CHAPTER V
When Raikes had parted from the Sepoy, a degree of his customary hardness and assurance was evident in his manner.
He had been able to comment sagaciously upon the extraordinary narrative, and had appropriated as much of the sapphire as his greedy glance and covetous memory could bear away; but now that he pursued his way along the dimly lighted hallway which led to his apartment, a singularly thoughtful mood oppressed him.
This phenomenon, due, in part, to the cessation of the drowsy cadences of the Sepoy and the absence of the fascination and gleam of the sapphire, was relegated by Raikes to the overtures of approaching drowsiness.
And yet the startling episode which confronted Prince Otondo in the evening’s instalmentof this Oriental complication recurred to his mind again and again.
Strangely, too, Raikes did not comment upon the singular fact of the narrative itself.
Why should the Sepoy take the trouble to relate it to him, and why should he, of all unconcerned and self-centered men, manifest such an unusual interest in a recital which lacked every practical feature and had nothing but the weird to commend it?
If he asked himself these questions, it was with the impersonality of lethargy, for they were dismissed as readily as they presented themselves.
With such sedative queries, which were gradually diminishing from fabric to ravel, Raikes finally reached his room and, securely bolting the door, began to prepare to retire.
This was not an elaborate proceeding.
His outer garments removed, he had only to seek the seclusion of the bedclothes, clad in the remainder of his attire.
In this manner he economized on the cost of a night-robe and the time it would consume to don and doff such a superfluity.
At all events, if such was not his sordid reasoning, the promptness with which he fell asleep indicated that he did not propose to squander useless time in wakeful speculation upon the intangible nothings to which his recollection of the narrative began to fade.
However, if Raikes had succeeded in passing the boundaries of slumber, he had admitted, at the same time, extravagances of which he would never have been guilty in his wakeful hours, for he found himself so engaged in all sorts of uneasy shiftlessness and inconsiderate expenditure that when morning came and he awoke, as usual, with the sunrise, he resumed his customary identity, peevish and unrefreshed.
For a moment he sat with his knees huddled to his chin, over which his eyes peered like vermin in the wainscoting, and then, urged by an impulse whose source he could not determine, he leaped with surprising agility to the floor and proceeded to the false radiator.
For a short space of inexplicable indecision he stood with his hands resting upon the button which released the fastenings in the rear,an uneasy thoughtfulness converging the ugly wrinkles downward to the root of his nose and contracting his eyebrows with senile apprehension.
Suddenly his wonted decision asserted itself. He pressed the button and the radiator swung toward him; a few moments later the inner compartments responded to his manipulation, and the last door opened.
Apparently everything was as he had left it.
To his rapid enumeration the quantity of the small bags, containing his beloved coin, remained undisturbed. But, upon nearer regard, one of them—that within easiest reach—seemed to betray, through its canvas sides, a variety of unusually sharp angles and definite lines.
With a suffocating sensation of impending disaster, Raikes grasped the bag.
It pended from his tense grip with a frightful lightness. He caught up its neighbor for further confirmation. It responded with reassuring bulk and weight. But this one fromwhich all specific gravity seemed to have departed—what did it contain?
With trembling hands the terrified man unfastened the cord which bound it and inverted the bag over the table.
Instead of the sharp, musical collision and clink of metal, a sodden succession of thuds smote his ears.
With a shriek of utter wonderment and alarm, Raikes stood erect and petrified.
His hands fell, with inert palsies, to his sides. His eyes seemed about to start from his head, for, looming dully to his aching gaze, in place of the coin he had so confidently hidden away, was a rayless, squalid heap of small, black coals.
A moment he stood lean and limp; every particle of the fever which consumed him concentrated in his starting eyes, which turned, with savage inquiry, toward the fastenings of the door.
The next instant, with a leap like that of a wild beast, he reached the threshold, examined the bolt with vivid glance and searching fingers,then raised his hand to his forehead with a gesture of utter distraction.
Nothing had been disturbed.
Even the check-pin which he had inserted over the bar for additional security was in place.
The only other possible means of entrance was by a window at the other extreme of the room.
But this was not to be considered, for it opened, with sheer precipitation, upon the unrelieved front of the house.
The windows adjacent were removed at a distance which could afford no possible basis from which to reach the one from which Raikes glared so grimly.
Moreover, the shutters had been clasped and the inner sash secured.
The conclusion was inevitable.
No one had entered the room during the night. It was impossible for a stranger to have access to the apartment during the day unobserved, and the recess behind the radiator was known to himself alone.
Nevertheless there was the absurd substitution.
It was incredible!
The secret repository was of his own construction.
The room was secure against intrusion.
And opposed to all this the incontrovertible proof of his loss, a catastrophe all the more agonizing since the logic of the situation obliged him to eliminate any one from suspicion.
Raikes had always considered a loss of this character the climax of malignant fate. He had never been able to contemplate it without the mortal shudder which usually communicates its chill to a loving parent confronted with the prospect of the departure of a dear one.
The recess in the wall contained all that Raikes held dear in the world; every spasm of fear, each contraction of the heart, always began and concluded with the button which moved its protecting bolts.
But now a new element added its ugly emphasis; there was something supernatural about the episode.
Convinced of the impossibility of thievery in any of its ordinary forms, he was bewildered as to the inexplicable means of his present predicament.
His sense of security was shaken.
He promised himself to stand guard over his belongings jealously that day, and to make assurance doubly sure at night.
In the meantime Raikes decided to confide his misfortune to no one.
There was a meager possibility that the guilty one might be misled by his silence; he had heard of such cases; he had known of the culprit offering condolences to the silent victim on the assumption that the latter had discussed his mishap with others.
He would wait, and with Raikes to determine was to do.
With his obnoxious individuality rendered several degrees more unendurable by his catastrophe, if that was possible, Raikes, having assumed that portion of his attire in which he had not slept, double-locked the door of his room from the outside with a brace of keys that, in all likelihood, had not their duplicates in existence,and proceeded to the dining-room, whither he had been preceded by his parchment of a sister.
At once he began to rustle his exhausted sensibilities with an added menace, awakened by a manifest desire on the part of the famished woman to satisfy the cravings of an ungratified hunger with an extra help of bread and butter.
As he looked upon the attenuated creature, with a morose reflection of his loss, the latter, with a rebellion which she could not control, selected with trembling fortitude a thick slice of bread, which she buttered liberally and began to devour with pathetic haste, despite the rebuking gleam of the rat eyes opposite, an episode which, added to his already perturbed mind, exasperated his brutal temper to the point of snarling remonstrance, which was fortunately denied its utterance by the opportune arrival of the Sepoy, who smiled blandly upon the chill acknowledgment of the shriveled Raikes.
The Sepoy, at the conclusion of a hearty repast, which the spinster witnessed with famishedenvy and Raikes considered with ascetic disapproval, looked, with a scarcely concealed disdain, into the furtive, troubled eyes of the miser and said: “I will see you to-night?”
“Yes,” replied Raikes promptly. “I will be there.”
“Very well; I will not return until the time appointed,” said the Sepoy. “I expect to show you a rarity.”
“Another brilliant aggravation?” asked Raikes.
“Ah!” laughed the Sepoy, “is that your estimation of the sapphire?”
“Yes,” returned Raikes with acid frankness. “To be permitted to appropriate the gleam and the radiance; to comprehend the cunning of the facets; to appraise its magnificent bulk intelligently, and witness the careless possession by another of all these beatitudes, I think that constitutes an aggravation.”
“It has been known to degenerate into a temptation,” continued the Sepoy, reflecting the cynical humor of the other.
“Aye!” admitted Raikes, “and has concluded in surrender.”
With this the strangely assorted trio left the table directly, the Sepoy to his problematical business, the spinster to escape the reprimand foreshadowed in the eyes of her brother, and Raikes to keep his treasures under malicious surveillance.
All that day his diseased mind tortured itself with impossible theories and absurd speculations, until his attempts to explain the curious substitution degenerated into a perfect chaos of despair and bewilderment.
With an impatience he could not explain, Raikes at last presented himself at the apartment of the Sepoy as the hour of ten was striking.
He was greeted by the curious individual within with a demeanor which somehow offended Raikes with the impression that his prompt eagerness was the subject of amused calculation.
His irritation, however, was not permitted to develop, for no sooner had he seated himself in the chair indicated by his host than the latter placed upon the table, within easy reachof his harassed visitor, a small box of leather and directed him to press the spring.
Anticipating something of the nature of the contents of the case from the material of which it was made, Raikes, forgetting for the moment the futility of the day’s researches, pressed his bony thumb upon the spring, and at once the lid flew back like a protest, disclosing the most superb diamond it had ever been his misfortune to see and not possess.
“Ah!” he cried in an ecstasy of tantalized contemplation, “the glass, the glass! Anything so precious must have had commensurate treatment. What color, what clarity, what bulk!” and as the unhappy creature yielded to that species of intoxication which even the grace of God seems unable to ameliorate, the Sepoy, with the easy poise and balance of intonation and phrase which had served as such facile vehicles for the previous instalments, began:
“When the bewildered prince realized the meaning of the worthless heap in the recess, and calculated, with familiar appraisement, theimmense loss represented by the senseless substitution, he stood for a moment destitute of all dignity and as impotent as the meanest of his household.
“His thin, fine lips, which usually held such firm partnership and divided his words with such cynical scission, relaxed separately into the inane lines of superstitious fear, and the luster of his restless eyes seemed to have degenerated into that surrounding dullness of sickly white which would have provided the impressionable Lal Lu with an easy fortitude to deny the approaches of this semi-potentate.
“The next instant, like the doubled blade of Toledo steel, the prince recoiled to his lithe stature, and the customary brightness of his eyes returned shadowed with a degree of crafty reflection.
“One by one, lest a stray gem might be collected with the worthless débris, like the crew of Ulysses clinging to the sheep of the Cyclops, Prince Otondo removed the pebbles which intruded their sordid presence in this scintillant treasure-trove like a motley of base subjects in an assemblage of the nobility.
“When the last of these worthless objects had been cleared from the recess, the prince closed the panel, and seating himself before the rayless heap, surrendered himself to moody reflection, like a disabled enthusiast confronted by his disillusions.
“How did these pebbles reach this hiding place?
“In asking himself the question, the prince had absolute assurance that it was impossible for any one to enter his sleeping-apartment without his knowledge.
“The puzzled man also recollected, with a shudder, which he alone could explain, that he had taken radical means of making it impossible for the artisan who had contrived the hidden treasury to reveal its existence.
“He was positive, too, when he had retired the night before, that his jewels were undisturbed.
“Why just this exchange of a handful?
“For what reason had not double the quantity been removed? Nay, why not all, since it was possible to abstract a portion?
“At this question the eerie iteration of the merchant returned to his mind:
“‘Pebbles for diamonds!’
“At once the distasteful alternative upon which it was based recurred to him.
“A quick radiation illumined his mind, and subsided to darkness as promptly.
“Ram Lal!
“It was he who had indicated the substitution. But the merchant could no more enter the room in which the prince was seated at this moment than the most abject menial in the palace.
“Still, the merchant had been able to predict the disaster.
“Some sort of association existed, but what it was, considered with the impracticability of unobserved entrance and exit, was beyond his comprehension.
“The incredible condition existed.
“In the light of its outrageous improbability, and the insuperable obstacles in the way of its accomplishment, the prince found himself compelled to dismiss every hypothesis.
“Still, he could subject Ram Lal to an investigation that would, at least, extort a confession as to his ability to allude to the episode in advance.
“In the meantime, with true Oriental craft, the prince determined to say nothing of his loss, and present an impassive demeanor to those by whom he was surrounded.
“With this purpose the prince proceeded to the apartment beyond, and was about to strike the gong to summon the servant charged with the preparation of his morning repast, when his attention was attracted to a slip of folded paper fluttering from the edge of the table-top and held in place by a diminutive bronze Buddha.
“With the weird certainty that this beckoning paper was another unaccountable feature of the savage perplexity he was compelled to endure, the prince, approaching, grasped the folded sheet with eager, trembling hands and exposed its inner surface to his vivid glance.
“‘Ah!’ With a burning sensation about his eyes, a fever of harassed impatience in hisbrain, and a sense of suffocation and impotent rage, he read:
“‘Most Illustrious!
“‘Unless Lal Lu is returned to her father by nightfall, another handful of precious stones will be replaced by as many pebbles.
“‘And this to warn thee:
“‘The native troops at Meerut are in revolt.
“‘They have shot the regimental officers, and have put to death every European they could find.
“‘They are now on their way to Delhi to proclaim Dahbur Dhu, thy grandfather, sovereign of Hindustan.
“‘The Moghul is old.
“‘Thou art next in succession.’
“There was no signature.
“None was needed; the prince had preserved several specimens of that chirography at the bottom of various interesting bills of sale.
“As this bizarre scion of an incredibly ancient régime read this extraordinary missive, with its exasperating reference to the restitutionof Lal Lu, and considered the prompt realization of the threatened reprisal which had followed his first failure to comply with the request of Ram Lal, a sense of fear and futility possessed him.
“With curious apathy, an unaccountable suggestion of impersonality, almost, he did not pause to consider the absence of the intolerant passion which his loss should have occasioned, or to wonder at his bewildered reception of this implication of further dispossession.
“The prince appeared to be moving as in a spell; but as he concluded the remainder of the missive and remembered, at its inspiration, that he was, indeed, the grandson of the Moghul and the heir-apparent of this pageant throne of Delhi, a sensible degree of his customary cynical assurance returned.
“Hastening to the ante-room, the prince, with alert reanimation, questioned the stalwart official who stood without.
“He indicated to his master that the missive had been left upon the outer sill of the thresholdleading from the ante-room to the corridor which opened upon the courtyard.
“Beyond this nothing could be learned; but other and more absorbing information was conveyed to the prince.
“He learned that several bodies of Sepoys had already passed the palace, on the highway, in the direction of Delhi.
“Startled at this rapid confirmation of the statement conveyed in the strange communication which he had just read, the prince rapidly reviewed the singular cause of the mutiny.
“Great Britain had just supplied the native soldiery with the Enfield rifle.
“This weapon was rendered formidable by a new cartridge, which, in order that it might not bind in the barrel bore, was greased in England with the fat of beef or pork.
“With incredible indifference to the prejudices of the Sepoys, the military authorities at Calcutta ordered the low-caste Lascars to prepare the cartridges in a similar manner.
“To this direct invitation disaster was not slow to respond.
“The fat of pigs was sufficient to make adegenerate of a Mohammedan; and to devour the flesh of cows converted a Hindoo into a Mussulman.
“In this manner had Tippu Sultan enforced the faith of Islam on hordes of Brahmins, and with the abomination of pork had the Afghans prevailed upon the Hindoo Sepoys, captured in the Kabul war, to become Mohammedans.
“Exasperated by the unconcealed contempt of the Brahmins, the Lascars, with an easily understood rancor, managed to convey the startling information to their detested superiors that the cartridges they bit in loading the new rifles were greased with the fat of cows, and that they were, in consequence, defiled, and their boasted caste supremacy was destroyed.
“This revelation, so momentous to the Hindoo, found its way first to Barrackpore by reason of its nearness to Calcutta.
“At once an indescribable panic ensued, and in a marvelously short time every native regiment in Bengal was confronted with the possibility of lost caste, and terrified at the consequent belief that the British Government wasmaking an attempt to Anglicize them with beef as they had already attempted to do with beer.
“The account of the greased cartridges, embellished as it speeded, traveled, with the rapidity which usually expedites evil rumor, along the Ganges and Jumna to Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi and Meerut, and the British authorities were confronted with a revolt which was to cost thousands of men and countless treasure.
“As the prince reflected upon the fever of events, and calculated their possible consequence to himself, the ambition—often napping, seldom in slumber—which he secretly cherished, awoke to disturbing vividness.
“His allowance was ample; his retinue, all things considered, impressive; and the Kutub, although in a state of disrepair in certain portions, was still unmistakably a royal residence. But he was thoroughly weary of the massive pile, and increasingly exasperated at the interdict of Delhi.
“Certain salacious possibilities within its walls still made their insidious appeals to him,and he had not forgotten the ceremonious deference accorded him in the household of the Moghul.
“At the Kutub he had to contrive his own dissipations and excesses.
“There was no need to be clandestine.
“The very frankness of his privileges discouraged his imagination. There was no spice of jeopardy in them; no preludes of intrigue.
“To relieve this surfeit, which is the worst of monotonies, eagerly would the prince have joined the revolting troops, detachments of which he could perceive from the walls of the Kutub hastening along the sun-scorched highway to Delhi.
“But his semi-majesty was cautious.
“It was characteristic of him that his mature reflections should frequently place his impulse under obligations; a condition that had resulted in many a salutary compromise with some proposed moral abandon.
“Should he show the slightest countenance to the native troops in the present emergency, the record of such an attitude would constitute anything but a passport to the continued considerationof the British Government, upon whose sufferance he not only enjoyed his present magnificent residence, but the acknowledgment of his right of succession as well.
“The prince was not yet inclined to believe that the Sepoys could make headway against his detested patrons.
“However, with his mind stimulated by the hazard of the prospect, this picturesque heir-apparent, who had assured himself, since his perusal of the unaccountably delivered missive, that Ram Lal had no intention of making his appearance that day, at least, returned to the apartment where his morning repast awaited him, which he dispatched with the preoccupied impersonality of a savant who consults his timepiece in order to determine the temperature.
“Advised of the fact that he had finished by a disposition to ignore his remaining privileges, the prince, as if to pursue the direction of the unseeing gaze which he projected into space, rose slowly, and with that moody deliberation which is so often the outward manifestation of an ignoble as well as an elevated determination,proceeded to the silken arras and disappeared from view between the folds.
“Quickly he traversed the passageway leading to the apartments of Lal Lu; and in response to a light touch upon the gong the same servile apparition emerged and vanished, with cringing obedience, down the passage.
“With a gleam in his eyes, which might have caused a magistrate to reflect or a moralist to anticipate, that was both sinister and engaging, eager and speculative, the prince, with a gesture that was not without its impatient majesty and lithe impressiveness, swept aside the curtains which guarded the entrance to the small ante-room and stepped within.”
As the Sepoy reached this point of the narrative, arranged, perhaps, with shrewd malice to tantalize his eager listener, an expression of libidinous expectation and depraved absorption deepened upon the countenance of the latter, who, like an animal deprived of its prey, looked up suddenly as the narrator paused, with an exasperation which he made little attempt to conceal.
“Hell!” he muttered, “why do you pause? It is not late. This is an irritating trick of yours to leave off at the crucial juncture.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the Sepoy mirthlessly. “You have attended me, then? Well, I can’t admit you with the prince until to-morrow evening. I have much to do ere I retire.”
“This is my dismissal, I presume,” responded Raikes sourly as he replaced the gem, from which he seemed unable to remove his thieving eyes.
“Here, take this damned thing; it has demoralized me,” and placing the shagreen case, with its priceless contents, in the hands of the evilly-smiling Sepoy, he disappeared through the doorway.
Arrived at the door which opened upon his room, Raikes was assured, by the familiar response of the locks to the pressure of his extraordinary keys, that his precautions of a few hours before had been undisturbed.
Moreover, his sister, seated in her room in a chair so placed as to command a view of the doorway opposite, and looking more effaced than ever from the weary vigil which her heartlessbrother had imposed upon her during his absence, advised him of the customary isolation and depression which distinguished this barren household.
Within, Raikes began to make himself secure for the night.
He double-locked the door, placed the heavy bar in the iron shoulders, over which he inserted a stout iron pin.
A brief investigation convinced him that it was out of the question to open the shutters from without.
Satisfied upon these points, Raikes proceeded to the radiator, which for a trembling space of apprehension he forbore to open.
However, since it was certainty he wanted, the valves shortly swung toward him, the inner door responded to the sesame of his touch, and the recess containing the tenets of his religion was exposed to view.
With trembling hands, which indicated the latent fear which unnerved him, and eyes aching with anxiety, the wretched man examined bag after bag of his precious coin with the solicitude one sees manifested by parents whosechildren are rendered doubly dear by the taking away of one of their number.
“Ah!” With a sigh, the relief of which almost concluded in physical collapse, Raikes was able to assure himself that his rapid inventory revealed no further loss.
Replacing his treasure with the indisposition he usually manifested to leave the vicinity of his hoard, the miser closed the various compartments with more than his accustomed certitude and began to prepare to respond to the lassitude of sleep which, for some unaccountable reason, was unusually insistent.
With the easy partition of attire already noted, Raikes presently found himself ready to tuck himself away for the night, which he did after rolling his bedstead directly in front of the false radiator.
This unusual measure of precaution consummated, Raikes, with the first sense of security he had felt for the last twenty-four hours, presently succumbed to a sleep remarkable for its quick approach and its subsequent soundness.
Until early dawn, with the relaxation whichis commonly the reward of innocence, Raikes slept away in unconscious travesty.
And when at last he opened his eyes he was as alertly awake as he had been profoundly asleep.
With a promptness due to his retiring forebodings, his habitual unrest and suspicion returned to him.
He was as vitally alive to the disturbing conditions of the day before as if they had been the subjects of an all-night meditation.
But the confidence of his bolts and bars, the recollection of his unusual measures of safety, reassured him somewhat.
It was, therefore, with a degree of composure he approached the door and satisfied himself that the bar and the locks had been undisturbed.
With equal assurance he rolled the bedstead from the radiator and pressed the button which operated the concealed spring, with a deliberation in which no suggestion of uneasiness appeared.
A quick revolution or so and the inner recess was revealed.
To his rapid accounting the quantity of bags was the same, and their relative positions, which he had so carefully arranged the night before, were undisturbed—but this one, that within easiest reach! What was it caused those sharp suggestions in its accustomed rotundity—those angular points?
In a quiver the man was transformed.
With a cry such as must have been forced from the Jew of old, compelled by the rough levies of his time to part at once with his teeth and his treasure, Raikes grasped the bag, which came away in his clutch with the agonizing lightness that had preceded his first loss.
Quickly he unfastened the mouth of the fateful packet and inverted it over the table.
The next instant there rattled to view a soulless, sodden shower of lack-luster, heart-breaking coals.
(To be continued on Dickey No. 2, Series B.)
“Ah, ha!” exclaimed Dennis, “an’ it’s there ye are again,” as the familiar phrase at the bottom of bosom No. 1 met his glance.
But it did not exasperate him on this occasion, for the young man, true to his determination to be liberal with himself, had still bosoms No. 2 and No. 3 at his disposal.
As he was about to separate No. 2 from its duplicate, his eyes, glancing aimlessly about for the moment, caught sight of a trim female figure sitting not far away on a bench diagonally opposite.
Hovering near her, a man, of a species Dennis had not seen before on the street corners of New York, seemed determined to intrude upon her attention.
Convinced of his purpose, the lady, for such she unmistakably appeared, rose from the seat as the fellow was about to raise his hat as a preliminary to further overtures, and sought another bench directly opposite the one from which Dennis had been a witness to her apparent persecution.
The intruder, however, refusing evidently to believe that the action of the lady had a personal application, deliberately walked past this new resting place and surveyed its occupant with insolent estimation.
A short distance away his pace slackened; he was about to return.
With genuine Irish impulse, Dennis, rising hurriedly, proceeded to the bench occupied by the disturbed lady, and, with a bow that was not deficient in grace and evident good intention, said:
“Excuse me, but say the wurrd, madam, and I’ll see that you are troubled no more with that loafer.”
For an instant, with an expression of countenance that suggested a fear that the flight from one intrusion was but the introduction to another, the lady looked upon Dennis with an astonishment that was partly the result of his picturesque contrasts of voice and visage.
Then, with fine intuition realizing, in the ingenuous face of the young Irishman, the unmistakable evidence of kindly impulse, she said, with a modulation in which Dennis was able to detect the accent of good breeding:
“I thank you, sir; I am tired; that man annoys me; but I would rather move on than be the cause of a disturbance.”
“If you will permit me,” responded Dennispromptly, “I will sit beside you long enough to indicate that you have met a friend; then I think that he will move off.”
The lady looked at Dennis with an uncertain smile, in which there was just enough restraint to urge the young man to add hastily: “An’ when he is gone for good, I will go too.”
“Oh, I was not thinking of that, I assure you!” the lady hastened to say. “That would be rather ungrateful on my part. I accept your suggestion. May I ask you to be seated?” and Dennis promptly complied.
As he had predicted, the fellow, who had witnessed the conversation, was compelled to accept its ostensible suggestion, and departed finally with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders and a Tammany tilt of his hat over his eyebrows.
In yielding to his gallant impulse, Dennis was unaware of the fact that he held, with not exactly picturesque abandon, bosom No. 1 in his right hand and the other two in his left, which gave him the appearance of having disposed, in some violent way, of the remainder of several shirts.
Awakened by the puzzled amusement depicted in the curious gaze with which the lady surveyed the various bosoms which he held, and encouraged by the impromptu nature of the entire episode, Dennis, as he realized the spectacle which he presented, indulged himself in a frank laugh, in which his companion seemed inclined to join.
The next moment he apologized, and, yielding to the obligation enforced by the situation, explained his possession of the dickey bosoms and the curious story which had gone before.
As he proceeded with the candor of genuine enthusiasm, and related the incredible narrative in his rich, Irish brogue, which affected his hearer, as it did every one else, with such singular sentiments in contrast with his remarkable countenance, all traces of punctilious restraint and artificial reticence vanished, and with the mien of one who proposes to extract all the entertainment possible from an undreamed-of experience, the lady urged Dennis to continue.
“I can’t do that unless I read the balancefrom the dickey,” said Dennis. “Would you mind?”
“I should like it very much,” replied the lady with gratifying readiness.
“Well, then,” said Dennis, “here goes,” and with his musical voice, which was one of his most inviting characteristics, the young man, on the basis of all that had preceded the bosom from which he was about to read, and which he had narrated to his auditor with refreshingverveand an ingenuousness whose vitalizing effect upon her sensibilities he was far from suspecting, began.
CHAPTER VI
Whoever has witnessed Kean’s superb delineation of the ruthless Richard in the scene where, in the illusion of his dying agony, swordless, he continues to lunge and feint, may comprehend the frightful mental overturn which prompted Raikes to sink inertly into a chair near the table, and with foam-flecked lips fall to counting, one by one, the miserable coals in the dull heap before him.
A silly smile overspread his sharp features like an apologetic sunbeam intruding upon a bleak landscape.
A gleam of shrewd transaction shone in his eyes.
The clutch of unwonted acquisition contracted his hands.
Slowly he made partition of the large from the small coals; regretfully he acknowledged the presence of the lesser bits as, with achuckle of greedy appreciation, he grouped the relative piles.
“Ha, ha! ha, ha! ha, ha!” What a laugh! What a frightful mockery of mirth! “Ha, ha! ha, ha!” and raising both hands above his head he brought them down upon the table with the lax inertia of utter collapse, and fell forward upon his extended arms, his face buried in the squalid heap beneath.
For a dreary hour he lay there without the twitch of a muscle, the well of a sigh.
Like a Cyclop’s eye the button at the bottom of the concave in the wall seemed to stare with wonder upon this unfamiliar Raikes, who could thus permit the radiator to swing open so heedlessly, and the inner recess to expose its golden glut.
Suddenly there came a sharp rap upon the door, then a pause; but its quick reverberations were unheeded by the prostrate man.
Again the thuds were administered to the echoing panels, and still no response.
“Uncle, I say, uncle!” cried a man’s voice. “Uncle!” and the shout was followed by a vigorouskick upon the woodwork; “Uncle! Uncle!”
At this last appeal Raikes stirred uneasily, and as the assault was continued with still greater stress, he managed finally to stagger uncertainly to his feet.
As he raised his head to listen to the clamor without, the meanness of his face, emphasized by the smudges of the coal in which it had so recently reposed, presented itself to the scandalized eye in the wall.
The miserable creature depicted the last degree of absurdity, and yet the ugly pathos of it all would have moved to pity.
“Uncle, I say!” and at the sound of the voice, which he recognized as that of his lusty nephew, Raikes, with a return of his accustomed intelligence, which had received its kindly repairs at the hands of nature during his brief coma, cried sharply: “Well, well!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the voice outside with an unmistakable accent of relief in its tone as it added, with unlettered eagerness: “It’s me—Bob!”
However, if his reawakened animation hadrevived his deadened spirit, it also restored the appreciation of his disaster, as, with a glance of vivid comprehension, he looked from the coal heap to the register, toward which he leaped with astonishing agility.
In an instant the inner recess was secure; in another the radiator was replaced, and Raikes, proceeding to the door, raised the bar, unlocked the catches and exclaimed, “Enter!”
As the breezy Bob crossed the threshold, the question of his eyes was instantly transformed to an expression of utter astonishment as he beheld the extraordinary blend of soil and pallor upon the countenance of his uncle.
“For the Lord’s sake!” he cried, “what ails your face?” and strongly tempted to laugh at the absurd spectacle, and as urgently impelled to restrain himself by the glittering eyes of the raging Raikes, he added, by way of apology for his noisy intrusion:
“We knew that you were in here, but could not make you hear us. You are almost two hours beyond your usual time.”
Directly in the rear of the young man stoodthe spinster, who gazed with widened eyes and parted lips upon her brother’s soiled visage.
“Well,” snarled Raikes, “I am all right, you see; now leave me until I get myself in shape to make an appearance.”
As the door closed behind the pair, Raikes hurried to the mirror, and above the crack which extended, like a spasm, diagonally across its surface he beheld his bloodless cheeks and forehead, and below, the dry slit of his mouth and his chin spattered with black and white.
As he witnessed the sorry sight, the unhappy man, unable for the moment to account for his plight, stood aghast, until his gaze, penetrating to the rear of his smudged physiognomy, beheld the reflection of the coal heaps upon the table.
At once a savage grin distorted his features into the degree of ugliness not already accomplished by its dusky resting place of the hour previous. A grin that was scarcely human and almost diabolical, as if the miserable creature had caught sight of the shriveled soul peering through the chinks which imprisoned his rateyes and found a malignant enjoyment in the contemplation of its contemptible littleness.
From this debasing inspection Raikes turned slowly to the washstand to remove the grime from his face, with an impersonal deliberation that was not only unnatural under the circumstances, but which awakened the eerie suggestion that he was expending his effort upon another than himself.
From this moment he became strangely calm; the sharp decision of his lips was never so pronounced.
A baleful, unwavering gleam distinguished his glance. He had evidently arrived at some determination, one that levied upon the last limit of his endurance.
All that day the unhappy man sat in his room, sullen and pondering.
The timid offers of nourishment made by his sister were either ignored or refused with such an ill grace that she finally forbore further overtures and left him to his morose reflections, to improve her opportunities of enjoying, unrebuked, the privileges of the table, until, by nightfall, an indigestion, which shewelcomed on account of its occasion, disturbed her with its unfamiliar pangs.
In response to his nephew’s concern as to his condition Raikes replied by saying: “I may have something to tell you by eleven o’clock to-night; will you be on hand?”
“Sure!” answered Bob with breezy goodwill.
From time to time Raikes glanced at the clock.
His last scrutiny had revealed the hour of nine. Sixty interminable minutes more remained ere he could see the Sepoy.
Slowly the leaden hands crawled over the indifferent face.
At last the half hour struck.
A strange impatience possessed him.
Perhaps the Sepoy might begin a little earlier than usual. He could, at least, suggest such a courtesy by his precipitation; it was far better than this unendurable wait.
With this anticipation he decided to proceed to the apartment of this singular narrator.
After taking his usual precautions, which seemed more or less of a mockery in view ofthe succession of disasters which had overtaken him, and again establishing the spinster in a position where she could maintain an unobstructed view of the entrance to his room, Raikes proceeded hurriedly along the various passageways, which finally concluded in his point of destination.
He rapped gently upon the door, which he discovered to be slightly ajar.
There was no response.
His second attempt to attract attention was pronounced enough to urge the door aside and enable him to make a comprehensive survey of the interior.
It was unoccupied; and of his last assault upon the panel the only recognition was a sullen echo in the hallway.
About to retire, his glance fell upon the table in the center of the room.
At once a sudden trembling seized him.
A burning fever surged through his veins; an irresistible impulse overwhelmed; for there, in inconceivable negligence, lay the shagreen case which he had so reluctantly returned to its owner only the night before.
And then—the malign agreement of his outward husk with his inner degradation was revealed.
His eyes, already criminal, reflected the kaleidoscopic succession of temptation and surrender; desire and thievery.
He scanned the passageway without in either direction.
No one was in sight.
A silence of respectable retirement prevailed that enabled him to hear his heartbeats almost, which surged along his veins to his ears and stifled the final gasp of the still, small voice within.
The next instant, with a lithe animal leap of astonishing quickness, Raikes, darting into the apartment, grasped the precious case and retreated as rapidly over the threshold.
Scarcely had the stealthy rogue vanished from the room when the door of a closet in the rear opened softly and revealed the Sepoy.
Upon his face a smile, surely evil, otherwise inscrutable, appeared, as he proceeded to the chair by the table, turned down the light in the lamp a trifle, and abstracted from hiswaistcoat pocket a small red case, the contents of which he examined with absorbed attention.
Arrived at his room, Raikes was elated to discover that he was not due at the Sepoy’s apartment until twenty minutes later.
“What a providence!” he murmured.
He would arrive late; he would make his approach as ostensible as possible; he would apologize for his tardiness.
His alibi would be perfect.
During these proposed depravities Raikes had closed and fastened the door, seated himself at the table, and pressed the spring which detained the lid of the shagreen case.
In a dazzling instant it flew open.
“Ah!” A very riot of irradiation and gleam met his eyes.
Here was rehabilitation! Here was amendment!
The diamond was a liberal equivalent for his losses.
Another glance at the clock revealed to him that he had exhausted ten minutes in his exultation.
This left a balance of ten minutes for a compunction or two.
Apparently he did not realize his opportunity, for half of the remaining time was consumed in the intoxication of the facets and the glamor, the thrill of intelligent valuation; and the other half to a grim calculation as to the usury that might accrue after the account with his losses was balanced.
These perjured figures were scarcely arranged to his satisfaction when the clock struck ten.
The strokes seemed like as many separate accusations.
“Bah! what are they to me?” he asked himself. He had been robbed; he had found a way to restitution; a man’s providence must measure to his necessities.
To arrive at these conclusions put him five minutes in arrears. Five more for a leisurely arrival would be ten; enough to apologize for; sufficient for his purposes.
He consumed as much time as possible secreting the stone in the recess. That accomplished,Raikes emerged from his room and proceeded down the hallway.
When he reached the apartment occupied by the Sepoy he breathed a sigh of relief.
The door was closed.
In response to his rap upon the panel, a voice which he recognized as that of the Sepoy cried: “Come in!”
With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, where, with him, the only conscience he had was located, Raikes complied with these instructions, and, closing the door softly, established himself, in his customary expectant attitude, in the chair indicated by his host.
“I have been told,” began the latter abruptly, “that there is a flaw in the sapphire.”
“What!” exclaimed Raikes with genuine concern. Two things he could comprehend: a loss and the abuse of property. The announcement of the Sepoy awakened the same misgiving which commonly affected his mind at a suggestion of defective title.
“Yes,” continued the Sepoy; “it was pointed out to me. But I am not convinced, or it may be that I refuse to be. A man often elects tobe blind when confronted with a suggestion of disaster. I want to be candid with myself. I require your assistance. While I continue the narrative, kindly see if you can discover any sign of blemish.”
Raikes, only too willing to engage himself upon anything which would assist his attempt at outward poise, seized the glass offered him and began a close inspection of the gem, as the Sepoy, with an indescribably insinuating modulation, resumed:
“As the prince advanced, Lal Lu, advised of his approach by the hasty exit of the waiting-woman and the soft alarm of the gong in the passageway, stood ready to receive him.
“A slight flush suffused her cheeks, a brighter luster beamed from her eyes.
“With a fervor which was evidently unembarrassed by any anticipation of denial, the prince approached the trembling Lal Lu, who seemed to his enamored glance unspeakably bewitching in the graceful attitude, of which she was thoroughly unconscious, which she had naturally assumed, and which gave unmistakableexpression to the hope, trepidation and regard awakened by his presence.
“And yet his eagerness was not reflected.
“There was little in the demeanor of the beautiful girl that was responsive; no indication of the sweet surrender that doubly endears, and which makes such irresistible appeals for protection and sensitive understanding to a man worthy of the name; and what evidences of confusion she betrayed were rather those which commonly prelude the execution of unwelcome resolution; a suggestion of a lurking disposition to readmit the Peri into Paradise, restrained by a knowledge of conditions unfulfilled.
“With the rapid interchange and subtle apprehension characteristic of a passion which has no definite assurances as to its right to monopolize the regard of the object of jealous consideration, the prince was compelled to acknowledge, in these vague suggestions, an intangible but no less real succession of barriers opposed to his ardent advances, and with a scarcely concealed and certainly undiplomaticirritation he paused before Lal Lu and demanded:
“‘What is it, Lal Lu? Thou art not glad to see me. I expected a reception other than this.’
“‘My father?’ demanded Lal Lu, ignoring the question and the yearning intonation of his address, each word of which was like a caress; ‘my father, what of him?’
“‘Ah!’ muttered the prince with deepening choler at the disturbing conditions introduced by the name, and a gleam strangely suggestive of menace. ‘Why speak of him now? Is not the present enough?’
“Lal Lu gazed upon the speaker with astonishment. How could he so easily forget what he had said the day before? And with a scarcely perceptible tightening of her beautiful lips, she said:
“‘Dost remember thy promise to give me news of him to-day?’
“‘I do,’ replied the prince. ‘I received word that he will not be here to-day.’
“‘Who told thee so?’ demanded Lal Lu.
“‘A writing so informed me.’
“‘Is it with thee?’
“‘No,’ replied the prince. ‘It is in my cabinet. Is not my word sufficient?’
“To this Lal Lu did not reply, but searched his countenance with a scrutiny which he found it difficult to endure, as he cried with renewed animation:
“‘Oh, Lal Lu, be not so cold! Hearken! The native regiments of Meerut are in revolt and on their way to Delhi.
“‘It is their purpose to re-establish Dahbur Dhu, my grandfather, upon the throne of the moghuls.
“‘As thou knowest, I am next in succession, and Dahbur Dhu is feeble and decrepit.
“‘The British are not in sufficient force to withstand a combined attack.
“‘See, then, Lal Lu, what this means for me; what it means for thee.’
“‘Oh!’ repeated the girl with curious emphasis, ‘what it means for thee, I know; but what it means for me’—and she paused with disconcerting deliberation as she added—‘thou hast not said.’
“‘Everything, my own!’ exclaimed theprince with generous ardor—‘everything! Thou hast but to command and thy will is done.’
“‘Everything?’ re-echoed Lal Lu with a questioning stress which the prince could not ignore—‘everything?’
“‘I have said,’ replied the prince.
“‘Am I then to be thy queen?’
“For a moment, a vital moment, the prince hesitated, but brief as the pause, scarcely the durance of an eye-flash, Lal Lu saw it, and gazed upon the prince with a disconcerting directness as he added, with the haste we note in the accused who attempt to distract suspicion by the utterance of glib generalities:
“‘My queen! Thou art always that!’
“‘Hold, Prince Otondo!’ exclaimed Lal Lu as the prince seemed about to surrender to an impulse to clasp her in his arms—‘hold! Thy answers suit me not. Reply, then, to this: Thy wife—am I to be thy wedded wife?’
“An expression like that of a peevish child tantalized by obstacles intruded to enhance its appreciation of favor withheld brightened hiseyes and sent sullen lines converging in his forehead.
“His hands clenched and opened; a faint suggestion of disdain curled his thin lips; the amiable inclination of his figure was transformed to an erect intolerance—and Lal Lu was answered.
“When the unfortunate girl could no longer doubt the unlovely evidence provided by the prince, and apprehended the humiliating significance of his hesitation, a majesty surer than his own, a presence superb in its elevation, encompassed her, and she gazed upon the perturbed man with an expression from which every trace of tenderness appeared to have vanished.
“With an angry sweep of his arm, as if to banish with a peremptory gesture the kneeling envoys of compunction, manliness and nobility, the prince stepped forward.
“‘What is that?’ At this moment the gong in the passageway responded to three measured strokes.
“‘Confusion!’ muttered the prince. ‘What does this mean?’ and turning abruptly, he hastenedto the doorway, swept aside the curtains, and revealed the trembling figure of the wrinkled crone who had quitted the apartment at his entrance.
“‘What now?’ cried the exasperated prince as he fixed his eyes, vivid with rage at the unwelcome interruption, upon the miserable creature.
“In reply the woman raised her shriveled hand, with a gesture that was not without its weird impressiveness, and pointed to his apartments.
“‘Speak!’ he demanded with a modification of his intensity, which he perceived deprived the waiting-woman of the power of speech.
“‘A messenger,’ she croaked, ‘from the palace of the moghul; he must speak with thee at once.’
“With one long glance of such concentrated determination that it caused the beautiful girl to tremble anew, the prince vanished through the portal and hastened along the passageway.
“Scarcely had he departed when the demeanor of the waiting-woman underwent a startling transformation.
“An incredible degree of energy quickened in the recoil of her bent form to a disproportionate erectness of stature.
“Beneath level, unwavering lids, her eyes emitted gleams which had pierced the retreating figure with deadly viciousness had they been poniards.
“The servile vanished, the abject; and she stood, the silent embodiment of evil, restrained purpose.
“The next instant, with an angry gesture that was vaguely significant of future requital and present impotence, the vindictive creature swept aside the curtains and re-entered the room leading to the apartment occupied by Lal Lu.
“As she approached the disturbed beauty, the tension in her mien relaxed, and she regarded thedistraitcountenance before her with a glance that was anything but unfriendly, in so far as it was possible to determine the nature of the sentiment in hiding behind that austere visage.
“Directly she stood by the table which Lal Lu had interposed as a sort of barricadeagainst advances of her impetuous lover, and with an attempt at a smile, which could as readily find acceptance as a repentant scowl, this singular being inserted her hand in the folds of the tunic which defended her parchment bosom, and produced from that barren demesne a folded missive, which she placed in the hands of the astonished Lal Lu.
“With trembling haste she exposed the inner surface of the paper, and with a glad heart and filial trust read:
“‘Be not afraid; relief is at hand.’
“There was no signature; none was needed.
“In a moment Lal Lu recognized her father’s familiar chirography, and as she reflected upon his well-known sagacity and resourceful boldness, her hope and courage renewed their belated assurances.
“‘Who gave you this?’ she asked.
“The waiting-woman, after a brief hesitation, in which inclination and restraint left their disturbing traces, replied:
“‘That I must not reveal.’
“‘At least,’ insisted Lal Lu, whose quick glance had detected the irresolution of the instantpreceding, ‘at least, tell me this: Was it my father?’
“‘No,’ replied the other promptly. With a barely perceptible grin of amusement at this ingenuous betrayal of the author of the few words which had awakened such animation, she added:
“‘One sent by him, it may be.’
“‘True,’ assented the girl.
“‘And now,’ exclaimed the woman with a return of her vindictive aspect, which the harassed beauty, unaware of its inspiration, witnessed with vague misgiving and a futile attempt to associate herself with its ugly manifestation; ‘and now, I would ask a question of you.’
“‘Yes?’ responded Lal Lu, perplexed at the baleful emphasis which preceded this announcement.
“‘Well, then,’ continued the woman with startling and uncompromising abruptness, ‘am I wrong in thinking that you would defend your honor with your life?’
“Before the astonished Lal Lu could reply, or encouraged, it may be, by some subtle confirmationin the look which shot from the distended eyes of the young girl, the eccentric speaker, again inserting her hands in the folds of her tunic, withdrew a short, slender poniard, at sight of which Lal Lu recoiled.
“‘Ha, ha!’ laughed the withered creature mirthlessly as she gazed with unsmiling eyes upon the shrinking beauty. ‘Be not afraid; this weapon is intended for you, but not to your hurt.’
“‘What, then?’ asked Lal Lu breathlessly, unable to adjust the peaceful assurance of the grim-visaged woman with the menace of the glittering blade.
“‘Listen!’ exclaimed the woman impressively: ‘I know Prince Otondo of old; he meditates no good for you. Were I in your place, I would receive his detested advances upon the point of this blade. Your protestations he will not heed, but this’—and the speaker advanced the dagger with a savage gesture which caused a shudder to pervade the trembling frame of Lal Lu—‘this is an argument he can understand.’
“‘Oh,’ cried the terrified girl, ‘I could not!’
“‘You could not?’ repeated the other with chilling emphasis. ‘Ha, ha! you could not! But you will submit to the advances of this monster!
“‘Believe me, you are not the sole object of his regard.
“‘There have been others caged within these walls who have been less obdurate than you, or whose resistance has availed them nothing.’
“‘Alas!’ exclaimed Lal Lu with an inexpressibly melancholy accent, as she considered the empty pedestal from which her ideal had fallen, and recalled with a shudder the caress which she had permitted and bestowed in that fervid interview with the prince. ‘Can this be true?’
“‘Aye!’ exclaimed the woman with savage affirmation. ‘Do not doubt it. Sooner than submit to the embraces of that wretch I would turn that weapon against myself.’
“‘Oh!’ exclaimed Lal Lu with a superb gesture and the light of unmistakable resolution in her eyes, ‘that I can do; but the other——’ And the poor girl trembled at the spectacle pictured in her mind.
“‘Well,’ exclaimed the woman, ‘I will leave this dagger here; do as you will; I have done for you what I could,’ and she turned to depart, unmindful, apparently, of Lal Lu’s tremulous ‘And I am grateful to you.’
“When the prince arrived at the apartment in which he accorded his audiences, if the attention he bestowed upon the meager assemblages which presented themselves occasionally can be dignified by that description, he found awaiting him a Hindoo, whom he recognized at once, and whose presence invariably preceded the recital of important information.
“To the degree that Prince Otondo had reason to suspect that his grandfather had certain of his servants subsidized at the Kutub, he measured secretly by similar secret embassies at the Delhi palace.
“The egotistical old moghul, with a vanity which even his anomalous situation with the British had not impaired, wished to assure himself that he would be worthily succeeded, and the prince was equally solicitous concerning the advancing senility of the moghul.
“In such bloodless intrigues this picturesque pair kept their servants engaged, until this germ of mutual distrust infected every dependent in the two households with that singular propensity to conspire which the studious historian of this mysterious country cannot have failed to record.
“On this basis certain shrewd spirits among the British intruders at this period were able to discover more of the character of the people under their unwelcome rule, in a single establishment of native servants, than in the general observations of a hundred English households.
“Awaiting, therefore, the conclusion of the ceremonies of approach, upon which he always insisted and which were shortly to be rendered so absurd, the prince at last, calling the Hindoo by name, demanded the occasion of his presence.
“‘It is an ill service, O prince,’ replied the Hindoo, ‘which I am about to render you.’
“‘What, then?’ exclaimed the prince. ‘To the point, to the point!’
“‘Your grandfather——’
“‘Is dead?’ inquired the prince with badly disguised eagerness.
“‘Nay; worse.’
“‘Proceed!’ demanded the prince. ‘What can be worse?’
“‘Your grandfather,’ replied the messenger, in evident haste to conclude a disagreeable task, ‘has taken to himself a young wife.’
“‘Ah!’ cried the prince, startled into a degrading abandonment of his customary elevation of demeanor. ‘The dotard, the imbecile! Married? To whom?’
“‘A daughter of the house of Nadis Shah, Rani Rue.’