Tuesday, 22 April 2025

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

 

CHAPTER XVII -THE CHAPEL UNDERGROUND

In the subterranean chapel, lit by rushlights that sent the shadows scurrying and made fantastically unreal the eager faces and the dissolving groups that clustered now around me, now around David, and again gathered about the tall old bishop with his peasant’s face and child’s eyes, David told them my tale, and then in turn told me the legend that I had brought so wonderfully to fulfillment.

The more bewildered I appeared, the stronger grew their faith, for the legend foretold that I was to come unknown to myself, and with no expectation of my own mission. They saw the cylinder, and there was none who doubted.

There were some thirty men and women present, of whom a dozen formed an inner council which had already formulated the plans for the new government. Some were delegates from outlaw bands in the recesses of the forests, some, like David, fugitives from the government bureaux and three or four, Paul among them, those who had most recently escaped from the defectives’ shops. There were representatives of various trades, who had come from London at imminent risk, intending to return:  one from the traffic guild I noticed in particular, a giant of a man with a black beard as crisp as an Assyrian king’s, who said that, at his signal, his guild would rise and fling themselves, to a man, upon the Guard.

It was a touching reunion. Two generations had gone by while men remained in ignorance of all that we and our ancestors had known: popular freedom, public rights, liberty to choose their trades, the sanctity of family life, and, above all, the absence of the galling inquisition and atrocious tyranny of Science run mad.

The elder men remembered with horror the period of the revolutions, in which a man would have given all that he had for life and bread. They regarded the epoch that had preceded this as the dark age of the world, much, I think, as we, in our turn, looked back upon the freer age before the Reformation. They had a misty tradition of a century in which men starved, in which the rich oppressed the poor and the poor dwelled in foul, sunless tenements and dressed in rags.

That tradition was true, and of the Moyen Age, before these things, of course they knew nothing. Now all had bread to eat, and light and air; but they lived in a world with neither hope nor joy, resource nor initiative, nor happiness in labor, in which one cherished the home ties furtively, while over their children always hung the menace of the defectives’ workshops, or the horrors of the Temple. And on them preyed the privileged caste of whites, taking toll of their daughters, lording it as judges and bureau bosses, in the name of Science emanating from a madman’s brain.

I began to gather, to my relief, that only the very ignorant believed that the Messiah would be a supernatural being. There was superstition enough hidden in the hearts of all, for faith, denied, creeps in, in strange guises; but the world awaited, rather, the inevitable leader who must come to set free a people grown over-ripe for freedom. For the horrors of the new civilization had reached the point where men had grown reckless of life. Everywhere was the anticipation of the approaching change, and even Sanson must have seen that neither his Guard nor his great Ray artillery could save his crumbling power. Science had overplayed her part when she had bankrupted human hearts.

Everywhere the deep sense of intolerable wrong was spreading. And although not even the very old remembered the time when Christianity was a living faith, yet the hopes of all hinged on it. There was no other hope for the world but the same Light that lit the darkness in the most shameful days of Rome’s high civilization. So they had enrolled themselves beneath that ancient banner of human freedom; dozens had died under torture rather than disclose the hiding place of their treasured Scriptures—of such parts as had come down to them, rewritten in the new syllabic characters. There was a rich harvest to come from many a martyr’s blood.

So, then, there had filtered down through the years the faith that in 2015, or seven and thirty years after the institution of the new era, a Messiah was to arise and restore freedom to man. It had begun with the discovery of the cylinder that contained Esther’s body, somewhere about the middle of the preceding century, and after the first revolutionary outbreak.

In some manner unknown the cylinder had made its appearance in the world. At first it was believed that it contained only the embalmed body of a woman, within a case fashioned so cunningly that none could open it. But later the rumor spread that at the end of a certain time the case would open of itself, and the woman awaken and come forth.

I inferred that Sanson, in spite of Lembken’s statement to me, had obtained access to Lazaroff’s papers, and had shrewdly resolved to turn the popular legend to his own use by placing the date of the fulfillment of the prophecy. He set the cylinder within the Temple and diffused the report that, when Esther awakened, they two would rule the world together and offer immortality to man.

The cylinder had, then, first appeared about 1950. It had become the symbol of the Revolution—Freedom sleeping. It had been carried before marching armies. It had been a rallying point for the defeated. Men had fought and died over it. It had been struck by unnumbered bullets. It had been lost and regained upon a dozen battlefields. Then it had vanished with the inauguration of the reactionary régime, to appear once more, the inspiration of new hopes, when Sanson sprang to his leadership, like a god, about the year 1980.

And all this while I had been sleeping within the vault, as heedless of the passing years as Esther in her undreamed of journeyings. That I had escaped notice was due, no doubt, to the single fact that the wall of the vault had fallen in and hidden my cylinder from sight, embedded, as it was, in mud up to the neck. Those who had read of me in the papers might not have prosecuted their search hard, thinking that the cylinder had been removed already.

As the years went by an amplification of the legend had spread until it grew to be a rooted popular belief that the Messiah who was to come would issue from a second cylinder. That was the reason why neither David nor Jones, nor any in the cellar doubted me.

Old Bishop Alfred grasped my hands in his. “This is not chance, but a wonderful sign from God,” he said. “To think that while we met here you lay within that case a few feet from us! I have doubted and dreaded, as all have, but nothing can daunt me now. We shall win freedom, we shall have our two names again.”

David whispered to me that, grown a little childish with age, the poor old man longed for the day when he could assume the ancient episcopal pomp. To sign himself, Alfred London, was his life’s dream, and he had vowed that till that day came his family name should never pass his lips.

After I had heard the story we kneeled in prayer, and the Bishop read to us from the syllabic version of the Bible, as it was known. It comprised only a few portions of the Old Testament, chiefly parts of Isaiah which some scribe had thought prophetic and necessary to be saved. Of the Synoptic Gospels there existed only a few fragments, too, but there was the “Sermon on the Mount” from the “Beatitudes” to the end, and the whole of the magnificent “Gospel According to St. John,” together with most of “Acts” and “Corinthians,” debased to some extent, and containing interpolations that had crept in, but on the whole faithful to the original. Though the entire Bible has, of course, been recovered, I am convinced, and many agree with me, that the world has gained immeasurably by the removal of the scaffolding of the Temple of Truth during more than two generations. Never again will literal interpretation be placed upon Old Testament mythology, the poetic allegory of “Creation and the Fall,” or the chronology that offered the life cycles of tribes as the events of one man’s life; nor will the warrior god, Jehovah, be considered anything but an incompletely discerned aspect of the divine.

Afterward, at David’s urging, I rose to speak. I hardly knew what I should say, but, as I stood in hesitation before the meeting some Pentecostal power seemed to lay hold of me, and a torrent of impassioned words broke from my lips, till I felt all minds and hearts enkindled from the flame in mine. I spoke of the old, free world, of old, illogical, and cherished customs, preserved through centuries, uniting men in a fellowship that logic could not give; of ideals and traditions carried onward from age to age, ennobling faith and strengthening a nation’s soul; of pride of family other than that of pedigreed stock; of initiative and resourcefulness, charity and good-will for weak as well as strong; of a ruling class bound by its traditions to public service, and open to all below who had the character and gifts to enter it.

But one thing I could not explain; when Bishop Alfred, rising, incredulous that the weak should have been protected, that they aroused pity instead of wrath, inquired, if we had really had this Christian use, why we had lost it.

When I ended I came back to myself, to find that  I was standing tongue-tied before them. I heard a sigh ascend from every lip; and then they were about me, falling upon their knees, grasping my hands, imploring me to accept their service and devotion. Elizabeth was weeping happily.

“I knew, Arnold,” she said.

Then the revolutionary committee took their seats upon the benches and, while the rest gathered about them, proceeded to consider the reports brought in. It was an informal meeting, hampered by none of those rules made by democracy for the restriction of free speech, and conducted with earnestness and quiet decorum. Man after man rose up and made his report, the leaders of the guilds pledging so many, describing their enthusiasm, stating the number of Ray rods in his possession, and pledging absolute obedience to instructions.

Then I was acquainted, as succinctly as possible, with the progress of the movement. It was known that during the next few days Sanson meant to address the people in the Temple, using some anniversary celebration as his occasion. He was universally credited with the plan to effect a coup d’etat, deposing Lembken and assuming the rulership of the Federation. He had attached the Guard to him with favors and gifts, so that intense hatred existed between it and Lembken’s airscouts. There was thus a triangular contest between Sanson, Lembken, and the revolutionaries; and the fear was that, if the airscouts were split by faction, the Guard would overwhelm them and establish Sanson in Lembken’s place, making a greater tyranny still.

It was, therefore, debated whether it might be possible, as unhappily it seemed necessary, to make some terms with Lembken that should ensure Sanson’s overthrow.

“We have gained one piece of priceless information from you, Arnold,” said David. “We know now that Sanson’s plans relate to the awakening of Esther. Five days is almost too short a period for our plans to mature; yet we know that Sanson’s coup must synchronize with the opening of the cylinder. It is believed that he has actually made some discovery, not, of course, of immortality, but for prolonging life, which he intends to offer the populace, should any champion, posing as the Messiah, come forth to challenge him. That will be a test such as has never yet been made in the world’s history, the choice between liberty and immortality, so-called. And it will be difficult for the multitude to choose the former and to reject the latter.”

“If the people have the choice they will choose wisely,” said Elizabeth, from within Paul’s arm. “Have no doubt as to that.”

“How do you know?” asked David.

“Because they want the love that is their birthright,” she answered boldly, “and love knows it is immortal and does not fear death.”

I saw the committee leader smile, and there came upon his face a very affecting look. An elderly man, a member of the privileged caste, he had voluntarily laid aside the white robes of his order and taken to the forests, to organize the beginnings of the Revolution. As he spoke, the detailed scheme began to be clear to me, and I understood that the rulers of the world were matched by no mean antagonists.

First he alluded to the belief, already current among all the revolutionary bands, that the Federation’s troops had been overwhelmed before Tula, and that the Tsar’s forces were already pouring through Skandogermania to seize the battleplanes from the disaffected airscouts in Hamburg and Stockholm and launch them against London. It was believed that the Council must be in desperate straits to have had recourse to the moving picture lie, as worthless as the falsehood that the escaped defectives had been retaken.

What seemed to me a psychological confirmation of this report was the circumstance asserted by him, that the torture of heretics, the activities of the vivisectionists, and the weeding out of morons were proceeding with unexampled rigor. For tyranny always becomes most cruel when it approaches its downfall, by inspiring terror, to create submission.

“You have heard,” continued the old man, “how Lembken lured Arnold to the People’s House. Lembken knows who he is. Then he must be aware of Sanson’s plans and is plotting to use Arnold in a counterstroke.

“He is old and obese and pleasure-loving. But you must not forget that he rose to power by the most cunning craft, inspiring, as he undoubtedly did, the murder of Boss Rose, and buying over the airscouts. Sanson underrates the old fox, but Lembken has his ear to the ground all the while he is supposed to be roystering in his devil’s palace. Now, friends, we can despise no weapon that will aid our cause. If we have to use Lembken, as the lesser evil, in order to unite the airscouts under Hancock against Sanson—”

“Never!” shouted the black-bearded leader of the traffic guild. “He has taken—taken—taken—”

The giant broke down and covered his face with his hands.

“My daughter,” he raved, raising his face with the tears streaming down his cheeks, and clenching his enormous hands. “Only today—today—I would not desert the cause, or I should have forced my way into the People’s House and killed him—”

I thanked God, the father did not know that I had seen her in the Council Hall.

The old leader got up and put his arm about the giant’s shoulder.

“But for the sake of freedom you will consent,” he said.

The other threw back his head. “Yes—for the cause, yes,” he answered quietly, and moved away. He stood with head drooping upon his breast, like some huge statue. I understood then the strength of the enmity to the government. No Ray artillery could withstand such a wild passion as the deviltries of Science had awakened.

“I can only offer the outlines of my plan,” resumed the old man, returning to his place, “because, at such a time, we must trust as much to the spontaneous instincts of our people as to a detailed scheme which may go wrong. But it seems to me that it is essential first to enter into communication with Lembken. We will offer him his palace, perhaps, and an untroubled life hereafter. It is a hard compromise, but there seems no other way, for Sanson must be destroyed, and everything depends on Hancock.

“Five days hence, when Sanson summons the people into the Temple, as many as possible of our men will assemble there, with Ray rods beneath their tunics. Arnold will advance and challenge Sanson. We shall spring forward, seize him, possess ourselves of the cylinder, assume possession of the Temple buildings, and set up our government. Meanwhile the airscouts will take possession of the barracks and Ray artillery.”

Here I interposed. “Is this the only way?” I asked. “Are there not annual elections? Would it not be possible—”

I was unprepared for the outburst of bitter laughter that answered me.

“Do you really believe, Arnold,” asked David, “that anything can be done like that? Even in your other life, history—the history that is not taught—informs me that the election of popular representatives had become farcical, especially in the home of democracy, America, through the refusal to permit unauthorized candidacies, through the demand for large sums of money to be deposited as a preliminary, by ballots drowned with names of unknown men, representing nobody knew whom, and fifteen to twenty feet in length; by ruffians at the polls—a device much used in Rome when she started on the democratic down-grade that led to tyranny; by stuffed ballots and lying counts, and voting machines ... in short, Arnold, we have so far improved upon those crude devices that the ballot is now the strongest weapon in our masters’ hands. And when freedom has been restored it will never be seen again. We shall never count heads, except among small bodies of committees, and the days of so-called representative government will never recur so long as men remain free.”

It was evident that his words had touched their imaginations in some way unknown to me, for they sprang to their feet and cheered him wildly. I learned afterward that all the laws, the most subversive of human rights, all the most fearful promulgations of Sanson were put to the farcical test of public approbation. The democratic State had killed itself, as it always does, but the shell remained to protect the tyranny that followed, as it always does, too.

Before the noise had quite subsided, Jones, who had come in quietly, stood up in the midst of the assembly.

“The plan to seize the Ray artillery is impossible,” he said bluntly.

“Why?” demanded a dozen voices.

“Because the small Ray guns upon the battleplanes are useless against the glow paint on the Guards’ fortress, and the Guards’ great Ray artillery will pick off our battleplanes one by one as they expose their unprotected parts while evolving in the air. It is impossible to protect the parts of a plane around the solar storage batteries, because the glow rays disturb their action. Then, again, when each of our men has discharged his Ray rod, where is he to replenish it without access to the solar storage within the Guards’ fortress? Even our airplanes, with their week’s supply, have to be replenished there.”

“Hold a battleplane where we can gain access to it, so that the rods can be recharged from its supply.”

“Not practicable,” said Jones.

“If each man has three Ray rods, he can kill three of Sanson’s men.”

“But unless you take the fortress the Ray artillery can make a desert of London.”

“What would you do, then?” asked the committee leader.

“Cut the solar supply cables.”

“Twelve feet underground, in steel and concrete?”

“No. At the heart of the world’s power system,” said the airscout. “In the Vosges. It is not impossible. The Ray artillery there is not carefully guarded; the early nights are dark. Make Sanson’s Ray guns useless at a stroke, and then storm the fortress in the old way, man against man.”

I saw the face of the black-bearded leader redden with blood. “Yes!” he cried, “that is the way.”

“And then we shall have two names again and life will be free,” said Bishop Alfred, musing. “Two names, as our fathers had.”

All caught the enthusiasm. The committee leader held up his hand for silence. “Wait! Who will go?” he demanded.

“I can. I will,” replied Jones, boldly. “I was born there. My father was a Frenchman, removed to England because he cherished national aspirations. I will succeed or die there.”

“Where will you get the airplane?”

“I have it here,” said Jones, as simply as if he could produce it from his pocket.

Again the mad clamor burst forth. Jones, as the first airscout to come over, filled all with enthusiasm, and belief in our success.

“And who will go to Lembken as our emissary?” asked the committee leader presently.

“I will,” I answered.

David started toward me. “No! The risk is too great,” he cried. “We need you in the Temple on the appointed day. We need your leadership for the sake of the cause. If Lembken refuses, or tricks you, all will be lost.”

I answered rather sadly. “You forget,” I said, “that I, too, have all I hold dear at stake. For this cause, too, I shall succeed or die.”

Thursday, 17 April 2025

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

 

CHAPTER I - THE MAN WHO DIED

I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the old country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him, but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. "Richard Hannay," I kept telling myself, "you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out."

It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Buluwayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days. But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all.

Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best-bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club—rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show, and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Café Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.

My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter and a lift-man at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.

I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.

"Can I speak to you?" he said. "May I come in for a minute?" He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.

I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back.

"Is the door locked?" he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand.

"I'm very sorry," he said humbly. "It's a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?"

"I'll listen to you," I said. "That's all I'll promise." I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky and soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.

"Pardon," he said, "I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead."

I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

"What does it feel like?" I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. "I'm not mad—yet. Say, sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in."

"Get on with your yarn," I said, "and then I'll tell you."

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:—

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in southeastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears. He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.

Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

"Do you wonder?" he cried. "For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the back stairs to find him.

"Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von Und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog.

"He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga."

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.

"Yes and no," he said. "They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn't be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win."

"But I thought you were dead,' I put in.

"Mors janua vitæ," he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) "I'm coming to that, but I've got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?"

I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon.

"He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out—not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have had to decease."

He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar.

"They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having international tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen."

"That's simple enough, anyhow," I said. "You can warn him and keep him at home."

"And play their game?" he asked sharply. "If he does not come they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his guvernment is warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th."

"What about the British Government?" I asked. "They're not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they'll take extra precautions."

"No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and double the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder."

I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.

"Where did you find out this story?" I asked.

"I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little book-shop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then . . ."

The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky.

"Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him. . . . He came in and spoke to the porter. . . . When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God's earth."

I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.

"I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again."

"How did you manage it?"

"I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody to-morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides it wasn't any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you. . . . There, sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business."

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined.

By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.

"Hand me your key," I said, "and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a bit if I can."

He shook his head mournfully. "I reckoned you'd ask for that, but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll get proof of the corpse business right enough."

I thought for an instant or two.

"Right. I'll trust you for the night. I'll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr Scudder. I believe you're straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I'm a handy man with a gun."

"Sure," he said, jumping up with some briskness. "I haven't the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man. I'll thank you to lend me a razor."

I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows.

Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.

"My hat! Mr Scudder—" I stammered.

"Not Mr Scudder," he corrected; "Captain Theophilus Digby, of the Seventh Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll thank you to remember that, sir."

I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis!

 

I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door.

Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwi, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.

"Stop that row, Paddock," I said. "There's a friend of mine, Captain—Captain—" (I couldn't remember the name) "dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me."

I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from over-work, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here, or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined.

I am bound to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast.

He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn't learn to call me "sir", but he 'sirred' Scudder as if his life depended on it.

I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the city till luncheon. When I got back the lift-man had a weighty face.

"Nawsty business 'ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the mortuary. The police are up there now."

I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing.

He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half a crown went far to console him.

I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one's own obituary notice.

The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.

Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn't blame him. I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job.

It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.

"Say, Hannay," he said, "I judge I should let you a bit deeper into this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to put up a fight." And he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard from him vaguely.

I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more interested in his own adventures than in his high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman—Julia Czechenyi—as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder—an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.

He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he didn't care a rush for his life.

"I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such mornings 'way back in the blue-Grass country, and I guess I'll thank Him when I wake up on the other side of Jordan."

Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall Jackson most of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half past ten in time for our game of chess before turning in.

I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I wondered if Scudder had turned in already.

I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.

My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

Wednesday's Good Reading: "Yolanda!" by Noel Rosa (in Portuguese).

 Lyrics and music by Noel Rosa in 1935; unfortunately the melody is lost.

 

 

- Yolanda! Yolanda!

- Yolanda! Yolanda!

 

Yolanda! Eu chamo, você não vem

E o eco só responde

"Yolanda... Yolanda..."

Se eu canto pro meu bem

Ele canta também...

 

Não se pode improvisar

Ele vem incomodar

Yolanda! Ele responde:

"Yolanda... Yolanda..."

 

Se me viro pro norte

Lá no sul ele está

Se me viro de frente

Lá nas costas vai ficar

 

Já estou até doente

Não consigo decifrar

Yolanda! Ele responde:

"Yolanda... Yolanda..."