The City in the Clouds Part 40

"No. I have talked the situation over with my friend. You are going to die, that is very certain, but not by my hand now, and not, Mr.

Midwinter, by the hand of the English law."

He was very quick. Even then he had an inkling of my meaning, for a perceptible shadow fell over his face and his eyes narrowed to slits.

"You mean?"

"We are going to telephone to the City in the Clouds. People will come from there and take you away--that will be easily managed. You will have some form of trial, and then--execution."

I never saw a change from red to white so sudden. That big face suddenly became a hideous, sickly white, toneless and opaque like the belly of a sole.

"You won't deliver me to the Chinese?" he gasped. "You can't know them as I do. They'd take a week killing me! They have horrible secrets--"

His voice died away in a whimper, and if ever I saw a man in deadly terror, it was that man then.

But I hardened my heart. I remembered how Morse and Juanita had suffered for two years at this man's hands. I remembered four murders, to my own knowledge, and I shrugged my shoulders.

"I can't help that. You have made your bed, and you must lie upon it."

"But such a bed!" he murmured, and his head fell forward on his chest.

His arms were bound at the elbow, but he could move the lower portion, and he now brought his right hand to his face.

"I'll telephone," said Bill, and went to the wall by the door where hung the instrument.

I sat gloomily watching the man in the chair.

What was he doing? His jaw was moving up and down. He seemed biting at his wrist.

Suddenly there was a slight, tearing, ripping noise, followed by a jerk backwards of his head and a deep intake of the breath.

"What is he doing?" Rolston said, turning round with the receiver of the telephone at his ear.

Midwinter held out his arm. I saw that the braid round the cuff of his morning coat was hanging in a little strip.

"I told you I always had something in reserve," he said, showing all his teeth as he grinned at me. "Always something up my sleeve--literally, in this case. I have just swallowed a little capsule of prussic acid which--"

If you want to learn of how a man dies who has swallowed hydrocyanic acid--the correct term, I believe--consult a medical dictionary. It is not a pleasant thing to see in actual operation, but, thank heavens, it is speedy!

The sweat was pouring down my face when it was over, but Bill Rolston had not turned a hair.

"Put something over his face, Sir Thomas," he said, "and I'll get through to Mr. Morse."

ENVOI

I take up my pen this evening, exactly ten years after I wrote the last paragraph of the above narrative, to read of James Antony Midwinter, dead like a poisoned rat in his chair, with a sort of amazement in my mind.

The whole story has been locked in a safe for ten long years, and that blessed and happy time has made the wild adventures, the terrible moments in the City in the Clouds, indeed seem things far off and long ago.

This afternoon I paid what will probably be my last visit to the strange kingdom up there.

I stood with my little son, Viscount Kirby, and my small daughter, Lady Juanita, and my wife, the Countess of Stax, at a very solemn ceremony.

In the presence of a Government official, a representative of His Majesty--Colonel Patrick Moore, of the Irish Guards, A.D.C.--the Cardinal Archbishop, and a few private friends, I watched the elmwood sh.e.l.l, containing Gideon Mendoza Morse, placed in its marble tomb.

It was his wish, to be buried there in his fantastic City, and no one said him nay. Well, the body lies in its place, two hundred weeping Chinamen are returning to the Flowery Land, wealthy beyond their utmost hopes, and in a few months the City in the Clouds will dissolve and disappear.

The rich treasures are coming to Stax, my castle in Norfolk--such as are not bequeathed, by Morse's munificence, to the museums of England and the galleries at Brazil.

Soon the immense plateau will be England's aerial terminus for the mail s.h.i.+ps from all parts of the world.

While Gideon Morse lived it was impossible to publish the truth. It is to appear now, at last, and I simply want to tie a few loose ends, and to bring down the curtain, leaving nothing unexplained.

First of all let me say that the general public knew nothing at all of the horrors in which I was so intimately concerned.

Juanita and I were married very quietly in Westminster Cathedral soon after Midwinter went to his account. The enormous fortune that she brought me, supplementing my own very considerable means, operated in the natural way. Other journals were added to the _Evening Special_, and we started a great campaign for the sweetening of ordinary life, and not unsuccessfully, as every one knows.

They made me a baron, and four years afterwards, Earl of Stax. As for my father-in-law, he refused to budge from the City in the Clouds.

I don't mean that he didn't make appearances in society, but he loved to get back to his fantastic haven, from whence, like a magician, he showered benefits upon London.

Arthur Winstanley, as everybody knows, is Under-Secretary for India and the most rising politician of our day.

It is said that William Rolston, editor of the _Evening Special_, is our most brilliant journalist, though the older school condemn him for an excess of imagination. I saw the other day, in the old-fas.h.i.+oned _Thunderer_, a slas.h.i.+ng attack upon a series of articles which had recently appeared upon China, and which the critic of the _Thunderer_ conclusively proved to be written from an abysmal depth of ignorance.

I don't often go to the office now, though I am still proprietor of the paper, but when I do, and sit in the editorial room, I miss Julia Dewsbury, best of all private secretaries since the beginning of the world.

Bill, however, a.s.sures me that she is all right, entirely taken up with the children, and not in the least inclined to bully him in spite of her eight years advantage in age.

"To that woman," says Bill reverentially, "I owe everything."

Let me wind up properly.

Crouching behind a high wall on Richmond Hill is a modest hostelry still known as the "Golden Swan." It is still my property, and pays me a satisfactory dividend. It is run by a co-partners.h.i.+p, which I should say is unique.

The Honest Fool and my ex-valet, Mr. Preston, perform this feat together, but, now that Morse is dead and the Chinese have all departed, I fear they will lose a good deal of custom. This I gathered from Mr.

Mogridge, that pillar of the saloon bar, who happened to meet me by chance in Fleet Street not long ago.

"'Allo! Why, it's Mr. Thomas, late landlord of the 'Golden Swan'!" said Mr. Mogridge. "'Aven't seen you for years. What are you doing now?"

"Oh, I'm doing very well, thank you, Mr. Mogridge. And how is the old 'Swan'?"

"Same as ever and no dropping off in the quality of the drinks. Still, I fear it's going down. I'm afraid it will never be quite the same as it was in the days of Ting-A-ling-A-ling," and here Mr. Mogridge placed his hands upon his hips and roared with laughter at that ancient joke.

THE END