We hurried down the track to the motor-car. I had gained a little time. But how could I keep my promise. And the next moment the problem became more difficult. The track boss came up with a short iron bar that his men had found in the weeds along the right of way.
“There's the claw-bar, that the devil done it with,” he said.
“You can tell it's just been handled by the way the rust's rubbed off.”
It was conclusive evidence. Everybody could see how the workman's hands, as he labored with the claw-bar to draw the spikes, had cleaned off the rust.
I hurried the motor away. We raced up the long winding road to Crewe's country-house, sitting like a feudal castle on the summit. And I wondered, at every moment, how I could keep my promise. The boy was a criminal, deserving to be hanged, no doubt, but the naked mother's heart that had dabbed against my fingers overwhelmed me.
Almost in a flash, I thought, we were in the grounds and before Crewe's house. Then I noticed lights and a confusion of voices. No one came to meet us. And we got out of the motor and went in through the open door. We found a group of excited servants. An old butler began to stammer to Marion.
“It was his heart, Miss... the doctor warned the attendants. But he got away to-night. It was overexertion, Miss. He fell just now as the attendants brought him in.” And he flung open the library door.
On a leather couch illumined by the brilliant light, Crewe lay; his massive relentless face with the great bowed nose, like the iron cast of what Marion had called a Nietzsche creature, motionless in death; his arms straight beside him with the great gloved hands open.
And all at once, at the sight, with a heavenly inspiration, I kept my promise.
“Look!” I cried. “Oh, everybody, how the palms of his gloves are covered with rust!”
The story of the American Ambassadress was not the only one related on this night.
Sir Henry Marquis himself added another, in support of the contention of his guest... and from her own country.
The lawyer walked about the room. The restraint which he had assumed was now quite abandoned.
“That's all there is to it,” he said. “I'm not trying this case for amusement. You have the money to pay me and you must bring it up here now, tonight.”
The woman sat in a chair beyond the table. She was young, but she looked worn and faded. Misery and the long strain of the trial had worn her out. Her hands moved nervously in the frayed coat-cuffs.
“But we haven't any more money,” she said. “The hundred dollars I paid you in the beginning is all we have.”
The man laughed without disturbing the muscles of his face. “You can take your choice,” he said. “Either bring the money up here now, to-night, or I withdraw from the case when court opens in the morning.”
“But where am I to get any more money?” the woman said.
The lawyer was a big man. His hair, black and thin, was brushed close to his head as though wet with oil; his nose was thick and flattened at the base. The office contained only a table, some chairs and a file for legal papers. Night was beginning to descend. Lights were appearing in the city. The two persons had come in from the Criminal Court after the session for the day had ended.
The woman seemed bewildered. She looked at the man with the curious expression of a child that does not comprehend and is afraid to ask for an explanation.
“If we had any more money,” she said, “I would bring it to you, but the hundred dollars was all we had.”
Then she began to explain, reiterating minute details. When the tragedy occurred and her husband was arrested by the police they had a small sum painfully saved up. It was now wholly gone. Like persons in profound misery, she repeated. The man halted the recital with a brutal gesture.
“I'll not discuss it,” he said. “You can bring the money in here before the court convenes in the morning, or I withdraw from the case.”
He went over to the file, took out a packet of legal papers and threw them on the table.
“All right, my lady!” he said, “perhaps you think your husband can get along without a lawyer. Perhaps you think the devil will save him, or heaven, or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!” There was biting irony in the bitter words.
A sudden comprehension began to appear in the woman's face. She realized now what the man was driving at. The expression in her face deepened into a sort of wonder, a sort of horror.
“You think he's guilty!” she said. “You think we got the money and we're trying to keep it, to hide it.”
The lawyer turned about, put both hands on the table and leaned across it. He looked the woman in the face.
“Never mind what I believe; you heard what I said!”
For a moment the woman did not move. Then she got up slowly and went out. In the street she seemed lost. She remained for some time before the entrance of the building. Night had now arrived. Crowds of people were passing, intent on their affairs, unconcerned. No one seemed to see the figure motionless in the shadow of the great doorway.
Presently the woman began to walk along the street in the crowd without giving any attention to the people about her or to the direction she was taking. She was in that state of mental coma which attends persons in despair. She neither felt nor appreciated anything and she continued to walk in the direction in which the crowd was moving.
Some block in the traffic checked the crowd and the woman stopped. The block cleared and the human tide drifted on, but the woman remained. The crowd edged her over to the wall and she stood there before the shutter of a shop-window. After a time the crowd passed, thinned and disappeared, but the woman remained as though thrown out there by the human eddy.
The woman remained for a long time unmoving against the shutter of the shop-window. Finally she was awakened into life by a voice speaking to her. It was a soft, foreign voice that lisped the liquid accents of the occasional English words:
“Ma pauvre femme!” it said; “come with me. Vous etes malade!”
The woman followed mechanically in a sort of wonder. The person who had spoken to her was young and beautifully dressed in furs that covered her to her feet. She had gotten down from a motorcar that stood beside the curb—one of those modern vehicles, fitted with splendid trappings.
Beyond the shop-window was a great cafe. The girl entered and the woman followed. The attendants came forward to welcome the splendid visitor as one whose arrival at this precise hour of the evening had become a sort of custom. She gave some directions in a language which the woman did not understand, and they were seated at a table.
The waiters brought a silver dish filled with a clear, steaming soup and served it. The girl threw back her fur coat and the dazed woman realized how beautiful she was. Her hair was yellow like ripe corn and there were masses of it banked and clustered about her head; her eyes were blue, and her voice, soft and alluring, was like a friendly arm put around the heart.
The miserable woman was so confused by this transformation—by the sudden swing of the door in the wall that had admitted her into this new, unfamiliar world—that she was never afterward able to remember precisely by what introductory words her story was drawn out. She found herself taken up, comforted and made to tell it.
Her husband had been a butler in the service of a Mr. Marsh, an eccentric man who lived in one of the old downtown houses of the city. He was a retired banker with no family. The man lived alone. He permitted no servants in the house except the butler. Meals were sent in on order from a neighboring hotel and served by the butler as the man directed. He received few visitors in the house and no tradespeople were permitted to come in. There seemed no reason for this seclusion except the eccentricities of the man that had grown more pronounced with advancing years.
It was the custom of the butler to leave the house at eight o'clock in the evening and return in the morning at seven. On the morning of the third of February, when the butler entered the house, as he was accustomed to do at eight o'clock in the morning, he found his master dead.
The woman continued with her narrative, speaking slowly. Every detail was vividly impressed upon her memory and she gave it accurately, precisely.
There was a narrow passage or hall, not more than three feet in width, leading from the butler's pantry into a little dining-room. This dining-room the old man had fitted up as a sort of library. It was farther than any other room from the noises of the city. His library table was placed with one end against the left wall of the room and he sat with his back toward the passage into the butler's pantry. On the morning of the third of February he was found dead in his chair. He had been stabbed in the back, on the left side, where the neck joins to the shoulder. A carving-knife had been used and a single blow had accomplished the murder.
It was known that on the evening before the old banker had taken from a safety-deposit vault the sum of $20,000, which it was his intention to invest in some securities. This money, in bills of very large denominations, was in the top drawer on the right side of the desk. The dead man had apparently not been touched after the crime, but the drawer had been pried open and the money taken. An ice-pick from the butler's pantry had been used to force it. The assassin had left no marks, finger-prints or tell-tale stains. The victim had been instantly killed with the blow of the knife which lay on the floor beside him.
The butler had been arrested, charged with the crime, and his trial was now going on in the Criminal Court. Circumstantial evidence was strong against him. The woman spoke as though she echoed the current comment of the courtroom without realizing how it affected her. She had done what she could. She had employed an attorney at the recommendation of a person who had come to interview her. She did not know who the person was nor why she should have employed this attorney at his suggestion, except that some one must be had to defend her husband, and uncertain what to do, she had gone to the first name suggested.
The girl listened, putting now and then a query. She spoke slowly, careful to use only English words. And while the woman talked she made a little drawing on the blank back of a menu card. Now she began to question the woman minutely about the details of the room and the position of the furniture where the tragedy had occurred, the desk, the attitude of the dead man, the location of the wound, and exact distances. And as the woman repeated the evidence of the police officers and the experts, the girl filled out her drawing with nice mathematical exactness like one accustomed to such a labor.
This was the whole story, and now the woman added the final interview with the attorney. She made a sort of hopeless gesture.
“Nobody believes us,” she said. “My husband did not kill him. He was at home with me. He knew nothing about it until he found his master dead at the table in the morning. But there is only our word against all the lawyers and detectives and experts that Mr. Thompson has brought against us.”
“Who is Mr. Thompson?” said the girl. She was deep in a study of her little drawing.
“He's Mr. Marsh's nephew, Mr. Percy Thompson.”
The girl, absorbed in the study of her drawing, now put an unexpected question.
“Has your husband lost an arm?”
“No,” she said, “he never had any sort of accident.”
A great light came into the girl's face. “Then I believe you,” she said. “I believe every word.... I think your husband is innocent.”
The girl was aglow with an enthusiastic purpose. It was all there in her fine, expressive face.
“Now,” she said, “tell me about this nephew, this Mr. Percy Thompson. Could we by any chance see him?”
“It won't do any good to see him,” replied the woman. “He is determined to convict my husband. Nothing can change him.”
The girl went on without paying any attention to the comment. “Where does he live—you must have heard?”
“He lives at the Markheim Hotel,” she said.
“The Markheim Hotel,” repeated the girl. “Where is it?”
The woman gave the street and number. The girl rose. “That's on my way; we'll stop.”
The two-went out of the cafe to the motor. The whole thing, incredible at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events happening in a dream or in some topsy-turvy country which she had mysteriously entered.
She sat back in the tonneau of the motor, huddled into the corner, a rug around her shoulders. The flashing lights seemed those of some distant, unknown city, as though she were transported into the scene of an Arabian tale.
The motor stopped before a little shabby hotel in a neighboring cross-street, and the footman, in livery beside the driver, got down at a direction of the girl and went up the steps. In a few moments a man came out and descended to the motor standing by the curb. He was about middle age. He looked as though Nature had intended him, in the beginning, for a person of some distinction, but he had the dissipated face of one at middle age who had devoted his years to a life of pleasure. There were hard lines about his mouth and a purple network of veins showing about the base of his nose.
As he approached the girl, leaning out of the open window of the tonneau, dropped her glove as by inadvertence. The man stooped, recovered it and returned it to her. The girl started with a perceptible gesture. Then she cried out in her charming voice,
“Merci, monsieur. I stopped a moment to thank you for the flowers you sent me last night. It was lovely of you!” and she indicated the bunch of roses pinned to her corsage.
The man seemed astonished. For a moment he hesitated as though about to make some explanation, but the girl went on without regarding his visible embarrassment.
“You shall not escape with a denial,” she said. “There was no card and you did not do me the honor to wait at the door, but I know you sent them—an usher saw you; you shall not escape my appreciation. You did send them?” she said.
The man laughed. “Sure,” he said, “if you insist.” He was willing to profit by this unexpected error, and the girl went on:
“I have worn the roses to-day,” she said, “for you. Will you wear one of them to-morrow for me?”
She detached a bud and leaned out of the door of the motor. She pinned the bud to the lapel of the man's coat. She did it slowly, deliberately, like one who makes the touch of the fingers do the service of a caress.
Then she spoke to the driver and the motor went on, leaving the amazed man on the curb before the shabby Markheim Hotel with the rosebud pinned to his coat—astonished at the incredible fortune of this favor from an inaccessible idol about whom the city raved.
The woman accepted the enigma of this interview as she had accepted the wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the other, incidents of this extraordinary night. She did not undertake to imagine what the drawing on the menu meant, the words about the one-armed man, the glove dropped for Thompson to pick up, the rose pinned on his coat; it was all of a piece with the mystery that she had stumbled into.
When the motor stopped and she was taken through a little door by an attendant into a theater box, she accepted that as another of these things into which she could not inquire; things that happened to her outside of her volition and directed by authorities which she could not control.
The staging of the opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her were all fabulous creatures, as the girl herself seemed a fabulous creature.
She sighed like one who must awaken from the splendor of a dream to realities of which the sleeper is vaguely conscious. Only the girl's voice seemed real. It seemed some great, heavenly reality like the sunlight or the sweep of the sea. It filled the packed places of the theater. She sang and one believed again in the benevolence of heaven; in immortal love. To the distressed woman effacing herself in the corner of the empty box it was all a sort of inconceivable witch-work.
And it was witch-work, as potent if not as amply fitted with dramatic properties as the witchwork of ancient legend.
The daughter of an obscure juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud, singing in a Swiss meadow, had been taken up by a wealthy American, traveling in Switzerland on an April morning-old, enervated with the sun of the Riviera, and displeased with life. And this rich old woman, her rheumatic fingers loaded with jewels, had transformed the daughter of the juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud into a singing wonder that made every human creature see again the dreams of his youth before him leading into the Elysian Fields.
And to the girl herself this transformation also seemed the wonder of witch-work. Her early life lay so far below in a world remote and detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of Vaud with the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of a juge d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated on her shoulders. Her father's life was given over to the labors of criminal investigation, but it was a field that returned nothing in the way of material gain. Honorable mention, a medal, the distinction of having his reports copied into the official archives, were the fruits of the man's life. She remembered the minutely exhaustive details of those reports which she used to copy painfully at night by the light of a candle. The old man, absorbed by his deductions, with his trained habits of observation and his prodigious memory, never seemed to realize the drudgery imposed upon the girl by his endless dictation.
“To-morrow,” the heavenly creature had said softly, like a caress, in the woman's ear when an attendant had taken her through the little door into the empty box. But the to-morrow broke with every illusion vanished.
The woman sat beside her husband in the dismal court-room when the court convened. The judge, old and tired, was on the bench. A sulphurous, depressing fog entered from the city. The court-room smelled of a cleaner's mop. The jury entered; and a few spectators, who looked as though they might have spent the night on the benches of the park out, side, drifted in. The attorneys and the officials of the court were present and the trial resumed.
Every detail of the departed, evening was, to the woman, a mirage except the brutal threat of the attorney, uttered before she had gone down into the street. This threat, with that power of reality which evil things seem always to possess, now materialized. After the court had opened, but before the trial could proceed, the attorney for the defendant rose and addressed the court.
He spoke for some moments, handling his innuendoes with skill. His intent was to withdraw from the case. He realized that this was an unusual procedure and that the course must be justified upon a high ethical plane. He was a person of acumen and of no inconsiderable skill and he succeeded. Without making any direct charge, and disclaiming any intent to prejudice the prisoner and his defense, or to deprive him of any safeguard of the law, he was able to convey the impression that he had been misled in undertaking the defense of the case; that his confidence in the innocence of the accused had been removed by unquestionable evidence which he had been led to believe did not exist.
He made this explanation with profound regret. But he felt that, having been induced to undertake the defense by representations not justified in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the case which developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he had the right to step aside out of an equivocal position. He wished to do this without injury to the prisoner and while there was yet an opportunity for him to obtain other counsel. The whole tenor of the speech was the right to be relieved from the obligation of an error; an error that had involved him unwittingly by reason of assurances which the developments of the case had now set aside. And through it all there was the manifest wish to do the prisoner no vestige of injury.
After this speech of his attorney the conviction of the man was inevitable. He sat stooped over, his back bent, his head down, his thin hands aimlessly in his lap like one who has come to the end of all things; like one who no longer makes any effort against a destiny determined on his ruin.
The thing had the overpowering vitality which evil things seem always to possess, and the woman felt helpless against it; so utterly, so completely helpless that it was useless to protest by any word or gesture. She could have gotten up and explained the true motive behind this man's speech; she could have repeated the dialogue in his office; she could have asserted his unspeakable treachery; but she saw with an unerring instinct that against the skill of the man her effort would be wholly useless. With his resources and his dominating cunning he would not only make her words appear obviously false, but he would make them fasten upon her a malicious intent to injure the man who had undertaken her husband's defense; and somehow he would be able, she felt, to divert the obliquity and cause it to react upon herself.
This was all clear to her, and like some little trapped creature of the wood that finds escape closed on every side and no longer makes any effort, she remained motionless.
The judge was an honorable man, concerned to accomplish justice and not always misled by an obvious intent. The proceeding did not please him, but he knew that no benefit, rather a continued injury, would result to the prisoner by forcing the attorney to go on with a case which it was evident that he no longer cared to make any effort to support. He permitted the man to withdraw. Then he spoke to the prisoner.
“Have you any other counsel?” he asked.
The prisoner did not look up. He replied in a low, almost inaudible voice.
“No, Your Honor,” he said.
“Then I shall appoint some one to go on with the case,” and he looked up over the docket before him and out at the few attorneys sitting within the rail.
It was at this moment that the woman, crying silently, without a sound and without moving in her chair, heard behind her the voice which she had heard the evening before, when, as now, at the bottom of the pit, she stood before the shutter of the shop-window.
“Will it be necessary, monsieur le judge?”
It was the same wonderful, moving, heavenly voice. Every sound in the court-room suddenly ceased. All eyes were lifted. And Thompson, sitting beside the district-attorney, saw, standing before the rail in the court-room, the splendid, alluring creature that had called him out of the sordid lobby of the Hotel Markheim and entranced him with an evidence of her favor. Unconsciously he put up his hand to feel for the bud in the lapel of his coat. It had remained there—not, as it happened, from her wish, but because he dare not lay the coat aside.
In the interval of intense interest arising at the withdrawal of the attorney from the case the girl had come in unnoticed. She might have appeared out of the floor. Her voice was the first indication of her presence.
The judge turned swiftly. “What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean, monsieur,” she answered, “that if a man is innocent of a crime, he cannot require a lawyer to defend him.”
The judge was astonished, but he was an old man and had seen many strange events happen along the way of a criminal trial.
“But why do you say this man is innocent,” he said.
“I will show you, monsieur,” and she came around the railing into the pit of the court before his bench. She carried in her hand the menu upon which, at the table in the cafe the night before, she had made a drawing of the scene of the homicide.
The extraordinary event had happened so swiftly that the attorney for the prosecution had not been able to interpose an objection. Now the nephew of the dead man spoke hurriedly, in whispers, and the attorney arose.
“I object to this irregular proceeding,” he said. “If this person is a witness, let her be sworn in the usual manner and let her take her place in the witness-chair where she may be examined by the attorney whom the court may see fit to appoint for the defense.”
It was evident that Mr. Thompson, urging the prosecutor, was alarmed. The folds of his obese neck lying above the collar of his coat took on a deeper color, and his mouth visibly sagged as with some unexpected emotion. He felt that he was becoming entangled in some vast, invisible net spread about him by this girl who had appeared as if by magic before the Hotel Markheim.
The judge looked down at the attorney. “I will have the witness sworn,” he said, “but I shall not at present appoint anybody to conduct an examination. When a prisoner before me has no counsel, I sometimes look after his case myself.”
He spoke to the girl. “Will you hold up your hand?” he said.
“Why, yes, monsieur,” she said, “if you will also ask Mr. Thompson to hold up his hand.”
“Do you wish him sworn as a witness?” said the judge.
The girl hesitated. “Yes, monsieur,” she said, “if that is the way to have him hold up his hand.”
Again Thompson was disturbed. Again he spoke to the prosecutor and again that attorney objected.
“We have not asked to have Mr. Thompson testify in this case,” he said. “It is true Mr. Thompson is concerned about the result of this trial. He is the nephew of the decedent and his heir. It is only natural that he should properly concern himself to see that the assassin is brought to justice.”
He spoke to the girl. “Do you wish to make Mr. Thompson your witness?” he said.
And again she replied with the hesitating formula:
“Why, yes, monsieur, if that is the way to cause him to hold up his hand.”
The judge turned to the clerk. “Will you administer the oath to these two persons?” he said.
Thompson rose. His face was disconcerted and slack. He hesitated, but the prosecutor spoke to him. Then he faced the judge and put up his hand. Immediately the girl cried out:
“Look, monsieur,” she said. “It is his left hand he is holding up!”
Immediately Thompson raised the other hand. “I beg your pardon, Your Honor,” he muttered. “I am left-handed; I sometimes make that mistake.”
And again the girl cried out: “You see... you notice it... it is true, then... he is left-handed.”
“I see he is left-handed,” said the judge, “but what has that to do with the case?”
“Oh, monsieur,” she said, “it has everything to do with it. I will show you.”
She moved up on the step before the judge's bench and laid the menu before him. The attorney for the prosecution also arose. He wished to prevent this proceeding, to object to it, but he feared to disturb the judge and he remained silent.
“Monsieur,” she said, “I have made a little drawing... I know how such things are done.... My father was juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud. He always made little drawings of places where crimes were committed.... Here you will see,” and she put her finger on the card, “the narrow passage leading from the butler's pantry into the dining-room used for a library. You will notice, monsieur, that the writing-table stood with one end against the wall, the left wall of the room, as one enters from the butler's pantry. It is a queer table. One side of it has a row of drawers coming to the floor and the other side is open so one may sit with one's knees under it. On the night of the tragedy this table was sitting at right angles to the left wall, that is to say, monsieur, with this end open for the writer's knees close up against the left wall of the room. That meant, monsieur, that on this night Mr. Marsh was sitting at the table with his back to the passage from the butler's pantry, close up against the left wall of the room.
“Therefore, monsieur,” the girl went on, “the man who assassinated Mr. Marsh entered from the butler's pantry. He slipped into the room along the left wall close up behind his victim.... Did it not occur so.”
This was the evidence of the police officials and the experts. It was clear from the position of the desk in the room and from the details of the evidence.
“And, monsieur,” she said, “will you tell me, is it true that the stab wound which killed Mr. Marsh was in the shoulder on the side next to the wall?”
“Yes,” said the judge, “that is true.”
The prosecutor, urged by Thompson, now made a verbal objection. The case was practically completed. The incident going on in the court-room followed no definite legal procedure and could not be permitted to proceed. The judge stopped him.
“Sit down,” he said. He did not offer any explanation or comment. He merely silenced the man and returned to the girl standing eagerly on the step before the bench.
“The wound was in the base of the man's neck at the top of the left shoulder on the side next to the wall,” he said. “But what has this fact to do with the case?”
“Oh, monsieur,” she cried, “it has everything to do with it. If the assassin who slipped along the wall had carried the knife in his right hand, the wound would have been on the right side of the dead man's neck. But if, monsieur, the assassin carried the knife in his left hand, then the wound would be where it is, on the left side. That made me believe, at first, that the assassin had only one arm—had lost his right arm—and must use the other; then, a little later, I understood.... Oh, monsieur, don't you understand; don't you see that the assassin who stabbed Mr. Marsh was left-handed?”
In a moment it was all clear to everybody. Only a left-handed man could have committed the crime, for only a left-handed man standing close against the left side of a room above one sitting at a desk against that wall could have struck straight down into the left shoulder of the murdered man. A right-handed assassin would have struck straight down into the right shoulder, he would not have risked a doubtful blow, delivered awkwardly across his body, into the left shoulder of his victim.
The girl indicated Thompson with her hand. “He did it; he's left-handed. I found out by dropping my glove.”
Panic enveloped the cornered man. He began to shake as with an ague. Sweat like a thin oil spread over his debauched face and the folds of his obese neck. With his fatal left hand he began to finger the lapel of his coat where the faded rosebud hung pinned into the buttonhole. And the girl's voice broke the profound silence of the court-room.
“He has the money, too,” she said. “I felt a bulky packet when I gave him the flower out of my bouquet last night.”
The big, thin-haired lawyer, leaving the courtroom after his withdrawal from the case, stopped at a window arrested by the amazing scene: The police taking the stolen money out of Thompson's pocket; the woman in the girl's arms, and the transfigured prisoner standing up as in the presence of a heavenly angel. This before him... and the splendid motor below under the sweep of the window, waiting before the courthouse door, brought back the memory of his biting, sarcastic words:
“... or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!”
And there occurred to him a doubt of the exclusive dominance of life by the gods he served.
The girl sat in a great chair before the fire, huddled, staring into the glow of the smoldering logs.
Her dark hair clouded her face. The evening gown was twisted and crumpled about her. There was no ornament on her; her arms, her shoulders, the exquisite column of her throat were bare.
She sat with her eyes wide, unmoving, in a profound reflection.
The library was softly lighted; richly furnished, a little beyond the permission of good taste. On a table at the girl's elbow were two objects; a ruby necklace, and a dried flower. The flower, fragile with age, seemed a sort of scrub poppy of a delicate yellow; the flower of some dwarfed bush, prickly like a cactus.
The necklace made a great heap of jewels on the buhl top of the table, above the intricate arabesque of silver and tortoise-shell.
It was nearly midnight. Outside, the dull rumble of London seemed a sound, continuous, unvarying, as though it were the distant roar of a world turning in some stellar space.
It was a great old house in Park Lane, heavy and of that gloomy architecture with which the feeling of the English people, at an earlier time, had been so strangely in accord. It stood before St. James's Park oppressive and monumental, and now in the midst of yellow fog its heavy front was like a mausoleum.
But within, the house had been treated to a modern re-casting, not entirely independent of the vanity of wealth.
After the dinner at the Ritz, the girl felt that she could not go on; and Lady Mary's party, on its way to the dancing, put her down at the door. She gave the excuse of a crippling headache. But it was a deeper, more profound aching that disturbed her. She was before the tragic hour, appearing in the lives of many women, when suddenly, as by the opening of a door, one realizes the irrevocable aspect of a marriage of which the details are beginning to be arranged. That hour in which a woman must consider, finally, the clipping of all threads, except the single one that shall cord her to a mate for life.
Until to-night, in spite of preparations on the way, the girl had not felt this marriage as inevitable. Her aunt had pressed for it, subtly, invisibly, as an older woman is able to do.
Her situation was always, clearly before her. She was alone in the world; with very little, almost nothing. The estate her father inherited he had finally spent in making great explorations. There was no unknown taste of the world that he had not undertaken to enter. The final driblets of his fortune had gone into his last adventure in the Great Gobi Desert from which he had never returned.
The girl had been taken by this aunt in London, incredibly rich, but on the fringes of the fashionable society of England, which she longed to enter. Even to the young girl, her aunt's plan was visible. With a great settlement, such as this ambitious woman could manage, the girl could be a duchess.
The marriage to Lord Eckhart in the diplomatic service, who would one day be a peer of England, had been a lure dangled unavailingly before her, until that night, when, on his return from India, he had carried her off her feet with his amazing incredible sacrifice. It was the immense idealism, the immense romance of it that had swept her into this irrevocable thing.
She got up now, swiftly, as though she would again realize how the thing had happened and stooped over the table above the heap of jewels. They were great pigeon-blood rubies, twenty-seven of them, fastened together with ancient crude gold work. She lifted the long necklace until it hung with the last jewel on the table.
The thing was a treasure, an immense, incredible treasure. And it was for this—for the privilege of putting this into her hands, that the man had sold everything he had in England—and endured what the gossips said—endured it during the five years in India—kept silent and was now silent. She remembered every detail the rumor of a wild life, a dissolute reckless life, the gradual, piece by piece sale of everything that could be turned into money. London could not think of a ne'er-do-well to equal him in the memory of its oldest gossips—and all the time with every penny, he was putting together this immense treasure—for her. A dreamer writing a romance might imagine a thing like this, but had it any equal in the realities of life?
She looked down at the chain of great jewels, and the fragment of prickly shrub with its poppy-shaped yellow flower. They were symbols, each, of an immense idealism, an immense conception of sacrifice that lifted the actors in their dramas into gigantic figures illumined with the halos of romance.
Until to-night it had been this ideal figure of Lord Eckhart that the girl considered in this marriage. And to-night, suddenly, the actual physical man had replaced it. And, alarmed, she had drawn back. Perhaps it was the Teutonic blood in him—a grandmother of a German house. And, yet, who could say, perhaps this piece of consuming idealism was from that ancient extinct Germany of Beethoven.
But the man and the ideal seemed distinct things having no relation. She drew back from the one, and she stood on tip-toe, with arms extended longingly toward the other.
What should she do?
Had the example of her father thrown on Lord Eckhart a golden shadow? She moved the bit of flower, gently as in a caress. He had given up the income of a leading profession and gone to his death. His fortune and his life had gone in the same high careless manner for the thing he sought. For the treasure that he believed lay in the Gobi Desert—not for himself, but for every man to be born into the world. He was the great dreamer, the great idealist, a vague shining figure before the girl like the cloud in the Hebraic Myth.
The girl stood up and linked her fingers together behind her back. If her father were only here—for an hour, for a moment! Or if, in the world beyond sight and hearing, he could somehow get a message to her!
At this moment a bell, somewhere in the deeps of the house, jangled, and she heard the old butler moving through the hall to the door. The other servants had been dismissed for the night, and her aunt on the preliminaries of this marriage was in Paris.
A moment later the butler appeared with a card on his tray. It was a card newly engraved in some English shop and bore the name “Dr. Tsan-Sgam.” The girl stood for a moment puzzled at the queer name, and then the memory of the strange outlandish human creatures, from the ends of the world, who used sometimes to visit her father, in the old time, returned, and with it there came a sudden upward sweep of the heart—was there an answer to her longing, somehow, incredibly on the way!
She gave a direction for the visitor to be brought in. He was a big old man. His body looked long and muscular like that of some type of Englishmen, but his head and his features were Mongolian. He was entirely bald, as bald as the palm of a hand, as though bald from his mother he had so remained to this incredible age. And age was the impression that he profoundly presented. But it was age that a tough vitality in the man resisted; as though the assault of time wore it down slowly and with almost an imperceptible detritus. The great naked head and the wide Mongolian face were unshrunken; they presented, rather, the aspect of some old child. He was dressed with extreme care, in the very best evening clothes that one could buy in a London shop.
He bowed, oddly, with a slow doubling of the body, and when he spoke the girl felt that he was translating his words through more than one language; as though one were to put one's sentences into French or Italian and from that, as a sort of intermediary, into English—as though the way were long, and unfamiliar from the medium in which the man thought to the one in which he was undertaking to express it. But at the end of this involved mental process his English sentences appeared correctly, and with an accurate selection in the words.
“You must pardon the hour, Miss Carstair,” he said, in his slow, precise articulation, “but I am required to see you and it is the only time I have.”
Then his eyes caught the necklace on the table, and advancing with two steps he stooped over it.
For a moment everything else seemed removed, from about the man. His angular body, in its unfamiliar dress, was doubled like a finger; his great head with its wide Mongolian face was close down over the buhl top of the table and his finger moved the heap of rubies.
The girl had a sudden inspiration.
“Lord Eckhart got these jewels from you?”
The man paused, he seemed to be moving the girl's words backward through the intervening languages.
Then he replied.
“Yes,” he said, “from us.”
The girl's inspiration was now illumined by a further light.
“And you have not been paid for them?”
The man stood up now. And again this involved process of moving the words back through various translations was visible—and the answer up.
“Yes—” he said, “we have been paid.”
Then he added, in explanation of his act.
“These rubies have no equal in the world—and the gold-work attaching them together is extremely old. I am always curious to admire it.”
He looked down at the girl, at the necklace, at the space about them, as though he were deeply, profoundly puzzled.
“We had a fear,” he said, “—it was wrong!”
Then he put his hand swiftly into the bosom pocket of his evening coat, took out a thin packet wrapped in a piece of vellum and handed it to the girl.
“It became necessary to treat with the English Government about the removal of records from Lhassa and I was sent—I was directed to get this packet to you from London. To-night, at dinner with Sir Henry Marquis in St. James's Square, I learned that you were here. I had then only this hour to come, as my boat leaves in the morning.” He spoke with the extreme care of one putting together a delicate mosaic.
The girl stood staring at the thin packet. A single thought alone consumed her.
“It is a message from—my—father.”
She spoke almost in a whisper.
The big Oriental replied immediately.
“No,” he said, “your father is beyond sight and hearing.”
The girl had no hope; only the will to hope. The reply was confirmation of what she already knew. She removed the thin vellum wrapper from the packet. Within she found a drawing on a plate of ivory. It represented a shaft of some white stone standing on the slight elevation of what seemed to be a barren plateau. And below on the plate, in fine English characters like an engraving, was the legend, “Erected to the memory of Major Judson Carstair by the monastery at the Head.”
The man added a word of explanation.
“The Brotherhood thought that you would wish to know that your father's body had been recovered, and that it had received Christian burial, as nearly as we were able to interpret the forms. The stone is a sort of granite.”
The girl wished to ask a thousand questions: How did her father meet his death, and where? What did they know? What had they recovered with his body?
The girl spoke impulsively, her words crowding one another. And the Oriental seemed able only to disengage the last query from the others.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “some band of the desert people had passed before our expedition arrived, nothing was recovered but the body. It was not mutilated.”
They had been standing. The girl now indicated the big library chair in which she had been huddled and got another for herself. Then she wished to know what they had learned about her father's death.
The Oriental sat down. He sat awkwardly, his big body, in a kind of squat posture, the broad Mongolian face emerging, as in a sort of deformity, from the collar of his evening coat. Then he began to speak, with that conscious effect of bringing his words through various mediums from a distance.
“We endeavored to discourage Major Carstair from undertaking this adventure. We were greatly concerned about his safety. The sunken plateau of the Gobi Desert, north of the Shan States, is exceedingly dangerous for an European, not so much on account of murderous attacks from the desert people, for this peril we could prevent; but there is a chill in this sunken plain after sunset that the native people only can resist. No white man has ever crossed the low land of the Gobi.”
He paused.
“And there is in fact no reason why any one should wish to cross it. It is absolutely barren. We pointed out all this very carefully to Major Carstair when we learned what he had in plan, for as I have said his welfare was very pressingly on our conscience. We were profoundly puzzled about what he was seeking in the Gobi. He was not, evidently, intending to plot the region or to survey any route, or to acquire any scientific data. His equipment lacked all the implements for such work. It was a long time before we understood the impulse that was moving Major Carstair to enter this waste region of the Gobi to the north.”
The man stopped, and sat for some moments quite motionless.
“Your father,” he went on, “was a distinguished man in one of the departments of human endeavor which the East has always neglected; and in it he had what seemed to us incredible skill—with ease he was able to do things which we considered impossible. And for this reason the impulse taking him into the Gobi seemed entirely incredible to us; it seemed entirely inconsistent with this special ability which we knew the man to possess; and for a long time we rejected it, believing ourselves to be somehow misled.”
The girl sat straight and silent, in her chair near the brass fender to the right of the buhl table; the drawing, showing the white granite shaft, held idly in her fingers; the illuminated vellum wrapper fallen to the floor.
The man continued speaking slowly.
“When, finally, it was borne in upon us that Major Carstair was seeking a treasure somewhere on the barren plateau of the Gobi, we took every measure, consistent with a proper courtesy, to show him how fantastic this notion was. We had, in fact, to exercise a certain care lest the very absurdity of the conception appear too conspicuously in our discourse.”
He looked across the table at the girl.
The man's great bald head seemed to sink a little into his shoulders, as in some relaxation.
“We brought out our maps of the region and showed him the old routes and trails veining the whole of it. We explained the topography of this desert plateau; the exact physical character of its relief. There was hardly a square mile of it that we did not know in some degree, and of which we did not possess some fairly accurate data. It was entirely inconceivable that any object of value could exist in this region without our knowledge of it.”
The man was speaking like one engaged in some extremely delicate mechanical affair, requiring an accuracy almost painful in its exactness.
“Then, profoundly puzzled, we endeavored to discover what data Major Carstair possessed that could in any way encourage him in this fantastic idea. It was a difficult thing to do, for we held him in the highest esteem and, outside of this bizarre notion, we had before us, beyond any question, the evidence of his especial knowledge; and, as I have said, his, to us, incredible skill.”
He paused, as though the careful structure of the long sentence had fatigued him.
“Major Carstair's explanations were always in the imagery of romance. He sought 'a treasure—a treasure that would destroy a Kingdom.' And his indicatory data seemed to be the dried blossom of our desert poppy.”
Again the Oriental paused. He put up his hand and passed his fingers over his face. The gaunt hand contrasted with the full contour.
“I confess that we did not know what to do. We realized that we had to deal with a nature possessing in one direction the exact accurate knowledge of a man of science, and in another the wonder extravagances of a child. The Dalai Lama was not yet able to be consulted, and it seemed to us a better plan to say no more about the impossible treasure, and address our endeavors to the practical side of Major Carstair's intelligence instead. We now pointed out the physical dangers of the region. The deadly chill in it coming on at sunset could not fail to inflame the lungs of a European, accustomed to an equable temperature, fever would follow; and within a few days the unfortunate victim would find his whole breathing space fatally congested.”
The man removed his hand. The care in his articulation was marked.
“Major Carstair was not turned aside by these facts, and we permitted him to go on.”
Again he paused as though troubled by a memory.
“In this course,” he continued, “the Dalai Lama considered us to have acted at the extreme of folly. But it is to be remembered, in our behalf, that somewhat of the wonder at Major Carstair's knowledge of Western science dealing with the human body was on us, and we felt that perhaps the climatic peril of the Gobi might present no difficult problem to him.
“We were fatally misled.”
Then he added.
“We were careful to direct him along the highest route of the plateau, and to have his expedition followed. But chance intervened. Major Carstair turned out of the route and our patrol went on, supposing him to be ahead on the course which we had indicated to him. When the error was at last discovered, our patrol was entering the Sirke range. No one could say at what point on the route Major Carstair had turned out, and our search of the vast waste of the Gobi desert began. The high wind on the plateau removes every trace of human travel. The whole of the region from the Sirke, south, had to be gone over. It took a long time.”
The man stopped like one who has finished a story. The girl had not moved; her face was strained and white. The fog outside had thickened; the sounds of the city seemed distant. The girl had listened without a word, without a gesture. Now she spoke.
“But why were you so concerned about my father?”
The big Oriental turned about in the chair. He looked steadily at the girl, he seemed to be treating the query to his involved method of translation; and Miss Carstair felt that the man, because of this tedious mental process, might have difficulty to understand precisely what she meant.
What he wished to say, he could control and, therefore, could accurately present—but what was said to him began in the distant language.
“What Major Carstair did,” he said, “it has not been made clear to you?”
“No,” she replied, “I do not understand.”
The man seemed puzzled.
“You have not understood!”
He repeated the sentence; his face reflective, his great bare head settling into the collar of his evening coat as though the man's neck were removed.
He remained for a moment thus puzzled and reflective. Then he began to speak as one would set in motion some delicate involved machinery running away into the hidden spaces of a workshop.
“The Dalai Lama had fallen—he was alone in the Image Room. His head striking the sharp edge of a table was cut. He had lost a great deal of blood when we found him and was close to death. Major Carstair was at this time approaching the monastery from the south; his description sent to us from Lhassa contained the statement that he was an American surgeon. We sent at once asking him to visit the Dalai Lama, for the skill of Western people in this department of human knowledge is known to us.”
The Oriental went on, slowly, with extreme care.
“Major Carstair did not at once impress us. 'What this man needs,' he said, 'is blood.' That was clear to everybody. One of our, how shall I say it in your language, Cardinals, replied with some bitterness, that the Dalai Lama could hardly be imagined to lack anything else. Major Carstair paid no attention to the irony. 'This man must have a supply of blood,' he added. The Cardinal, very old, and given to imagery in his discourse answered, that blood could be poured out but it could not be gathered up... and that man could spill it but only God could make.
“We interrupted then, for Major Carstair was our guest and entitled to every courtesy, and inquired how it would be possible to restore blood to the Dalai Lama; it was not conceivable that the lost blood could be gathered up.
“He explained then that he would transfer it from the veins of a healthy man into the unconscious body.”
The Oriental hesitated; then he went on.
“The thing seemed to us fantastic. But our text treating the life of the Dalai Lama admits of no doubt upon one point—'no measure presenting itself in extremity can be withheld.' He was in clear extremity and this measure, even though of foreign origin, had presented itself, and we felt after a brief reflection that we were bound to permit it.”
He added.
“The result was a miracle to us. In a short time the Dalai Lama had recovered. But in the meantime Major Carstair had gone on into the Gobi seeking the fantastic treasure.”
The girl turned toward the man, a wide-eyed, eager, lighted face.
“Do you realize,” she said, “the sort of treasure that my father sacrificed his life to search for?”
The Oriental spoke slowly.
“It was to destroy a Kingdom,” he said.
“To destroy the Kingdom of Pain!” She replied, “My father was seeking an anesthetic more powerful than the derivatives of domestic opium. He searched the world for it. In the little, wild desert flower lay, he thought, the essence of this treasure. And he would seek it at any cost. Fortune was nothing; life was nothing. Is it any wonder that you could not stop him? A flaming sword moving at the entrance to the Gobi could not have barred him out!”
The big Oriental made a vague gesture as of one removing something clinging to his face.
“Wherefore this blindness?” he said.
The girl had turned away in an effort to control the emotion that possessed her. But the task was greater than her strength; when she came back to the table tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her face. Emotion seemed now to overcome her.
“If my father were only here,” her voice was broken, “if he were only here!”
The big Oriental moved his whole body, as by one motion, toward her. The house was very still; there was only the faint crackling of the logs on the fire.
“We had a fear,” he said. “It remains!”
The girl went over and stood before the fire, her foot on the brass fender, her fingers linked behind her back. For sometime she was silent. Finally she spoke, without turning her head, in a low voice.
“You know Lord Eckhart?”
A strange expression passed over the Oriental's face.
“Yes, when Lhassa was entered, the Head moved north to our monastery on the edge of the Gobi—the English sovereignty extends to the Kahn line. Lord Eckhart was the political agent of the English government in the province nearest to us.”
When the girl got up, the Oriental also rose. He stood awkwardly, his body stooped; his hand as for support resting on the corner of the table. The girl spoke again, in the same posture. Her face toward the fire.
“How do you feel about Lord Eckhart?”
“Feel!” The man repeated the word.
He hesitated a little.
“We trusted Lord Eckhart. We have found all English honorable.”
“Lord Eckhart is partly German,” the girl went on.
The man's voice in reply was like a foot-note to a discourse.
“Ah!” He drawled the expletive as though it were some Oriental word.
The girl continued. “You have perhaps heard that a marriage is arranged between us.”
Her voice was steady, low, without emotion.
For a long time there was utter silence in the room.
Then, finally, when the Oriental spoke his voice had changed. It was gentle, and packed with sympathy. It was like a voice within the gate of a confessional.
“Do you love him?” it said.
“I do not know.”
The vast sympathy in the voice continued. “You do not know?—it is impossible! Love is or it is not. It is the longing of elements torn asunder, at the beginning of things, to be rejoined.”
The girl turned swiftly, her body erect, her face lifted.
“But this great act,” she cried. “My father, I, all of our blood, are moved by romance—by the romance of sacrifice. Look how my father died seeking an antidote for the pain of the world. How shall I meet this sacrifice of Lord Eckhart?”
Something strange began to dawn in the wide Mongolian face.
“What sacrifice?”
The girl came over swiftly to the table. She scattered the mass of jewels with a swift gesture.
“Did he not give everything he possessed, everything piece by piece, for this?”
She took the necklace up and twisted it around her fingers. Her hands appeared to be a mass of rubies.
A great light came into the Oriental's face.
“The necklace,” he said, “is a present to you from the Dalai Lama. It was entrusted to Lord Eckhart to deliver.”