IX. The End of the Road
The man laughed.
It was a faint cynical murmur of a laugh. Its expression hardlydisturbed the composition of his features.
"I fear, Lady Muriel," he said, "that your profession is ruined. Ourfriend--'over the water'--is no longer concerned about the affairs ofEngland."
The woman fingered at her gloves, turning them back about the wrists.Her face was anxious and drawn.
"I am rather desperately in need of money," she said.
The cynicism deepened in the man's face.
"Unfortunately," he replied, "a supply of money cannot be influenced bythe intensity of one's necessity for it."
He was a man indefinite in age. His oily black hair was brushedcarefully back. His clothes were excellent, with a precise detail.Everything about him was conspicuously correct in the English fashion.But the man was not English. One could not say from what race hecame. Among the races of Southern Europe he could hardly have beendistinguished. There was a chameleon quality strongly dominant in thecreature.
The woman looked up quickly, as in a strong aversion.
"What shall you do?" she said.
"I?"
The man glanced about the room. There was a certain display withinthe sweep of his vision. Some rugs of great value, vases and bronzes;genuine and of extreme age. He made a careless gesture with his hands.
"I shall explore some ruins in Syria, and perhaps the aqueduct which theFrench think carried a water supply to the Carthage of Hanno. It willbe convenient to be beyond British inquiry for some years to come; andafter all, I am an antiquarian, like Prosper Merimee."
Lady Muriel continued to finger her gloves. They had been cleaned andthe cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible along the inner side ofthe wrist hem. This was, to the woman, the first subterfuge of decayingsmartness. When a woman began to send her gloves to the laundry shewas on her way down. Other evidences were not entirely lacking in thewoman's dress, but they were not patent to the casual eye. Lady Murielwas still, to the observer, of the gay top current in the London world.
The woman followed the man's glance about the room.
"You must be rich, Hecklemeir," she said. "Lend me a hundred pounds."
The man laughed again in his queer chuckle.
"Ah, no, my Lady," he replied, "I do not lend." Then he added.
"If you have anything of value, bring it to me.... not informationfrom the ministry, and not war plans; the trade in such commodities isended."
It was the woman's turn to laugh.
"The shopkeepers in Oxford Street have been before you, Baron.. .. I'venothing to sell."
Hecklemeir smiled, kneading his pudgy hands.
"It will be hard to borrow," he said. "Money is very dear to theBritisher just now--right against his heart.... Still.... perhaps one'sfamily could be thumb screwed......An elderly relative with no childrenwould be the most favorable, I think. Have you got such a relativeconcealed somewhere in a nook of London? Think about it. If you couldrecall one, he would be like a buried nut."
The man paused; then he added, with the offensive chuckling laugh:
"Go to such an one, Lady Muriel. Who shall turn aside from virtuein distress? Perhaps, in the whole of London, I alone have thebrutality--shall we call it--to resist that spectacle."
The woman rose. Her face was now flushed and angry.
"I do not know of any form of brutality in which you do not excel,Hecklemeir," she said. "I have a notion to, go to Scotland Yard with thewhole story of your secret traffic."
The man continued to smile.
"Alas, my Lady," he replied, "we are coupled together. Scotland Yardwould hardly separate us.... you could scarcely manage to drown me and,keep afloat yourself. Dismiss the notion; it is from the pit."
There was no virtue in her threat as the woman knew. Already her mindwas on the way that Hecklemeir had ironically suggested--an elderlyrelative, with no children, from whom one might borrow,--she valuedthe ramifications of her family, running out to the remote, witheredbranches of that noble tree. She appraised the individuals and rejectedthem.
Finally her searching paused.
There was her father's brother who had gone in for science--decidingagainst the army and the church--Professor Bramwell Winton, thebiologist. He lived somewhere toward Covent Garden.
She had not thought of him for years. Occasionally his name appeared insome note issued by the museum, or a college at Oxford.
For almost four years she had been relieved of this thought about one'sfamily. The one "over the water" for whom Hecklemeir had stolen theScottish toast to designate, had paid lavishly for what she could findout.
She had been richly, for these four years, in funds.
The habit was established of dipping her hand into the dish. And nowto find the dish empty appalled her. She could not believe that it wasempty. She had come again, and again to this apartment above the shopsin Regent Street, selected for its safety of ingress; a modiste and ahairdresser on either side of a narrow flight of steps.
A carriage could stop here; one could be seen here.
Even on the right, above, at the landing of the flight of steps NanceColeen altered evening gowns with the skill of one altering the plumageof the angels. It must have cost the one "over the water" a pretty pennyto keep this whole establishment running through four years of war.
She spoke finally.
"Have you a directory of London, Hecklemeir?"
The man had been watching her closely.
"If it is Scotland Yard, my Lady," he said, "you will not require adirection. I can give you the address. It is on the Embankment,near..."
"Don't be a fool, Hecklemeir," she interrupted, and taking the book fromhis hands, she whipped through the pages, got the address she sought,and went out onto the narrow landing and down the steps into RegentStreet:
She took a hansom.
With some concern she examined the contents of her purse. There was aguinea, a half crown and some shillings in it--the dust of the bin. Andher profession, as Hecklemeir had said, was ended.
She leaned over, like a man, resting her arms on the closed doors.
The future looked troublous. Money was the blood current in the life sheknew. It was the vital element. It must be got.
And thus far she had been lucky.
Even in this necessity Bramwell Winton had emerged, when she could notthink of any one. He would not have much. These scientific creaturesnever accumulated money, but he would have a hundred pounds. He had nowife or children to scatter the shillings of his income.
True these creatures spent a good deal on the absurd rubbish of theirhobbies. But they got money sometimes, not by thrift but by a sort ofchance. Had not one of them, Sir Isaac Martin, found the lost mines fromwhich the ancient civilization of Syria drew its supply of copper. AndHector Bartlett, little more than a mummy in the Museum, had gone onefine day into Asia and dug up the gold plates that had roofed a templeof the Sun.
He had been shown in the drawing rooms, on his return, and she hadstopped a moment to look him over--he was a sort of mummy. She was nothoping to find Bramwell Winton one of these elect. But he was a hivethat had not been plundered.
She reflected, sitting bent forward in the hansom, her face determinedand unchanging. She did not undertake to go forward beyond the hundredpounds. Something would turn up. She was lucky... others had gone tothe tower; gone before the firing squad for lesser activities inwhat Hecklemeir called her profession, but she had floated through...carrying what she gleaned to the paymaster. Was it skill, or was she achild of Fortune?
And like every gambler, like every adventurer in a life of hazard, shedetermined for the favorite of some immense Fatality.
It was an old house she came to, built in the prehistoric age of London,with thick, heavy walls, one of a row, deadly in its monotony. The rowwas only partly tenanted.
She dismissed the hansom and got out.
It was a moment before s
he found the number. The houses adjoining oneither side were empty, the windows were shuttered. One might haveconsidered the middle house with the two, for its step was unscrubbed,and it presented unwashed windows.
It was a heavy, deep-walled structure like a monument. Even thestreet in the vicinity was empty. If the biologist had been seeking anundisturbed quarter of London, he had, beyond doubt, found it here.
There was a bridged-over court before the house. Lady Muriel crossed.She paused before the door. There had been a bell pull in the wall, butthe brass handle was broken and only the wire remained.
She was uncertain whether one was supposed to pull this wire, and inthe hesitation she took hold of the door latch. To her surprise the dooryielded, and following the impulse of her extended hand, she went in.
The hall was empty. There was no servant to be seen. And immediately thedomestic arrangement of the biologist were clear to her. They would bethat of one who had a cleaning woman in on certain days, and so livedalone. She was not encouraged by this economy, and yet such a custom ina man like Bramwell Winton might be habit.
The scientist, in the popular conception, was not concerned with theluxury of life--they were a rum lot.
But the house was not empty. A smart hat and stick were in the rack andfrom what should be a drawing room, above, there descended faintly thesound of voices.
It seemed ridiculous to Lady Muriel to go out and struggle with thebroken bell wire. She would go up, now that she had entered, andannounce herself, since, in any event, it must come to that.
The heavy oak door closed without a sound, as it had opened. Lady Murielwent up the stairway. She had nothing to put down. The only thing shecarried was a purse, and lest it should appear suggestive--as of onecoming with his empty wallet in his hand--she tucked the gold mesh intothe bosom of her jacket.
The door to the drawing room was partly open, and as Lady Murielapproached the top of the stair she heard the voices of two men in aneager colloquy; a smart English accent from the world that she was sodesperately endeavoring to remain in, and a voice that paused andwas unhurried. But they were both eager, as I have written, as thoughcommonly impulsed by an unusual concern.
And now that she was near, Lady Muriel realized that the conversationwas not low or under uttered. The smart voice was, in fact, loud andincisive. It was the heavy house that reduced the sounds. In fact, theconversation was keyed up. The two men were excited about something.
A sentence arrested the woman's advancing feet.
"My word! Bramwell, if some one should go there and bring the thingsout, he would make a fortune, and would be famous. Nobody ever believedthese stories."
"There was Le Petit, Sir Godfrey," replied the deliberate voice. "Hedeclared over his signature that he had seen them."
"But who believed Le Petit," continued the other. "The world took himto be a French imaginist like Chateaubriand... who the devil, Bramwell,supposed there was any truth in this old story? But by gad, sir, it'strue! The water color shows it, and if you turn it over you will seethat the map on the back of it gives the exact location of the spot.It's all exact work, even the fine lines of the map have the bearingsindicated. The man who made that water color, and the drawing on theback of it, had been on the spot.
"Of course, we don't know conclusively who made it. Tony had gone infrom the West coast after big game, and he found the thing put up asa sort of fetish in a devil house. It was one of the tribes near theKaramajo range. As I told you, we have only Tony's diary for it. I foundthe thing among his effects after he was killed in Flanders. It's prettycertain Tony did not understand the water color. There was only thissingle entry in the diary about how he found it, and a query in pencil.
"My word! if he had understood the water color, he would have beatenover every foot of Africa to Lake Leopold. And it would have been thebiggest find of his time. Gad! what a splash he'd have made! But henever had any luck, the beggar... stopped a German bullet in the firstweek out.
"Now, how the devil, Bramwell, do you suppose that water color got intoa native medicine house?"
The reflective voice replied slowly.
"I've thought about the thing, Sir Godfrey. It must have been the workof the Holland explorer, Maartin. He was all about in Africa, and hedied in there somewhere, at least he never came out... that was tenyears ago. I've looked him up, and I find that he could do a watercolor--in fact there's a collection of his water colors in, the Dutchmuseum. They're very fine work, like this one; exquisite, I'd say. Thefellow was born an artist.
"How it got into the hands of a native devil doctor is not difficultto imagine. The sleeping sickness may have wiped Maartin out, or thenatives may have rushed his camp some morning, or he may have beenmauled by a beast. Any article of a white man is medicine stuff youknow. When you first showed me the thing I was puzzled. I knew whatit was because I had read Le Petit's pretension... I can't call it apretension now; the things are there whether he saw them or not.
"I think he did not see them. But it is certain from this water colorthat some one did; and Maartin is the only explorer that could have donesuch a color. As soon as I thought of Maartin I knew the thing couldhave been done by no other."
Lady Muriel had remained motionless on the stair. The door to thedrawing room, before her, was partly open. She stepped in to the angleof the wall and drew the door slowly back until it covered this angle inwhich she stood.
She was rich in such experiences, for her success had depended, not alittle, on overhearing what was being said. Through the crack of thedoor the whole interior of the room was visible.
Sir Godfrey Halleck, a little dapper man, was sitting across the tablefrom Bramwell Winton. His elbows were on the table, and he was lookingeagerly at the biologist. Bramwell Winton had in his hands the thingunder discussion.
It seemed to be a piece of cardboard or heavy paper about six inches inlength by, perhaps, four in width. Lady Muriel could not see what wasdrawn or painted on this paper. But the heart in her bosom quickened.She had chanced on the spoor of something worth while.
The little dapper man flung his head up.
"Oh, it's certain, Bramwell; it's beyond any question now. My word!If Tony were only alive, or I twenty years younger! It's no greatundertaking, to go in to the Karamajo Mountains. One could start fromthe West Coast, unship any place and pick up a bunch of natives. The mapon the back of the water color is accurate. The man who made that knewhow to travel in an unknown country. He must have had a theodolite andthe very best equipment. Anybody could follow that map."
There was a battered old dispatch box on the table beside Sir Godfrey'sarm--one that had seen rough service.
"Of course," he went on, "we don't know when Tony picked up thisdrawing. It was in this box here with his diary, an automatic pistol andsome quinine. The date of the diary entry is the only clue. That wouldindicate that he was near the Karamajo range at the time, not far fromthe spot."
He snapped his fingers.
"What damned luck!"
He clinched his hands and brought them down on the table.
"I'm nearly seventy, Bramwell, but you're ten years under that. Youcould go in. No one need know the object of your expedition. HectorBartlett didn't tell the whole of England when he went out to Syria forthe gold plates. A scientist can go anywhere. No one wonders what he isabout. It wouldn't take three months. And the climate isn't poisonous. Ithink it's mostly high ground. Tony didn't complain about it."
The biologist answered without looking up.
"I haven't got the money, Sir Godfrey."
The dapper little man jerked his head as over a triviality.
"I'll stake you. It wouldn't cost above five hundred pounds."
The biologist sat back in his chair, at the words, and looked over thetable at his guest.
"That's awfully decent of you, Godfrey," he said, "and I'd go if I saw away to get your money to you if anything happened."
"Damn the money!" cried the other.
; The biologist smiled.
"Well," he said, "let me think about it. I could probably fix up somesort of insurance. Lloyd's will bet nearly any sane man that he won'tdie for three months. And besides I should wish to look things up alittle."
Sir Godfrey rose.
"Oh, to be sure," he said, "you want to make certain about the thing. Wemight be wrong. I hadn't an idea what it was until I brought it to you,and of course Tony hadn't an idea. Make certain of it by all means."
The biologist extended his long legs under the table. He indicated thewater color in his hand.
"This thing's certain," he said. "I know what this thing is."
He rapped the water color with the fingers of his free hand.
"This thing was painted on the spot. Maartin was looking at this thingwhen he painted it. You can see the big shadows underneath. No livingcreature could have imagined this or painted it from hearsay. He had tosee it. And he did see it. I wasn't thinking about this, Godfrey. I wasthinking the Dutch government might help a bit in the hope of findingsome trace of Maartin and I should wish to examine any information theymight have about him."
"Damn the Dutch government!" cried the little man. "And damn Lloyd's. Wewill go it on our own hook."
The biologist smiled.
"Let me think about it, a little," he said.
The dapper man flipped a big watch out of his waistcoat pocket.
"Surely!" he cried, "I must get the next train up. Have you got a placeto lock the stuff? I had to cut this lid open with a chisel."
He indicated the tin dispatch box.
"Better keep it all. You'll want to run through the diary, I imagine.Tony's got down the things explorer chaps are always keen about;temperature, water supply, food and all that..... Now, I'm off. See youThursday afternoon at the United Service Club. Better lunch with me."
Then he pushed the dispatch box across the table. The biologist rose andturned back the lid of the box. The contents remained as Sir Godfrey'sdead son had left them; a limp leather diary, an automatic pistol ofsome American make, a few glass tubes of quinine, packed in cotton wool.
He put the water color on the bottom of the box and replaced them.
Then he took the dispatch box over to an old iron safe at the fartherend of the room, opened it, set the box within, locked the door, and,returning, thrust the key under a pile of journals on the corner of thetable. Then he went out, and down the stairway with his guest to thedoor.
They passed within a finger touch of Lady Muriel.
The woman was quick to act. There would be no borrowing from BramwellWinton. He would now, with this expedition on the way, have no penny foranother. But here before her, as though arranged by favor of Fatality,was something evidently of enormous value that she could cash in toHecklemeir.
There was fame and fortune on the bottom of that dispatch box.
Something that would have been the greatest find of the age to TonyHalleck... something that the biologist, clearly from his words andmanner, valued beyond the gold plates of Sir Hector Bartlett.
It was a thing that Hecklemeir would buy with money... the very thingwhich he would be at this opportune moment interested to purchase. Shesaw it in the very first comprehensive glance.
Her luck was holding Fortune was more than favorable, merely. Itexercised itself actively, with evident concern, in her behalf.
Lady Muriel went swiftly into the room. She slipped the key from underthe pile of journals and crossed to the safe sitting against the wall.
It was an old safe of some antediluvian manufacture and the lock wasworn. The stem of the key was smooth and it slipped in her gloved hands.She could not hold it firm enough to turn the lock. Finally with herbare fingers and with one hand to aid the other she was able to move thelock and so open the safe.
She heard the door to the street close below, and the faint sound ofBramwell Winton's footsteps as though he went along the hall into theservice portion of the house. She was nervous and hurried, but thisreassured her.
The battered dispatch box sat within on the empty bottom of the a safe.
She lifted the lid; an automatic pistol lay on a limp leather-backedjournal, stained, discolored and worn. Lady Muriel slipped her handunder these articles and lifted out the thing she sought.
Even in the pressing haste of her adventure, the woman could not forbearto look at the thing upon which these two men set so great a value. Shestopped then a moment on her knees beside the safe, the prized articlein her hands.
A map, evidently drawn with extreme care, was before her. She glancedat it hastily and turned the thing quickly over. What she saw amazed andpuzzled her. Even in this moment of tense emotions she was astonished:She saw a pool of water,--not a pool of water in the ordinary sense--buta segment of water, as one would take a certain limited area of thesurface of the sea or a lake or river. It was amber-colored and assmooth as glass, and on the surface of this water, as though theyfloated, were what appeared to be three, reddish-purple colored flowers,and beneath them on the bottom of the water were huge indistinctshadows.
The water was not clear to make out the shadows. But the appearingflowers were delicately painted. They stood out conspicuously on theglassy surface of the water as though they were raised above it.
Amazement held the woman longer than she thought, over thisextraordinary thing. Then she thrust it into the bosom of her jacket,fastening the button securely over it.
The act kept her head down. When she lifted it Bramwell Winton wasstanding in the door.
In terror her hand caught up the automatic pistol out of the tin box.She acted with no clear, no determined intent. It was a gesture of fearand of indecision; escape through menace was perhaps the subconsciousmotive; the most primitive, the most common motive of all creatures inthe corner. It extends downward from the human mind through all life.
To spring up, to drag the veil over her face with her free hand, and tothrust the weapon at the figure in the doorway was all simultaneous andinstinctive acts in the expression of this primordial impulse of escapethrough menace.
Then a thing happened.
There was a sharp report and the figure standing in the doorway swayeda moment and fell forward into the room. The unconscious gripping of thewoman's fingers had fired the pistol.
For a moment Lady Muriel stood unmoving, arrested in every muscle bythis accident. But her steady wits--skilled in her profession--did notwholly desert her. She saw that the man was dead. There was peril inthat--immense, uncalculated peril, but the prior and immediate peril,the peril of discovery in the very accomplishment of theft, was by thisact averted.
She stooped over, her eyes fixed on the sprawling body and with her freehand closed the door of the safe. Then she crossed the room, put thepistol down on the floor near the dead man's hand and went out.
She went swiftly down the stairway and paused a moment at the door tolook out. The street was empty. She hurried away.
She met no one. A cab in the distance was appearing. She hailed it asfrom a cross street and returned to Regent. It was characteristic of thewoman that her mind dwelt upon the spoil she carried rather than uponthe act she had done.
She puzzled at the water color. How could these things be flowers?
Bramwell Winton was a biologist; he would not be concerned with flowers.And Sir Godfrey Halleck and his son Tony, the big game hunter, werenot men to bother themselves with blossoms. Sir Godfrey, as she nowremembered vaguely, had, like his dead son, been a keen sportsman in hisyouth; his country house was full of trophies.
She carried buttoned in the bosom of her jacket something that these menvalued. But, what was it? Well, at any rate it was something that wouldmean fame and fortune to the one who should bring it out of Africa. Thatone would now be Hecklemeir, and she should have her share of the spoil.
Lady Muriel found the drawing-room of her former employer in someconfusion; rugs were rolled up, bronzes were being packed. But in thedisorder of it the proprietor was imperturbable.
He merely elevated hiseyebrows at her reappearance. She went instantly to the point.
"Hecklemeir," she said, "how would you like to have a definite objectivein your explorations?"
The man looked at her keenly.
"What do you mean precisely?" he replied.
"I mean," she continued, "something that would bring one fame andfortune if one found it." And she added, as a bit of lure, "You rememberthe gold plates Hector Bartlett dug up in Syria?"
He came over closer to her; his little eyes narrowed.
"What have you got?" he said.
His facetious manner--that vulgar persons imagine to bedistinguished--was gone out of him. He was direct and simple.
She replied with no attempt at subterfuge.
"I've got a map of a route to some sort of treasure--I don't knowwhat--It's in the Karamajo Mountains in the French Congo; a map to itand a water color of the thing."
Hecklemeir did not ask how Lady Muriel came by the thing she claimed;his profession always avoided such detail. But he knew that she had goneto Bramwell Winton; and what she had must have come from some scientificsource. The mention of Hector Bartlett was not without its virtue.
Lady Muriel marked the man's changed manner, and pushed her trade.
"I want a check for a hundred pounds and a third of the thing when youbring it out."
Hecklemeir stood for a moment with the tips of his fingers pressedagainst his lips; then replied.
"If you have anything like the thing you describe, I'll give you ahundred pounds... let me see it."
She took the water color out of the bosom of her jacket and gave it tohim.
He carried it over to the window and studied it a moment. Then he turnedwith a sneering oath.
"The devil take your treasure," he said, "these things arewater-elephants. I don't care a farthing if they stand on the bottom ofevery lake in Africa!"
And he flung the water color toward her. Mechanically the stunned womanpicked it up and smoothed it out in her fingers.
With the key to the picture she saw it clearly, the shadowy bodies ofthe beasts and the tips of their trunks distended on the surface likea purple flower. And vaguely, as though it were a memory from adistant life, she recalled hearing the French Ambassador and Baron Rudddiscussing the report of an explorer who pretended to have seen thesesupposed fabulous elephants come out of an African forest and go downunder the waters of Lake Leopold.
She stood there a moment, breaking the thing into pieces with her barehands. Then she went out. At the door on the landing she very nearlystepped against a little cockney.
"My Lidy," he whined, "I was bringing your gloves; you dropped them onyour way up."
She took them mechanically and began to draw them on... the crypticsign of the cleaner on the wrist hem was now to her indicatory ofher submerged estate. The little cockney hung about a moment as for agratuity delayed, then he disappeared down the stair before her.
She went slowly down, fitting the gloves to her fingers.
Midway of the flight she paused. The voice of the little cockney, butwithout the accent, speaking to a Bobby standing beside the entrancereached her.
"It was Sir Henry Marquis who set the Yard to register all laundry marksin London. Great C. I. D. Chief, Sir Henry!"
And Lady Muriel remembered that she had removed these gloves in order toturn the slipping key in Bramwell Winton's safe lock.