The Sleuth of St. James's Square, Melville Davisson Post [learn to read activity book .txt] 📗

to the great marble hearth, under this strange enlargement, now some distance below.”

The big Oriental paused, and looked down at me.

“I knew then, Excellency, that the Master was lost! The creative energies of the Spirit suffer no division of worship; those of the body must be wholly denied. I had warned the Master. And in travail, Excellency, I turned over with my face to the floor.

“But there is always hope, hope over the certainties of experience, over the certainties of knowledge. Perhaps the Master, even now, sustained in the spirit, would put away the devocation.... No, Excellency, I was not misled. I knew the Master was beyond hope! But the will to hope moved me, and I turned back to the crevice at the doorsill.”

He paused.

“There was now a delicate odor, everywhere, faintly, like the blossom of the little bitter apple here in your country. The red embers in the fireplace gave out a steady light; and in the glow of it, on the marble hearth, stood the one who had descended from the elevation of the andiron.”

Again the man hesitated, as for an accurate method of expression.

“In the flesh, Excellency, there was color that would not appear in the image. The hair was yellow, and the eyes were blue; and against the black marble of the fireplace the body was conspicuously white. But in every other aspect of her, Excellency, the woman was on the hearth in the flesh as she is in the clutch of the savage male figure in the image.

“There is no dress or ornament, as you will recall, Excellency. Not even an ear-jewel or an anklet, as though the graver of the image felt that the inherent beauty of his figure could take nothing from these ostentations. The woman's heavy yellow hair was wound around her head, as in the image. She shivered a little, faintly, like a naked child in an unaccustomed draught of air, although she stood on the warm marble hearth and within the red glow of the fire.

“The voice from the male figure of the image, which I had brought the Master, and which stood as the andiron, now so immensely enlarged, was beginning again to speak. The thin metallic sounds seemed to splinter against the dense silence, as it went forward in the ritual prescribed.

“But the Master had already decided; he stood now on the great marble hearth with his papers crushed together. And as I looked on, through the crevice under the doorsill, he put out his free hand and with his finger touched the woman gently. The flesh under his finger yielded, and stooping over, he put the formulas into the fire.”

Like one who has come to the end of his story, the huge Oriental stopped. He remained for some moments silent. Then he continued in an even, monotonous voice:

“I got up from the floor then, and purified myself with water. And after that I went into an upper chamber, opened the window to the east, and sat down to write my report to the brotherhood. For the thing which I had been sent to do was finished.”

He put his hand somewhere into the loose folds of his Oriental garment and brought out a roll of thin vellum like onion-skin, painted in Chinese characters. It was of immense length, but on account of the thinness of the vellum, the roll wound on a tiny cylinder of wood was not above two inches in thickness.

“Excellency,” he said, “I have carefully concealed this report through the misfortunes that have attended me. It is not certain that I shall be able to deliver it. Will you give it for me to the jewel merchant Vanderdick, in Amsterdam? He will send it to Mahadal in Bombay, and it will go north with the caravans.”

His voice changed into a note of solicitation.

“You will not fail me, Excellency—already for my bias to the Master I am reduced in merit.”

I put the scroll into my pocket and went out, for a motorcar had come into the park, and I knew that Marquis had arrived.

I met Sir Henry and the superintendent in the long corridor; they had been looking in at my interview through the elevated grating.

“Marquis,” I cried, “the judge was right to cut short the criminal trial and issue a lunacy warrant. This creature is the maddest lunatic in this whole asylum. The human mind is capable of any absurdity.”

Sir Henry looked at me with a queer ironical smile.

“The judge was wrong,” he said. “The creature, as you call him, is as sane as any of us.”

“Then you believe this amazing story?” I said.

“I believe Rodman was found at daylight dead on the hearth, with practically every bone in his body crushed,” he replied.

“Certainly,” I said. “We all know that is true. But why was he killed?”

Again Sir Henry regarded me with his ironical smile.

“Perhaps,” he drawled, “there is some explanation in the report in your pocket, to the Monastic Head. It's only a theory, you know.”

He smiled, showing his white, even teeth.

We went into the superintendent's room, and sat down by a smoldering fire of coals in the gate. I handed Marquis the roll of vellum. It was in one of the Shan dialects. He read it aloud. With the addition of certain formal expressions, it contained precisely the Oriental's testimony before the court, and no more.

“Ah!” he said in his curiously inflected Oxford voice.

And he held the scroll out to the heat of the fire. The vellum baked slowly, and as it baked, the black Chinese characters faded out and faint blue ones began to appear.

Marquis read the secret message in his emotionless drawl:

“'The American is destroyed, and his accursed work is destroyed with him. Send the news to Bangkok and west to Burma. The treasures of India are saved.”'

I cried out in astonishment.

“An assassin! The creature was an assassin! He killed Rodman simply by crushing him in his arms!”

Sir Henry's drawl lengthened.

“It's Lal Gupta,” he said, “the cleverest Oriental in the whole of Asia. The jewel-traders sent him to watch Rodman, and to kill him if he was ever able to get his formulae worked out. They must have paid him an incredible sum.”

“And that is why the creature attached himself to Rodman!” I said.

“Surely,” replied Sir Henry. “He brought that bronze Romulus carrying off the Sabine woman and staged the supernatural to work out his plan and to save his life. I knew the bronze as soon as I got my eye on it—old Franz Josef gave it as a present to Mahadal in Bombay for matching up some rubies.”

I swore bitterly.