The Blue Wall Part 32

"Who are you? I tell you that you are talking nonsense. I have no daughter!"

"Fine words," I said threateningly; "fine words. But this is no time for them. She is in vital danger--"

"Danger!" he screamed, clawing at the red blankets. "My G.o.d! Has it come? What form? Quick, I say! What form?"

"It is because you can shed light upon it that I have come," said I. "We know little. She has sent her husband away--"

"d.a.m.n him!" he choked.

"She has locked herself in her room. She has been so for three weeks.

The maid--"

"Margaret Murchie," he whispered. "She believes that I am dead?"

I nodded.

"I know nothing," he said. "The girl is not of me or mine."

"Come, come," said I. "It is time for disclosure."

He arose, searched under the corner of the mattress a moment, and then, with a quick, panther-like movement, sprang upon the bed again, holding a revolver in his two claws.

"I have no idea of what you mean," he cried. "I will not be questioned.

If I shoot, it is self-defense. You understand that. Nor will any one be the wiser. She is not my daughter. I know nothing of her."

"You know everything," I cried, as anger made me reckless. "It will not pay you to flourish that weapon. Listen!"

"Some one else coming!" he whispered.

"Yes," I shouted. "You have seen him before. It is young Estabrook."

The wizened creature immediately hid the revolver under the folds of the blanket and began to play nervously with the chessmen. Both of us waited, listening to the approach of the footsteps which came so cautiously behind the pendant canvas.

To see at last that I was right, that the newcomer was Estabrook, was a relief.

"Well," said the young man, appearing suddenly around the corner. "I came. I thought I heard your voice, Doctor. You were talking?"

I pointed.

The worn, colorless face of the other man gazed up at us pathetically; his body had relaxed into the hollows of his disordered cot. Against the scene of regal gardens which was luminous as if the painted sky itself bathed all in the soft light of a spring evening, the man and his face were ridiculous and incongruous. His presence in that half-real setting seemed a satire upon the beauties achieved by man and G.o.d.

"Who?" asked Estabrook involuntarily.

"The Sheik of Baalbec," I said.

The man looked up at me again.

"Mortimer Cranch," said I.

He fell forward on his face. It was several moments before any of us moved. Cranch spoke first. He had arisen, and now stood with his sad eyes fixed upon Estabrook, and I noticed for the first time that his mouth and lips showed suffering and, perhaps, strength.

"It is this, above all things, I hoped would never come," said he. "You have resurrected me from the dead. I was buried. You have dug me up.

Whatever good you may get from this strange meeting, make the most of it. If it will help to guard against the danger spoken of by this man you address as Doctor, I will be satisfied."

"You dog!" cried Estabrook, hot with emotions of violence. "It is you who were responsible for the death of Judge Colfax."

The other held out his knotted hands toward me.

"The whole story!" he cried. "Not a part. You must know the whole story."

"Briefly," I commanded.

He nodded, and began to pace the foreground of the Gardens of Versailles, back and forth like a tethered beast in a park. His voice was dispa.s.sionate. The narrative proceeded in a monotone. But if fiends could conceive a tale more dark, they would whisper it among themselves.

For this, told in the somewhat quaint narrative of a former generation, was his story.

BOOK VI

A PUPPET OF THE Pa.s.sIONS

CHAPTER I

THE VANISHED DREAM

There is only one person now in this world who could have told you my name. I have been sure that she has long believed me to be dead. That person is Margaret Murchie, and it is only too plain that she has told you all that she knows of me. Parts of my life she does not know. My testimony as to these is now given against my prayers, for I have prayed that I never would have to uncover my heart to any living man.

My first two recollections are of my birthplace and of my mother. A lifetime has pa.s.sed, yet I remember both as plainly as if they were before me now. I was heir to a fine old colonial estate which, because of diminis.h.i.+ng fortunes and increasing troubles extending over two generations, had been allowed to run down. My great-great-grandfather, whose portrait hung in the old parlor between two mirrors that extended solemnly from floor to ceiling, had been a sea-captain and s.h.i.+powner, and, it is said, a privateer as well. Whatever strange doings he had seen, one thing is certain; he returned after one mysterious voyage with great wealth, a sword-wound through his middle, ruined health, and a desire for respectability, social position, and a reputation for piety.

It had been he who had built the immense house which, in my childhood, was shaded by huge gnarled trees, under which crops of beautiful but poisonous toadstools were almost eternally sprouting.

If the great house was like a tomb, my mother was like a flower in it. I recall the sweetness of her timid personality, the half-frightened eyes which looked at me sometimes from the peculiar solitude of her mind, and the faint perfume of her dress when, as a child, I would rest my head in her lap and beg her to tell me of my father's brave and good life.

If I grew up somewhat headstrong and self-confident, it was in part due to a faith in my inheritance. The delicate and refined lips of my mother, upon which prayers were followed by lies and lies by prayers, taught me an almost indescribable belief in my own strength. The fruit forbidden by moral law to the ordinary man seemed to belong of right to me. No sensation, no indulgence, no excess seemed to threaten me. I knew my mother's philosophy of pleasure was different from mine, and, reaching an early maturity, I concealed from her the experiments I made in tasting daintily and rather proudly of life's pleasures. Before my boyhood had gone, my natural cleverness and my selection of friends had introduced me to many follies, each of which I regarded as a taste of life which in no way meant a weakness. Weakness I was sure was not the legacy of character which I possessed, and I failed to notice that I no longer sipped of the various poisons which the world may offer, but feverishly drank long drafts.

The awakening came in extraordinary form. I had not had my eighteenth birthday when, upon a beautiful moonlit night in spring, a man and a woman, more sober and much older than I, drove me out to my gate, begged me to say less of the n.o.bility of the horse which they had whipped into a froth of perspiration, and left me to make my way alone along the long path of huge flagstones to the house.

A light burned in the hall. I stood there looking for a long time in the mirror of the old mahogany hatrack, with a growing conviction that my reflected image looked extraordinarily like some one I had seen before.

I finally recognized myself as being an exact counterpart of my great-great-grandfather's portrait. This did not shock me, though the idea was a new one. I remember I laughed and brushed some white powder from my sleeve. The powder did not come off readily; it was with some thought of finding a brush that I gave my serious attention to the handles of one of the little drawers. My awkward movement resulted in pulling it completely out. Chance brought to light at that moment an object long hidden behind the drawer itself. The thing fell to the floor; I stooped dizzily to pick it up. It was an old glove!

It was an old glove, musty with age and yet still filled with the individuality of the man who had worn it and still creased in the distinctive lines of his hand. As I held it, I imagined that it was still warm from the contact of living flesh, that it still carried faint whiffs of its owner's personality as if he had a moment before drawn it from his fingers. What maudlin folly seized me, I cannot say. I remember that I exclaimed to myself affectionately, as one might who, like Narcissus, wors.h.i.+ped his own image in a pool. I pressed the glove to my face, delighting in its imagined likeness to myself. I gave it, in my intoxicated fancy, the attributes of a living being. To me it seemed alive with vital warmth. It had long lain a corpse. My touch had thrilled it as its contact now thrilled me.

With it, pressing it against my cheek, I turned toward the portiere of the library, and as chance would have it, making a misstep when my head was swimming, I went plunging forward into the folds of this curtain.

Because of this I found myself sitting flat upon the hardwood floor, gibbering like an idiot at the dim light which showed the bookcases which extended around the room from floor to ceiling.