Thursday's Serial: "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan (in English) - IV

 

CHAPTER VI - THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHÆLOGIST

I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat Those were in Mr, Turnbull's keep, as was Scudder's little book, my watch and—worst of all—my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.

I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got some kind of warmth. My spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hide-and-seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary inn-keeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I should pull through. My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was "well nourished." I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself—for the ginger biscuits merely emphasised the aching void—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of in London. There were Paddock's crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached eggs—how often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all the varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porter-house steak and a quart of bitter with a Welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.

I woke very cold and stiff about an hour after dawn. It took me a little while to remember where I was, for I had been very weary and had slept heavily. I saw first the pale blue sky through a net of heather, then a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots placed neatly in a blackberry-bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots in mad haste. For there were men below, not more than a quarter of a mile off, spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and beating the heather. Marmie had not been slow in looking for his revenge.

I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it gained a shallow trench which slanted up the mountain face. This led me presently into the narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to the top of the ridge. From there I looked back, and saw that I was still undiscovered. My pursuers were patiently quartering the hillside and moving upwards.

Keeping behind the skyline, I ran for maybe half a mile till I judged I was above the uppermost end of the glen. Then I showed myself, and was instantly noted by one of the flankers who passed the word to the others. I heard cries coming up from below, and saw that the line of search had changed its direction. I pretended to retreat over the skyline, but instead went back the way I had come, and in twenty minutes was behind the ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From that viewpoint I had the satisfaction of seeing the pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of the glen on a hopelessly false scent. I had before me a choice of routes, and I chose a ridge which made an angle with the one I was on, and so would soon put a deep glen between me and my enemies. The exercise had warmed my blood, and I was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly. As I went I breakfasted on the dusty remnants of the ginger biscuits.

I knew very little about the country, and I hadn't a notion what I was going to do. I trusted to the strength of my legs, but I was well aware that those behind me would be familiar with the lie of the land, and that my ignorance would be a heavy handicap. I saw in front of me a sea of hills, rising very high towards the south, but northwards breaking down into broad ridges which separated wide and shallow dales. The ridge I had chosen seemed to sink after a mile or two to a moor which lay like a pocket in the uplands. That seemed as good a direction to take as any other.

My stratagem had given me a fair start—call it twenty minutes—and I had the width of a glen behind me before I saw the first heads of the pursuers. The police had evidently called in local herds or gamekeepers. They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved my hand. Two dived into the glen and began to climb my ridge, while the others kept their own side of the hill. I felt as if I were taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and hounds.

But very soon it began to seem less of a game. Those fellows behind were hefty men on their native heath. Looking back I saw that only three were following direct and I guessed that the others had fetched a circuit to cut me off. My lack of local knowledge might very well be my undoing, and I resolved to get out of this tangle of glens to the pocket of moor I had seen from the tops. I must so increase my distance as to get clear away from them and I believed I could do this if I could find the right ground for it. If there had been cover I would have tried a bit of stalking, but on these bare slopes you could see a fly a mile off. My hope must be in the length of my legs and the soundness of my wind, but I needed easier ground for that, for I was not bred a mountaineer. How I longed for a good Afrikander pony!

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge and down into the moor before any figures appeared on the skyline behind me. I crossed a burn, and came out on a highroad which made a pass between two glens. All in front of me was a big field of heather sloping up to a crest which was crowned with an odd feather of trees. In the dike by the roadside was a gate, from which a grass-grown track led over the first wave of the moor. I jumped the dike and followed it, and after a few hundred yards—as soon as it was out of sight of the highway—the grass stopped and it became a very respectable road which was evidently kept with some care. Clearly it ran to a house, and I began to think of doing the same. Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be that my best chance would be found in this remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees there—and that meant cover.

I did not follow the road, but the burnside which flanked it on the right, where the bracken grew deep and the high banks made a tolerable screen. It was well I did so, for no sooner had I gained the hollow than, looking back, I saw the pursuit topping the ridge from which I had descended.

After that I did not look back; I had no time. I ran up the burnside, crawling over the open places, and for a large part wading in the shallow stream. I found a deserted cottage with a row of phantom peat-stacks and an overgrown garden. Then I was among young hay, and very soon had come to the edge of a plantation of windblown firs. From there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking a few hundred yards to my left. I forsook the burnside, crossed another dike, and almost before I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance back told me that I was well out of sight of the pursuit, which had not yet passed the first lift of the moor.

The lawn was a very rough place, cut with a scythe instead of a mower, and planted with beds of scrubby rhododendrons. A brace of blackgame, which are not usually garden birds, rose at my approach. The house before me was the ordinary moorland farm, with a more pretentious white-washed wing added. Attached to this wing was a glass verandah, and through the glass I saw the face of an elderly gentleman meekly watching me.

I stalked over the border of coarse hill gravel and entered the verandah door. Within was a pleasant room, glass on one side, and on the other a mass of books. More books showed in an inner room. On the floor, instead of tables, stood cases such as you see in a museum, filled with coins and queer stone implements. There was a knee-hole desk in the middle, and seated at it, with some papers and open volumes before him, was the benevolent old gentleman. His face was round and shiny, like Mr Pickwick's, big glasses were stuck on the end of his nose, and the top of his head was as bright and bare as a glass bottle. He never moved when I entered, but raised his placid eyebrows and waited on me to speak.

It was not an easy job, with about five minutes to spare, to tell a stranger who I was and what I wanted, and to win his aid. I did not attempt it. There was something about the eye of the man before me, something so keen and knowledgeable, that I could not find a word. I simply stared at him and stuttered.

"You seem in a hurry, my friend," he said slowly.

I nodded towards the window. It gave a prospect across the moor through a gap in the I plantation, and revealed certain figures half a mile off straggling through the heather.

"Ah, I see," he said, and took up a pair of field glasses, through which he patiently scrutinised the figures.

"A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we'll go into the matter at our leisure. Meantime, I object to my privacy being broken in upon by the clumsy rural policeman. Go into my study and you will see two doors facing you. Take the one to the left and close it behind you. You will be perfectly safe."

And this extraordinary man took up his pen again,

I did as I was bid, and found myself in a little dark chamber which smelled of chemicals and was lit only by a tiny window high up in the wall. The door had swung behind me with a click like the door of a safe. Once again I had found an unexpected sanctuary.

All the same I was not comfortable. There was something about the old gentleman which puzzled and rather terrified me. He had been too easy and ready, almost as if he had expected me. And his eyes had been horribly intelligent.

No sound came to me in that dark place. For all I knew the police might be searching the house, and if they did they would want to know what was behind this door. I tried to possess my soul in patience and to forget how hungry I was. Then I took a more cheerful view. The old gentleman could scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to reconstructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs would content me, but I wanted the better part of a flitch of bacon and half a hundred eggs. And then, while my mouth was watering in anticipation, there was a click and the door stood open.

I emerged into the sunlight to find the master of the house sitting in a deep armchair in the room he called his study, and regarding me with curious eyes.

"Have they gone?" I asked.

"They have gone. I convinced them that you had crossed the hill. I do not choose that the police should come between me and whom I am delighted to honour. This is a lucky morning for you, Mr. Richard Hannay."

As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall a little over his keen grey eyes. In a flash the phrase of Scudder's came back to me, when he had described the man he most dreaded in the world. He had said that he "could hood his eyes like a hawk." Then I saw that I had walked straight into the enemy's headquarters.

My first impulse was to throttle the old ruffian and make for the open air. He seemed to anticipate my intention, for he smiled gently and nodded to the door behind me. I turned and saw two men-servants who had me covered with pistols.

He knew my name, but he had never seenme before. And as the reflection darted across my mind, I saw a slender chance.

"I don't know what you mean," I said roughly. "And who are you calling Richard Hannay? My name's Ainslie."

"So?" he said, still smiling. "But of course you have others. We won't quarrel about a name."

I was pulling myself together now and I reflected that my garb, lacking coat and waistcoat and collar, would, at any rate, not betray me. I put on my surliest face and shrugged my shoulders.

"I suppose you're going to give me up after all, and I call it a damned dirty trick. My God, I wish I had never seen that cursed motor-car! Here's the money and be damned to you," and I flung four sovereigns on the table.

He opened his eyes a little. "Oh, no, I shall not give you up. My friends and I will have a little private settlement with you, that is all. You know a little too much, Mr. Hannay. You are a clever actor, but not quite clever enough."

He spoke with assurance, but I could see the dawning of a doubt in his mind.

"O, for God's sake stop jawing," I cried. "Everything's against me. I haven't had a bit of luck since I came on shore at Leith. What's the harm in a poor devil with an empty stomach picking up some money he finds in a bust-up motor-car? That's all I done, and for that I've been chivvied for two days by those blasted bobbies over those blasted hills. I tell you I'm fair sick of it. You can do what you like, old boy! Ned Ainslie's got no fight left in him."

I could see that the doubt was gaining.

"Will you oblige me with the story of your recent doings?" he asked.

"I can't, guv'nor," I said in a real beggar's whine. "I've not had a bite to eat for two days. Give me a mouthful of food, and then you'll hear God's truth."

I must have showed my hunger in my face, for he signalled to one of the men in the doorway. A bit of cold pie was brought and a glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a pig—or rather like Ned Ainslie, for I was keeping up my character. In the middle of my meal he spoke suddenly to me in German, but I turned on him a face as blank as a stone wall.

Then I told him my story—how I had come off an Archangel ship at Leith a week ago, and was making my way overland to my brother at Wigton. I had run short of cash—I hinted vaguely at a spree—and I was pretty well on my uppers when I had come on a hole in a hedge, and, looking through, had seen a big motor-car lying in a burn. I had poked about to see what had happened, and had found three sovereigns lying on the seat and one on the floor. There was nobody there or any sign of an owner, so had pocketed the cash. But somehow the law had got after me. When I had tried to change a sovereign in a baker's shop the woman had cried on the police, and a little later, when I was washing my face in a burn, I had been nearly gripped, and had only got away by leaving my coat and waistcoat behind me.

"They can have the money back," I cried, "for a fat lot of good it's done me. Those perishers are all down on a poor man. Now if it had been you, guv'nor, that had found the quids, nobody would have troubled you."

"You're a good liar, Hannay," he said.

I flew into a rage. "Stop fooling, damn you! I tell you my name's Ainslie, and I never heard of any one called Hannay in my born days. I'd sooner have the police than I you with your Hannays and your monkey-faced pistol tricks. No, guv'nor, I don't mean that. I'm much obliged to you for the grub. I'll thank you to let me go now the coast's clear."

It was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see he had never seen me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from my photographs—if he had got one of them. I was pretty smart and well dressed in London, and now I was a regular tramp.

"I do not propose to let you go. If you are what you say you are, you will soon have a chance of clearing yourself. If you are what I believe you are, I do not think you will see light much longer."

He rang a bell and a third servant appeared from the verandah.

"I want the Lanchester in five minutes," he I said. "There will be three to luncheon."

Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all. There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself on his mercy and offer to join his side, and if you consider the way I felt about the whole thing, you will see that that impulse must have been purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerised and mastered by a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even to grin. "You'll know me next time, guv'nor," I said.

"Karl," he said in German to one of the men in the doorway. "You will put this fellow in the store-room till I return, and you will be answerable to me for his keeping."

I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear.

The store-room was a damp chamber in what had been the old farmhouse. There was no carpet on the uneven floor and nothing to sit down on but a school form. It was black as pitch, for the windows were heavily shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelled of mould and disuse. My jailers turned the key in the door, and I could hear them shifting their feet as they stood on guard outside.

I sat down in the chilly darkness in a very miserable frame of mind. The old boy had gone off in a motor to collect the two ruffians who had interviewed me yesterday. Now, they had seen me as the roadman, and they would remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles from his beat, pursued by the police? A question or two would put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr. Turnbull, probably Marmie too; most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance had I in this moorland house with three desperadoes and their armed servants? I began to think wistfully of the police, now plodding over the hills after my wraith. They at any rate were fellow countrymen and honest men, and their tender mercies would be kinder than these ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn't have listened to me. That old devil with the eyelids had not taken long to get rid of them. I thought he probably had some kind of graft with the constabulary. Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was to be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That's the sort of owlish way we run our politics in the Old Country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I hadn't more than a couple of hours to wait. It was simply waiting on destruction, for I could see no way out of this mess. I wished that I had Scudder's courage, for I am free to confess I didn't feel any great fortitude. The only thing that kept me going was that I was pretty furious. It made me boil with rage to think of those three spies getting the pull on me like this. I hoped that at rate I might be able to twist one of their necks before they downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but they were the kind that lock with a key and I couldn't move them. From the outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelled of cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the wall which seemed worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard—what they call a "press" in Scotland—and it locked. I shook it and it seemed rather flimsy. For want of something better to do I put out my strength on that door, getting some purchase on the handle by looping my braces round it. Presently the thing gave with a crash which I thought would bring in my warders to inquire. I waited for a bit and then started to explore the cupboard shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there. I found an odd vesta or two in my trouser pockets and struck a light. It went out in a second, but it showed me one thing. There was a little stock of electric torches on one shelf. I picked up one and found it was in working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated further. There were bottles and cases of queer smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for experiments, and there were coils of fine copper wire and yanks and yanks of a thin oiled silk. There was a box of detonators, and a lot of cord for fuses. Then away at the back of a shelf I found a stout brown cardboard box, and inside it a wooden case. I manged to wrench it open, and within lay half a dozen little grey bricks, each a couple of inches square.

I took up one and found that it crumbled easily in my hand. Then I smelled it and put my tongue to it. After that I sat down to think. I hadn't been a mining engineer for nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it.

With one of these bricks I could blow the house to smithereens. I had used the stuff in Rhodesia and knew its power. But the trouble was that my knowledge wasn't exact.

I had forgotten the proper charge and the right way of preparing it, and I wasn't sure about the timing. I had only a vague notion, too, as to its power, for though I had used it I had not handled it with my own fingers.

But it was a chance, the only possible chance. It was a mighty risk, but against it was an absolute black certainty. If I used it the odds were, as I reckoned, about five to one in favour of my blowing myself into the treetops; but if I didn't I should very likely be occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by the evening. That was the way I had to look at it. The prospect was pretty dark either way, but anyhow there was a chance, both for myself and for my country.

The remembrance of little Scudder decided me. It was about the beastliest moment of my life, for I'm no good at these cold-blooded resolutions. Still I managed to rake up the pluck to set my teeth and choke back the horrid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply shut off my mind and pretended I was doing an experiment as simple as Guy Fawkes fireworks.

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter of a lentonite brick, and buried it near the door, below one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing the detonator in it. For all I knew half those boxes might be dynamite. If the cupboard held such deadly explosives, why not the boxes? In that case there would be a glorious skyward journey for me and the German servants and about an acre of the surrounding country. There was also the risk that the detonation might set off the other bricks in the cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I knew about lentonite. But it didn't do to begin thinking about the possibilities. The odds were horrible, but I had to take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of the window and lit the fuse. Then I waited for a moment or two. There was dead silence—only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage, and the peaceful cluck of hens from the warm out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my Maker, and wondered where I would be in five seconds.

A great wave of heat seemed to surge upwards from the floor, and hang for a blistering instant in the air. Then the wall opposite me flashed into a golden yellow and dissolved with a rending thunder that hammered my brain into a pulp. Something dropped on me, catching the point of my left shoulder.

And then I became unconscious.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted beyond a few seconds. I felt myself being choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere behind me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the window had fallen, and through the ragged rent the smoke was pouring out to the summer noon. I stepped over the broken lintel, and found myself standing in a yard in a dense and acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I could move my limbs, and I staggered blindly forward away from the house.

A small mill lade ran in a wooden aqueduct at the other side of the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled onto a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp of heather-mixture behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The ladders were rotten with age, and in the loft the rats had gnawed great holes in the floor. Nausea shook me, and a wheel in my head kept turning, while my left shoulder and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy. I looked out of the window and saw a fog still hanging over the house and smoke escaping from an upper window. Please God I had set the place on fire, for I could hear confused cries coming from the other side. But I had no time to linger, since this mill was obviously a bad hiding-place. Any one looking for me would naturally follow the lade, and I made certain the search would begin as soon as they found that my body was not in the store-room. From another window I saw that on the far side of the mill stood an old stone dovecot. If I could get there without leaving tracks I might find a hiding-place, for I argued that my enemies, if they thought I could move, would conclude I had made for open country, and would go seeking me on the moor.

I crawled down the broken ladder, scattering chaff behind me to cover my footsteps, did the same on the mill floor, and on the threshold where the door hung on broken hinges. Peeping out I saw that between me and the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled ground, where no footmarks would show. Also it was mercifully hid by the mill buildings from any view from the house. I slipped across the space, got to the back of the dove-cot and prospected a way of ascent.

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on. My shoulder and arm ached like hell, and I was so sick and giddy that I was always I on the verge of falling. But I managed it somehow. By the use of outjutting stones and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy root I got to the top in the end. There was a little parapet behind which I found space to lie down. Then I proceeded to go into an oldfashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun glaring in my face. For a long time I lay motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled my brain. Sounds came to me from the house—men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw figures come out—a servant with his head bound up, and then a younger man in knickerbockers. They were looking for something, and moved towards the mill. Then one of them caught sight of the wisp of cloth on the nail, and cried out to the other. They both went back to the house, and brought two more to look at it. I saw the rotund figure of my late captor, and I thought I made out the man with the lisp. I noticed that all had pistols.

For half an hour they ransacked the mill. I could hear them kicking over the barrels and pulling up the rotten planking. Then they came outside, and stood just below the dovecot, arguing fiercely. The servant with the bandage was being soundly rated. I heard them fiddling with the door of the dovecot, and for one horrid moment I thought they were coming up. Then they thought better of it, and went back to the house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay baking on the roof-top. Thirst was my chief torment. My tongue was like a stick, and to make it worse, I could hear the cool drip of water from the mill-lade. I watched the course of the little stream as it came in from the moor, and my fancy followed it to the top of the glen, where it must issue from an icy fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses. I would have given a thousand pounds to plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest. But I saw something else more interesting. The house stood almost on the summit of a swell of moorland which crowned a sort of plateau, and there was no higher point nearer than the big hills six miles off. The actual summit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish clump of trees—firs mostly, with a few ashes and beeches. On the dovecot I was almost on a level with the tree-tops, and could see what lay beyond. The wood was not solid, but only a ring, and inside was an oval of green turf, for all the world like a big cricket-field. I didn't take long to guess what it was. It was an aerodrome, and a secret one. The place had been most cunningly chosen. For suppose any one were watching an aeroplane descending here, he would think it had gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the place was on the top of a rise in the midst of a big amphitheatre any observer from any direction would conclude it had passed out of view behind the hill. Only a man very close at hand would realise that the aeroplane had not gone over but had descended in the midst I of the wood. An observer with a telescope on one of the higher hills might have discovered the truth, but only herds went there, and herds do not carry spy-glasses. When I looked from the dovecot I could see far away a blue line which I knew was the sea, and I grew furious to think that our enemies had this secret conning-tower to rake our waterways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came back the chances were ten to one that I would be discovered. So through the afternoon I lay and prayed for the coming of darkness, and glad I was when the sun went down over the big western hills and the twilight haze crept ever the moor. The aeroplane was late. The gloaming was far advanced when I heard the beat of wings, and saw it volplaning downward to its home in the wood. Lights twinkled for a bit and there was much coming and going from the house. Then the dark fell and silence.

Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on in its last quarter and would not rise till late. My thirst was too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o'clock, so far as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn't easy, and half-way down I heard the back door of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill wall. For some agonising minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed that whoever it was would not come round by the dovecot. Then the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could onto the hard soil of the yard.

I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dike till I reached the fringe of trees which surrounded the house. If I had known how to do it I would have tried to put that aeroplane out of action, but I realised that any attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty certain that there would be some kind of defence round the house, so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling carefully every inch before me. It was as well, for presently I came on a wire about two feet from the ground. If I had tripped over that, it would doubtless have rung some bell in the house and I would have been captured.

A hundred yards further on I found another wire cunningly placed on the edge of a small stream. Beyond that lay the moor, and in five minutes I was deep in bracken and heather. Soon I was round the shoulder of the rise, in the little glen from which the mill-lade flowed. Ten minutes later my face was deep in the spring, and I was soaking down pints of the blessed water. But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me and that accursed dwelling.

Tuesday's Serial: “The Messiah of the Cylinder” by Victor Rousseau (in Englsih) - XIII

 

CHAPTER XX - THE SWEEP OF THE NET

“I am not at all afraid,” I retorted, nettled at Lazaroff’s sneer, “but how do I get in?”

A dog was yelping somewhere outside the Institute, and all the dogs in Croydon seemed to have taken up its challenge. It was difficult for me to make my voice audible above the uproar.

“I am not at all afraid,” I repeated, “but—”

I was back in the cellar with Esther and Lazaroff, and we were examining the cylinders. As I looked about me, I seemed to be in the cylinder still, but gradually it expanded, until it became a vast hall, dark, save for a little window near the ceiling, through whose half-opaque crystal a little light filtered in dimly.

Lazaroff seemed to have aged. He wore a white beard, and his touch was very gentle as he bathed my face with water. As I stared at him he became ... somebody whom I had once known ... Bishop Alfred!

“Now you are better,” said the old man, with his child-like smile.

I put my hand up to my aching head. There was a scarred groove along the top of the scalp, where the glow ray had plowed its passage. I began to remember now.

The howling of the dogs broke out afresh. The din was terrific, and the mournful tones of the poor animals’ cries made the place a pandemonium.

“Arnold!” whispered a soft voice at my side.

Elizabeth was kneeling there, and David stood behind her. Next to David stood the little woman who had been our neighbor in the Strangers’ House, and a multitude of men and women, and children, too, watched me through the gloom.

“Where am I? Who are all these?” I asked. Then, lighting upon a more momentous question, “How long have I been here?”

“Three days, Arnold,” whispered Elizabeth.

“Then in two days—two days—” I gasped.

“No, Arnold, tomorrow is the day,” interposed David, coming up to me softly. “Sanson has proclaimed a meeting in the Temple at sunrise, and it is now late afternoon. We are all in his trap. He must have found you, taken you unaware, and fired at you, but afterward he changed his mind and brought you here in his dispatchplane, where he found Bishop Alfred awaiting him, and Elizabeth and myself, who had gone back to find him. I bought a few days’ respite by surrender, and there was even pleasure in the thought that my daughter will not meet her fate in Lembken’s palace.”

“Where, then?” I asked, struggling painfully up.

“In the Vivisection Bureau—with these,” he answered, indicating the assemblage.

“Where are we, David?” I cried in anguish.

“Beneath it. In the vaults where Sanson keeps his morons, Christians, criminals, and dogs, to await the table.”

I was upon my feet raving like a madman, making my way round the vault, striking my fists against the damp stone walls, crazed with the thought of Esther. They followed me, and some laid their hands on me in restraint, but I thrust them away. They thought I could not bear to share their wretched fate. But the nearness of the crisis, the thought of Esther in Sanson’s power deprived me of my senses.

The vault was an enormous one, the only access being at the far end, by means of an oak gate, heavily barred. In this further portion were chained, all along the walls, the dogs destined for the experimental work above. As I drew near the gate the howling broke forth afresh. It steadied me; I came back to my senses; somebody was at my side, clasping my arm and speaking a few timid words in my ear.

I swung around and caught at the little woman who had been our neighbor. She had her children with her, and the three held each other closely, as if their last hour had begun.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

I did not know David was near, but at the words he clasped me in his arms.

“She is here, Arnold,” he answered, “because the last act of terrorism has brought her. Sanson’s reason has left him, and he has flung his net wide over London for victims. He has gathered everyone: morons, Christians, criminals, suspects. She taught her children fairy stories. The inspectors had long suspected it, and they terrified the little girl into admission by threatening to kill the mother. They were then adjudged morons. The mother pleaded to be allowed to accompany them to the table, alleging that her father had been color-blind. Her prayer was granted; she is going, Arnold; we all are going—”

“No,” said the old bishop in a regretful tone, “not one of us is going. You see,” he added in explanation, “the Russians are in Stockholm, and it will not be long before they arrive in London to free the world. That is why Sanson lost his self-control. He knows. He wants to finish his enemies at home before they come.”

“How do you know?” demanded David, while everyone grew still and listened.

“It is given to me to know,” said Bishop Alfred simply, beaming and rubbing his hands. “I should like to have followed my dear master, the Lord Bishop of London, to the fagots, but none of us will go to the tables now, and we shall all have our two names again.”

David drew me aside. “Arnold,” he said, “this situation would have robbed stronger men of their wits. I am afraid that our case is hopeless. One of the Guard, who knows me, has told me that Sanson is preparing for a holocaust of victims tomorrow, to celebrate his coup. He will stop at nothing to appease his blood thirst. Arnold, all our people know who you are. For their sake you must lead and show them how to die, as the first Christians died. It is hard, my dear boy—”

I knew he was not thinking of death, but of my tragedy.

“Your capture has rendered our plans abortive,” he went on. “But still there may be some hope unguessed by us. Unto the last we will not impugn God’s power. Now, my friends,” he added, turning toward the crowd, which circulated in the vault slowly, always following me, “let us show the Guard where our strength lies.”

In the gloom of the vast vault, above the howling of the dogs, the hymn was raised, old Bishop Alfred leading, in a voice singularly sweet, although in speech the tones were broken. All kneeled.

Afterward David spoke briefly. He reminded us of the brave traditions of martyrdom and its happy expectancy. We were going to face our fate together, strengthened by our companionship and in the knowledge that our death would create a revulsion of sentiment that would sweep Sanson from power and restore Christianity to the world. They cried out their approval, and there was no face but reflected David’s dauntless resolution. Then it was as if some soul of merriment swept over us all. I saw strangers embracing, there was clapping of hands, and the concluding hymn was shouted so joyously that a slit in the little window overhead was thrust back, and I saw the face of a sentinel stare in on us with something of superstitious awe.

The glass must have been sound-proof, like that which enclosed Lembken’s gardens, for, as the slit was pushed back, I heard the cries of the multitude in the courts above:

“Sanson! Sanson! Sanson!” they howled. “Out with the Christian morons! To the Rest Cure! The Rest Cure!”

The slit was pushed into place, cutting off all sound. Darkness was falling. The little light within the vault faded. Gradually the voices died away. Sometimes a hymn would be started, but mostly we sat silent now, and even the dogs ceased howling, and only stirred and whined at intervals. I heard the little woman’s children whimper, and fancied her motherly face bent over them as she quieted their fears. I only felt Elizabeth’s presence, and that of David, good, fatherly man, on whom I leaned more than he knew. At last the only sounds were the bishop’s mumbling voice, as he talked to himself, and the staccato tapping of his stick on the stone floors.

A man near me leaped up and craned his neck, looking into the gloom

“They are coming,” I heard him say. “They are gathering up the Stockholm fleets. They will be here—”

“Who?” I burst out.

“The Russians,” he answered gently. “See them coming; big men, with bloody crosses on their breasts.”

A man near me leaped up and craned his neck, looking into the gloom. One or two cried out at the old bishop’s words, and some listened and whispered eagerly. Time passed. Most of the prisoners slept. I was still too sick and dizzy from my wound; I waited in a sort of apathy, and I seemed to see Esther within the opening cylinder, and Sanson, creeping like a foul beast of prey toward her.

I had been dozing. I started up at the sound of bolts being withdrawn, the heavy door at the far end of the vault was opened, and flashing lights shone in on us. The dogs, awakened, began to howl again. There was the stamping of heavy boots upon the stones, and a detachment of the Guard appeared before us.

They numbered seven. Six of them were privates, carrying solar torches and Ray rods; and in their midst stood a tall man with a black beard and a curved sword sheath that clanked on the stones. I recognized in him Mehemet, the Turkish commander.

Some, who had slept and mercifully forgotten all, sat up in bewilderment, others leaped up, thinking the hour had come. As we stood blinking at the lights, Mehemet spoke a few words, and the soldiers flashed their torches into our faces until they lighted on mine. Then Mehemet stepped forward and laid his hand on my shoulder, and drew me toward him; and the soldiers closed about us.

David sprang toward them.

“You shall not take him alone!” he cried. “Let us go with him, every one of us. We shall go to death together.”

And others sprang forward too, clamoring, beseeching. “Take us all!” they cried. “Take us together!”

Mehemet shrugged his shoulders and turned away. The captives flung themselves before the soldiers, who hesitated.

It was then that the old bishop, who had never ceased to mumble, I think, came quietly up to us.

“It is all right. Let him go,” he said gently. “He will come to no harm.”

A tall man with a black beard and a curved sword sheath that clanked on the stones.

I recognized in him Mehemet the Turkish commander

“It is my orders,” said Mehemet, looking with respect at Bishop Alfred. “I have come for him alone.”

Half quieted by the bishop’s intervention, my fellow-prisoners ceased to offer forcible resistance. But they wept and prayed, and David grasped me by the hand.

“We shall be together in spirit, Arnold!” he cried. “God be with you. God be with you.” He flung his arms about me, and the guards, touched by the scene, permitted him to accompany me as far as the door. They picked their way carefully by the light of their torches, to avoid treading on the dogs, which crept to their feet or strained, yelping, upon their chains. At the door I found Elizabeth.

“We shall be with you in your hour, Arnold!” she said, embracing me and fighting back her sobs valiantly. “We shall all think of you tomorrow.”

The crowd dispersed. The last thing that I saw was the white, terrified, maternal face of the little woman, as she clutched her children to her breast, and, over her, the bishop’s pastoral staff, held up as if to shield her.

The door was closed behind me, and the soldiers shot the bolts home. In front of me was a flight of winding concrete stairs, dividing at a central space into two portions that ran right and left respectively. We took the left. I expected to emerge into the Vivisection Bureau, to see the eager students of the medical school, and Sanson, the presiding devil, there. But instead I saw a gate above me; a guard unlocked it. Then I found myself standing alone beside Mehemet, in the interior court between the Temple and the Airscouts’ Fortress, between the Science Wing and the Council Building.

High above me the bridges crossed, spanning the gulf in whose recess we stood. I saw once more the palms against the upreared crystal walls.

As I watched I saw the battleplanes take their flight once more, one by one, from the roof of the Airscouts’ Fortress, rising into the dark night like luminous balloons. In the distance London glowed like day.

Behind us, in the outer courts, a multitude was shrieking curses upon the Christians; and, for the first time, I heard threats against Lembken, and realized that Sanson’s plans were made for that coup which I was never to see.

“We are going to Sanson?” I asked Mehemet, nerving myself for his affirmative reply.

He spat. “The jackal!” he said. “Sooner would I become a Christian than serve such spawn. We are going to the People’s House.”

Evidently Sanson did not know that the main prop of his new house had fallen.

 

 

CHAPTER XXI - AMARANTH

I stepped out of the elevator into a part of the Palace that I had not seen before. The room into which the waiting negro ushered me was completely dark, though a thin line of light at the further end showed me that there was a lighted room beyond.

I strained my eyes, striving to penetrate the gloom. I took a few steps forward, stretching out my hands to feel if any obstacle were in the way. Looking back, I could not even discern the heavy curtain that had dropped soundlessly behind me.

I knew that there was someone in the room, and that it was not Lembken. I waited; I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment. Then swiftly the room was flooded with the soft solar light.

It was bare, except for the rugs and a low divan pushed against one wall, with a little table beside it. Everything was of the color of gold: the walls, the ceiling, the rugs upon the floor. And before me, clothed from head to foot in a sheer, trailing garment of dull gold, stood the girl Amaranth.

Her dark hair was bound back in a loose Grecian knot, her sandaled feet gleamed white on the gold fabric under them; she stretched out her white arms to me and, taking me by the hand, led me to the divan and placed me at her side.

“Poor Arnold!” she began in a caressing tone, “you have suffered so much in your ignorance and your desire to help your friends. But all your troubles are ended now, and your friends shall not be harmed. Do you think you can love me, Arnold?”

She looked at me with neither boldness nor hesitation, and then, folding her arms, drummed her sandal heels against the foot of the divan.

“Are you not lucky, Arnold, to have won my love!” she continued. “I gave my love to you from the moment when I first saw you enter the room in which I sat with Lembken, looking so stern, so resolute, like one of those adventurous heroes of the twentieth century of whom we read in our romances. That is why I made Lembken tell Mehemet to bring you here. He was so hurt by your departure that I think he would have let his plans go to ruin rather than himself plead with you. He is very sensitive and kind.

“You are not afraid to love me, Arnold?” she continued, looking at me with curious scrutiny. “You need not be afraid. Lembken has grown tired of me, so I must find another. He has taken a fancy to Coral, my blue, an absurd little yellow-haired thing. You shall see her.”

She clapped her hands twice, and a door opened, apparently a part of the wall. A fair-haired girl, dressed in a loose blue tunic and Zouave trousers, entered, carrying a tray on which were two golden winecups.

Amaranth took the nearest cup in her hands, touched the rim with her lips, and held it out to me.

“Drink with me, Arnold,” she said.

But I would not drink, lest the corruption of the wine should dull me and disarm my strength in the spell of that enervating hell. I handed back the cup to her.

Amaranth looked at me for an instant with quivering lips. Then she burst into tears and hurled the cup at the maid. She flung the other also. The first missed its mark and fell against the base of the wall, where it shed its ruby contents in a widening stain. The second cup struck the maid’s cheek and cut it, and the wine drenched the blue tunic.

The maid smiled, biting her lips, stooped down, picked up both cups, and, placing them on the tray, departed silently. Amaranth sobbed as if her heart was broken. Then suddenly she turned and flung her arms about me.

“Arnold, I love you!” she cried. “You saw her? She is Lembken’s favorite now, that yellow-haired fool with the blue eyes like saucers. Lembken means us for each other. Can you not love me?”

I sat in silence, trying to pick my path cautiously through the mists of bewildering doubt. Amaranth unclasped her arms from about my neck, and her face assumed a look of mockery.

“Oh, I know!” she said, “it is that Elizabeth of yours whom you think you love. And you think you can only love one at a time, in your romantic twentieth-century way. Well, I will match myself against her. You shall bring her here, Arnold, and I will fight her for you, and I will be your blue and she shall be your white, and I will serve you obediently till I have won your heart. Look on me, Arnold! See how beautiful I am! For I was born here; I am Boss Rose’s daughter, and I have never left the People’s House. Look at the whiteness of my skin! The sun has never shone on it. Look at my lips, Arnold! Put your mouth to my cheek—it is as soft as the bloom upon a nectarine. Do you think, then, I am afraid to match myself against your Elizabeth?”

She smiled contemptuously, and tilted back her head, and clasped her hands behind it, and watched me through her lashes. Yet I detected a resource of feverish resolve in her; and I knew that she and I, Mehemet, Sanson, were that night weaving the threads in a fabric upon the loom of destiny, and that each word we spoke flashed like the thread-bearing shuttle over it.

So, piecing my words together with infinite care, because the lives of Esther and all those who were dear to me hung on them, I answered her:

“Forgive my sullen mood. You have promised that my friends shall go free; yet they expect to die at sunrise, and it is hard to be at ease. How can I save them?”

Amaranth unclasped her hands and turned to me with a quick gesture of penitence.

“Ah, it was wrong of me to speak of love first, when you have such a burden of sorrow, Arnold!” she answered. “I had forgotten that men’s minds are troubled in the world below. Here we are free and have no cares, except how we shall take our pleasures. And to think that you left us to help your friends, when Lembken would have done everything you wished!

“Now I will set your mind at rest. Lembken has already given the command that your friends shall live until Sanson has spoken in the Temple, and when he has spoken he will no longer have power—if you obey Lembken. But he was deeply hurt by your leaving him, for he is very sensitive to unkindness, and so he asked me to speak to you on his behalf. Now, if you act loyally, you may save your friends and the world. Tomorrow there will be an end to all of Sanson’s mad schemes of tyranny. Mehemet and his guards have abandoned him. Lembken knows everything; he knows all the desperate plans his poor people have made, and his heart is wrung for them.”

She paused, and placing her hand on mine, looked very earnestly at me.

“Arnold, you know that Sanson has been poisoning the people’s minds against Lembken, in pursuance of his plan to depose him,” she continued. “So your part, which will be detailed to you later, will be to enter the Temple tomorrow among the priests. You will defend Lembken against Sanson. You will remind the people how they elected him from year to year, because he was their friend. Tell them he has not changed. And in return liberty shall be established and the hated Guard disbanded. Lembken asks only for his dignity and wealth, and his friends in the People’s House. He is growing old, Arnold, and desires power no more.”

She watched me with that centuries-old look, and in my heart I knew I had not fathomed hers. This was what I had meant to propose. Yet—yet I doubted her.

“It is agreed, then,” she cried gaily, “and now you will be one of us. It is past midnight, Arnold, and in a few short hours you shall be hidden in the priests’ room to be coached for your part. Till then—”

She ceased suddenly, as the sound of voices came from the room beyond the further door. She slipped from the divan.

“Sanson has been with Lembken,” she whispered. “He is coming this way. Arnold, do you want to see your enemy broken? That will be a glorious beginning to this first night of ours, and afterwards we shall go to the revels in the garden. I shall be proud of you, Arnold, for now the girls are taunting me because Lembken is tired of me. How I shall be envied! But come here quickly!”

She took me to the door in the wall through which the girl Coral had come. At a distance of a few paces it was invisible. I wondered how many more such doors were set in the walls of Lembken’s palace.

“You shall listen here,” she said, “I trust you Arnold. You will not lose your self-control and enter, no matter what you hear? Ah, I shall test your love for that Elizabeth! But I trust you, and the beginning of this night’s masque shall be the humbling of your enemy. Stay here until I call you!”

She thrust me behind the door and withdrew, closing it. I heard the rustle of her garment as she crossed the room—then nothing.

I found myself standing in a dim corridor that ran as far as I could see in either direction. The nameless horror of the Palace overcame me, and it was with a strong effort that I controlled my wild impulse of flight.

As I stood there I heard the sound of stealthy footsteps, and, looking up, saw the maid Coral coming softly toward me. She was carrying the tray, with two full winecups, and she stopped beside me and set it down on the carpet.

She stood looking at me. Her eyes were blazing with anger, and her slim body shook under the blue tunic. But on her mouth was the same set smile that I had seen when she picked up the cups.

She said nothing, but, placing her hand against the door, opened it an inch or two without the slightest sound. At that moment I heard a door opened, the rustle of Amaranth’s robe, and a lithe tread on the floor.

Sanson spoke. “I have said all that there is to say,” he answered. “Why do you plead with me? Do you think a woman can plead with me where Lembken failed? He shall have his honors and residence here—no more.”

“But spare your prisoners, Sanson,” said Amaranth softly. “Spare Arnold. For my sake,” she said, pleading.

Sanson spoke curtly. “All Christians and all morons must be tomorrow’s sacrifice to the new era,” he answered.

“Do not go, Sanson,” Amaranth besought him, as he moved away from her. “Listen to me! You, who are so merciless and cruel, why do you not take all?”

“I have all that I need,” he said impatiently. “What more?”

“Why have you spared Lembken? Why do you not slay him and rule with us? We hate him. He is a tyrant, and you know the fate of his women when they have ceased to please. You who have made yourself the master of the world, for whose sight we throng the sides of the crystal walls as you cross the courts below—why have you refused the pleasures that are for the world’s masters?”

He stood still; I fancied that he was looking at her, trying to measure his problem in the balances once more. Coral cast a glance at me. The smile was still on her face, but she nodded her head thoughtfully, as if she, too, had her problem.

“Listen, Sanson,” continued Amaranth fiercely, “when Boss Rose climbed to power he built the People’s House and made it a pleasure-palace for the world’s elect. Then he died under a murderer’s dagger, and Lembken, who had long envied him, came to rule in his place. He, too, has lived his time. Now he is broken. You, the next ruler of the world—why do you not do as he did? We are tired of him. We want another lord, Sanson.”

I knew that she was clinging to him as she had clung to me. I did not look at Coral, but I knew that she was still smiling.

“You can set us free, Sanson,” continued Amaranth gently. “You can rid us of our tyrant.”

The murmuring voice went on and on, and Sanson made no answer.

“You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight. Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh, yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! Take me, Sanson—”

I heard the man breathe as if in a trance. That strange pity which he inspired in me awoke again. All the long tragedy of his life, the vigil of five and thirty years, the love that must prove vain—I realized it all. For this vain love he had ensnared the world, and now the world leaped at him to ensnare him. Devil as he was, in will his life had been, in one respect, a hero’s.

“Drink with me, Sanson,” I heard Amaranth murmur. “You do not know the taste of wine. A pledge to our love. A pledge to our lives!”

She was conquering. The tyrant of the world was almost prostrate at the feet of this girl of twenty years. Attila’s fate was to be his. I heard him groan in bitterness of conflict.

Amaranth clapped twice. Instantly the girl Coral stooped down, pushing me fiercely from the door, and, taking up the tray, went in. Amaranth took the brimming winecup and touched it with her lips.

“Drink, Sanson!” she murmured.

I was watching them now. I saw Sanson rise and raise the cup in his hand. He did not drink, neither did he reject it, but stood like one in a daze, all movement inhibited by the fierceness of that inner struggle. Amaranth seized the second cup from the tray, leaped from the couch, and raised it on high.

“To our love, Sanson!” she cried, and drained it.

At that moment the jagged cut on the girl Coral’s face grew red with blood again.

Coral stood holding the tray, and she looked at Amaranth and smiled. She stood like a tinted statue.

Sanson was still standing in front of the divan. He had not drunk; he held the cup in his hand and was himself as immobile as a statue.

“Will you not drink the pledge that I have drunk?” asked Amaranth, laying her fingers lightly on his arm and leaning toward him.

And I had underestimated Sanson after all. Now, at the moment of surrender, his indomitable will flamed out, seeming to possess his body and mold each feature, every muscle to its unconquerable resolve.

“I will not drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor.

He turned and strode from the room like the conqueror he was. He passed the curtain, which fell behind him. He had won his hardest battle, taken unaware, fighting against a cunning ambush; and I knew now that hardly an earthly enemy could conquer him.

I was in the room now, for there was no need to hide myself any longer. I watched Amaranth, who, as statuesque as Sanson had been, stood looking after him. A minute passed.

Suddenly she wheeled about and clapped her hands to her side. She staggered; a spasm of pain crossed her face, and she looked searchingly at Coral. The maid in the blue tunic looked back at her, smiling.

Their eyes did not waver until Amaranth swayed backward and fell on the divan. A scream broke from her lips, and then another; a third; she wrung her hands and moaned.

I kneeled before her. “What is it, Amaranth?” I cried.

Sanson’s indomitable will flamed out. “I will not drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor

She raised herself and looked wildly at me. Her face was ashen pale, the features pinched; dark rings had crept beneath her eyes.

“She gave me the—wrong cup,” she whispered.

I tried to go for aid, but Amaranth clung to me. “There is no hope,” she sobbed. “I must die. Stay with me, Arnold!”

Her head fell back and she breathed heavily. I turned and saw Coral beside me, a smiling, waxen doll, the new queen of the harem by the dying one.

“Go!” I thundered at her.

She shrugged her shoulders daintily and went, leaving the winecups on the floor.

Amaranth’s hand trembled upon my sleeve. I bent over her. Her eyes fixed themselves on mine.

“Put your hand under me,” she muttered; “raise me. All is lost now. Sanson has beaten Lembken, and everything is ended. Save your Elizabeth if you can.”

She drew my face toward hers and spoke in panting accents:

“It was Lembken’s plot. He learned that Sanson held you in the vaults. His case was desperate. He asked Mehemet’s aid. Mehemet said he—his men would not desert Sanson while he lived, but if he died they would follow him for Lembken. I was to poison Sanson and thus win over the Guard. I was to drug you only, and keep you out of the way. Lembken liked you; he would not let you be killed. He has been communicating with the American bosses. The plan—the plan—”

She gathered her strength with a last effort of will.

“The plan was of long standing. Events hastened it. Mehemet knew it. Britain was to have a God again, Mehemet’s God, and the American Mormons were to unite with us, for their faith is nearly the same. The people would have a god, and this would unite all nations against the Christian Russians. They are in Stockholm. The American battleplanes are on their way to help us against them. When Sanson was dead the guards were to join the airscouts. Now you must go. Save your Elizabeth. Kill Sanson. I can say no more. Escape—”

She muttered something that I could not hear, and then her eyes, which had closed, reopened and wavered on mine again.

“I loved you, Arnold,” she said in a weak, clear voice. “I’m glad I died before I lost you. I used to wish I had been born in other days ... the twentieth-century days, when ... women were different ... all different ... men mated one only ... give the people those days again if you beat Sanson, Arnold.”

She tried to stretch out her hands to me. Her eyelids quivered, and she sighed very deeply.

I saw a crimson stain upon my hands. It was the wine from Sanson’s winecup.