Every day, when I came down to breakfast, it was Joan who had been across to Covent Garden for the flowers I like best to have about me—it was Joan’s clever fingers which delved amidst the mass of littered papers and unfailingly extracted therefrom the erring document; Joan who told me at night what had happened during the day in this dismal world of politics and art—the world in which we amuse ourselves by calling those who differ from us knaves and decrying all merit save that which makes its own appeal to us. Rarely did I find her in that merry mood of girlhood in which I caught her—how long ago it seemed!—at the Fête at Kensington. If her face betrayed the sea’s dower of heightened colour and eyes unspeakably blue, she had become less the child and more the woman, and she lived as one tortured between two rivers of doubt—knowing the past and fearing the future, but unconscious of the present. Between us there stood the impassable barrier of the truce we arrived at upon the deck of my yacht,White Wings. I was never again to tell her what she was and must be to me—never to speak of a man’s love prevailing above all else, more precious to him than all else under God’s fair sky; never to speak of it until I could carry the secret to her and say—“This is your birthright, such were the days of your childhood.” I had pledged my word, and the bond was of honour. Time might redeem it or time might bring the ultimate misfortune upon me—I knew not nor had the courage to prophesy.
So London became the city of my desire, and in London my work began. I saw Joan every day, heard the music of her laughter, and was conscious of her presence about me as man is ever aware of the spirit of happiness which hovers so rarely about a busy life. The littered table in my private room bore witness to my activities, and the animation with which I had pursued them. Many ambitions have I set before me to worship in the years of the old time, but never such a task as this; whose achievement must bring a reward beyond price; whose failure, I was aware, would separate me finally and for ever from the woman I love.
To say that I laboured at it incessantly, indeed, is to do little justice to actuality. The mystery went with me wherever I turned. I wrestled with it through nights of bitter dreaming; it followed me to the streets, to the theatres, to the houses of my friends. It prevailed above every other occupation; it would start up even in the blue eyes which daily asked the unspoken question; it would envelop little Joan herself as a veil which hid her true self from me; it would stand out black and clear upon every page that I wrote—a sentence irrevocable, a very torture of the doubt. The secret, or the years of darkness, said the voice. I hid myself from the light and still I heard its message. It spoke to me above the city’s clamour and the hum of throngs. The secret, or the night! What an alternative was that!
I was to go to Joan and to say to her—You are the daughter of this man or that, but not of General Fordibras. I was to tell her that none of hers had part or lot in the great conspiracy of crime whose fringe I had touched, whose arch-priest I had named. Here was the task in a nutshell, so simple seemingly that any dunce might have entered upon it with confidence or any child sat down to master it. Yet, witness the uncertain steps I had followed, and judge then what kind of a task it was and what the peculiar nature of my difficulties. Judge then if I misrepresent the circumstance or claim for myself that which truth has not justified.
We had made a fair passage home from the Azores and come straight to London. Losing none of the precious hours, I went immediately to Scotland Yard, and from Scotland Yard to a friendly Minister’s room at Whitehall, and there I told this story as it is written in this book, and as time has not changed it. If I met with incredulity, I blame no one. My cables home had warned the police of much that I would tell them, and more that remained mere surmise. Murray himself—my old friend Murray, whose suppositions had sent me upon an errand as strange as any in his calendar—Murray assured me that the police of France, of Germany, of America, and of Portugal were already advised of that which had been done, and of the evidence upon which it was being done. But even he had begun to lose faith.
“We have searched the houses you named in Paris,” he said, “and there are half a dozen men under lock and key. They have arrested five in Berlin, and the world has read the story of the coup made in New York. To be frank with you, that is all we can do. This Jew of yours appears in none of these successes. He is not named anywhere. There is no trace of him—not a word, or a letter, or a trinket. The Governor of the Island of Santa Maria declares that the mines there are just what they pretend to be; that he has been over them with General Fordibras, and that he finds the General a very simple, soldierly gentleman. As to your Diamond Ship—they will believe in that when she comes to port. I have traced the various steamers you have named to me, and their papers are in all cases correct. To be candid, Dr. Fabos, if the Jew himself had come to this office, I should have had no evidence to offer against him. There is only one of his company threatened so far by your revelations, and she is Miss Fordibras.”
We laughed together, and I showed him at once that I was not disappointed.
“You are face to face with a master,” I exclaimed, “and you expect to find childs’ toys in his hands. If Valentine Imroth is to be hanged by any thieves’ den in Germany or in Paris—to say nothing of London—then he is a hundred miles from being the man I met at Santa Maria, or that brother Jew who commands the Diamond Ship. Do not believe it, Murray. The success of this organisation is a success of delegation. Nine out of ten men in Imroth’s employ have never heard his name, never seen him, or become aware of his existence. The greater rogues, who form his cabinet, are as little likely to be taken in anycafé des assassinsas the Jew himself is likely to make a speech at Westminster. We have touched the fringe of a splendid fabric, but threads of it only are in our hands. To-day, at the Admiralty, Sir James Freeman tells me that a second cruiser will be despatched to the South Atlantic next week. If they discover the derelict, I shall be astounded. Ask me for a reason and I can give you none. It is mere premonition. Sitting here in London I can depict that sagging hulk as clearly as if I watched her from the deck of my own yacht. She is drifting there, peopled by devils, a ship of blood and death—drifting God knows where, without hope, or idea, or haven. She may so drift to the Day of Judgment, but man will never discover her. That is my belief. I have no reason for it—I admit freely that it is ridiculous.”
Murray did not quarrel with my point of view, but assuredly he could not help me. No trace of Imroth had been discovered; Fordibras had not been arrested, nor had any news of him come from Santa Maria. The house there, I understood, was shut up, and the so-called miners had left many weeks ago in a steamer for Europe. The most diligent search had revealed none of those caverns of treasure which I believed (and still believe) to exist. There were implements for drilling and blasting, forges, cranes, and cartridges, but of secret habitation, none. The Valley House was declared to be an American’s whim, the mountain passage one of old existence, and perfectly well known to every inhabitant. Such simplicity I judged to have been bought at a handsome price. Gold alone could have set these people’s tongues wagging so pleasantly.
“They are bought to a man, Murray,” I said; “and unless we care to pay a higher price, we may trouble them no more. In my view they are not the only recipients of this man’s oily bounty. I would venture to say that he has friends enough in some of the South American republics to save an army from the gallows. We will take it at that and leave it there. If the Park Lane people do not care to carry it further, I have no interest. You cannot arrest this man, you say, because there is no evidence against him. That must be told him when we meet—it shall be part of the price I pay for his secret. Such a secret I am determined to force from him if I lose my life in the venture. Nothing else concerns me now, Murray. Let a thousand criminals go down to the sea in ships, and I am unmoved. His secret—my task begins and ends with that.”
He did not understand me wholly, nor would I unbosom myself to him. The partial failure of my voyage could not but result in such incredulity as I met everywhere at home. Nor might I blame a shrewd officer for saying frankly that there was at present no evidence that could be read in court against Valentine Imroth. His treasure had been successfully hidden from every human eye. A friendly Government sheltered him; his dupes seemed unable to betray him. The spell that he cast had been powerful to protect him even in his absence. I saw more plainly than ever that the final scene must be between the arch-rogue and myself—even at the peril of my life.
And how should this be, you ask? How might I draw from the shadows a man fearing the light; one for whom the police of five nations were supposed to be seeking—a man who would as soon come to England, you might say, as venture into the jaws of hell? Let the circumstance answer me. I had a letter from the Jew himself three days after Murray assured me that all the talent of Europe could not discover him. Twenty-four hours later one of the fastest steam launches on the River Thames carried me from London Bridge to a house which should give all or deny me all before another dawn had broken. These were the truths, and they need no ornament of mine. I was going to the Jew’s house, and Okyada, my little Jap, alone went with me. Let the circumstance speak, I say, for it is worth a thousand guesses. The greatest criminal alive, as I believed this man to be, had asked me to go to him, and I had answered “yes.” So shall the record stand—even, as it would seem, this surpassing folly—for a woman’s sake, as so much folly and wisdom have been since man’s world began.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MASTER CARD.
We Visit Canvey Island.
The Jew had written to me, I say, and I had answered his letter. In a few brief sentences, worthy of the man and his story, he put me upon my honour and recited the compact between us.
“To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship.“At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May. Fear nothing, as I am unafraid. The word is no less sacred to me than to you. I pass it and bid you come.”
“To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship.
“At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May. Fear nothing, as I am unafraid. The word is no less sacred to me than to you. I pass it and bid you come.”
Whence, then, had this strange letter been delivered, and how had I falsified the fine phrases of the police and communicated with the Jew? The truth shall be told with all the brevity I can command.
There is published thrice every month in Paris a pretendedly comic paper, called theJournal des Polissons. Ostensibly a journalpour rire, a poor man’sPunchand jester, it is, as I have long known, a sure means by which one thief may communicate with another, or any assassin make known his hiding place to his friends. This knowledge I employed directly it became plain to me that Valentine Imroth had escaped the meshes of the law’s clumsy net, and defied a police which vainly protested that there was no evidence against him. I advertised in the paper in the common cryptogram of the Polish societies. Making no effort to be clever, I intimated to the Master of the Ship that I could be of the greatest service to him if he, in his turn, were willing to be of some little service to me. This letter, so amazing and so many are the eyes which watch the Jew’s career, was answered before a week had run. In a sentence I learned that the so-called Master was in hiding on Canvey Island—that desolate marsh beyond Tilbury, familiar to all who go down to the Nore in ships. There he would see me and hear my news. There I must challenge him and be answered—ah, what would I not have given to know in what manner he would answer me!
It is not to be supposed that I claim any merit of this voyage or was unaware of its peculiar dangers. The Jew knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal, and I might reasonably argue that he would never be madman enough to attempt anything against me at a moment when I could render him a service of such magnitude as that I proposed. To be frank, I found the whole business not less humiliating than that former failure in mid-ocean, which will remain the supreme misfortune of my career. Here was I, who had set out to hunt this man down, about to say to him—“Go your way; I have done with you. The police say there is no evidence against you. It is their affair, and I will take no further part in it.” He, on his part, must guess that I came to him in some such mood. Canvey Island, I remembered, could be easily gained from the open sea, and just as easily from the shore of Essex. There would be a hundred eyes watching the coming of my launch, spies afloat and spies ashore, a launch of his own, perhaps, and certainly every expedient his subtle mind could contrive against any treachery that might be contemplated against him. He would trust me with a sword naked to his hand as it were. On my side, I might go safely while we agreed—but let us quarrel, and then heaven help me, I said.
Thus, in a word, the situation lay. I staked my life, not upon the honour of Valentine Imroth, but upon a human interest I believed powerful enough to protect me. And this step I took that I might return to Joan and say: “Here is the truth; here is the story which you and I will guard while we live.” The danger could be nothing to me in the face of that which success must mean. I was as a miner lifting his pick for the last time. What hopes and fears I carried to that lonely island, what a burden of doubt and dread!
I shall say nothing of my voyage down the Thames, nor of those scenes so often described, and with such feeling, by some of our later day novelists. To me the lower river is ever an echo of the voice of the agitated Pepys, or the more stately tones of the pious Evelyn. A changed river since the great ships deserted the wharves by London Bridge, none the less, she is, in a sense, still the great highway to the kingdoms of the world. Here is that water temple which the giant masts wall in; here all tongues are eloquent of the worship of the sea; here men of all nations commingle in that rare confraternity which has earned our wealth and established our greatness while the centuries have run. A river it is of curdling pools and racing tides, of towering stages and gabled houses; a river of mystery and of darkness, beloved of the city which has deserted her, inseparable from the story of its people. To her true disciples, then, be the keeping of the record. My launch carried me too speedily by creek and pool that I should claim to be of the elect.
Now, we had left St. Katherine’s wharf late in the afternoon, and it was almost dark when the great orb of the Chapman Light came to our view. A rough diagram on the back of the Jew’s letter had indicated to me where I must land upon the island, and at what point his servants would wait for me. Had I been in doubt, a green lantern swinging by the low wall of an ancient farmhouse—the first you see when the island comes to your view—would have called my attention to the place and invited me to go ashore there. I had by consent passed my word to take none but Okyada to the meeting, and faithful to the promise he alone followed me to the landing stage and prepared to go up to the house with me. The launch itself had been lent to me by Messrs. Yarrow, and was commanded by one of their engineers. I did not dare to ask even Captain Larry to be with me upon such a night—and as for my friend, the loquacious Timothy, it would have been madness to bring him. The Jew had told me in the plainest terms that my very life depended upon a faithful interpretation of the terms of the compact, and I knew my man too well to doubt his meaning. This lonely shore, I said again, would be watched by a hundred eyes. And what eyes! Truly a man might peer into those gloomy shadows and believe this to be the haven of ultimate Melancholy, the home of those unresting spirits the great river had carried out from the stress and storms of the city’s life. A chill hand of Nature’s death had touched it. Its very breath was as a pest.
An old negro stood on the landing stage as the launch came alongside, and he it was who carried the lantern. No one else appeared to be about, though I heard a whistle blown sharply, and answered by another toward the Essex shore. The negro himself hid his face as much as possible from me, nor did he utter a single word or betray the slightest emotion at my coming. I noticed, however, that he waited for the launch to cast a little way into the river before he moved from the stage; and when this was done and the whistle had been sounded a second time, he led the way up a narrow grassy path to the farmhouse, and quietly left me at its door. Night had quite come down by this time, and a dank white mist began to rise above the marshes. The farmhouse itself appeared to be a structure built by some honest Dutchman who had helped to save Canvey Island from the sea when Essex was still washed by the waters of the estuary. A single light burned in one of its windows, but elsewhere it was dark as the river which flowed so blackly before its gates.
I knocked three times upon an ancient door, and was answered immediately by a trim maidservant. Yes, she said, Mr. Imroth was at home and expecting me. And so she ushered me into the presence of that master criminal for whom the police had searched the cities of the world.
Seated in a low arm-chair in a little room at the front of the house—a poor, shabby apartment, furnished with no better taste than a Margate lodging house, I perceived that Valentine Imroth wore a green shade low over his eyes, but not so low as to impair his vision; while the chair he had placed for me and the lamp set upon the table would permit him to follow every passing thought of mine with the eyes of a human artist upon whom nothing is lost. Careless in his attitude, he smoked an immense cigar with evident satisfaction, and had by his side a black bottle, which, as I knew by its shape, should contain Hollands gin. In many ways a changed man from the Jew I had met upon the heights at Santa Maria, the ferocious aspect of him was but little abated; and as though to emphasise it, he had laid a great stick by the side of his chair while one of the ugliest boar hounds I have ever seen blinked at his feet, and lifted a savage head silently at my coming. These things I observed instantly, and drew my own conclusions from them, “He is not armed,” I said, “but somewhere near by his friends are concealed—the dog would hold me if he gave the word, and half a score of ruffians would do the rest.” A place of peril surely—and yet I had known that it must be so when I set out to meet him.
I put my hat upon the floor and drew the chair a little back from the table to which it had been drawn up.
“I am here,” I said shortly, “in answer to your letter. The conditions upon which we meet are faithfully observed between us. My servant is waiting for me at your door, and my launch is out in the river. Let us get to business at once. That, I hope, is your wish.”
He thrust the shade back upon his forehead, and showed me a pair of red-limned eyes, watery and blinking as the dog’s at his feet. The long thin hand which held the cigar seemed to be silver-backed like a brush, with nails as black as ebony. An immense diamond glittered upon his little finger. Like all his fellows, he had not conquered the love of personal display even at his age, which could not have been less than eighty years.
“It is my hope,” he repeated, not without dignity—which, however, he lost instantly in the manner of a broker of Houndsditch selling shabby furniture—“to see the great Dr. Fabos of London, to have him in my house; that is an honour for an humble old man. What have I done to deserve it?—how has this pleasure come into a poor old life?”
He tittered like some old witch making a peat fire by a roadside. But it was the laughter of a vanity not to be hushed, and I passed it by with a gesture.
“The pleasure came into your house at your own invitation,” I rejoined. “It will go again very shortly by the same road. Please give me your attention. I am here neither for mutual expressions of self-admiration nor the desire of your amiable company. In a word, I have come to ask you for the story of Joan Fordibras.”
He nodded his head, still tittering, and leaned back in his chair to survey me with a closer circumspection.
“The great Dr. Fabos of London,” he repeated, “here in the house of the poor old Jew! How I am complimented; how I am honoured! The great English doctor who has followed a poor old man all round the world, and has come here to beg a favour of him at last! Repeat your question, doctor—ask me many times. The words are music to me, I drink them in like wine—the words of my dear friend the doctor; how shall I ever forget them?”
It was horrible to hear him cackle; more horrible still to remember that a single word of his uttered aloud to the men who watched us (for I believe that we were watched) would have cost me my life upon the instant. How to continue I hardly knew. Long minutes passed and found him still worming and cackling in the chair as an old hag above a reddening fire. I had nothing further to say—it was for him to proceed.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” he continued presently, falling boldly into the language of his race. “Yes, yes; you are the great Dr. Fabos of London, and I am the poor old Jew. And you would know the story of the little Joan Fordibras! How small the world is that we should meet here in this shabby house—the poor old Jew and the rich doctor. And so you come to me after all for help! It is the Jew who must help you to your marriage; the Jew who shall save the little girl for her lover. Ah, my dear, what a thing is love, and what fools are men! The great rich doctor to leave his home, his friends, his country, to spend the half of his fortune upon a ship—all for love, and that he might see the poor old Jew again. I have never heard a better thing—God of my fathers, it is something to have lived for this!”
He repeated this many times as though the very words were meat and drink to him. I began to perceive that he was the victim of an inordinate vanity, and that my own failure was dearer to him than a gift of millions would have been.
“Do I want money?” he asked presently, turning upon me almost savagely. “Heaven hear me, it is as dirt beneath my feet. Do I want fine houses, halls of marble, and gowns of silk? Look at the room in which I live. Consider my circumstance, my fortune, my riches, the clothes upon my back, the servants who wait upon me! Money, no—but to see the great men humbled—to strike at their fortunes, at their hearts; ah, that is something the poor old Jew would die for!
“Here to-night my reward begins. The great Dr. Fabos comes to me upon his knees to beg me the gift of a woman’s heart. How many have so come since I was this doctor’s age—a young man, spurned by his people, a fool, living honestly, a worshipper in temples made by man? And to all, I have said as I say to him, no, a thousand times, no! Get you gone from me as they have gone. Admit that the Jew is your master after all. Live to remember him—bear the brand upon your heart, the curse which he has borne at your people’s will, at the bidding of their faith. So I answer you, Dr. Fabos. Such are my words to you—the last time we shall ever meet, who knows, perhaps the last day you may have to live.”
He leaned forward, and from his eyes there seemed to shine a light of all the fires of evil that ever burned in human breast. No man, I believe, has listened to such a threat as he uttered against me this night. The very tones of it could freeze the blood at the heart, the gestures were those of one who lusted for human blood with all the voracity of an animal. I will not deny that I shivered while I heard him. Remember the remote farmhouse, the lonely marsh, the silence of the night, the stake at issue between us. Who shall wonder if my words were slow to come?
“You threaten me,” I said with some composure, “and yet, as a student of your race, I should have thought that the hour for threats had not come. I am here to ask you to do me a service, but at the same time to suggest an equivalent that might not be unacceptable to you. Let us consider the matter from a purely business basis, and see if we cannot arrive at an understanding. You must be perfectly aware that I do not come empty-handed——”
He interrupted me with a savage cry, so startling that it amazed me.
“Fool!” he cried; “I am the master of the fortunes of kings. What can you bring that is of any value to me?”
I answered him immediately—
“The liberty of your wife, Lisette, who was arrested in Vienna this morning.”
It was as though I had struck a blow at his heart. The cry that escaped his lips might have come from the very depths of hell; I have never seen a human face so distorted by the conflicting passions of love and hate and anger. Gasping, a horrid sound in his throat, he staggered to his feet and felt nervously for the cudgel at his side—the great hound leaped up and stiffened every limb.
“Keep that dog back, or, by God! I will kill you where you stand,” I cried, and every word I spoke thrilling me as a desire gratified, I turned his mockery upon him. “Here is the great Dr. Fabos of London come into his own at last, you see. Fool, in your turn, did you think that you dealt with a child? The woman is in gaol, I say. My money has put her there—I alone can set her free—I alone, Valentine Imroth. Listen to that and beg her freedom on your knees—you devil amongst men; kneel to me or she shall pay the uttermost farthing. Now will you hear me, or shall I go? Your wife, Lisette, the little French brunette from Marseilles—did I not tell you at Santa Maria that I had the honour of her acquaintance? Fool to forget it—fool! for by her you shall pay.”
The words came from my lips in a torrent of mad eloquence I could not restrain. I had played the master card, and was as safe in this house from that moment as though a hundred of my friends were there to guard me. The Jew lay stricken at my feet. Ghastly pale, his hands palsied, his limbs quivering as with an ague, he sank slowly back into the chair, his eyes searching my own in terror, his whole manner that of one who had not many moments to live.
“My wife, Lisette—yes, yes—it would be by her. I am an old man, and you will have pity—speak and tell me you will have pity—you are Dr. Fabos of London! What harm has the poor old Jew done you? Oh, not her, for the love of God—I will tell you what you wish, give me time—I am an old man, and the light fades from my eyes—give me time and I will tell. Lisette—yes, yes—I am going to her at Buda, and she is waiting for me. Devil, you would not keep me from Lisette——”
I poured some spirit into a glass and put it to his lips.
“Listen,” I said. “Your wife is arrested, but I can set her free. Write truly the story of Miss Fordibras, and a cable from me this night shall obtain her liberty. I will listen to no other terms. Joan Fordibras’ story—that is the price you must pay—here and now, for I will give you no second chance——”
It would be vain to speak of the scene that followed, the muttering, the piteous entreaty, the hysterical outbursts. I had never made so astounding a discovery as that which told me, a week before I left England in my yacht, that this old man had married a young wife in Paris, and that—such are the amazing contrasts of life—he loved her with a devotion as passionate as it was lasting. The knowledge had saved me once already at Santa Maria; to-night it should save my little Joan, and take from her for ever the burden of doubt. Not for an instant did my chances stand in jeopardy. Every word that I spoke to this abject figure brought me one step nearer to my goal. They were as words of fire burning deep into a dotard’s heart.
“Lisette,” I continued, seeing him still silent. “Lisette is charged with the possession of certain jewels once the property of Lady Mordant. I am the witness who has identified those jewels. Your dupe, Harry Avenhill, who came up to rob my house in Suffolk, is the man who will charge this woman with her crime and establish the case against her. Whether we go to Vienna or persuade Lady Mordant to withdraw the charge, it is for you to say. I will give you just ten minutes by that clock upon your chimney. Use them well, I implore you. Think what you are doing before it is too late to think at all—the liberty this woman craves or the charge and punishment. Which is it to be, old man? Speak quickly, for my time is precious.”
For a little while he sat, his hands drumming the table, his eyes half closed. I knew that he was asking himself what would be the gain or the loss should he beckon some one from the shadows to enter the house and kill me. One witness would thus be removed from his path—but who would answer for the others? And was it possible that his old enemy, who had outwitted him so often, would be outwitted to-night? This seemed to me his argument. I watched him rise suddenly from his chair, peer out to the darkness, and as suddenly sit again. Whether his courage had failed him or this were the chosen moment for the attack, I shall never be able to say with certainty. For me it was an instant of acute suspense, of nervous listening for footsteps, of quick resolution and prompt decision. Let there be an echo of a step, but one sound without, I said, and I would shoot the man where he sat. Thus was I determined. In this dread perplexity did the instant pass.
“I cannot write,” he gasped at last. “Put your questions to me, and I will answer them.”
“And sign the document I have brought with me. So be it—the questions are here, in order. Let your answers be as brief.”
I sat at the head of the table and spread the document before me. The lamp shed a warm aureole of light upon the paper, but left the outer room in darkness. My words were few, but deliberate; his answers often but a mutter of sounds.
“Joan Fordibras, whose daughter is she?”
“The daughter of David Kennard of Illinois.”
“Her mother?”
“I am not acquainted with her name—a French Canadian. The records in Illinois will tell you.”
“How came she to be the ward of this man Fordibras?”
“His cowardice—his conscience, as men call it. Kennard was charged with the great safe robberies of the year 1885—he was innocent. They were my planning—my agents executed them. But Kennard—ah, he betrayed me, he would have stood in my path, and I removed him.”
“Then he was convicted?”
“He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. Fordibras, under the name of Changarnier—his real name—he is the cousin of that Changarnier who did France much mischief in the year 1870—Fordibras was then the Governor of the Sing Sing prison on the Hudson River. He was in my pay, but David Kennard had been his friend, and he took the daughter and brought her up as his own child. I did not forbid it—why should I? A woman, if she is pretty, is useful to my purposes. I wished to humble this man of iron, and I have done so. Pshaw, what a figure he cuts to-day! Skulking in Tunis like a paltry cutpurse—afraid of me, afraid but proud, my friend—proud, proud, as one of your great nobles. That is Hubert Fordibras. Speak a word to the police, and you may arrest him. Hush—I will send you evidence. He is proud, and there is heart in him. Tear it out, for he is a traitor. He has shut his eyes and held out his hands, and I have put money into them. Tear the heart out of him, for he will kill the woman you love.”
I ignored the savage treachery of this, its brutality and plain-spoken hatred. The General’s pride must have been a bitter burden to this creeping scoundrel with his insufferable vanities and his intense desire to abase all men before him. The quarrel was nothing to me—I could well wish that Hubert Fordibras might never cross my path again.
“Traitor or not—it is your concern,” I said. “There is another question here. When Joan Fordibras wore my stolen pearls in London, was the General aware that they were stolen?”
A smile, revoltingly sardonic, crossed his ashen face.
“Would he have the brains? She wore them at my dictation. I had long watched you—you did not know it, but knowledge was coming to you. I said that you must be removed from my path. God of heaven! Why were you not struck dead before Harry Ross lay dead on Palling beach?”
“The young seaman who was found with the Red Diamond of Ford Valley in his possession! The brother of Colin Ross who took your place upon theEllida? I begin to understand—he was carrying those jewels to London, and an accident overtook him? That was a grave misfortune for you.”
He clenched his hands and looked me full in the face.
“Had he lived I would have torn him limb from limb. He stole the jewels from my dispatch boat and was drowned escaping to shore. My friend, the good God was merciful to him that He let him die.”
I could not but smile at piety so amazing. In truth a new excitement had seized upon me, and my desire to escape the house had now become a fever of impatience. What if an accident befell me, or an agent of evil stood suddenly between Joan and my tidings! How if the cup were dashed from my lips at the last moment! Good God! What an agony, even in imagination!
“Mr. Imroth,” I said, rising upon the impulse. “I will cable at once to Vienna, saying that I have no evidence to offer, and the girl Lisette will be discharged. Go where you will, but leave England. To-night I spare you. But should you cross my path again, I will hang you as surely as there is an Almighty God to judge your deeds and punish you for them. That is my last word to you. I pray with all my soul that I shall never see your face again.”
He did not move, uttered no sound, sat like a figure of stone in his chair. And so I left him and went out into the night.
For I was going to Joan, to bear to her the supreme tidings of my message, to lay this gift of knowledge at her feet, and in those eyes so dear to read the truth which, beyond all else on earth, was my desire.