XV. Satire of the Sea
"What was the mystery about St. Alban?" I asked.
The Baronet did not at once reply. He looked out over the Englishcountry through the ancient oak-trees, above the sweep of meadow acrossthe dark, creeping river, to the white shaft rising beyond the woodedhills into the sky.
The war was over. I was a guest of Sir Henry Marquis for a week-end athis country-house. The man fascinated me. He seemed a sort of bottomlessStygian vat of mysteries. He had been the secret hand of England formany years in India. Then he was made a Baronet and put at the head ofEngland's Secret Service at Scotland Yard.
A servant brought out the tea and we were alone on the grass terracebefore the great oak-trees. He remained for some moments in reflection,then he replied:
"Do you mean the mystery of his death?"
"Was there any other mystery?" I said.
He looked at me narrowly across the table.
"There was hardly any mystery about his death," he said. "The man shothimself with an old dueling pistol that hung above the mantel in hislibrary. The family, when they found him, put the pistol back on thenail and fitted the affair with the stock properties of a mysteriousassassin.
"The explanation was at once accepted. The man's life, in the publicmind, called for an end like that. St. Alban after his career, should byevery canon of the tragic muse, go that way."
He made a careless gesture with his fingers.
"I saw the disturbed dust on the wall where the pistol had been moved,the bits of split cap under the hammer, and the powder marks on themuzzle.
"But I let the thing go. It seemed in keeping with the destiny of theman. And it completed the sardonic picture. It was all fated, as theGaelic people say.... I saw no reason to disturb it."
"Then there was some other mystery?" I ventured.
He nodded his big head slowly.
"There is an ancient belief," he said, "that the hunted thing alwaysturns on us. Well, if there was ever a man in this world on whom thehunted thing awfully turned, it was St. Alban."
He put out his hand.
"Look at the shaft yonder," he said, "lifted to his memory, toweringover the whole of this English country, and cut on its base with hisservices to England and the brave words he said on that fatal morning onthe Channel boat. Every schoolboy knows the words:
"'Don't threaten, fire if you like!'
"First-class words for the English people to remember. No bravado, justthe thing any decent chap would say. But the words are persistent. Theyremain in the memory. And it was a thrilling scene they fitted into.One must never forge that: The little hospital transport lying in theChannel in a choppy sea that ran streaks of foam; the grim turret andthe long whaleback of a U-boat in the foam scruff; and the sun lying onthe scrubbed deck of the jumping transport.
"Everybody was crowded about. St. Alban was in the center of the humanpack, in a pace or two of clear deck, his injured arm in a sling; hissplit sleeve open around it; his shoulders thrown back; his head lifted;and before him, the Hun commander with his big automatic pistol.
"It's a wonderful, spirited picture, and it thrilled England. It was inaccord with her legends. England has little favor of either the gods ofthe hills or the gods of the valleys. But always, in all her wars, thegods of the seas back her."
The big Baronet paused and poured out a cup of tea. He tasted it and setit down on the table.
"That's a fine monument," he said, indicating the white shaft that shotup into the cloudless evening sky. "The road makes a sharp turn by it.You have got to slow up, no matter how you travel. The road rises there.It's built that way; to make the passer go slow enough to read thelegends on the base of the monument. It's a clever piece of business.Everybody is bound to give his tribute of attention to the conspicuousmemorial.
"There are two faces to the monument that you must look at if you gothat road. One recounts the man's services to England, and the otherface bears his memorable words:
"'Don't threaten, fire if you like!'"
The Baronet fingered the handle of his teacup.
"The words are precisely suited to the English people," he said. "Noheroics, no pretension, that's the whole spirit of England. It's theEnglish policy in a line: We don't threaten, and we don't wish to bethreatened by another. Let them fire if they like,--that's all in thegame. But don't swing a gun on us with a threat. St. Alban was luckyto say it. He got the reserve, the restraint, the commonplaceunderstatement that England affects, into the sentence. It was a pieceof good fortune to catch the thing like that.
"The monument is tremendous. One can't avoid it. It's always before theeye here, like the White Horse of Alfred on the chalk hill in Berkshire.All the roads pass it through this countryside. But every mortal thingthat travels, motor and cart, must slow up around the monument."
He stopped for a moment and looked at the white needle shimmering in theevening sun.
"But St. Alban's greatest monument," he said, "was the lucky sentence.It stuck in the English memory and it will never go out of it. Onewouldn't give a half-penny for a monument if one could get a phrasefastened in a people's memory like that."
Sir Henry moved in his chair.
"I often wonder," he said, "whether the thing was an inspiration of St.Alban's that morning on the deck of the hospital transport, or had hethought about it at some other time? Was the sentence stored inthe man's memory, or did it come with the first gleam of returningconsciousness from a soul laid open by disaster? I think racial words,simple and unpretentious, may lies in any man close to the bone likethat to be rived out with a mortal hurt. That's what keeps me wonderingabout the words he used. And he did use them.
"I don't doubt that a lot of our hero stuff has been edited after thefact. But this sentence wasn't edited. That's what he said, precisely.A hundred wounded soldiers on the hospital transport heard it. They werecrowding round him. And they told the story when they got ashore. Thestory varied in trifling details as one would expect among so manywitnesses to a tragic event like that. But it didn't vary about whatthe man said when the Hun commander was swinging his automatic pistol onhim.
"There was no opportunity to edit a brave sentence to fit the affair.St. Alban said it. And he didn't think it up as he climbed out of thecabin of the transport. If he had been in a condition to think, hehad enough of the devil's business to think about just then; a bravesentence would hardly have concerned him, as I said awhile ago.
"Besides, we have his word that, after what happened in the cabin,everything else that occurred that morning on the transport was a blankto the man; was walled off from his consciousness, and these words werethe first impulse of one returning to a realization of events."
Sir Henry Marquis reflected.
"I think they were," he continued. "They have the mark of spontaneity;of the first disgust of one grasping the fact that he was beingthreatened."
The Baronet paused.
"The event had a great effect on England," he said. "And it helped torestore our shattered respect for a desperate enemy. The Hun commanderdidn't sink the transport, and he didn't shoot St. Alban. It's truethere was a sort of gentleman's agreement among the enemies thathospital transports should not be sunk.
"But anything was likely to happen just then. The Hun had failed tosubjugate the world, and he was a barbarous, mad creature. Englandbelieved that something noble in St. Alban worked the miracle.
"'You're a brave man!'
"Some persons on the transport testified to such a comment from thesubmarine commander. At any rate, he went back to his U-boat and theundersea.
"That's the last they saw of him. The transport came on into Dover.
"England thought the affair was one of the adventures of the sea.A chance thing, that happened by accident. But there was one man inEngland who knew better."
"You?" I said.
The Baronet shrugged his shoulders.
"St. Alban," he answered.
He got up and began to walk about
the terrace. I sat with the cup oftea cooling before me. The big man walked slowly with his fingers linkedbehind him. Finally he stopped. His voice was deep and reflective.
"'Man is altogether the sport of fortune!'... I read that in Herodotus,in a form at Rugby. I never thought about it again. But it's God'struth. St. Alban was at Rugby. I often wonder if he remembered it. Myword, he lived to verify it! Herodotus couldn't cite a case to equalhim. And the old Greek wasn't hemmed in by the truth. I maintain thatthe man's case has no parallel.
"To have all the painstaking labor of years negatived by one enveloping,vicious misfortune; to be beaten out of life by it, and at the same timeto gain that monument out yonder and one's niche as hero by the grimdevice of an enemy's satire; by the acting of a scene that onewould never have taken part in if one had realized it, is beyond anycomplication of tragedy known to the Greek.
"Look at the three strange phases of it: To be a mediocre Englishmanwith no special talent; to die in horrible despair; and to leave behinda glorious legend. And for all these three things to contradict oneanother in the same life is unequaled in the legends of any people."
The Baronet went on in a deep level voice.
"There was a vicious vitality behind the whole desperate business. Everyvisible impression of the thing was wrong. Every conception of it heldtoday by the English people is wrong!
"The German submarine didn't overhaul the hospital transport in theChannel by accident. The Hun commander didn't fail to sink the transportout of any humane motives. He didn't fail to shoot St. Alban because hewas moved by the heroism of the man. It was all grim calculation!
"He thought it was safe to let St. Alban go ahead. And he would havebeen right if St. Alban had been the great egotist that he was.
"The commander of that submarine was Plutonburg of Prussia. He was theright-hand man of old Von Tirpitz. He was the one man in the German navywho never ceased to urge its Admiralty to sink everything. He loathedevery fiber of the English people. We had all sorts of testimony tothat. The trawlers and freightboat captains brought it in. He stagedhis piracies to a theatrical frightfulness. 'Old England!' he would say,when he climbed up out of the sea onto the deck of a British ship andlooked about him at the sailors, 'Old, is right, old and rotten!' Thenhe would smite his big chest and quote the diatribes of Treitschke.'But in a world that the Prussian inhabits a nation, old and rotten, mayendure for a time, but it shall not endure forever!'
"Plutonburg didn't let St. Alban and the transport go ahead out of thepromptings of a noble nature. He did it because he hated England, andhe wanted St. Alban to live on in the hell he had trapped him into. Hecounted on his keeping silent. But the Hun made a mistake.
"St. Alban didn't measure up to the standard of Prussian egoism by whichPlutonburg estimated him."
Sir Henry continued in the same even voice. The levels of emotion in hisnarrative did not move him.
"Did you ever see the picture of Plutonburg, in Munich? He had a facelike Chemosh. And he dressed the part. Other under-boat commanders worethe conventional naval cap, but Plutonburg always wore a steel helmetwith a corrugated earpiece. Some artist under the frightfulness dogmamust have designed it for him. It framed his face down to the jaw. Theface looked like it was set in iron, and it was a thick-lidded, heavy,menacing face; the sort of face that a broad-line cartoonist gives to athreatening war-joss. At any rate, that's how the picture presents him.One thinks of Attila under his ox head. You can hardly imagine anythinghuman in it, except a cruel satanic humor.
"He must have looked like Beelzebub that morning, on the transport, whenhe let St. Alban go on."
The Baronet looked down at me.
"Now, that's the truth about the fine conduct of Plutonburg that Englandapplauded as an act of chivalry. It was a piece of sheer, hellishmalignity, if there ever was an instance."
Sir Henry took a turn across the terrace, for a moment silent. Then hewent on:
"And in fact, everything in the heroic event on the deck of thetransport was a pretense. The Hun didn't intend to shoot St. Alban. As Ihave said, Plutonburg had him in just the sort of hell he wanted him in,and he didn't propose to let him out with a bullet. And St. Alban oughtto have known it, unless, as he afterwards said, the whole thingfrom the first awful moment in the cabin was simply walled out of hisconsciousness, until he began dimly to realize up there in the sun, inthe crowd, that he was being threatened and blurted out his words from asort of awful disgust."
Again he paused.
"Plutonburg was right about having St. Alban in the crater of the pit.But he was wrong to measure him by his Prussian standard. St. Alban cameon to London. He got the heads of the War Office together and toldthem. I was there. It was the devil's own muddle of a contrast. Outside,London was ringing with the man's striking act of personal heroism.And inside of the Foreign Office three or, four amazed persons werelistening to the bitter truth."
The Baronet spread out his hands with a sudden gesture.
"I shall always remember the man's strange, livid face; his fingers thatjumped about the cuff of his coat sleeve; and his shaking jaw."
Sir Henry went over and sat down at the table. For a good while he wassilent. The sun filtering through the limbs of the great oak-trees mademottled spots on his face. He seemed to turn away from the thing he hadbeen concerned with, and to see something else, something wholly apartand at a distance from St. Alban's affairs.
"You must have wondered like everybody else," he said, "why the Allieddrive on the Somme accomplished so little at first. Both England andFrance had made elaborate preparations for it over a long period oftime. Every detail had been carefully, worked out. Every move had beenestimated with mathematical exactness.
"The French divisions had been equipped and strategically grouped.England had put a million of fresh troops into France. And the line ofthe drive had been mapped. The advance, when it was opened on the firstday of July, ought to have gone forward irresistibly from cog to coglike a wheel of a machine on the indentations of a track. But the thingdidn't happen that way. The drive sagged and stuck."
The big Englishman pressed the table with his clinched hand.
"My word!" he said, "is it any wonder that the devil, Plutonburg,grinned when he put up his automatic pistol? Why shoot the Englishman?He would do it himself soon enough. He was right about that. If he hadonly been right about his measure of St. Alban, the drive on the Sommewould have been a ghastly catastrophe for the Allied armies."
I hesitated to interrupt Sir Henry. But he had got my interestdesperately worked up about what seemed to me great unjointed segmentsof this affair, that one couldn't understand till they were puttogether. I ventured a query.
"How did St. Alban come to be on the hospital transport?" I said. "Washe in the English army in France?"
"Oh, no," he said. "When the war opened St. Alban was in the HomeOffice, and, he set out to make England spy-proof. He organized theConfidential Department, and he went to work to take every precaution.He wasn't a great man in any direction, but he was a careful, thoroughman. And with tireless, never-ceasing, persistent effort, he very nearlyswept England clean of German espionage."
Sir Henry spoke with vigor and decision.
"Now, that's what St. Alban did in England--not because he was a man ofany marked ability, but because he was a persistent person dominated bya single consuming idea. He started out to rid England of every form ofespionage. And when he had accomplished that, as the cases of Ernest,Lody, and Schultz eloquently attest, he determined to see that everymove of the English expeditionary force on the Continent should beguarded from German espionage."
Sir Henry paused and poured out a cup of tea. He tasted it. It was cold,and he put the cup down on the table.
"That's how St. Alban came to be in France," he said. "The great driveon the Somme had been planned at a meeting of military leaders in Paris.The French were confident that they could keep their plans secret fromGerman espionage. They admitted frankly that signals were wi
relessed outof France. But they had taken such precautions that only the briefestsignals could go out.
"The Government radio stations were always alert. And they at oncenegatived any unauthorized wireless so that German spies could only snapout a signal or two at any time. They could do this, however.
"They had a wireless apparatus inside a factory chimney at Auteuil. Itwasn't located until the war was nearly over.
"The French didn't undertake to say that they could make their countryspy-proof. They knew that there were German agents in France that nobodycould tell from innocent French people. But they did undertake to saythat nothing could be carried over into the German lines. And theyjustified that promise. They did see that nothing was carried out ofFrance." The Baronet looked at me across the table.
"Now, that's what took St. Alban across the Channel," he said. "TheEnglish authorities wanted to be certain that there was no Germanespionage. And there was no man in England able to be certain of thatexcept St. Alban. He went over to make sure. If the plans for the Sommedrive should get out of France, they should not get out through anyEnglish avenue."
The Baronet paused.
"St. Alban went about the thing in his thorough, persistent manner. Hedidn't trust to subordinates. He went himself. That's what took him outon the English line. And that's how he came to be wounded in the elbow.
"It wasn't very much of a wound--a piece of shrapnel nearly spent whenit hit him. But the French hospital service was very much concerned. Itgave him every attention.
"The man came into Paris when he had finished. The French authoritiesput him up at the Hotel Meurice. You know the Hotel Meurice. It's onthe Rue de la Rivoli. It looks out over the garden of the Tuileries. St.Alban was satisfied with the condition of affairs in France, and he wasanxious to go back to London. Arrangements had been made for him to goon the hospital transport.
"He was in his room at the Meurice waiting for the train to Calais. Hewas, in fact, fatigued with the attention the French authorities hadgiven him. Everything that one could think of had been anticipated, hesaid. He thought there could be nothing more. Then there was a timidknock, and a nurse came in to say that she had been sent to see that thedressing on his arm was all right. He said that he had found it easierto submit to the French attentions than to undertake to explain that hedidn't need them.
"He was busy with some final orders, so he put out his arm and allowedthe nurse to take the pins out of the split sleeve and adjust thedressing. She put on some bandages, made a little timid curtsey and wentout.
"St. Alban didn't think of it again until the German U-boat stopped thetransport the next morning in the Channel. He wasn't disturbed when thesubmarine commander came into his cabin. He knew enough not to carryany papers about with him. But Plutonburg didn't bother himself aboutluggage. He'd had his signal from the factory chimney at Auteuil.He stood there grinning in the cabin before St. Alban; that Satanic,Chemosh grin that the artist got in the Munich picture.
"'I used to be something of a surgeon,' he said, 'Doctor Ulrich vonPlutonburg, if you will remember. I'll take a look at your arm.'
But, Alban said he thought the man might be moved by some humaneconsideration, so he put out his arm.
"Plutonburg took the pins out of the sleeve and removed the bandage thatthe nurse had put on in the Hotel Meurice. Then he held it up. Thelong, cotton bandage was lined with glazed cambric, and on it, in minutedetail, was the exact position of all the Allied forces along the wholefront in the region of the Somme, precisely as they had been massed forthe drive on July first!"
I cried out in astonishment. "So that's what you meant," I said, "by thetrailed thing turning on him!"
"Precisely," replied the Baronet. "The very thing that St. Alban laboredto prevent another from doing, he did awfully himself!"
The big Englishman's fingers drummed on the table.
"It was a great moment for Plutonburg," he said. "No living man but thatPrussian could have put the Satanic humor into the rest of the affair."
He paused as under the pressure of the memory.
"St. Alban always maintained that from the moment he saw the long map onthe bandage everything blurred around him, and began to clear only whenhe spoke on the deck. He used to curse this blur. It made him a nationalfigure and immortal, but it prevented him, he said, from striking thePrussian in the face."
XVI. The House by the Loch
There was a snapping fire in the chimney. I was cold through and I wasglad to stand close beside it on the stone hearth. My greatcoat had keptout the rain, but it had not kept out the chill of the West Highlandnight. I shivered before the fire, my hands held out to the flame.
It was a long, low room. There was an ancient guncase on one side,but the racks were empty except for a service pistol hanging by itstrigger-guard from the hook. There were some shelves of books on theother side. But the conspicuous thing in the room was an image of Buddhain a glass box on the mantelpiece.
It was about four inches high, cast in silver and, I thought, of immenseage.
I had to wait for my uncle to come in. But I had enough to think about.Every event connected with this visit seemed to touch on some mystery.There was his strange letter to me in reply to my note that I was inEngland and coming up to Scotland. Surely no man ever wrote a queererletter to a nephew coming on a visit to him.
It dwelt on the length of the journey and the remoteness of the place. Iwas to be discouraged in every sentence. I was to carry his affectionateregards to the family in America and say that he was in health.
It stood out plainly that I was not wanted.
This was strange in itself, but it was not the strangest thing aboutthis letter. The strangest thing was a word written in a shaky crampedhand on the back of the sheet: the letters huddled together: "Come!"
I would have believed my uncle justified in his note. It was a longjourney. I had great difficulty to find anyone to take me out from therailway station. There were idle men enough, but they shook their headswhen I named the house. Finally, for a double wage, I got an old gilliewith a cart to bring me as far on the way as the highroad ran. But hewould not turn into the unkept road that led over the moor to the house.I could neither bribe nor persuade him. There was no alternative but toset out through the mist with my bag on my shoulder.
Night was coming on. The moor was a vast wilderness of gorse. The houseloomed at the foot of it and beyond the loch that made a sort of estuaryfor the open sea. Nor was this the only thing. I got the impression as Itramped along that I was not alone on the moor. I don't know out of whatevidences the impression was built up. I felt that someone was in thegorse beyond the road.
The house was closed up like a sleeping eye when I got before it. It wasa big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines half torn awayby the winds: I hammered on the door and finally an aged man-servantholding a candle high above his head let me in.
This was the manner of my coming to Saint Conan's Landing.
I had some supper of cold meat brought in by this aged servant. He was ashrunken derelict of a human figure. He was disturbed at my arrivaland ill at ease. But I thought there was relief and welcome in hisexpression. The master would be in directly; he would light a fire inthe drawing-room and prepare a bedchamber for me.
One would hardly find outside of England such faithful creaturesclinging to the fortunes of descending men. He was at the end of lifeand in some fearful perplexity, but one felt there was something stanchand sound in him.
I had no doubt that there, under my eye, was the hand that had added thecramped word to my uncle's letter.
I stood now before the fire in the long, low room. The flames and a tallcandle at either end of the mantelpiece lit it up. I was looking at theBuddha in the glass box. I could not imagine a thing more out of note.Surely of all corners of the world this wild moor of the West Highlandswas the least suited to an Oriental cult. The elements seemed under nocontrol of Nature. The land was windswept, and the sea came crying int
othe loch.
I suppose it was the mood of my queer experiences that set me at thisspeculation.
One would expect to find some evidences of India in my uncle's house.He had been a long time in Asia, on the fringes of the English service.Toward the end he had been the Resident at the court of an obscure Rajahin one of the Northwest Provinces. It was on the edge of the Empirewhere it touches the little-known Mongolian states south of the Gobi.
The Home Office was only intermittently in touch with him. Butsomething, never explained, finally drew its attention and he was putout of India. No one knew anything about it; "permitted to retire," wasthe text of the brief official notice.
And he had retired to the most remote place he could find in the Britishislands. There was no other house on that corner of the coast. The manwas as alone as he would have been in the Gobi.
If he had planned to be alone one would have believed he had succeededin that intention. And yet from the moment I got down from the gillie'scart I seemed drawn under a persisting surveillance. I felt now thatsome one was looking at me. I turned quickly. There was a door at theend of the room opening onto a bit of garden facing the sea. A manstood, now, just inside this door, his hand on the latch. His head andshoulders were stooped as though he had been there some moments, asthough he had let himself noiselessly in, and remained there watching mebefore the fire.
But if so, he was prepared against my turning. He snapped the latch andcame down the room to where I stood.
He was a big stoop-shouldered Englishman with a pale, pasty facebeginning to sag at the jowls. There was a queer immobility about thefeatures as though the man were always in some fear. His eyes were apale tallow color and seemed too small for their immense sockets. Onecould see that the man had been a gentleman. I write it in the past,because at the moment I felt it as in the past. I felt that somethinghad dispossessed him.
"This will be Robin," he said. "My dear fellow, it was fine of you totravel all this way to see me."
He had a nervous cold hand with hardly any pressure in the grasp of it.His thin black hair was brushed across the top of his bald head, and thedistended, apprehensive expression on his face did not change.
He made me sit down by the fire and asked me about the familyin America. But there was, I thought, no real interest in thisinterrogation until he came to a reflective comment.
"I should like to go to America," he said; "there must be great wastesof country where one would be out of the world."
The sincerity of this expression stood out in the trivial talk. Itindicated something that disturbed the man. He was as isolated as hecould get in England, but that was not enough.
He sat for a moment silent, the fingers of his nervous hand moving onhis knee. When he glanced up, with a sudden jerk of his head, hecaught me looking at the little image of Buddha in its glass box on themantelpiece.
Was this longing for solitude the influence of this mysterious religion?
Remote, lonely isolation was a cult of Buddha. The devotees of that cultsought the waste places of the earth for their meditations. To be outof the world, in its physical contact, was a prime postulate in thepractice of this creed.
"Ah, Robin," he cried, as though he were in a jovial mood and carelessof the subject, "do you have a hobby?"
I answered that I had not felt the need of one. The inquiry was asurprise and I could think of nothing better to reply with.
"Then, my boy," he went on, "what will you do when you are old? One musthave something to occupy the mind."
He got up and turned the glass box a little on the mantelpiece.
"This is a very rare image," he said; "one does not find this imageanywhere in India. It came from Tibet. The expression and the pose ofthe figure differ from the conventional Buddha. You might not see that,but to any one familiar with this religion these differences aremarked. This is a monastery image, and you will see that it is cast, notgraven."
He beckoned me to come closer, and I rose and stood beside him. He wenton as with a lecture:
"The reason given by the natives why this image is not found in SouthernAsia is that it cannot be cast anywhere but in the Tibetan monasteries.A certain ritual at the time of casting is necessary to produce aperfect figure. This ritual is a secret of the Khan monasteries.Castings of this form of image made without the ritual are alwaysdefective; so I was told in India."
He moved the glass box a little closer to the edge of the mantelpiece.
"Naturally," he went on, "I considered this story, to be a mere piece ofreligious pretension. It amused me to make some experiments, and tomy surprise the castings were always defective. I brought the image toEngland."
He shrugged his shoulders as with a careless gesture.
"In my idle time here I tried it again. And incredibly the result wasalways the same; some portion of the figure showed a flaw. My interestin the thing was permanently aroused. I continued to experiment."
He laughed in a queer high cackle.
"And presently I found myself desperately astride a hobby. I got all theBabbitt metal that I could buy up in England and put in the days andnot a few of the nights in trying to cast a perfect figure of thisconfounded Buddha. But I have never been able to do it."
He opened a drawer of the gun-case and brought over to the fire half adozen castings of the Buddha in various sizes.
Not one among the number was perfect. Some portion of the figure was inevery case wanting. A hand would be missing, a portion of a shoulder, abit of the squat body or there would be a flaw where the running metalhad not filled the mold.
"I'm hanged," he cried, "if the beggars are not right about it. Thething can't be done! I've tried it in all sorts of dimensions. You willsee some of the big figures in the garden. I've used a ton of metal andevery sort of mold."
Then he flung his hand out toward the bookcase.
"I've studied the art of molding in soft metal. I have all the bookson it, and I've turned the boathouse into a sort of shop. I've spent ahundred pounds--and I can't do it!"
He paused, his big face relaxed.
"The country thinks I'm mad, working with such outlandish deviltry. But,curse the thing, I have set out to do it and I am not going to throw itup."
And suddenly with an unexpected heat he damned the Buddha, shaking hisclenched hand before the box.
"Your pardon, Robin," he cried, the moment after. "But the thing'sridiculous, you know. The ritual story would be sheer rubbish. Thebeggars could not affect a metal casting with a form of words."
I have tried to set down here precisely what my uncle said. It wasthe last talk I ever had with the man in this world, and it profoundlyimpressed me. He was in fear, and his jovial manner was a ghastlypretence. I left him sitting by the fire drinking neat whisky from atumbler.
The old man-servant took me up to my room. It was a big room in a wingof the house looking out on the garden and the sea. I saw that it hadbeen cleaned and made ready against my coming; clearly the old manexpected me.
He put the candle on the table and laid back the covers of the bed. Andsuddenly I determined to have the matter out with him.
"Andrew," I said, "why did you add that significant word to my uncle'sletter?"
He turned sharply with a little whimpering cry.
"The master, sir!" he said, and then he stopped as though uncertainin what manner to go on. He made a hopeless sort of gesture with hisextended hands.
"I thought your coming might interrupt the thing.... You are of hisfamily and would be silent."
"What threatens my uncle?" I cried, "What is the thing?"
He hesitated, his eyes moving about the floor.
"Oh, sir," he said, "the master is in some wicked and dangerousbusiness. You heard his talk, sir; that would not be the talk of a manat peace.... He has strange visitors, sir, and the place is watched. Icannot tell you any more than that, except that something is going tohappen and I am shaken with the fear of it."
I looked out through the musty c
urtains before I went to bed. Butthe whole world was dark, packed down in the thick mist. Once, in thedirection of the open sea, I thought I saw the flicker of a light.
I was tired and I slept profoundly, but somewhere in the sleep I saw myuncle and a priest of Tibet gibbering over a ladle of molten silver.
It was nearly midday when I awoke. The whole world had changed as undersome enchantment; there was brilliant sun and afresh stimulating airwith the salt breath of the sea in it. Old Andrew gave me some breakfastand a message.
His manner like everything else seemed to have undergone sometransformation. He was silent and, I thought, evasive. He repeated themessage without comment, as though he had committed it to memory from anunfamiliar language:
"The master directed me to say that he must make a journey to Oban. Itis urgent business and will not be laid over."
"When does my uncle return," I said.
The old man shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he lookedout through the open window onto the strip of meadow extending into theloch. Finally he replied:
"The master did not name the hour of his return."
I did not press the interrogation. I felt that there was something herethat the old man was keeping back; but I had an impression of equalforce that he ought to be allowed the run of his discretion with it.Besides, the brilliant morning had swept out my sinister impressions.
I got my cap and stick from the rack by the door and went out. The housewas within a hundred paces of the loch, in a place of wild beauty ona bit of moor, yellow with gorse, extending from the great barrenmountains behind it right down into the water. Immense banners of mistlay along the tops of these mountain peaks, and streams of water likeskeins of silk marked the deep gorges in dazzling whiteness.
The loch was a crooked finger of the sea hooked into the land. It wasclear as glass in the bright morning. The open sea was directly beyondthe crook of the finger, barred out by a nest of needlepointed rocks. Onthis morning, with the sea motionless, they stood up like the teeth of aharrow, but in heavy weather I imagined that the waves covered them. Tothe eye they were not the height of a man above the level water; theyglistened in the brilliant sun like a sheaf of black pikes.
This was Saint Conan's Landing, and it occurred to me that if the holyman came in rough weather from the Irish coast he required, in truth,all the perspicacity of a saint to get his boat in without having itimpaled on these devil's needles.
There was no garden to speak of about the house. It was grown up likethe moor. Two or three images of Buddhas stood about in it; one of themwas quite large--three feet in height I should say at a guess. Theywere on rough stone pedestals. I examined them carefully. They were alldefective; the large one had an immense flaw in the shoulder. The gorsenearly covered them; the unkept hedge let the moor in and there were nolonger any paths, except one running to the boathouse.
I did not follow the path. But I looked down at the boathouse with someinterest. This was the building that my uncle had turned into a sort offoundry for his weird experiments. There was a big lock on the door anda coal-blacked chimney standing above the roof.
It was afternoon. The whole coast about me was like an undiscoveredcountry. I hardly knew in what direction to set out on my exploration.I stood in the path digging my stick into the gravel and undecided.Finally I determined to cross the bit of moor to the high groundoverlooking the loch. It was the sloping base of one of the great peaksand purple with heather. It looked the best point for a full sweep ofthe sea and the coast.
I jumped the hedge and set out across the moor to the high ground.
There was no path through the gorse, but when I reached the heatherwhere the foot of the mountain peak descended into the loch there wasa sort of newly broken trail. The heather was high and dense and Ifollowed the trail onto the high ground overlooking the sweep of thecoast.
The loch was dappled with sun. The air was like wine. The mountainsabove the moor and the heather were colored like an Oriental carpet.I was full of the joy of life and swung into an immense stride, whensuddenly a voice stopped me.
"My lad," it said, "which one of the Ten Commandments is it the mostdangerous to break?"
Before me, at the end of the trail, seated on the ground, was a bigHighlander. He was knitting a woolen stocking and his needles wereclicking like an instrument. I was taken off my feet, but I tried tomeet him on his ground.
"Well," I answered, "I suppose it would be the one against murder, thesixth."
"You suppose wrong," he replied. "It will be the first. You will readin the Book how Jehovah set aside the sixth. Aye, my lad, He ordered itbroken when it pleased Him. But did you ever read that He set aside thefirst or that any man escaped who broke it?"
He spoke with the deep rich burr of his race and with a structure ofspeech that I cannot reproduce here.
"Did you observe," he added, "the graven images that your uncle has setup?... Where is the man the noo?"
"He is gone to Oban," I said.
He sprang up and thrust the stocking and needles into his sporran.
"To Oban!" He stood a moment in some deep reflection. "There will beships out of Oban." Then he put another question to me:
"What did auld Andrew say about it?"
"That my uncle was gone to Oban," I answered, "and had set no time forhis return."
He looked at me queerly for a moment, towering above me in the deepheather.
"Do you think, my lad, that your uncle could be setting out for heathenparts to learn the witch words for his hell business in the boathouse?"
The suggestion startled me. The thing was not beyond all possibility.
But I felt that I had come to the end of this examination. I was notgoing to be questioned further like a small boy overtaken on the road Ihad answered a good many questions and I determined to ask one.
"Who are you?" I said. "And what have you got to do with my uncle'saffairs?"
He cocked his eye at me, looking down as one looks down at a child.
"The first of your questions," he said, "you will find out if youcan, and the second you cannot find out if you will." And he was gone,striding past me in the deep heather.
"I have some business with your uncle, of a pressing nature," he calledback. "I will just take a look through Oban, the night and the morn'smorn."
I was utterly at sea about the big Highlander. He might be a friendor an enemy of my uncle. But clearly he knew all about the man and themysterious experiment in which he was engaged. He was keeping the placewell within his eye; that was also evident. From his seat in the heatherthe whole place was spread out below him.
And his queer speech fitted with old Andrew's fear. Surely the Buddhawas a heathen image and my uncle had set it up. The stern Scotchconscience would be outraged and see the Decalogue violated in itsinjunctions. This would explain the dread with which my uncle's housewas regarded and the reason I could find no man to help me on the way toit. But it would not explain my uncle's apprehension.
But my adventure on this afternoon did not end with the big Highlander.I found out something more.
I returned along the edge of the loch and approached the boathouse fromthe waterside.
Here the path passed directly along the whole wall of the building. Thepath was padded with damp sod, and as it happened I made no sound on it.It was late afternoon, the shadows were beginning to extend, there wasno wind and the whole world was intensely quiet. Midway of the wall Istopped to listen.
The house was not empty. There was some one in it. I could hear himmoving about.
It was of no use to try to look in through the wall; every joint andcrack of the stones was plastered. I went on.
Old Andrew was about setting me some supper. He came over and stood amoment by the window looking at the shadows on the loch. And I tried totake him unaware with a sudden question:
"Has my uncle returned from Oban?"
But I had no profit of the venture.
"The master," he said, "is
where he went this morning."
The strange elements in this affair seemed on the point of convergingupon some common center. The thing was in the air. Old Andrew voiced itwhen he went out with his candle.
"Ah, sir," he said, "it was the fool work of an old man to bring youinto this affair. The master will have his way and he must meet whatwaits for him at the end of it."
I saw how he hoped that my visit might interrupt some plan that my unclewas about to put into effect, but realized that it was useless.
Clearly my uncle had not left the place; he had been at work all day inthe boathouse. The journey was to account to me for his disappearance. Ihad passed the lie along to the queer sentinel that sat watching in theheather and I wondered whether I had sent a friend or an enemy into Obanon an empty mission, and whether I had fouled or forwarded my uncle'senterprise.
I put out the candle and sat down by the window to keep watch, for theboathouse, the loch and the open sea were under the sweep of it. But,alas, Nature overreaches our resolves when we are young. It was far intothe night when I awoke.
A wind was coming up and I think it was the rattle of the window thataroused me. There was no moon, but under the open stars the world wasfilled with a thin, ghostly light, and the scene below the window wasblurred a little like an impalpable picture.
A low-masted sailing ship lay in the open sea; there was a boat at theedge of the loch, and human figures were coming out of the boathousewith burdens which they were loading into the boat. Almost immediatelythe boat, manned with rowers, turned about and silently traversed thecrook of the loch on its way to the ship. But certain of the humanfigures remained. They continued between the boathouse and the beach.
And I realized that I had opened my eyes on the loading of a ship. Theboat was taking off a cargo.
Something stored in the boathouse was being transferred to the hold ofthe sailing ship. The scene was inconceivably unreal. There was nosound but the intermittent puffs of the wind, and the figures were likephantoms in a sort of lighted mist. Directly as I looked two figurescame out of the boathouse and along the path to the drawing-room doorunder my window. I took off my shoes and crept carefully out of the roomand down the stairway. The door from the hall into the long, low roomwas ajar. I stood behind it, and looked in through the crack.
My uncle was burning letters and papers in the fireplace with a candle,and in the chair beyond him sat the strangest human creature that I hadever seen in the world.
He was a big Oriental with a sodden, brutal face fixed as by somesorcery into an expression of eternal calm. He wore the uniform of anEnglish skipper. It was dirty and sea-stained as though picked up atsome sailor's auction. He was speaking to my uncle and his carefulprecise sentences in the English tongue, coming from the creature,seemed thereby to take on added menace.
"Is it wise, Sahib," he said, "to leave any man behind us in thishouse?"
"We can do nothing else," replied my uncle.
The Oriental continued with the same carefully selected words:
"Easily we can do something else, Sahib," he said, "with a bar of pigsecurely lashed to the ankles, the sea would receive them."
"No, no," replied my uncle, busy with his letters and the candle. Thebig Oriental did not move.
"Reflect, Sahib," he went on. "We are entering an immense peril. Thething that will be hunting us has innumerable agencies everywhere inits service. If it shall discover that we have falsified its symbols,it will search the earth for us. And what are we, Sahib, against thisthing? It does not die, nor wax old, nor grow weary."
"The lad knows nothing," replied my uncle, "and old Andrew will keepsilent."
"Without trouble, Sahib," the creature continued, "I can put the youngone beyond all knowledge and the old one beyond all speech. Is itpermitted?"
My uncle got up from the fireplace, for he had finished with his work.
"No," he said, "let there be an end of it."
He turned about, and under the glimmer of the candle I could see thatthe man had changed; his big pale face was grim with some determinedpurpose, and there was about him the courage and the authority of onewho, after long wavering, at last hazards a desperate venture. He brokethe glass box and put the Buddha into his pocket.
"It is good silver," he said, "and it has served its purpose."
The Oriental got softly onto his feet like a great toy of cotton wood.His face remained in its expression of equanimity, and he added nofurther word of gesture to his argument.
My uncle held the door open for him to pass out, and after that heextinguished the candle and followed, closing the door noiselesslybehind him.
The thing was like a scene acted in a playhouse. But it accomplishedwhat the playhouse fails in. It put the fear of death into one whowatched it. To me in the dark hall, looking through the crack of thedoor, the placid Oriental in his English uniform, and with his precisewords like an Oxford don, was surely the most devilish agency that everurged the murder of innocent men on an accomplice.
The wind was continuing to rise and the mist now covered the loch andthe open sea. It was of no use to stand before the window, for the worldwas blotted out. I was cold and I lay down on the bed and wrapped thecovers around me. It seemed only a moment later when old Andrew's handwas on me, and his thin voice crying in the room.
"Will you sleep, sir, and God's creatures going to their death!"
He ran, whimpering in his thin old voice, down the stair, and I followedhim out of the house into the garden.
It was midmorning. A man was standing before the door, his hands behindhim, looking out at the sea. In his long trousers and bowler hat Idid not at once recognize him for the Highlander of my yesterday'sadventure.
The coast was in the tail of a storm. The wind boomed, as though puffedby a bellows, driving in gusts of mist.
The ship I had seen in the night was hanging in the sea just beyond thecrook of the loch. It fluttered like a snared bird. One could seethe crew trying every device of sail and tacking, but with all theirdesperate ingenuities the ship merely hung there shivering like astricken creature.
It was a fearful thing to look at. Now the mist covered everything andthen for a moment the wind swept it out, and all the time, the silent,deadly struggle went on between the trapped ship and the sea running inamong the needles of the loch. I don't think any of us spoke except theHighlander once in comment to himself.
"It's Ram Chad's tramp.... So that's the craft the man was dependingon!"
Then the mist shut down. When it lifted, the doom of the ship waswritten. It was moving slowly into the deadly maw of the loch.
Again the mist shut down and, when again the wind swept it out, the shiphad vanished.
There was the open sea and the long swells and the murderous currentboiling around the sharp points of the needles; but there was no shipnor any human soul of the crew. Old Andrew screamed like a woman at thesight.
"The ship!" he cried. "Where is the ship and the master?"
The thing was so swift and awful that I spoke myself.
"My God!" I said. "How quickly the thing they feared destroyed them!"
The big Highlander came over where I stood. The burr of his speech andits sacred imagery were gone with his change of dress.
"No," he said, "they escaped the thing they feared.... What do you thinkit was?"
"I don't know," I answered. "The creature in the English uniform saidthat it did not die, nor wax old, nor grow weary."
"Ram Chad was right," replied the Highlander. "The British governmentneither dies, ages, nor tires out. Do you realize what your uncle wasdoing here?"
"Molding images of Buddha," I said.
"Molding Indian rupees," he retorted.
"The Buddha business was a blind.... I'm Sir Henry Marquis, Chief of theCriminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. ... We got track ofhim in India."
Then he added:
"There's a hundred thousand sterling in false coin at the bottom of theloch yonder!
"
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