Spence entered the courtyard of the building. It was quiet and deserted; some pigeons were feeding there.
He turned under a stone archway to the right, pushed open a door, and entered the museum.
There was a babel of voices.
A small group of people stood by a wooden pedestalin the centre of the room, which supported the famous cruciform font found at Bîâr Es-seb'a.
They turned at Spence's entrance. He saw some familiar faces of people with whom he had been brought in contact during the time of the first discovery.
Two English missionaries, one in orders, the English Consul, and Professor Theodore Adams, the American archæologist, who lived all the year round in the new western suburb, stood speaking in grave tones and with distressed faces—so it seemed to the intruder.
An Egyptian servant, dressed in white linen, carrying a bunch of keys, was with them.
In his hand the Consul held a roll of yellow native wax.
An enormous surprise shone out on the faces of these people as Spence walked up to him.
"Mr. Spence!" said the Consul, "we never expected you or heard of your coming. This is most fortunate, however. You were his great friend. I think you both shared chambers together in London?"
Spence looked at him in wonder, mechanically shaking the proffered hand.
"I don't think I quite understand," he said. "I came here quite by chance, just to see if there was any one that I knew about."
"Then you have not heard—" said the clergyman.
"I have heard nothing."
"Your friend, our distinguished fellow-worker, Professor Hands, is no more. We have just received a cable. Poor, dear Hands died of heart disease while taking a seaside holiday."
Spence was genuinely affected.
Hands was an old and dear friend. His sweet, kindly nature, too dreamy and retiring perhaps for the rush and hurry of Occidental life, had always been wonderfullywelcome for a month or two each year in Lincoln's Inn. His quaint, learned letters, his enthusiasm for his work had become part of the journalist's life. They were recurring pleasures. And now he was gone!
Now it was all over. Never more would he hear the quiet voice, hear the water-pipe bubble in the quiet old inn as night gave way to dawn....
His brain whirled with the sudden shock. He grew very pale, waiting to hear more.
"We know little more," said the Consul, with a sigh. "A cable from the central office of the Society has just stated the fact and asked me to take official charge of everything here. We were just about to begin sealing up the rooms when you came. There are many important documents which must be seen to. Mr. Forbes, poor Hands's assistant, is away on the shores of the Dead Sea, but we have sent for him by the camel garrison post. But it will be some weeks before he can be here, probably."
"This is terribly sad news for me," said Spence at length. "We were, of course, the dearest friends. The months when Hands was in town were always the pleasantest. Of course, lately we did not see so much of each other; he had become a public character. He was becoming very depressed and unwell, terrified, I almost think, at what was going on in the world owing to the discovery he had made, and he was going away to recuperate. But I knew nothing of this!"
"I am sorry," said the Consul, "to have to tell you of such a sad business, but we naturally thought that somehow you knew—though, of course, in point of time that would hardly be possible, or only just so."
"I am in the East," said Spence, giving an explanation that he had previously prepared if it became necessary to account for his presence—"I am here on amission for my newspaper—to ascertain various points about public opinion in view of all these imminent international complications."
"Quite so, quite so," said the Consul. "I shall be glad to help you in any way I can, of course. But when you came in we were wondering what we should do exactly about poor Hands's private effects, papers, and so on. When he went on leave all his things were packed in cases and sent down here from his rooms in the upper city. I suppose they had better be shipped to England. Perhaps you would take charge of them on your return?"
"I expect you will hear from his brother, the Rev. John Hands, a Leicestershire clergyman, when the mail comes in," said Spence. "This is a great blow to me. I should like to pay my poor friend some public tribute. I should like to write something for English people to read—a sketch of his life and work here in Jerusalem—his daily work among you all."
His voice faltered. His eyes had fallen on a photograph which hung upon the wall. A group of Arabs sat at the mouth of a rock tomb. In front of them, wearing a sun helmet and holding a ten-foot surveyor's wand, stood the dead professor. A kindly smile was on his face as he looked down upon the white figures of his men.
"It would be a gracious tribute," said one of the missionaries. "Every one loved him, whatever their race or creed. We can all tell you of him as we saw him in our midst. It is a great pity that old Ionides has gone. He was the confidential sharer of all the work here, and Hands trusted him implicitly. He could have told you much."
"I remember Ionides well," said Spence. "At the time of the discovery, of course, he was very much inevidence, and he was examined by the committee. Is the old fellow dead, then?"
"No," answered the missionary. "Some time ago, just after the Commission left, in fact, he came into a considerable sum of money. He was getting on in years, and he resigned his position here. He has taken an olive farm somewhere by Nabulûs, a Turkish city by Mount Gerizim. I fear we shall never see him more. He would grieve at this news."
"I think," said Spence, "I will go back to my hotel. I should like to be alone to-day. I will call on you this evening, if I may," he added, turning to the Consul.
He left the melancholy group, once more beginning their sad business, and went out again into the narrow street.
He wanted to be alone, in some quiet place, to pay his departed friend the last rites of quiet thought and memory. He would say a prayer for him in the cool darkness of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
How did it go?
"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality; Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality; Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
Always all his life long he had thought that these were perhaps the most beautiful of written words.
He turned to the right, passed the Turkish guard at the entrance, and went down the narrow steps to the "Calvary" chapel.
The gloom and glory of the great church, its rich and sombre light, the cool yet heavy air, saddened his soul. He knelt in humble prayer.
When he came out once more into the brilliant sunlightand the noises of the city he felt braver and more confident.
He began to turn his thoughts earnestly and resolutely to his mission.
Swiftly, with a quick shock of memory, he remembered his talk with the old fortune-teller. It was with an unpleasant sense of chill and shock that he remembered her predictions.
Some strange sense of divination had told her of this sad news that waited for him. He could not explain or understand it. But there was more than this. It might be wild and foolish, but he could not thrust the woman's words from his brain.
She knew he was in quest of some one. She said he would be told....
He entered the yellow stone portico of the hotel with a sigh of relief. The hall was large, flagged, and cool. A pool of clear water was in the centre, glimmering green over its tiles. The eye rested on it with pleasure. Spence sank into a deck-chair and clapped his hands. He was exhausted, tired, and thirsty.
An Arab boy came in answer to his hand-clapping. He brought an envelope on a tray.
It was a cable from England.
Spence went up-stairs to his bedroom. From his kit-bag he drew a small volume, bound in thick leather, with a locked clasp.
It was Sir Michael Manichoe's private cable code—a precious volume which great commercial houses all over the world would have paid great sums to see, which the great man in his anxiety and trust had confided to his emissary.
Slowly and laboriously he de-coded the message, a collection of letters and figures to be momentous in the history of Christendom.
These were the words:
"The woman has discovered everything from Llwellyn. All suspicions confirmed. Conspiracy between Llwellyn and Schuabe. You will find full confirmation from the Greek foreman of Society explorations, Ionides. Get statement of truth by any means, coercion or money to any amount. All is legitimate. Having obtained, hasten home, special steamer if quicker. Can do nothing certain without your evidence. We trust in you. Hasten."Manichoe."
"The woman has discovered everything from Llwellyn. All suspicions confirmed. Conspiracy between Llwellyn and Schuabe. You will find full confirmation from the Greek foreman of Society explorations, Ionides. Get statement of truth by any means, coercion or money to any amount. All is legitimate. Having obtained, hasten home, special steamer if quicker. Can do nothing certain without your evidence. We trust in you. Hasten.
"Manichoe."
He trembled with excitement as he relocked the code.
It was a light in a dark place. Ionides! the trusted for many years! The eager helper! The traitor bought by Llwellyn!
It was afternoon now. He must go out again. A caravan, camels, guides, must be found for a start to-morrow.
It would not be a very difficult journey, but it must be made with speed, and it was four days, five days away.
He passed out of the hotel and by the Tower of Hippicus.
A new drinking fountain had been erected there, a domed building, with pillars of red stone and a glittering roof, surmounted by a golden crescent.
Some camel drivers were drinking there. He was passing by when a tall, white-robed figure bowed low before him. A voice, speaking French, bade him good-day.
The face of the man seemed familiar. He asked him his name and business.
It was Ibrahim, the Egyptian servant he had seen at the museum in the morning.
The rooms had been sealed up, and the man had been to the Consul's private house with the keys.
This man had temporarily succeeded the Greek Ionides.
Spence turned back to the hotel and bade Ibrahim follow him.
Thenight was cold and still, the starlight brilliant in the huge hollow sapphire of the sky.
Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Spence sat at the door of one of the two little tents which composed his caravan.
Ibrahim the Egyptian, a Roman Catholic, as it seemed, had volunteered to act as dragoman. In a few hours this man had got together the necessary animals and equipment for the expedition to Nabulûs.
Spence rode a little grey horse of the wiry Moabite breed, Ibrahim a Damascus bay. The other men, a cook and two muleteers, all Syrians of the Greek Church, rode mules.
The day's march had been long and tiring. Night, with its ineffable peace and rest, was very welcome.
On the evening of the morrow they would be on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, near to the homestead of the man they sought.
All the long day Spence had asked himself what would be the outcome of this wild journey. He was full of a grim determination to wring the truth from the renegade. In his hip pocket his revolver pressed against his thigh. He was strung up for action. Whatever course presented itself, that he would take, regardless of any law that there might be even in these far-away districts.
His passport was specially endorsed by the ForeignOffice; he bore a letter, obtained by the Consul, from the Governor of Jerusalem to the Turkish officer in command of Nabulûs.
He had little doubt of the ultimate result. Money or force should obtain a full confession, and then, a swift rush for London with the charter of salvation—for it would be little less than that—and the engine of destruction for the two terrible criminals at home.
As they marched over the plains the red anemone and blue iris had peeped from the herbage. The ibex, the roebuck, the wild boar, had fled from the advancing caravan.
Eagles and vultures had moved heavily through the sky at vast heights. Quails, partridges, and plovers started from beneath the horses' feet.
As the sun plunged away, the owls had begun to mourn in the olive groves, the restless chirping of the grasshoppers began to die away, and as the stars grew bright, the nightingale—the lonely song-bird of these solitudes—poured out his melody to the night.
The camp had been formed under the shade of a clump of terebinth and acacias close to a spring of clear water which made the grass around it a vivid green, in pleasant contrast to the dry, withered herbage in the open.
The men had dug out tree roots for fuel, and a red fire glowed a few yards away from Spence's tent.
A group of silent figures sat round the fire. Now and then a low murmur of talk sounded for a minute and then died away again. A slight breeze, cool and keen, rustled in the trees overhead. Save for that, and the occasional movement of one of the hobbled horses, no sound broke the stillness of the glorious night.
It was here, so Spence thought, that the Lord must have walked with His disciples on the journey between Jerusalem and Nazareth.
On such a night as this the little group may have sat in the vale of El Makhna in quiet talk at supper-time.
The same stars looked down on him as they did on those others two thousand years ago. How real and true it all seemed here! How mucheasierit was to realise and believe than in Chancery Lane!
Why did men live in cities?
Was it not better far for the soul's health to be here alone with God?
Here, and in such places as these, God spoke clear and loud to the hearts of men. He shuddered as the thought of his own lack of faith came back to him.
In rapid review he saw the recent time of his hopelessness and shame. How utterly he had fallen to pieces! It was difficult to understand the pit into which he was falling so easily when Basil had come to him.
Now, the love of God ran in his veins like fire, every sight and sound spoke to him of the Christus Consolator.
It was more than mere cold belief, aloveor personal devotion to Christ welled up in him. The figure of the Man of Sorrows was very near him—there was a great fiery cross of stars in the sky above him.
He entered the little tent to pray. He prayed humbly that it might be even thus until the end. He prayed that this new and sweet communion with his Master might never fade or lessen till the glorious daylight of Death dawned and this sojourning far from home was over.
And, in the name of all the unknown millions whom he was come to this far land to aid, he prayed for success, for the Truth to be made manifest, and for a happy issue out of all these afflictions.
"And this we beg for Jesus Christ,Hissake."
Then much refreshed and comforted he emerged once more into the serene beauty of the night.
He lit his pipe and sat there, quietly smoking. Presently Ibrahim the Egyptian began to croon a low song, one of the Egyptian songs that soldiers sing round the camp-fires.
The man had done his term of compulsory service in the past, and perhaps this sudden transition from the comfortable quarters in Jerusalem to the old life of camp-fire andplein airhad its way with him and opened the springs of memory.
This is part of what he sang in a thin, sad voice:
Born in Galiub, since my birth, many times have I seen the Nile's waters overflow our fields.And I had a neighbour, Sheikh Abdehei, whose daughter's face was known only to me:Nothing could be compared to the beauty and tenderness of Fatmé.Her eyes were as big as coffee cups, and her body was firm with the vigour of youth.We had one heart, and were free from jealousies, ready to be united.But Allah curse the military inspector who bound my two hands,For, together with many more, we were marched off to the camp.I was poor and had to serve, nothing could soften the inspector's heart.The drums and the trumpets daily soon made me forget my cottage and the well-wheel on the Nile.
Born in Galiub, since my birth, many times have I seen the Nile's waters overflow our fields.And I had a neighbour, Sheikh Abdehei, whose daughter's face was known only to me:Nothing could be compared to the beauty and tenderness of Fatmé.Her eyes were as big as coffee cups, and her body was firm with the vigour of youth.We had one heart, and were free from jealousies, ready to be united.But Allah curse the military inspector who bound my two hands,For, together with many more, we were marched off to the camp.I was poor and had to serve, nothing could soften the inspector's heart.The drums and the trumpets daily soon made me forget my cottage and the well-wheel on the Nile.
The long-drawn-out notes vibrated mournfully in the night air.
Sadly the singer put his hand to one side of his head, bending as if he were wailing.
The quaint, imaginative song-story throbbed through many phases and incidents, and every now and again the motionless figures round the red embers wailed in sympathy.
At last came the end, a happy climax, no less loved by these simple children of the desert than by the European novel reader.
... So that I was in the hospital and had become most seriously ill.But swifter than the gazelle, the light of my life came near the hospital.And called in at the window, "Ibrahim! my eye! my heart!"And full of joy I carried her about the camp, and presented her to all my superiors, leaving out none, from the colonel down to the sergeant.I received my dismissal, to return to Galiub and to marry.Old Abdehei was awaiting us, to bless us.God be praised!
... So that I was in the hospital and had become most seriously ill.But swifter than the gazelle, the light of my life came near the hospital.And called in at the window, "Ibrahim! my eye! my heart!"And full of joy I carried her about the camp, and presented her to all my superiors, leaving out none, from the colonel down to the sergeant.I received my dismissal, to return to Galiub and to marry.Old Abdehei was awaiting us, to bless us.God be praised!
So sang Ibrahim, the converted Christian, the Moslem songs of his youth; for here, in El Makhna, the plain of Shechem, there were no missionaries with their cold reproof and little hymns in simple couplets.
The fire died away, and they slept until dawn flooded the plain.
When, on the next day, the sun was waning, though still high in the western heavens, the travellers came within view of the ancient city of Nabulûs.
There was a great tumult of excitement in Spence's pulses as he saw the city, radiant in the long afternoon lights, and far away.
Here, in the confines of this distant glittering town, lay the last link in the terrible secret which he was to solve.
On either side the purple slopes of the mountains made a mighty frame to the terraced houses below. Ebal and Gerizim kept solemn watch and ward over the city.
The sun was just sinking as they rode into the suburbs. It was a lovely, placid evening.
The abundant cascades of water, which flow from great fissures in the mountain and make this Turkish town the jewel of the East, glittered in the light.
Below them the broad, still reservoirs lay like plates of gold.
They rode through luxuriant groves of olives, figs, and vines, wonderfully grateful and refreshing to the eye after the burnt brown herbage of the plain, towards the regular camping-ground where all travellers lay.
In the cool of the evening Spence and Ibrahim rode through the teeming streets to the Governor's house.
It was a city of fanatics, so the Englishman had heard, and during the great Moslem festivals the members of the various, and rather extensive, missionary establishments were in constant danger. But as the two men rode among the wild armed men who sat in the bazaars or pushed along the narrow streets they were not in any way molested.
After a ceremonious introduction and the delivery of the letter from the Governor of Jerusalem, Spence made known his business over the coffee and cigarettes which were brought immediately on his arrival.
The Governor was a placid, pleasant-mannered man, very ready to give his visitor any help he could.
It was represented to him that the man Ionides, who had but lately settled in the suburbs, was in the possession of some important secrets affecting the welfare of many wealthy residents in Jerusalem. These, it was hinted, were of a private nature, but in all probability great pressure would have to be put upon the Greek in order to receive any satisfactory confession.
The conversation, which was carried on in French, ended in an eminently satisfactory way.
"Monsieur will understand," said the Governor, "that I make no inquiry into the nature of the information monsieur wishes to obtain. I may or may not have my ideas upon that subject. The Greek was, I understand, intimately connected with the recent discoveries in Jerusalem. Let that pass. It is none of my business. Here I am a good Moslem, Allah be praised! it is a necessity of my official position."
He laughed cynically, clapped his hands for a new brass vessel of creaming coffee and continued:
"A political necessity, Monsieur, as a man of the world, will quite understand me. I have been in London, at the Embassy, and I myself am free from foolishprejudices. I am not Moslem in heart nor am I Christian—some coffee, Monsieur?—yes! Monsieur also is a man of the world!"
Spence, sitting cross-legged opposite his host, had smiled an answering cynical smile at these words. He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. Everything depended upon making a good impression upon this local autocrat.
"Eh bien, monsieur avait raison-même—that, I repeat, is not my affair. But this letter from my brother of Jerusalem makes me of anxiety to serve your interests. And, moreover, the man is a Greek, of no great importance—we are not fond of the Greeks, we Turks! Now it is most probable that the man will not speak without persuasion. Moreover, that persuasion were better officially applied. To assist monsieur, I shall send Tewfik Pasha, my nephew, and captain commandant of the northern fort, with half a dozen men. If this dog will not talk they will know how to make him. I suppose you have no scruples as to any means they may employ? There are foolish prejudices among the Western people."
Spence took his decision very quickly. He was a man who had been on many battle-fields, knew the grimness of life in many lands. If torture were necessary, then it must be so. The man deserved it, the end was great if the means were evil. It must be remembered that Spence was a man to whom the very loftiest and highest Christian ideals had not yet been made manifest. There are degrees in the struggle for saintliness; the journalist was but a postulant.
He saw these questions of conduct roughly, crudely. His conscience animated his deeds, but it was a conscience as yet ungrown. And indeed there are many instruments in an orchestra, all tuneful perhaps to the conductor's beat, which they obey and understand, yetnot all of equal eminence or beauty in the great scheme of the concert.
The violin soars into great mysteries of emotion, calling high "in the deep-domed empyrean." The flutes whisper a chorus to the great story of their comrade. Yet, though the plangent sounding of the kettle-drums, the single beat of the barbaric cymbals are in one note and unfrequent, yet these minor messages go to swell the great tone-symphony and make it perfect in the serene beauty of somethingdirected and ordained.
"Sir," said the journalist, "the man must be made to speak. The methods are indifferent to me."
"Oh, that can be done; we have a way," said the Governor.
He shifted a little among his cushions. A certain dryness came into his voice as he resumed:
"Monsieur, however, as a man of the world, will understand, no doubt, that when a private individual finds it necessary to invoke the powers of law it is a vast undertaking to move so ponderous a machine?... also it is a privilege? It is not, of course, a personal matter—ça m'est égal. But there are certain unavoidable and indeed quite necessary expenses which must be satisfied."
Spence well understood the polite humbug of all this. He knew that in the East one buys justice—or injustice—as one can afford it. As the correspondent of that great paper over which Ommaney presided, he had always been able to spend money like water when it had been necessary. He had those powers now. There was nothing unusual to him in the situation, nor did he hesitate.
"Your Excellency," he said, "speaks with great truth upon these points. It is ever from a man of your Excellency's penetration that one hears those dicta whichgovern affairs. I have a certain object in view, and I realise that to obtain it there are certain necessary formalities to be gone through. I have with me letters of credit upon the bank of Lelain Delaunay et Cie., of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Athens."
"A sound, estimable house," said the Governor, with a very pleased smile.
"It but then remains," said Spence, "to confer with the secretary of your Excellency as to the sum which is necessary to pay for the legal expenses of the inquiry."
"You speak most sensibly," said the Turk. "In the morning I will send the captain commandant and the soldiers to the encampment. My secretary shall accompany them. Then, Monsieur, when the little preliminaries are arranged, you will be free to start for the farm of this dog Ionides. It is not more than four miles from your camp, and my nephew will guide you there. May Allah prosper your undertaking."
"—And have you in His care," replied Spence. "I will now have the honour to wish your Excellency undisturbed rest."
He rose and bowed. The Turkish gentleman rose also and shook hands in genial European fashion.
"Monsieur," he said, with an expansive smile, "Monsieur is without doubt a thorough man of the world."
That night, in the suburbs of the city, sweet and fragrant as the olive groves and fig trees were, cool and fresh as the night wind was, Spence slept but little.
He could hear the prowling dogs of the streets baying the Eastern moon, the owls hooted in the trees, but it was not these distant sounds, all mellowed by the distance, which drove rest and sleep away. It was the imminent sense of the great issues of the morrow, a wild and fierce excitement which forbade sleep or rest and filled his veins with fire.
He could not quite realise what awful things hung upon the event of the coming day. He knew that his brain could not contain the whole terror and vastness of the thought.
Indeed, he felt thatnobrain could adequately realise the importance of it all.
Yet even that partial realisation of which he was capable was enough to drive all peace away, the live-long night, to leave him nothing but the plangent, burning thought.
He was very glad when the cool, hopeful dawn came.
The nightmare of vigil was gone. Action was at hand. He prayed in the morning air.
Presently, from the city gates, he saw a little cavalcade drawing near, twelve soldiers on wiry Damascene horses, an officer, with the Governor's secretary riding by his side.
Those preliminaries of a signed draft upon the bank, which cupidity and the occasion demanded, were soon over.
These twelve soldiers and their commandant cost him two hundred pounds "English"; but that was nothing.
If his own words were ineffective, then the cord and wedge must do the rest. It had to be paid for.
The world was waiting.
On through the olive groves and the vines laden with purple. On, over the little stone-bridged cascades and streams—sweet gifts of lordly Ebal—round the eastern wall of the town, crumbling stone where the mailed lizards were sleeping in the sun; on to the low roofs and vivid trees where the Greek traitor had made his home!
At length the red road opened before them on to a burnt plain which was the edge and brim of the farm.
It lay direct and patent to the view, the place of the great secret.
Ionides was waiting for them, under a light verandah which ran round the house, before they reached the building.
He had seen them coming over the plain.
A little elderly olive-skinned man, with restless eyes the colour of sherry, bowed and bent before them with terrified inquiry in every gesture.
His gaze flickered over the arms and shabby uniforms of the soldiers with hate and fear in it mingled with a piteous cringing. It was the look which the sad Greek boatmen on the shores of the Bosphorus wear all their lives.
Then he saw Spence and recognised him as the Englishman who had been the friend of Hands, and was at the meetings of the Conference.
The sight of the journalist seemed to affect him like a sudden blow. The fear and uneasiness he had shown at the first sight of the Turkish soldiers were intensified a thousand-fold.
The man seemed to shrink and collapse. His face became ashen grey, his lips parched suddenly, for his tongue began to curl round them in order to moisten their rigidity.
With a great effort he forced himself to speak in English first, fluent enough but elementary, and then in a rush of French, the language of all Europe, and one with which the cosmopolitan Greek is ever at home.
The captain gave an order. His men dismounted and tied up the horses.
Then, taking the conduct of the affair into his own hands at once, he spoke to Ionides with a snarling contempt and brutality that he would hardly have used to a strolling street dog.
"The English gentleman has come to ask you some questions, dog. See to it that you give a true answerand speedy. For, if not, there are many ways to make you. I have the warrant of his Excellency the Governor to do as I please with you and yours."
The Greek made an inarticulate noise. He raised one long-fingered, delicate hand to his throat.
Spence, as he watched, could not help a feeling of pity. The whole attitude of the man was inexpressibly painful in its sheer terror.
His face had become a white wedge of fear.
The officer spoke again.
"You will take the English pasha into a private room," he said sternly, "where he will ask you all he wishes. I shall post two of my men at the door. Take heed that they do not have to summon me. And meanwhile bring out food and entertainment for me and my soldiers."
He clapped his hands and the women of the house, who were peering round the end of the verandah, ran to bring pilaff and tobacco.
Spence, with two soldiers, closely following the swaying, tottering figure of Ionides, went into a cool chamber opening on to the little central courtyard round which the house was built.
It was a bare room, with a low bench or ottoman here and there.
But, on the walls, oddly incongruous in such a setting, were some framed photographs. Hands, in a white linen suit and a wide Panama hat, was there; there was a photograph of the museum at Jerusalem, and a picture cut from an English illustrated paper of the Society's great excavations at Tell Sandahannah.
It was odd, Spence thought gravely, that the man cared to keep these records of his life in Jerusalem, crowned as it was with such an act of treachery.
He sat down on the ottoman. The Greek stood before him, cowering against the wall.
It was a little difficult to know how he should begin; what was the best method to ensure a full confession.
He lit a cigarette to help his thoughts.
"What did Sir Robert Llwellyn give you?—how much?" he said suddenly.
Again the look of ashen fear came over the Greek's face. He struggled with it before he spoke.
"I am sorry that your meaning is not plain to me, sir. I do not know of whom you speak."
"I speak of him whom you served secretly. It was with your aid that the 'new' tomb was found. But before it was found you and Sir Robert Llwellyn were at work there. I have come to obtain from you a detailed confession of how the thing was done, who cut the inscription?—I must know everything. If not, I tell you with perfect truth, your life is not safe. The Governor has sent men with me and you will be made to speak."
He spoke with a deep menace in his tone, and at the same time drew his revolver from the hip pocket of his riding-breeches and held it on his knee.
He had begun to realise the awful nature of this man's deed more and more poignantly in his presence. True, he was the tool of greater intelligences, and his guilt was not so heavy as theirs. Nevertheless, the Greek was no fool, he had something of an education, he had not done this thing blindly.
The man crouched against the wall, desperate and hopeless.
One of the soldiers outside the door moved, and his sabre clanked.
The sound was decisive. With a broken, husky voice Ionides began his miserable confession.
How simple it was! Wild astonishment at the ease with which the whole thing had been done filled the journalist's brain.
The tomb, already known to the Greek, the slow carving of the inscription at dead of night by Llwellyn, the new coating ofhamrasealing up the inner chamber.
And yet, so skilfully had the forgeries been committed, chance had so aided the forgers, and their secret had been so well preserved that the whole world of experts was deceived.
In the overpowering relief of the confession Spence was but little interested in the details, but at length they were duly set down and signed by the Greek in the presence of the officer.
By midnight the journalist was far away on the road to Jerusalem.
InSir Robert Llwellyn's flat in Bond Street the electric bell suddenly rang, a shrill tinkle in the silence.
Schuabe, who sat by the window, looked up with a strained, white face.
Avoiding his glance, Llwellyn rose and went out into the passage. The latch of the door clicked, there was a murmur of voices, and Llwellyn returned, following a third person.
Schuabe gave a scarcely perceptible shudder as this man entered.
The man was a thick-set person of medium height, clean shaven. He was dressed in a frock-coat and carried a silk hat, neither new nor smart, yet not seedy nor showing any evidences of poverty. The man's face was one to inspire a sensitive or alert person with a sudden disgust and terror for which a name can hardly be found. It was an utterly abominable and black soul that looked out of the still rather bilious eyes.
The eyes were much older than the rest of the face. They were full of a cold and deliberate cruelty and, worse even than this, such a hideousknowledgeof unmentionable crime was there! The lips made one thin, wicked curve which hardly varied in direction, for this man could not smile.
He belonged to a certain horrible gang who infest the West End of London, bringing terror and ruin to allthey meet. These people haunt the bars and music halls of the "pleasure" part of London.
It were better for a man that he had never been born—a thousand times better—than that he should go among these men. Black shame and horrors worse than death they bring with both hands to the bitter fools who lightly meet them unknowing what they are.
Constantine Schuabe, in the moment when he saw this man—knowing well who and what he was—knew the bitterest moment of his life.
Vast criminal that he was himself, mighty in his evil brain, ... he was pure; certain infamies were not his.... He spat into his handkerchief with an awful physical disgust.
"This is my friend, Nunc Wallace," said Llwellyn, pale and trembling.
The man looked keenly at his two hosts. Then he sat down in a chair.
"Well, gentlemen," he said in correct English, but with a curious lack oftimbre, of life and feeling in his voice—he spoke as one might think a corpse would speak—"I'm sorry to say that it's all off. It simply can't be done at any price. Even I myself, 'King of the boys' as they call me, confess myself beaten."
Schuabe gave a sudden start, almost of relief it seemed.
Llwellyn cleared his throat once or twice before he could speak. When the words came at length there was a nauseous eagerness in them.
"Why not, Wallace? Surelyyouand your friends—it must be something very hard that you can't manage."
The words jostled each other in their rapid utterance.
"Give me a drink, Sir Robert, and I'll tell you the reason," said the man.
Then, with an inexpressible assumption of confidence and an identity of interests, which galled and stung thetwo wretched men till they could hardly bear the torture of it, he began:
"You see, it's like this; we can generally calculate on 'putting a man through it' if he's anything to do with racing on the Turf. I've seen a man's face kicked liver colour, and no one knew who did it. But this parson was a more difficult thing altogether. Then it has been very much complicated by the fact of his friend coming back.
"The idea was to get into the chambers on the evening of this Spence's arrival and put them both through it. In fact, we'd arranged everything fairly well. But two nights ago, as I was in the American bar, at the Horsecloth, a man touched me on the arm. It was Detective Inspector Melton. He knows everything. 'Nunc,' he said, 'sit down at one of these little tables and have a drink. I want to say a few words to you.' Well, of course I had to. He knows every one of the boys.
"'Now, look here,' he said straight out. 'Some of your crowd have been watching the Rev. Basil Gortre of Lincoln's Inn; also, you've had a man at Charing Cross waiting for the continental express. Now, I've nothing against youyet, but I'll just tell you this. The people behind you aren't any guarantee for you. It's not as you think. This is a big thing. I'll tell you something more. This Mr. Gortre and this Mr. Spence you're waiting for are guarded night and day by order of the Home Secretary. It's an international affair. You can no more touch them than you can touch the Prince of Wales. Is that clear? If it's not, then you'll come with me at once on suspicion. I can put my finger on Bunny Watson'—he's my organising pal, gentlemen—'inside of an hour.'"
He stopped at last, taking another drink with a shakinghand, watching the other two with horribly observing eyes.
His cleverness had at once shown him that he had stumbled into something far more dangerous than any ordinary incident of his horrid trade. A million pounds would not have made him touch the "business" now. He had come to say this to his employers now.
The unhappy men became aware that the man was looking at them both with a new expression. There was wonder in his cold eyes now, and a sort of fear also. When Llwellyn had first sought him with black and infamous proposals, there had been none of this.Thathad seemed ordinary enough to him, the reason he did not inquire or seek to know.
But now there was inquiry in his eyes.
Both Schuabe and Llwellyn saw it, knew the cause, and shuddered.
There was a tense silence, and then the creature spoke again. There was a loathsome confidential note in his voice.
"Now, gentlemen," he said, "you've already paid me well for any little kindness I may have been able to try to do for you. I suppose, now that the little job is 'off,' I shall not get the rest of the sum agreed upon?"
Schuabe, without speaking, made a sign to Llwellyn. The big man got up, went to a little nest of mahogany drawers which stood on his writing-table, and opening one of them, took from it a bundle of notes.
He gave them to the assassin. "There, Nunc," he said; "no doubt you've done all you could. You won't find us ungrateful. But I want to ask you a few questions."
The man took the notes, counted them deliberately, and then looked up with a gleam of satisfied greedpassing over his face—the gleam of a pale sunbeam in hell.
"Ask anything you like, sir," he said; "I'll give you any help I can."
Already there was a ring almost of patronage in his voice. The word "help" was slightly emphasised.
"This inspector, who is he exactly? I mean, is he an important person?"
"He is the man who has charge of all the big things. He goes abroad when one of the big city men bunk to South America. He generally works straight from the Home Office; he's the Government man. To tell the truth, I was surprised to meethimin the Horsecloth. One of the others generally goes there. Whenhebegan to talk, I knew that there was something important, more than usual."
"He definitely said that he knew your—backers?"
"Yes, he did; and what's more, gentlemen, he seemed to know too much altogether about the business. I don't pretend to understand it.Idon't know why a young parson and a press reporter are being looked after by Government as if they were continental sovereigns and the Anarchists were trying to get at them—no more than I know why two such gentlemen as you are wanting two smaller men put through it. But all's well that ends well.I'msatisfied enough, and I'm extremely glad that I got this notice in time to stop it off. But whatever you do, gentlemen, give up any idea of doing those two any harm. You couldn't do it—couldn't get near them. Give it up, gentlemen. Somehow or other, they know all about it. Be careful. Now I'm off. Good-day, gentlemen. Look after yourselves. I fear there is trouble brewing somewhere, though it won't come throughme. They can'tproveanything on our side."
He went slowly out of the room, back into the darkness of the pit whence he came, to the dark which mercifully hides such as he from the gaze of dwellers under the heavens.
Only the police of London know all about these men, and their imaginations are not, perhaps, strong enough to let the horror of contact remain with them.
When he had gone, Llwellyn sank heavily into a chair. He covered his face with his hands and moaned.
"Oh, fool that I was to try anything of the sort!" hissed Schuabe. "I might have known!"
"What is the state of things, really, do you suppose?" said Llwellyn.
"Imminent with doom for us!" Schuabe answered in a deep and melancholy voice. "It is all clear to me now. Your woman was set on to you by these men from the first. They are clever men. Michael Manichoe is behind them all. She got the story. Spence has been sent to verify it. He has got everything from Ionides. The Government has been told. These things have been going on during the last few hours. Spence has cabled something of his news, perhaps not all. He will be back to-day, this afternoon. He will have left Paris by now, and almost be nearing Amiens. In that train, Llwellyn, lies our death-warrant. Nothing can stop it. They will send the news all over the world to-night. It will be announced in London by dinner-time, probably."
Llwellyn groaned again. In this supreme hour of torture the sensualist was nearer collapse than the ascetic. His life told heavily. He looked up. His face was green-grey save where, here and there, his fingers had pressed into, and left red marks upon, the cheeks, which had lost their firmness and begun to be pendulous and flabby.
"What do you think must be the end?" he said.
"The end is here," said Schuabe. "What matters the form or manner of it? They may bring in a bill and hang us, they will certainly give us penal servitude for life, but probably we shall be torn in pieces by the mob. There is only one thing left."
He made an expressive gesture. Llwellyn shuddered.
"All is not necessarily at an end," he said. "I shall make a last effort to get away. I have still got the clergyman's clothes I wore when I went to Jerusalem. There will be time to get out of London before this evening."
"All over the continent and America you would be known. There is no getting away nowadays. As for me, I shall go down to my place in Manchester by the mid-day train. There is just time to catch it. And there I shall die before they can come to me."
He got up and strode away out of the flat with a set, stern face. Never a passing look did he give to the man he had enriched and damned for ever. Never a gesture of farewell.
Already he was as one in the grave. Llwellyn, left to himself in the silent, richly furnished flat, fell into hysterical sobbing.
His big body shook with the vehemence of his unnatural terror. His moans and cries were utterly without dignity or pathos. He was filled with the immense self-pity of the sensualist.
It is the added torture which comes to the evil-liver.
In the hour of blackness, every moment of physical gratification or sin adds its weight to the terrible burden which must be borne.
This man felt that he was lost. Perhaps all hope was not quite dead. He called on all his courage to make a last attempt at escape.
He must leave this place at once. He would go first to his house in Upper Berkeley Street, Lady Llwellyn's house! His wife.
Something strange and long forgotten moved within him at that word. What might not his life have been by her side, a life lived in open honour! What had he done with it all? His great name, his fame, were built up slowly by his long and brilliant work. Yet all the time that fair edifice was being undermined by secret workers. The lusts of the flesh were deep below the structure, their hammers were always slowly tapping—and now it was all over.
He drove up to his own door, unlocked it, and went up the stairs to his own rooms.
Though he had not been near them for weeks, he saw—with how keen a pang of regret—that they were swept and tidy, ready for his coming at any time.
He rang the bell.
Thedoor opened softly. A long beam of late winter sunshine which had been pouring in at the opposite window and striking the door with its projection of golden powder suddenly framed, played over, and lighted up the figure of Lady Llwellyn.
Sir Robert stood in the middle of the pleasant room and looked at her.
The sunlight showed up the grey pallor of her face, the lines of sorrow and resignation, the faded hair, the thin and bony hands.
"Kate," he said in a weak voice.
It was the first time he had called her by her name for many years.
The tired face lit up with a swift and divine tenderness.
She made a step forward into the room.
He was swaying a little, giddy, it seemed.
She looked him full in the face and saw things there which she had never seen before. A great horror was upon him, a frightful awakening from the long, sensual sloth of his life.
Moving, working, in that great countenance, generally so impassive, uninfluenced by any emotion—at least to her long watchings—except by a moody irritation, she saw Doom, Fate, the Call of the Eumenides.
It came to the poor woman in a sudden wave of illuminating certainty.
Sheknewthe end had come.
And yet, strangely enough, she felt nothing but a quickening of the pulses, a swift embracing pity which was almost a joy in its breaking away of barriers.
If the end were here, it should be together—at last together.
For she loved this cruel, sinning man, this lover of light loves, this man of purple, fine linen, and the sparkling deadly wines of life.
"Kate!"
He said it once more.
Her manner changed. Shrinking, timidity, fear, fled for ever. In her overpowering rush of protecting love all the diffidences of temperament, all the bars which he had forced her to build around her instincts, were swept utterly away.
She went quickly up to him, folded him in her arms.
"Robert!" she said, "poor boy, the end has come to it all. I knew it must come some day. Well, we have not been happy. I wonder ifyouhave been happy? No, I don't think so. But now, Robert, you have me to comfort you with my love once more, my poor Robert, once more, as in the old, simple days when we were young."
She led him to a couch.
He trembled violently. His decision of movement seemed to have gone. His purpose of flight had for the moment become obscure.
And now, into this man's heart came a remorse and regret so awful, a realisation so sudden and strong, so instinct with a pain for which there is no name, that everything before his eyes turned to burning fire.
The flames of his agony burnt up the veils which had for so long obscured the truth. They shrivelled and vanished.
Too late, too late, he knew what he had lost.
The last agony wrenched his brain round again to another and more terrible contemplation.
His thoughts were in other and outside hands, which pulled his brain from one scene to another as a man moves the eye of the camera obscura to different fields of view.
Incredible as it may seem, for the first time Llwellynrealised what he had done—realised, that is, in its entirety, the whole horror and consequences of that action of his which was to kill him now.
He had notbeen ableto see the magnitude and extent of his crime before—either at the time when it was proposed to him, except at the first moment of speech, or after its committal.
His brain and temperament had been wrapped round in the hideous fact of sensuality, which deadens and destroys sensation.
And now, with his wife's thin arms round him, her withered cheek pressed to his, her words of glad love, a martyr's swan song in his ears, hesaw,knew, andunderstood.
Through the terror of his thoughts her words began to penetrate.
"I know, Robert—husband, I know. The end is here. But what has happened? Tell me everything, that I may comfort you the more. Tell me, Robert,for the dear Christ's sake!"
At those words the man stiffened. "For the dear Christ's sake!"
Suddenly, in the disorder and tumult of his tortured brain, came, quite foolishly and inconsequently, a quotation from an old French romance—full of satire and the keen cynicism of a period—which he had been reading:
"'Tres volontiers,' repartit le démon.'Vous aimez les tableaux changeans;Je veux vous contenter.'"
Yes! the devil who was torturing him now had shown him many moving aspects of life.Les tableaux changeans!
But now, at last, here was the worst moment of all.
"For the dear Christ's sake, tell me, Robert!"
How could he tellthis?
This was his last moment of peace, his last chance of any help or hope.
He had begun to cling to her, to mingle foolish tears with hers—the while his fired brain ranged all the halls of agony.
For if he told her—this gentle Christian lady, to whom he had been so unkind—then she would never touch him more.
The last hours—there was but little time remaining—would be alone.Alone!
This new revelation that her love was still his, wonder of mysteries! this came at the last moments to aid him.
A last grace before the running waters closed over him. Was he to give this up?
The thought of flight lay like a wounded bird in his brain. It crept about it like some paralysed thing. Not yet dead, but inactive. Though he knew how terribly the moments called to him, yet he could not act.
The myriad agonies he was enduring now, agonies so various and great that he knew Hell had none greater, these, even these were alleviated by the wonder of his wife's love.
The terrible remorse that was knocking at his heart could not undo that.
He clung to her.
"Tell me all about it, Robert. I will forgive you,whatever you have done. I have long ago forgiven everything in my heart. There are only the words to say."
She rested her worn, tired head on his shoulder. The sunbeams gave it a glory.
Again the man must suffer a terrible agony. She had asked him to tell her all his trouble in a voice full of gentle pleading.
Whose voice did her voice recall to him; what fatal hour?A coarser voice, a richer voice, trembling, so he had thought, with love for him.
"Tell me everything, Bob!" It was Gertrude's voice.
The day of his undoing! The day when his horrid secret was wrested from him by the levers of his own passions. The day which had brought him to this.Finis coronat opus!
But the agony within him was the agony ofcontrast.
The great fires round his soul had burnt his lust away. There was no more regret or longing for the evil past. All the joys of a sensual life seemed as if they had never been. Now, the pain was the pain of a man, not who knows the worst too soon, but who knows the best too late!
A vivid picture, a succession of thoughts following each other with such kinetic swiftness that they became welded in one single picture, as one may see a vast landscape of wood and torrent, champaign and forest, in one flash of the storm sword, came to him now.
And, at the last, he saw himself seated at a great table in a noble room. There were soft lights. Silver and flowers were there. Round the board sat many men and women. On their faces was the calm triumph of those who had succeeded in a fine battle, won an intellectual strife. The faces were calm, powerful, serene. They were the salt of society. He saw his own face ina little mirror set among the flowers. His face was even as their faces. Self-reverence had dignified it, self-knowledge and self-control had turned the lines to kindly marble, defiant of time.
At the other end of the table sat a calm and gracious lady, richly dressed in some glowing sombre stuff. She was the grave and loving matron who slept by his side.
Full of honour, full of the glorious satisfaction of a great work well done, a life lived well; hand in hand, a noble and notable pair, they were making their fine progress together.
"I am waiting, Robert, dear!"
Then he knew that he must speak. In rapid words, which seemed to come from a vast distance, he confessed it all.
He told her how Schuabe had tempted him with a vast fortune, how he was already in his power when the temptation had come. How his evil desires had so gripped him, his life of sin had become like air itself to him.
He told of the secret visit to Palestine and the forgery which had stirred the world.
As he spoke, he felt, in some subtle way, that the life and warmth were dying out of the arms which were round him.
The electric current of devotion which had been flowing from this lady seemed to flicker and die away.
The awful story was ended at last.
Then with a face in which the horror came out in waves, inexpressibly terrible to see, with each beat of the pulses a wave of unutterable horror, she slowly rose.
Her arms fell heavily to her sides, all her motions became automatic, jerky.
Slowly, slowly, she turned.
Her feet made no noise as she moved over the room.Her garments did not rustle. But she walked, not as an elderly woman, but a very old woman.
The door clicked softly. He was left alone in the comfortable room.
Alone.
He stood up, tottered a few steps in the direction she had gone, and then, with a resounding crash which shook the furniture in a succession of quick rattles, his great form fell prone upon the floor.
He lay there, head downwards, with the sunshine pouring on him, still and without any reactionary movement.
The afternoon was begun. London was as it had been for days. The uneasiness and unrest which were now become the common incubus of its inhabitants neither grew nor lessened.
The afternoon papers were merely repetitions of former days. Great financial houses were tottering, rumours of wars were growing every hour, no country was at rest, no colony secure. Over the world lawlessness and rapine were holding horrid revel.
But, and long afterwards, this fact was noticed and commented on by the historians: on this especial winter's afternoon there was no ultra-alarming shock, speaking comparatively, to the general state of things.
In the pale winter sunshine men moved heavily about their business, the common burden was shared by all, but there was no loud trumpet note during those hours.
About four o'clock some carriages drove to Downing Street. In one sat Sir Michael Manichoe, Father Ripon, Harold Spence, and Basil Gortre.
In another was the English Consul at Jerusalem, who had arrived with Spence from the Holy City, Dr. Schmöulder from Berlin, and the Duke of Suffolk.
The carriages stopped at the house of the Prime Minister and the party entered.
Nothing occurred, visibly, for an hour, though urgent messages were passing over the telephone wires.
In an hour's time a cab came driving furiously down the Embankment, round by the new Scotland Yard and St. Stephen's Club, into Parliament Street.
The cab contained the Editor of theTimes. Following his arrival, in a few seconds, a number of other cabs drove up, all at a fast pace. Each one contained a prominent journalist. Ommaney was among the first to arrive, and Folliott Farmer was with him.
It was nearly an hour when these people left Downing Street, all with very grave faces.
A few minutes after their departure Sir Michael and his party came out, accompanied by several ministers, including the Home Secretary and the Chief Commissioner of Police.
Though the distance to Scotland Yard is only a few hundred yards, the latter gentleman jumped into a passing hansom and was driven rapidly to his office.
This brings the time up to about six o'clock.
It was quite dark in Sir Robert's room. A faint yellow flicker came through the window, which was not curtained, from a gas lamp in the street. A dull and distant murmur from the Edgeware Road could be dimly heard, otherwise the room was quite silent.
Llwellyn did not lie where he had fallen. His swoon had lasted long and no one had come to succour him. But the end was not just yet. The merciful oblivion of passing from a swoon into death was denied him.
He had come to his senses late in the afternoon, about the time that the large party of people had emerged onfoot and in carriages from the narrowcul-de-sacof Downing Street.
He had felt very cold, an icy-cold. There had come a terrible moment. The physical sensation was swamped and forgotten in one frightful flash of realisation. He was alone, the end was at hand.
Alone.
Instinctively he had tried to rise. He was lying face downwards at the return of sensation. His legs would not answer the message of his brain when he tried to move them so that he might rise. They lay like long dead cylinders behind him. He was able to drag himself very slowly, for a yard or two, until he reached an ottoman. He could not lift the vast weight of his body into the seat. It was utterly beyond his strength. He propped his trunk against the seat. It was all he was able to accomplish. Icy-cold sweat ran down his cheeks at the exertion. After he had finished moving he found that all strength had left him.
He was paralysed from the waist downwards. The rest of his body was too weak to move him.
Only his brain was working with a terrible activity, there alone in the chill dark.
There came into his molten brain the impulse to pray. Deep down in every human heart that impulse lies.
It is a seed planted there by God that it may grow into the tree of salvation.
The effort was sub-conscious. Almost simultaneously with it came the awful remembrance of what he had done.
A name danced in letters of flame in his brain—JUDAS.
He looked round for some means to end this unbearable torture. He could see nothing, the room was very cold and dark, but he knew there was a case of razors on a table by the window.
When he tried to move he found that he could not. The paralysis was growing upwards.
Then this was to be the end?
A momentary flood of relief came over him. His blood seemed warm again.
But the sensation died rapidly away, the physical and mental glow alike.
He remembered those cases, frequent enough, when the whole body loses the power of movement, but the brain survives, active, alive, helpless.
And all the sweat which the physical glow had induced turned to little icicles all over his body, even as the thought froze in his brain.
An hour went by.
Alone in the dark.
His tongue was parched and dry. A sudden wonder came to him—could he speak still?
Without realising what word he used as a test he spoke.
"Kate."
A gaunt whisper in the silence.
Silence! How silent it was! Yet no, he could hear the distant rumbling of the traffic. He became suddenly conscious of it. Surely it was very loud?
It must be this physical change which was creeping over him. His head was swimming, disordered.
Yet it seemed strangely loud.
And louder, as he began to listen intently. He could not move his head to catch the sound more clearly, but he was beginning to hear it well enough now.
No traffic ever sounded quite like that. It was like an advancing tide, thundering, as a horse gallops, over flat, level sands.
A great sea rushing towards—towards what?
Then he knew what that sound was.
At last he knew.