* * *
When I woke up the next morning, my room was flooded with sunshine from a dome in the ceiling.
Seated on my bed, and balancing a cup of tea, was young Bill Rolston. His hair was restored to its natural red, his nose normal, and his high cheek bones were gone. On each side of his chubby face his transparent ears stood out at right angles, and his button of a mouth was wreathed in a genial smile.
"Good old Pu-Yi came for me about two o'clock this morning, Sir Thomas, and told me all that had happened. I say, sir, what a man to have on the staff of the Evening Special! What an intellect! Why, we'd have him dictating to Cabinet Ministers within a year!"
I lay idly watching this brilliant and faithful youth. Journalist once, I reflected, journalist forever. There's no getting it out of the blood, and here in this man, if I'm not mistaken, when many of us have faded away from Fleet Street forever, will be the biggest of us all.
I was surprised to find that Bill was distinctly on the side of Gideon Morse in his anticipation of evil. We argued it out while I was dressing, and I insisted that the City in the Clouds was impregnable.
"To all ordinary appearance, to all ordinary efforts, yes, Sir Thomas. But I'll never change my belief that there's nothing that human wit can invent that human wit cannot circumvent."
After breakfast, which I took alone, the servant led me to a great white house standing among conservatories, which I learned was almost an exact reproduction of the Palacete Mendoza, the residence of Gideon Morse at Rio. And there, in her own charming sitting room, fragrant with flowers and stamped in a hundred ways with her personality, Juanita was waiting. She was radiant. Happiness lay about her like sunbeams. I never saw anyone more changed than she was from the girl I had met the night before.
"Come, dearest," she said, "and I'll show you some of our wonders. I could not show you all of them in one day. Oh, Tom, isn't it all splendid? Couldn't you sing and shout for joy?"
I helped her into a fur coat -- for it was bitter cold outside, though the wind of the night before had dropped, and was provided with one myself as we left the house. Standing in the patio was a little two-seated automobile, a tiny toy of a thing run from electric storage batteries, which made no noise louder than the humming of a wasp. We got into this and Juanita was like a child as she pulled the starting lever and we rolled away.
I have said I woke to find my bedroom full of sunlight, but as we glided down an arcade of conservatories, on each side of the road, so that the illusion of passing among a palm grove was almost complete, I noticed that dark and angry clouds were gathering not far above our heads, and it was through one single aperture that the sunlight poured. The effect of this, when we ran through the tunnelled archway and came out into a great square, was curious.
A third of the buildings which towered up on every side were bathed in glory; the rest grey, sullen, and throwing shadows of sable on the lawns, gravel sweeps, and parquet flooring. We investigated a dozen marvels of which I shall not speak here. The whole experience was a dream of luxury so wonderful, and so fantastic also, that my readers must wait for William Rolston's book, now nearing completion. It was impossible to believe that we were actually walking, motoring, more than two thousand feet above London in a little world of our own which bore no relation whatever to ordinary human life.
This was especially borne in on me with overwhelming force when we had ascended the steps of a tower and came out into a glass chamber on the roof, where an old Chinese gentleman with tortoiseshell spectacles showed us the great telescope which Morse had installed.
Following the shifting path of sunlight, I got a dim glimpse of the English Channel over a far-flung Champaign of fertile woods and downs, studded here and there with toy towns the size of threepenny-pieces. Once, but only for a moment, I made out the great towers of Canterbury Cathedral, but the sun shifted and the vision passed.
London itself, brought immediately to our feet, was an astonishing sight, but as everyone has seen the photographs taken from aeroplanes I will not dilate on it, though it differed in many ways from these.
Perhaps the most pleasing sight of all was that of Richmond Park, where the winter Fair had just begun. We could see the roundabouts, the swings, and so forth, with great clearness, and even, as the wind freshened, catch a faint buzzing noise from the steam organs.
Then a captive balloon rose up, I suppose a thousand feet, and some quarter of a mile away. With powerful field glasses we could see the big basket crammed with adventurous trippers, till she was hauled down again to make another ascent and add a few more pounds to the profits of her proprietors.
I was quite tired when we went back to the house to lunch.
During the meal, which was long and elaborate, Morse showed a side of his nature I had never before seen. He was not jovial or in high spirits -- distinctly not that -- but he was strangely tender and human. I realized the immense love he had for Juanita, and wondered how he could ever bear to see her love me. But he was kindness itself -- like a father, to the interloper who had stormed his fortress, and I always like to think of him as he was on that afternoon, full of anecdotes about his youth, of Juanita's mother, of the old days in Brazil. It was my formal whole-hearted reception into his life. Henceforth I was to be -- he said it once in well and delicately-chosen words -- a son to him, who had never had a son.
In the afternoon I went back to my own quarters, which consisted of a villa at the end of the Palace gardens, where I was lodged with Bill Rolston, and attended by various well-trained Chinese servants. I had rarely seen a more delightful bachelor dwelling.
I took a cup of tea with Bill about four o'clock. It was now quite dark, and the bitter wind was rising again, but heavy curtains of tussore silk were pulled over the windows, a fire of yew logs burned in the open hearth, and softly shaded electric lights all combined to produce the cosiest and most homelike effect it is possible to imagine.
It was then that a man came in to say that Mr. Pu-Yi begged the honour of an audience.
Bill Rolston vanished, and my thin, ascetic friend glided in, and at my invitation sank into a chair by the fire. I don't think, in the whole course of my life, I could recall a conversation which touched, interested, and excited my admiration more than this, and I have met everyone "from Emperor to Clown." Pu-Yi apologized profoundly for his seeming treachery.
With a wealth of lucid self-analysis and the power of presenting a clear statement which I have seldom heard equalled, Pu-Yi showed how he was torn between his new-born debtorship to me, his loyalty to Morse, for whom he professed a profound esteem, and -- here he hinted with extraordinary finesse -- his mute adoration for Juanita.
"It was, Sir Thomas, touch and go, of course. I was in the position of a surgeon who has to risk everything on one heroic stroke of the knife. I did so, and behold, all the conflicting elements are reconciled. The pieces of the puzzle have come together."
"My friend," I said, "betray me twenty million times if you can bring me such happiness as you have brought. Besides, it wasn't a betrayal, it was a great brain leading a smaller one to its appointed goal."
We talked a little more, he drank tea, he smoked, and, to my growing discomfort I found in him the same note of pessimism and apprehension that Morse could not conceal, and Bill Rolston himself had partially revealed.
"But I won't believe that any harm can come to Miss Morse," I said, almost angrily.
The thin lips smiled. "That I never said, Sir Thomas. There are no indications of that. You and your lady are in peril, but you will win through."
"Confound it, man, it seems to me that captivity in this magnificent birdcage has the same effect on everyone. I'll get Morse to come and hunt with me in the Shires. I've got a nice little box in Gloucestershire, close to Chipping Norton. You talk as if you actually knew something. As if you had information of a calamity."
"I hear it in the wind," he said strangely, and his voice was like a withered leaf blown before the wind. Then he le
ft me.
I dined with Juanita and her father. Bill was asked too, and he kept my girl, and sometimes even Mr. Morse, in fits of laughter with stories of his short but erratic career, and especially a racy account of his illicit opium-selling down below.
"You see, sir," he said, "you brought it on yourself, by kidnapping me and imprisoning me here in the first instance. I had to get my own back."
Morse's face clouded over for a moment. "It was a disgraceful thing to do," he said. "I quite admit it, but had the necessity arisen I would have kidnapped the Prince of Wales," and from that moment always I seemed to see that a faint but perceptible shadow was creeping over his spirits.
We had a little music, in a charming room built for the purpose. Juanita played on the guitar and sang little Spanish love songs. Bill "obliged" with a ditty which he said was a favourite of the revered Charles Lamb, which seemed to consist entirely of the following lines:
"Diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son John, Went to bed with his breeches on."
I think that when Juanita said goodnight to us all -- and to me privately in the passage -- she went to bed quite happy and cheerful.
About half-past ten Bill slipped off and I remained to smoke a final cigar with Morse.
"I'm low, Thomas," he said. "I'm very low tonight."
I made him take a little whisky and potash, a thing he rarely did.
"It's the unnatural life, sir, that you've condemned yourself to recently. You come out of this and hunt with me in Gloucestershire and I'll protect you as well as you're protected here, and you'll get as right as rain."
"You're very kind," he replied, "but take care of her, Kirby. For God's sake, take care of her. She'll have no one else in the world but you if they get me or Pu-Yi."
I was about to expostulate again when the door opened and Boss Mulligan slouched in.
"Been all round the City, governor, with the usual patrol. Everything quiet, nothing unusual anywhere. All the servants have given in their tallies and are safe in their quarters."
Morse looked at me. "That's our system, Tom," he said. "At a certain hour all the servants go to the lower stage, except those that may be urgently wanted. For instance, there's a fellow in your house to valet you tonight. Juanita has her little Spanish maid, and I think Pu-Yi keeps someone. Otherwise we are all to ourselves up here. All the lift doors are locked on the second stage and so is the central staircase. Mulligan here is on guard all night in the room where you saw him."
"An' watchin' ye from the ind of me eye, Sorr Thomas," said the genial ruffian, "av ye'll belave ut."
"You're a good actor, Mulligan," I said. It seemed about the only thing I could say.
"Sure, an' I am that," he said, "I am that, sorr, but I'm a bether doer. An' av ye'd reely bin staling in----"
His immense fist clenched itself and he shook it in my direction.
"Mulligan, go back to the guard room," said Morse. "You're drunk."
The giant's face changed from ferocity into pained surprise. "But av course, sorr," he said. "It's me usual time, as your honour must know. But begob, I'm efficient!"
The mingled grin and glare on his countenance when Mr. Mulligan went away left no doubt in my mind about that.
A few minutes afterwards, certainly not drunk, and I hope efficient, I left the Palacete Mendoza, and walked through the gardens to the villa. Morse himself barred the door after me.
It was bitter, aching cold and the wind was razor-keen. Gaunt wreaths of mist were all around like a legion of ghosts, and I realized that the clouds were descending on us. Soon I would not be able to see a yard before me, though the electric lamps that never went out all night, over the whole City in the Clouds, glowed with a dim blueness here and there through the fog.
However, I found the villa all right, and Chang, my Chinese boy, waiting in the hall. He took my coat, saw that the fires in the sitting room and the adjoining bedroom were made up, and then I told him he might be off to his quarters on the second stage, for which he seemed extremely thankful.
I don't suppose Chang had been gone more than a minute when the door of my sitting room opened and Bill Rolston came in quickly. He was wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas, and his hair was all rough like one recently aroused from sleep.
"What on earth's the matter?" I said.
"I undressed," he said, "in my bedroom, which is just above yours as you know, and fell asleep in my chair with all the lights on. I woke only a short time ago, and before switching off the lamps I went to the window to see what sort of a night it was."
"Hellish, if you want to know."
"The light streamed out on a great curtain of mist, almost like the projector lamp on a screen of a cinema. Sir Thomas, as I stood there I could swear that something big, black and oblong sank down from that darkness above, passed through my zone of light and disappeared in the blackness below."
"What on earth do you mean? What sort of a thing?"
He hesitated for a moment and then he said, "Almost like a group of statuary, though I only saw it for a mere instant."
He had obviously been half dreaming when he went to the window, his eyes, even now, were heavy with sleep.
"Simply and solely a trick of the wind on the mist, and your own figure interposing between the light and the window, and throwing a momentary shade on the swaying white curtain outside. The mist's as thick as linen and it changes every moment. You go to bed properly, and sleep the sleep of the just."
He didn't attempt to argue, but looked a little ashamed of himself for obtruding for such a trivial reason. Ten minutes afterwards I was also in bed and fast asleep.