He drew it out with a half smile at himself for choosing the one book he knew by heart from among this new wealth of literature.
The familiar touch, the pleasant sensation of the limp, rough leather on his fingertips gave him a feeling of security. But that very fact seemed to remind him that some danger, some subtle mental danger, was near. Was this Bible sent to him? Were his eyes and hands directed to it by the vibrating, invisible presence of God he felt near?
Then a swift impulse came to him. He took the book in his right hand, breathed a prayer for help and guidance, and opened it at random.
He was about to make a trial of that old medieval practice of "searching". He opened the book with his eyes fixed in front of him, and then let them drop towards it. For a moment the small type was blurred and indistinct, and then one text from the Gospel of Mark seemed to leap out at him.
"Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is."
This, then, was his message! He was to watch, to pray, for the time was at hand when----
The curtain slid aside and Schuabe entered with a tray. He had changed his morning coat for a long dressing gown of camel's-hair, and wore scarlet leather slippers.
Basil slipped the Bible back into its place and turned to face him.
"I live very simply," Schuabe said, "and can offer you nothing very elaborate. But here is some cold chicken, a watercress salad, and a bottle of claret."
They sat opposite each other at the round table and said little. Both men were tired and hungry. After he had eaten, Basil bent his head for a second or two in an inaudible grace, and made the sign of the Cross before he rose from his chair.
"Symbol!" said Schuabe, with a cold smile, as he saw him.
The truce was over.
"What is that Cross to which all Christians bow?" Schuabe continued. "It was the symbol of the water-god of the Gauls, a mere piece of their iconography. The Phoenician ruin of Gigantica is built in the shape of a cross; the Druids used it in their ceremonies; it was Thor's hammer long before it became Christ's gibbet; it is used by the pagan Icelanders to this day as a magic sign in connection with storms of wind. Why, the symbol of Buddha on the reverse of a coin found at Ugain is the same cross, the 'fylfot' of Thor. The cross was carved by Brahmins a thousand years before Christ in the caves of Elephanta. I have seen it in India with my own eyes in the hands of Siva Brahma and Vishnu. The worshipper of Vishnu attributes as many virtues to it as the pious Roman Catholics here in Salford to the Christian cross. There's the very strongest evidence that the origin of the cross is phallic! The crux ansata was the sign of Venus. It appears beside Baal and Astarte!"
"Very possibly, Mr. Schuabe," said Basil, quietly. "Your knowledge on such points is far wider than mine, but that doesn't affect Christianity in the slightest."
"Of course not! Whoever said it did? But this reverence for the Cross, the instrument of execution on which an excellent teacher, and as far as we know a really good man, suffered, angers me because it reminds me of the absurd and unreasoning superstitions which cloud the minds of so many educated men like yourself."
"Ah," said Basil, quietly, "now we have come to the point."
"If you choose, Mr. Gortre," Schuabe answered. "You're an intellectual man, and one intellectual man has a certain right to challenge another. I was staying with Lord Haileybury the other day, and I spent two whole mornings walking over the country with the Bishop of London, talking on these subjects. I answered him easily enough, but when he tried to prove a revelation -- Christianity -- he utterly broke down. We parted very good friends, and I gave him a thousand pounds for the East London poor fund. But still, say what you will to me. I am here to listen."
He looked calmly at the young man with his unsmiling eyes. He held a Russian cigarette in his fingers, and waved it with a gentle gesture of invitation as if from an immeasurable superiority.
As Basil watched him, he knew that here was an intelligence far keener and finer than his own. But with all that certainty, he felt entirely undismayed, strangely uplifted.
"I have a message for you, Mr. Schuabe," he began, and the other bowed slightly, without irony, at his words. "I have a message for you, one which I firmly believe I have been sent here to deliver, but it is not the message or the argument you expect to hear."
He stopped for a short time, marshalling his mental forces, and noticing a slight but perceptible look of surprise in his host's eyes.
"I know you better than you imagine, sir," Basil said gravely, "and not as many other good and devout Christians see you. I tell you here tonight with absolute certainty that you are the active enemy of Christ -- I say active enemy."
The face opposite became slightly less tranquil, but the voice was as calm as ever.
"You speak according to your beliefs, Mr. Gortre," he said. "I am no Christian, but there is much good in Christianity. My words and writings may have helped lift the veil of superstition and hereditary influences from the eyes of many men, and in that sense I suppose I am an enemy of the Christian faith. My sincerity is my only apology -- if one were needed. You speak with more harshness and less tolerance than I would have thought it your pleasure or your duty to use."
Basil Gortre rose. "Man," he cried, with sudden sternness, "I know you hate our Lord, and would work Him evil. You are as Judas was, for tonight it is given me to read far into your brain."
Schuabe rose quickly from his chair and stood facing him. His face was now pallid. Something looked out of his eyes which almost frightened Basil.
"What do you know?" Schuabe cried, as if in a swift stroke of pain. "Who----?" He stopped by a tremendous effort.
Some thought seemed to come to reassure him. "Listen," Schuabe continued. "I tell you, paid priest as you are, a blind man leading the blind, that a day is coming when all your boasted fabric of Christianity will disappear. It will go suddenly, and be swept utterly away. And you, you will see it. You will be left naked of your faith, stripped and bare, with all Christendom beside you. Your pale Nazarene will die amid the bitter laughter of the world. Die as surely as He died two thousand years ago, and no man or woman will resurrect Him. You know nothing, but you will remember my words of tonight, until you also become as nothing, and endure the inevitable fate of mankind."
He had spoken with extraordinary vehemence, hissing the words out with a venom and malice from which Basil Gortre shrunk. There was such unutterable conviction in Schuabe's thin, evil voice that for a moment the pain of it was like a spasm of physical agony.
Schuabe had thrown down the mask. It was even as Basil said, the soul of Judas Iscariot looked out from those eyes. The millionaire saw the clergyman's sudden shrinking. The smile of a devil flashed over his face.
Basil had turned to Schuabe once more and saw the look. As he watched, an awful certainty grew within him, a thought so appalling that all that had gone before sank into utter insignificance. He staggered for a moment and then rose to his full height, a fearful loathing in his eyes, a scorn like a whip of fire in his voice.
Schuabe blanched before him, for he saw the truth in the curate's soul.
"As the Lord of Hosts is my witness," cried Basil loudly, "I know you now for what you are! You know that Christ is God!"
Schuabe shrank into his chair.
"Antichrist!" pealed out Basil's accusing voice. "You know the truth full well, and you have dared to lift your hand against God!"
Then there was a dead silence in the room. Schuabe sat motionless by the dying fire.
Very slowly the colour crept back into his cheeks. Slowly the strength and light entered his eyes. He moved slightly.
At last he spoke.
"Go," he said. "Go, and never let me see your face again. You have spoken. Yet I tell you still that such a blinding blow shall descend on Christendom that----"
He rose quickly from his chair. His manner changed utterly with a stunning swiftness.
He went to the window and pulled aside the curtain. A chill and
ghostly dawn crept into the library.
"Let us make an end of this," Schuabe said quietly. "Of what use is it for you and me, atoms that we are, to wrangle and thunder through the night over an infinity in which we have neither part nor lot? Come, get you homewards. Rest, as I am about to do. The night has been an unpleasant dream. Treat it as such. We differ on great matters. Let that be so, and we will forget it. You may have a friend in me, if you wish it so."
Basil, hardly conscious of any voluntary movements, his brain in a stupor, the arteries all over his body beating like drums, took the hat and coat the other handed him and stumbled out of the house.
It was five o'clock in the morning, raw, damp, and cold.
With a white face, drawn and haggard with emotion, Basil strode down the hill. The keen air revived his physical powers, but his brain was whirling, whirling, till connected thought was impossible.
What was it? What was the truth about that nightmare, that long, horrid night in the warm, rich room? His powers were failing. He must see a doctor after breakfast.
When he reached the foot of the hill, and was about to turn down the road which led to his rooms, he stopped to rest for a moment.
From far behind the hill, over the dark, silhouetted houses of the wealthy people who lived on it, a huge, formless pall of purple smoke was rising, almost blotting out the dawn in a Titanic curtain of gloom. The feeble newborn sun flickered red through it, the colour of blood. There was no wind that morning, and the fog and smoke from the newly lit factory chimneys in the Irwell valley could not be dispersed. It crept over the town like doom itself -- menacing, vast, unconquerable.
Basil pulled out his latchkey with trembling hand, and turned to enter his own door.
The cloud was spreading.
"Lighten our darkness," he whispered, half consciously as he fell fainting on the doorstep.
He was soon found, and carried in to the sickbed, where he would lie ill with brain fever for more than two months.
Chapter 4
In his great room at the British Museum -- great, that is, for the private room of a Museum official -- Robert Llwellyn sat at his writing desk finishing the last few lines of his article on the Hebrew inscription in mosaic discovered at Kefr Kenna.
It was nearly four in the afternoon, growing dark with the twilight of a winter's afternoon in central London. A reading lamp on the desk threw a bright circle of light on the sheet of white paper covered with minute writing, which lay before the keeper of Biblical antiquities.
The view from the tall windows was grim. Nothing met the eye but the gloomy backs of some of the great dingy lodging houses which surrounded the Museum: bedroom windows, back bedrooms with grimy curtains, tastelessly unpleasant.
Although his great room looked official, it was far from uncomfortable. There were many bookshelves lining the walls. Over them hung large framed photographs and drawings of inscriptions. On a stand by itself, covered with a glass shade, was a duplicate of Dr. Schick's model of the Haram area during the Christian occupation of Jerusalem.
A dull fire glowed in the large open fireplace.
Llwellyn wrote a final line with a sigh of relief and leaned back in his swivel chair. His face was gloomy, and his eyes were dull with some inward communing, apparently of a disturbing and unpleasant kind.
The door opened noiselessly, and Lambert, the assistant keeper and secretary, entered.
He drew up a chair to the writing desk. "The permit has been granted!" he said.
A quick interest shone on Professor Llwellyn's face. "Ah," he said, "it has come at last, then, after all these months of waiting. I began to despair of the Turkish Government. I never thought it would be granted. Now the Society can begin to excavate in the prohibited spots. Really that is splendid news, Lambert. We'll have some startling results. I doubt but that the whole theory of the Gospel narrative will have to be reconstructed during the next few years!"
"It is possible," said Lambert, "but on the other hand it may happen that nothing whatever of importance is found."
Llwellyn nodded. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. "But how do you know of this permit, Lambert?"
"Last night I was dining with my uncle, Sir Michael Manichoe. The Home Secretary was there, a great friend of my uncle's. You know the great interest he takes in the work of the Palestine Exploring Society, and his general interest in the Holy Land?"
"Yes, of course," said Llwellyn. "Well?"
"It is owing to his personal interest in the work that the Sultan has granted the permit. After dinner he took me aside, and we had a longish talk. He spoke of you, sir, as the greatest living authority -- wouldn't hear of Conrad Schick or Clermont-Ganneau in the same breath as you. He went on to say in confidence, and he hinted to me that I had his permission to tell you, that they are going to offer you knighthood in a few days."
A sudden flush suffused the face of the elder man. Then he laughed a little. "Your news is certainly unexpected, my dear boy," he said. "For my part, knighthood is not an especially welcome thing personally, but it means recognition of my work, you see. In that way only, it is good news that you have brought."
"That's just it, Professor," the young man answered enthusiastically. "That's exactly it. It's a proper thing that the greatest living authority on the antiquities and history of Asia Minor should be officially recognised. It encourages all of us, you see, Professor."
The young man's generous excitement pleased Llwellyn. He placed his hand on his shoulder with a kindly, affectionate gesture.
At that moment a messenger knocked and entered with a bundle of letters which had just arrived by the quarter past four post. With a congratulatory shake of the hand, Lambert left his chief to his correspondence.
The great specialist, when Lambert had left the room, rose from his chair, went towards the door with swift, cat-like steps, and locked it.
The letters the messenger had brought were many in number and various in shape and style. Five or six of them bore foreign stamps and indications that they came from the Continental antiquarian societies. He put these on one side to be opened later.
Then he took up an envelope addressed to him in firm black writing and turned it over. On the flap was the white, embossed oval and crown, showing it came from the House of Commons. His face became pale. The letter ran as follows:
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Dear Llwellyn,
I am writing to you now to say I am determined that the present situation cannot continue. You must understand that my patience is exhausted, and that, unless the large sum you owe me is repaid within the next week, my solicitors have my instructions, which are quite unalterable, to proceed in bankruptcy against you without further delay.
The principal and interest now total to the sum of fourteen thousand pounds. Your promises to repay, and your innumerable requests for more time in which to do so, now extend over a period of three years. I have preserved all your letters on the subject at issue between us, and I find that so far from decreasing your indebtedness when your promises became due, you have invariably asked me for further sums, which, in foolish confidence, as I feel now, I have advanced to you.
It would be superfluous to point out what bankruptcy would mean to you in your position. Ruin would be the only word. And it would be no ordinary bankruptcy. I know where these large sums have gone, and my knowledge can hardly fail to be shared by others in London society.
I have still an opportunity to offer you, however, and perhaps you will find me by no means the tyrant you think.
There are certain services you can do me, and which, if you fall in with my views, will not only wipe off the many thousands of your indebtedness, but provide you with a capital sum which will place you above the necessity for any such financial manoeuvres in the future as your -- shall I say infatuation? -- has led you to resort to in the past.
If you care to lunch with me at my rooms in the Hotel Cecil at two o'clock the day after tomorrow -- Friday -- we may di
scuss your affairs quietly. If not, then I must refer you to my solicitors entirely.
Yours sincerely,
CONSTANTINE SCHUABE
The big man gave a horrid groan -- half snarl, half groan -- the sound which comes from a strong animal desperate and at bay.
He crossed over to the fireplace and pushed the letter into a glowing cavern among the coals, holding it there with the poker until it was utterly consumed, and fluttered up the chimney from his sight in a sheet of ash -- the very colour of his relaxed and pendulous cheeks.
He opened another letter, a small, fragile thing written on mauve paper with heavy underlining, in a large, irregular hand -- a woman's hand.
15 BLOOMSBURY COURT MANSIONS
Dear Bob,
I will expect you at the flat tonight at eleven, without fail. You'd better come, or things which you won't like will happen.
You've just got to come.
Yours,
GERTRUDE
He put this letter into his pocket and began to walk the room in long, silent strides.
A little after five he put on a heavy fur coat and left the now silent and gloomy halls of the British Museum.
The lamps of Holborn were lit, and a blaze of light came from Oxford Circus where the winking electric advertisements had just begun their work on the tops of the houses.
Llwellyn walked steadily on towards the Marble Arch and the Edgware Road. The continual background noise of horse-drawn traffic helped his brain. It became active and able to think, to plan once more. The steady exercise warmed his blood and exhilarated him.
For many years, while his name became great in Europe and the solid brilliancy of his work grew in lustre as he grew in age, he had lived two lives, finding an engrossing joy in each.
The lofty scientific world had no points of contact with that other and unspeakable half-life. There had been rumours, things said in secret by envious and less distinguished men, but they had never harmed him. His professional colleagues hardly understood them and cared nothing. His work was all-sufficient. What did it matter if smaller people with forked tongues hissed horrors of his private life?