# Portrait of a Man with Red Hair/Part 4

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PART IV: THE TOWER
I — II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII
PART IV
THE TOWER
I
With an instinctive movement both Harkness and Dunbar closed in upon Hesther.
The three stood just in front of the heavy locked door facing the dim hall. On the bottom stair was Crispin Senior, and on the floor below him, one on either side, the two Japanese servants.
A glittering candelabrum, hanging high up, was fully lit, but it seemed to give a very feeble illumination, as though the fog had penetrated here also.
Crispin was wearing white silk pyjamas, brown leather slippers, and a dressing-gown of a rich bronze-coloured silk flowered with gold buds and leaves. His eyes were half-closed, as though the light, dim though it was, was too strong for him. His face wore a look of petulant rather childish melancholy. The two servants were statues indeed, no sign of life proceeding from them. There was, however, very little movement anywhere, the flags moving in the draught the chief.
Hesther's face was white, and her breath came ​in little sharp pants, but she held her body rigid. Harkness after that first cry was silent, but Dunbar stepped forward shouting:
"You damned hound—you let us go or you shall have this place about your ears!" The hall echoed the words which, to tell the truth, sounded very empty and theatrical. They were made to sound the more so by the quietness of Crispin's reply.
"There is no need," he said, "for all those words, Mr. Dunbar. It is your own fault that you interfered and must pay for your interference. I warned you weeks ago not to annoy me. Unfortunately you wouldn't take advice. You have annoyed me—sadly, and must suffer the consequences."
"If you touch a hair of her head——" Dunbar burst out.
"As to my daughter-in-law," Crispin said, stepping down on to the floor, and suddenly smiling, "I can assure you that she is in the best possible hands. She knows that herself, I'm sure. What induced you, Hesther," he said, addressing her directly, "to climb out of your window like the heroine of a cinematograph and career about on the seashore with these two gentlemen is best known only to yourself. At least you saw the error of your ways and are in time, after all, to go abroad with us to-day."
He advanced a step towards them. "And you, Mr. Harkness, don't you think that you have rather ​violated the decencies of hospitality? I think you will admit that I showed you nothing but courtesy as host. I invited you to dinner, then to my house, showed you my few poor things, and how have you repaid me? Is this the famous American courtesy? And may I ask while we are on the question, what business this was of yours?"
"It was anybody's business," said Harkness firmly, "to rescue a helpless girl from such a house as this."
"Indeed?" asked Crispin, "And what is the matter with this house?"
Here Hesther broke in: "Look back two nights ago," she cried, "and ask yourself then what is the matter with this house and whether it is a place for a woman to remain in."
"For myself," said Crispin. "I think it is a very nice house, and I am quite sorry that we are leaving it to-day. That is, some of us—not all," he added, softly.
"If you are going to murder us," Dunbar cried, "get done with it. We don't fear you, you know, whatever colour your hair may be. But whether you murder us or no I can tell you one thing, that your own time has come—not many more hours of liberty for you."
"All the more reason to make the most of those I have got," said Crispin. "Murder you? No. But you have fallen in very opportunely for the testing ​of certain theories of mine. I look forward to a very interesting hour or two. It is now just four o'clock. We leave this house at eight—or, at least, some of us do. I can promise all of us a very interesting four hours with no time for sleep at all. I have no doubt you are all tired, wandering about in the fog for so long must be fatiguing, but I don't see any of you sleeping—not for an hour or two, at least."
Hesther said then: "Mr. Crispin, I believe that I am chiefly concerned in this. If I promise to go quietly with you abroad I hope that you will free these two gentlemen. I give you that promise and I shall keep it."
"No, no" Dunbar cried, springing forward. "You shan't go with him anywhere, Hesther, by heaven you shan't. Not while there's any breath in my body——"
"And when there isn't any breath in your body, Mr. Dunbar," said Crispin, "what then?"
"A very good line for an Adelphi melodrama, Mr. Crispin," said Harkness, "but it seems to me that we've stayed here talking long enough. I warn you that I am an American citizen, and I am not to be kept here against my will——"
"Aren't you indeed, Mr. Harkness?" said Crispin. "Well, that's a line of Adelphi drama, if you like. How many times in a secret service play has the hero declared that he's an American citizen? Which only goes to show, I suppose, how near real life is to ​the theatre—or rather how much more theatrical real life is than the theatre can ever hope to be. But you're all right, Mr. Harkness—I won't forget that you're an American citizen. You shall have special privileges. That I promise you."
Dunbar then did a foolish thing. He made a dash for the farther end of the hall. What he had in mind no one knows—in all probability to find a window, hurl himself through it and escape to give the alarm. But the alarm to whom? That was, as far as things had yet gone, the foolishness of their position. A policeman arriving at the house would find nothing out of order, only that there two gentlemen had broken in, barbarously, at a midnight hour to abscond with the married lady of the family.
Dunbar's effort was foolish in any case; its issue was that, in a moment of time, without noise or a word spoken, the two Japanese servants had him held, one hand on either arm. He looked stupid enough, there in the middle of the hall, his eyes dim with tears of rage, his body straining ineffectively against that apparently light and casual hold.
But it was strange to perceive how that movement of Dunbar's had altered all the situation. Before that the three were at least the semblance of visitors demanding of their host that they should be allowed to go; now they were prisoners and knew it. Although Hesther and Harkness were still ​untouched they were as conscious as was Dunbar of a sudden helplessness—and of a new fear.
Harkness watched Crispin who had walked forward and now stood only a pace or two from Dunbar. Harkness saw that his excitement was almost uncontrollable. His legs, set widely apart, were quivering, his nostrils panting, his eyes quite closed so that he seemed a blind man scenting out his enemy.
"You miserable fellow," he said—and his voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "You fool—to think that you could interfere. I told you ... I warned you ... and now am I not justified? Yes—a thousand times. Within the next hour you shall know what pain is, and I shall watch you realise it."
Then his body trembled with a sort of passionate rhythm as though he were swaying to the run of some murmured tune. With his eyes closed and the shivering it was like the performance of some devotional rite. At least Dunbar showed no fear.
"You can do what you damn well please," he shouted. "I'm not afraid of you, mad though you are."
"Mad? Mad?" said Crispin, suddenly opening his eyes. "That depends. Yes, that depends. Is a man mad who acts at last when given a perfectly just and honourable opportunity for a pleasure from which he has restrained himself because the oppor​tunity hitherto was not honourable? And madness? A matter of taste, my friends, decides that. I like olives—you do not. Are you therefore mad? Surely not. Be broad-minded, my friend. You have much to learn and but little time in which to learn it."
Harkness perceived that the man was savouring every moment of this situation. His anticipations of what was to come were so ardent that the present scene was coloured deep with them. He looked from one to another, tasting them, and his plans for them on his tongue. His madness—for never before had his eyes, his hands, his whole attitude of body more highly proclaimed him mad—had in it all the preoccupation with some secret life that leads to such a climax. For months, for years, grains of insanity, like coins in a miser's hoard, had been heaping up to make this grand total. And now that the moment was come he was afraid to touch the hoard lest it should melt under his fingers.
He approached Harkness.
"Mr. Harkness," he said quite gently, "believe me I am sorry to see this. You took me in last evening, you did indeed. I felt that you had a real interest in the beautiful things of art, and we had that in common. All the time you were nothing but a dirty spy—a mean and dirty spy. What right had you to interfere in the private life of a private gentleman who, twenty-four hours ago, was ​quite unknown to you, simply on the word of a crazy braggart boy? Have you so little to do that you must be poking your fingers into every one else's business? I liked you, Mr. Harkness. As I told you quite honestly last evening I don't know where I have met a stranger to whom I took more warmly. But you have disappointed me. You have only yourself to thank for this—only yourself to thank."
Harkness replied firmly. "Mr. Crispin, I had every right to act as I have done, and I only wish to God that it had been successful. It is true that when I came down to Cornwall yesterday I had no knowledge of you or your affairs, but, in the Treliss hotel, quite inadvertently, I overheard a conversation that showed me quite plainly that it was some one's place to interfere. What I have seen of you since that time, if you will forgive the personality, has only strengthened my conviction that interference—immediate and drastic—was most urgently necessary.
"Thanks to the fog we have failed. For Dunbar and myself we are for the moment in your power. Do what you like with us, but at least have some pity on this child here who has done you no wrong."
"Very fine, very fine," said Crispin. "Mr. Harkness, you have a style—an excellent style—and I congratulate you on having lost almost completely your American accent—a relief for all of us. But come, come, this has lasted long enough. I would ​point out to you two gentlemen that, as one of you has already discovered, any sort of resistance is quite useless. We will go upstairs. One of my servants first—you two gentlemen next, my other servant following, then my daughter-in-law and myself. Please, gentlemen."
He said something in a foreign tongue. One Japanese started upstairs, Harkness and Dunbar followed. There was nothing else at that moment to be done. Only at the top of the stairs Dunbar turned and cried: "Buck up, Hesther. It will be all right." And she cried back in a voice marvellously clear and brave: "I'm not frightened, David; don't worry."
Harkness had a momentary impulse to turn, dash down the stairs again and run for the window as Dunbar had done; but as though he knew his thought the Japanese behind him laid his hand on his arm; the thin fingers pressed like steel. At the upper floor Dunbar was led one way, himself another. One Japanese, his hand still on his arm, opened a door and bowed. Harkness entered. The door closed. He found himself in total obscurity.
II
He did not attempt to move about the room, but simply sank down on to the floor where he was. He was in a state of extreme physical weariness—his body ached frown head to foot—but his brain ​was active and urgent. This was the first time to himself that he had had—with the exception of his cliff climbing—since his leaving the hotel last evening, and he was glad of the loneliness. The darkness seemed to help him; he felt that he could think here more clearly; he sat there, huddled up, his back against the wall, and let his brain go.
At first it would do little more than force him to ask over and over again: Why? Why? Why? Why did we do this imbecile thing? Why, when we had all the world to choose from, did we find our way back into this horrible house? It was a temptation to call the thing magic and to have done with it, really to suggest that the older Crispin had wizard powers, or at least hypnotic, and had willed them back. But he forced himself to look at the whole thing clearly as a piece of real life as true and as actual as the ham-and-eggs and buttered toast that in another hour or two all the world around him would be eating. Yes, as real and actual as a toothbrush, that was what this thing was; there was nothing wizard about Crispin; he was a dangerous lunatic, and there were hundreds like him in any asylum in the country. As for their return he knew well enough that in a fog people either walked round and round in a circle or returned to the place that they had started from.
At this point in his thoughts a tremor shook his body. He knew what that was from, and the ​anticipation that, lying like a chained animal, deep in the recesses of his brain, must soon be loosed and then bravely faced. But not yet, oh no, not yet! Let his mind stay with the past as long as it might.
In the past was Crispin. He looked back over that first meeting with him, the actual moment when he had asked him for a match, the dinner, the return to the hotel when, influenced then by all that Dunbar had told him, he had seen him standing there, the polite gestures, the hospitable words, the drive in the motor.... His mind stopped abruptly there. The door swung to, the lock was turned.
In that earlier Crispin there had been something deeply pathetic—and when he dared to look forward—he would see that in the later Crispin there was the same. So with a sudden flash of lightning revelation that seemed to flare through the whole dark room he saw that it was not the real Crispin with whom they—Hesther, Dunbar and he—were dealing at all.
No more than the ravings of fever were the real patient, the wicked cancerous growth the real body, the broken glass the real picture that seemed to be shattered beneath it.
They were dealing with a wild and dangerous animal, and in the grip of that animal, pitiably, was the true struggling suffering soul of Crispin. Not ​struggling now perhaps any more; the disease had gone too far, growing through a thousand tiny almost unnoticed stages to this horrible possession.
He knew now—yes, as he had never never known it, and would perhaps never have known it had it not been for the sudden love for and tenderness towards human nature that had come to him that night—what, in the old world, they had meant by the possession of evil spirits. What it was that Christ had cast out in His ministry. What it was from which David had delivered King Saul.
Quick on this came the further question. If this were so might he not perhaps when the crisis came—as come he knew it would—appeal to the real Crispin and so rescue both themselves and him? He did not know. It had all gone so far. The animal with its beastly claws deep in the flesh had so tight a hold. He realised that it was in all probability the personality of Hesther herself that had urged it to such extremes. There was something in her clear-sighted simple defiance of him that had made Crispin's fear of his powerlessness—the fear that had always contributed to his most dangerous excesses—climb to its utmost height. He had decided perhaps that this was to be the real final test of his power, that this girl should submit to him utterly. Her escape had stirred his sense of failure as nothing else could do. And then their return, all the nervous excitement of that night, the constant ​alarm of the neighbourhoods in which they had stayed so that, as the younger Crispin had said, they had been driven "from pillar to post," all these things had filled the bowl of insanity to overflowing. Could he rescue Crispin as well as themselves?
Once more a tremor ran through his body. Because if he could not—— Once more he thrust the anticipation back, pulling himself up from the floor and beginning slowly, feeling the wall with his hand like a blind man, to walk round the room.
His eyes now were better accustomed to the light, but he could make out but little of where he was. He supposed that he was on the second floor where were the rooms of Hesther and the younger Crispin. The place seemed empty, there was no sound from the house. He might have been in his grave. Fantastic stories came to his mind, Poe-like stories of walls and ceilings growing closer and closer, of floors opening beneath the foot into watery dungeons, of fiery eyes seen through the darkness. He repeated then aloud:
"I am Charles Percy Harkness. I am thirty-five years of age. I grew up in Baker, Oregon, in the United States of America. I am in sound mind and in excellent health. I came down to Cornwall yesterday afternoon for a holiday, recommended to do so by Sir James Maradick, Bart."
This gave him some little satisfaction; to himself he continued, still walking and touching the wall​paper with his hand: "I am shut up in a dark room in a strange house at four in the morning for no other reason than that I meddled in other people's affairs. And I am glad that I meddled. I am in love, and whatever comes out of this I do not regret it. I would do over again exactly what I have done except that I should hope to do it better next time."
He felt then seized with an intense weariness. He had known that he was, long ago, physically tired, but excitement had kept that at bay. Now quite instantly as though a spring in the middle of his back had broken, he collapsed. He sank down there on the floor where he was, and all huddled up, his head hanging forward into his knees, he slept. He had a moment of conscious subjective rebellion when something cried to him: "Don't surrender. Keep awake. It is part of his plan that you should sleep here. You are surrendering to him."
And from long misty distances he seemed to hear himself reply:
"I don't care what happens any more. They can do what they like.... They can do what they like...."
And almost at once he was conscious that they were summoning him. A tall thin figure, like an old German drawing, with wild hair, set mouth, menacing eye like Baldung's "Saturnus," stood before him and pointed the way into vague misty space. Other ​figures were moving about him, and he could see as his eyes grew stronger, that a vast multitude of naked persons were sliding forward like pale lava from a volcano down a steep precipitous slope.
As they moved there came from them a shuddering cry like the tremor of the ground beneath his feet.
"Not there! Not there!" Harkness cried, and Saturnus answered, "Not yet! You have not been judged."
Almost instantly judgment followed—judgment in a narrow dark passage that rocked backward and forward like the motion of a boat at sea. The passage was dark, but on either side of its shaking walls were cries and shouts and groans and piteous wails, and clouds of smoke poured through, as into a tunnel, blinding the eyes and filling the nostrils with a horrible stench.
No figure could be seen, but a voice, strong and menacing, could be heard, and Harkness knew that it was himself the voice was addressing. His naked body, slippery with sweat, the acrid smoke blinding him, the voices deafening him, the rocking of the floor bewildering him, he felt desperately that he must clear his mind to answer the charges brought against him.
The voice was clear and calm: "On February 2, 1905, your friend Richard Hentley was accused in the company of many people during his absence, ​of having ill-treated his wife while in Florence. You knew that this was totally untrue and could have given evidence to that effect, but from cowardice you let the moment pass and your friend's position was seriously damaged. What have you to say in your defence?"
The thick smoke rolled on. The walls tottered. The cries gathered in anguish.
"On March 13, 1911, you wired to your sisters in America that you were ill in bed when you were in perfect health, because you wished to stay for a week longer in London in order to attend some races. What have you to say in your defence?"
"On October 3, 1906, you grievously added to the unhappiness of Mrs. Harrington-Adams by asserting in mixed company that no one in New York would receive her and that all Americans were astonished that she should be received at all in London."
Here at any rate was an opportunity. Through the smoke he cried:
"There at least I am innocent. I have never known Mrs. Harrington-Adams. I have never even seen her."
"No," the voice replied. "But you spoke to Mrs. Phillops who spoke to Miss Cator who then cut Mrs. Adams. Other people followed Miss Cator's example, and you were quoted as an authority. Mrs. ​Adams's London life was ruined. She had never done you any harm."
"On December 14, 1912, you told your sisters that you hated the sight of them and their stuffy ways, that their attempts at culture were ridiculous, and that, like all American women, they were absurdly spoilt."
Through the smoke Harkness shouted: "I am sure I never said——"
The voice replied: "I am quoting your exact words."
"In a moment of pique I lost my temper. Of course I didn't mean——"
"On June 3, 1913, you went secretly into the library of a friend and stole his book of Rembrandt drawings. You knew in your heart that you had no intention of returning it to him, and when, some months later, he spoke of it, wishing to lend it to you and wondered why he could not find it you said nothing to him about your own possession of it."
Harkness blushed through the rolling smoke. "Yes, that was shameful," he cried. "But I knew that he didn't care about the book and I——"
"What have you to say against these charges?"
"They are all little things," Harkness cried, "small things. Every one does them...."
"Judgment! Judgment! Judgment!" cried the voice, and suddenly he felt himself moving in the ​vast waters of human nudity that were slipping down the incline. He tried to stay himself, he flung out his hands and touched nothing but cold slimy flesh.
Faster and faster and faster. Colder and colder and colder. Darker and darker and darker. Despair seized him. He called on his friends. Others were calling on every side of him. Thousands and thousands of names mingled in the air. The smoke came up to meet them—vast billowing clouds of it. He knew with a horrible consciousness that below him a sea of upturned swords, were waiting to receive them. Soon they would be impaled.... With a shriek of agony he awoke.
He had not been asleep for more, perhaps, than ten minutes, but the dream had unnerved him. When he rose from the ground he tottered and stood trembling. He knew now why it was that his enemy had designed that he should sleep; he knew now that he could no longer ward off the animal that on padded feet had been approaching him—the pain! The pain! The pain!
The sweat beaded his forehead, his knees gave way and he sank yet again upon the floor. He was murmuring: "Anything but that. Anything but that. I can't stand pain. I can't stand pain, I tell you. Don't you know that I have always funked it all my life long? That I've always prayed that whatever else I got it wouldn't be that. That ​I've never been able to bear to see the tiniest thing hurt, and that in all my thought about going to the war, although I didn't try to escape it, it was even more the pain that I would see than the pain that I would feel.
"And now to wait for it like this, to know that it may be torture of the worst kind, that I am in the power of a man who can reason no longer, who is himself in the power of something stronger and more evil than any of us."
Then dimly it came through to him that he had been given three tests to-night, and as it always is in life the three tests especially suited to his character, his strength and weakness, his past history. The dance had stripped him of his aloofness and drawn him into life, his love for Hesther that he had surrendered had taken from him his selfishness—and now he must lose his fear of pain.
But that? How could he lose it? It was part of the very fibre of his body, his nerves throbbed with it, his heart beat with it. He could not remember a time when it had not been part of him. When he had been five or six his father had decided that he must be beaten for some little crime. His father was the gentlest of human beings, and the beating would be very little, but at the sight of the whip something had cracked inside his brain.
He was not a coward; he had stood up to the beating without a tear, but the sense of the coming ​pain had been more awful than anything that he could have imagined. It was the same afterwards at school. He was no coward there either, shared in the roughest games, stood up to bullies, ventured into the most dangerous places.
But one night earache had attacked him. It was a new pain for him and he thought that he had never known anything so terrible. Worse than all else were the intermissions between the attacks and the warnings that a new attack was soon to begin. That approach was what he feared, that terrible and fearful approach. He had said very little, had only lain there white and trembling, but the memory of all those awful hours stayed with him always.
Any thought of suffering in others—of poor women in childbirth, of rabbits caught in traps, of dogs poisoned, of children run over or accidentally wounded—these things, if he knew of them, produced an odd sort of sympathetic pain in himself. The strangest thing had been that the war, with all its horrors, had not driven him crazy as he might have expected from his earlier history. On so terrible a scale was it that his senses soon became numbed? He did the work that he was given to do, and heard of the rest like cries beyond the wall. Again and again he had tried to mingle, himself, in it; he had always been prevented.
A dog run over by a motor car struck him more terribly than all the agonies of Ypres.
​But these things, what had they to do with his present case? He could not think at all. His brain literally reeled, as though it shook, tried to steady itself, could not, and then turned right over. His body was alive, standing up with all its nerves on tip-toe. How was he to endure these hours that were coming to him?
"I must get out of this!" some one, not himself, cried. It seemed to him that he could hear the strange voice in the room. "I must get out of this. How dare they keep me if I demand to be let out? I am an American citizen. Let me out of this. Can't you hear? Bring me a light and let me out. I have had enough of this dark room. What do you mean by keeping me here? You think that you are stronger than I. Try it and see. Let me out, I say! Let me out!"
He tottered to his feet and ran across the room, although he could not see his way, blundering against the opposite wall. He beat upon it with his hands.
"Let me out, do you hear! Let me out!"
He was not himself, Harkness. He could no longer repeat those earlier words. He was nobody, nothing, nothing at all. They could not hurt him then. Try as they might they could not hurt him, Harkness, when he was not Harkness. He laughed, stroking the wall gently with his hand as though it were his friend.
​"It's all right, do you see? You can't hurt me because you can't find me. I'm hiding. I don't know where to find myself, so that it isn't likely you will find me. You can't hurt nothing, you know. You can't indeed."
He laughed and laughed and laughed—gently enjoying his own joke. There was a sudden knocking at the door.
"Come in!" he said in a whisper. "Come in!"
His heart stood still with fear.
The door opened, splashing into the darkness a shower of light like water flung from a bucket. In the centre of this the two Japanese were standing.
"Master says please come. If you ready he ready."
At sight of the Japanese a marvellous thing had happened. All his fear had on the instant left him, his beastly physical fear. It fell from him like an old suit of clothes, discarded. He was himself, clear-headed, cool, collected, and in some strange new way, happy.
Harkness followed them.
III
Harkness followed, conscious only of one thing, his sudden marvellous and happy deliverance from fear. He could not analyse it—he did not wish to. He did not consider the probable length of its duration. Enough that for the present Crispin might ​cut him into small pieces, skin him alive, boil him in a large pot like a lobster, and he would not care. He followed the sleek servants like a school-boy.
The Tower? Then at last he was to see the interior of this mysterious place. It had exercised, all through this adventure, a strange influence over him, standing up in his imagination white and pure and apart, washed by the sea, guarded by the woods behind it, having a spirit altogether of its own and quite separate from the man who for the moment occupied it. This would be perhaps the last building on this world that would see his bones move and have their being, he had a sense that it knew and sympathised with him and wished him luck.
Meanwhile he walked quietly. His chance would still come and with Dunbar beside him. Or was he never to see Dunbar again? Some of his new-found courage trembled. The worst of this present moment was his loneliness. Was the final crisis to be fought out by himself with no friends at hand? Was he never to see Hesther again? He had an impulse to throw himself forward, attack the servants, and let come what will. The silence of the house was terrible—only their footsteps soft on the thick carpet—and if he could wring a cry or two from his enemies that would be something. No, he must wait. The happiness of others was involved with his own.
The men stopped before a dark-wooded door.
​They went through and were met by a white circular staircase. Up this they passed, paused before another door, and crossed the threshold into a high circular brilliantly-lit room. For the moment Harkness, his eyes dimmed a little by the shadows of the staircase, could see nothing but the gayness, brightness of the place papered with a wonderful Chinese pattern of green and purple birds, cherry-coloured pagodas and crimson temples. The carpet was a soft heavy purple, and there was a number of little gilt chairs, and, in front of the narrow barred window, a gilt cage with a green and crimson macaw.
All this, standing by the door shading his eyes from the dazzling crystal candelabra, he took in. Then suddenly saw something that swept away the rest—Hesther and Dunbar standing together, hand in hand, by the window. He gave a cry of joy, hurrying towards them. It was as though he had not seen them for years; they caught his hand in theirs; Crispin was there watching them like a benevolent father with his beloved children.
"That's right," he said. "Make the most of your time together. I want you to have a last talk."
He sat down on one of the gilt chairs.
"Won't you sit down In a moment I shall leave you alone together for a little while. In case you have any last words...." Then he leaned forward in that fashion so familiar now to ​Harkness, huddled together, his red hair and little eyes and pale white soft hands alone alive. "Well, and so—in my power, are you not? The three of you. You can laugh at my ugliness and my stupidity and my bad character, but now you are in my hands completely. I can do whatever I like with you. Whatever... the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain. I, ludicrous creature that I am, have absolute power over three fine young things like you, so strong, so beautiful. And then more power and then more and then more. And over many finer, grander, more beautiful than you. I can say crawl and you will crawl, dance and you will dance.... I who am so ugly that every one has always laughed at me. I am a little God, and perhaps not so little, and soon God Himself...."
He broke off, making the movement of music in the air with his hands.
"You a little overestimate the situation," said Harkness, quietly. "For the moment you can do what you like with our bodies because you happen to have two servants who, with their Jiu-Jitsu and the rest of their tricks, are stronger than we are. It is not you who are stronger, but your servants whom your money is able to buy. I guess if I had you tied to a pillar and myself with a gun in my hand I could make you look pretty small. And in any case it is only our bodies that you can do any​thing with. Ourselves—our real selves—you can't touch."
"Is that so?" said Crispin. "But I have not begun. The fun is all to come. We will see whether I can touch you or no. And for my daughter-in-law"—he looked at Hesther—"there is plenty of time—many years perhaps."
Nothing in all his life would ever appeal more to Harkness than Hesther then. From the first moment of his sight of her what had attracted him had been the exquisite mingling of the child and of the woman. She had been for him at first some sort of deserted waif who had experienced all the cruelty and harshness of life so desperately early that she had known life upside down, and this had given her a woman's endurance and fortitude. She was like a child who has dressed up in her mother's clothes for a party and then finds that she must take her mother's place.
And now when she must, after this terrible night, be physically beyond all her resources she seemed, in her shabby ill-made dress, her hair disordered, her face pale, her eyes ringed with grey, to have a new courage that must be similar to that which he had himself been given. She kept her hand in Dunbar's, and with a strange dim unexpected pain Harkness realised that that new relation between the two of which he had made the foundation had grown through danger and anxiety the one for ​another already to a fine height. Then he was conscious that Hesther was speaking. She had come forward quite close to Crispin and stood in front of him looking him calmly and clearly in the eyes.
"Please let me say something. After all I am the principal person in this. If it hadn't been for me there would not have been any of this trouble. I married your son. I married him, not because I loved him, but because I wanted things that I thought that you could give me. I see now how wrong that was and that I must pay for doing such a thing. I am ready to do right by your son. I never would have tried to run away if it had not been for you—the other night. After that I was right to do everything I could to get away. I begged your son first—and he refused. You have had me watched during the last three weeks—every step that I have taken. What could I do but try to escape?
"We've failed, and because we've failed and because it has been all my fault I want you to punish me in any way you like but to let my two friends go. I was not wrong to try to escape." She threw up her head proudly, "I was right after the way you had behaved to me, but now it is different. I have brought them into this. They have done nothing wrong. You must let them go."
"You must let all of us go." Dunbar broke in hotly, starting forward to Hesther's side. "Do you ​think we're afraid of you, you old play-acting red-haired monkey? You just let us free or it will be the worse for you. Do you know where you'll be this time to-morrow? Beating your fancy coloured hair against a padded cell, and that's where you should have been years ago."
"No, no," Hesther broke in. "No, no, David. That's not the way. You don't understand. Don't listen to him. I'm the only one in this, I tell you—can't you hear me?—that I will stay. I won't try to run away, you can do anything to me you like. I'll obey you—I will indeed. Please, please—Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand. But I do. Let them go. They've done no harm. They only wanted to help me. They didn't mean any- thing against you. They didn't truly. Oh! let them go! Let them go!"
In spite of her struggle for self-control her terror was rising, her terror never for herself but now only for them. She knew, more than they, of what he was. She saw perhaps in his face more than they would ever see.
But Harkness saw enough. He saw rising into Crispin's eyes the soul of that strange hairy fetid-smelling animal between whose paws Crispin's own soul was now lying. That animal looked out of Crispin's eyes. And behind that gaze was Crispin's own terror.
Crispin said:
​"This is very comforting for me. I have waited for this moment." Then Harkness came over to him and stood very close to him.
"Crispin, listen to me. It isn't the three of us who matter in this, it is yourself. Whatever you do to us we are safe. Whatever you think or hope you can't touch the real part of us, but for yourself to-night this is a matter of life or death.
"1 may know nothing about medicine and yet know enough to tell you that you're a sick man—badly sick—and if you let this animal that has his grip on you get the better of you in the next two hours you're finished, you're dead. You know that as well as I. You know that you're possessed of an evil spirit as surely as the man with the spirits that cleared the Gadarene swine into the sea. It isn't for our sakes that I ask you to let us go to-night. Let us go. You'll never hear from any of us again. In the morning, in the decent daylight, you'll know that you've won a victory more important than any you've ever won in your life.
"You talk about mastering us, man. Master your own evil spirit. You know that you loathe it, that you've loathed it for years, that you are miserable and wretched under it. It is life or death for you to-night, I tell you. You know that as well as I."
For one moment, a brief flashing moment, Harkness met for the first and for the last time the real ​Crispin. No one else saw that meeting. Straight into the eyes, gazing out of them exactly as a prisoner gazes from behind iron bars, jumped the real Crispin, something sad, starved and dying. One instant of recognition and he was gone.
"That is very kind of you, Mr. Harkness," Crispin said. "I knew that I should enjoy this quarter of an hour's chat with you all and truly I am enjoying it. My friend Dunbar shows himself to be quite frankly the young ruffian he is. It will be interesting to see whether in—say an hour's time from now—he is still in the same mind. I doubt it; quite frankly I doubt it very much. It is these robust natures that break the easiest. But you other two—really how charming. All altruism and unselfishness. This lady has no thought for anything but her friends, and Mr. Harkness, like all Americans, is full of fine idealism. And you are all standing round me as though you were my children listening to a fairy story. Such a pretty picture!
"And when you come to think of it here I am quite alone, all defenceless, one to three. Why don't you attack me? Such an admirable opportunity! Can it be fear? Fear of an old fat ugly man like me, a man at whom every one laughs!"
Dunbar made a movement. Harkness cried: "Don't move, Dunbar. Don't touch him. That's what he wants."
Crispin got up. They were now all standing in ​a little group close together. Crispin gathered his dressing-gown around him.
"The time is nearly up," he said. "I am going to leave you alone together for a little last talk. You'll never see one another again after this, so you had best make the most of it. You see that I am not really unkind."
"It is hopeless." Harkness turned round to the window. "God help us all."
"Yes, it is hopeless," Crispin said gently. "At last my time has come. Do you know how long I have waited for it? Do you know what you represent to me? You have done me wrong, the two of you, broken my hospitality, betrayed my bread and salt, invaded my home. I have justice if I punish you for that. But you stand also for all the others, for all who have insulted me and laughed at me and mocked at me. I have power at last. I shall prick you and you shall bleed. I shall spit on you and you shall bow your heads, and then when you are at my feet stung with a thousand wounds I will raise you and care for you and love you, and you shall share my power——"
He jumped suddenly from his gilt chair and stuttered, waving his hands as though he were commanding an army, towards the macaw who was asleep with his head under his crimson wing. "I shall be king in my own right, king of men, emperor ​of mankind, then one with the gods, and at the last I will shower my gifts...."
He broke off, looking up at a red lacquer clock that stood on a little round gilt table. "Time—time—time nearly up!" He swung round upon the three of them.
Dunbar burst out:
"Don't flatter yourself that you'll get away to-morrow. When we're missed——"
"You won't be missed," Crispin answered with a sigh, as though he deeply regretted the fact. "The hotel will receive a note in the morning saying that Mr. Harkness has gone for a coast walk, will return in a week, and will the hotel kindly keep his things until his return? Of course the hotel most kindly will. For Mr. Dunbar—well, I believe there is only an aunt in Gloucester, is there not? It will be, I imagine, a month at least before she makes any inquiry. Possibly a year. Possibly never. Who knows? Aunts are often extraordinarily careless about their nephew's safety. And in a week. Where can one not be in a week in these modern days? Very far indeed. Then there is the sea. Anything dropped from the garden over the cliff so completely vanishes, and their faces are so often—well, spoilt beyond recognition...."
"If you do this," Hesther cried, "I will——"
"I regret to say," interrupted Crispin, "that after eight this morning you will not see your ​father-in-law of whom you are so fond for six months at least. Ah, that is good news for you, I am sure. That is not to say you will never see him again. Dear me, no. But not immediately. Not immediately!"
Harkness caught Hesther's hand. He saw that she was about to make some desperate movement. "Wait," he said; "wait. We can do nothing now."
For answer she drew him to her and flung out her hand to Dunbar. "We three. We love one another," she cried. "Do your worst."
Crispin looked once more at the clock. "Melodrama," he said. "I, too, will be melodramatic, I give you twenty minutes by that clock—a situation familiar to every theatre-goer. When that clock strikes six I shall, I'm afraid, want the company of both of you gentlemen. Make your adieus then to the lady. Your eternal adieus."
He smiled and gently tip-toed from the room.
IV
"And so the curtain falls on Act Three of this pleasant little drama," said Dunbar, huskily, turning towards the window. "There will be a twenty minutes' interval. But the last act will be played in camera. If only one wasn't so beastly tired—and if only it wasn't all my fault...." His voice broke.
Harkness went up to him, put his arm around ​him and drew him to him. "Look here. I'm older than both of you. I might almost be your father, so you've got to obey my orders. I'll be best man at your wedding yet, David, your's and Hesther's. There's nobody to blame. Nothing but the fog. But don't let's cheat ourselves either. We're shut up here at half-past five in the morning miles from any help, no way out, no telephone, and two damn Japs who are stronger than we are, in the power of a man who's as mad as a hatter and as bloodthirsty as a tiger.
"It's going to be all right, I tell you. I know it. I feel it in my bones. But we've got to behave for these twenty minutes—only seventeen of them now—as though it won't be. It's of no use for us to make any plan. We'll have to do something on the spur of the moment when we see what the old devil has up his sleeve for us——
"Meanwhile, as I say, make the best of these minutes."
He put out his arm and drew Hesther in.
"I tell you that I love you both. I've only known you a day, but I love you as I've never loved any one in my life before. I love you as father and brother and comrade. It's the best thing that has happened to me in all my life."
The three, body to body, stood looking out through the gilded bars at the sky, silver grey, and washed with shifting shadows.
​"After all," he went on, "if our luck doesn't hold, and we are going to die in the next hour or so, what is it? It's only what millions of fellows passed through in the war and under much more terrible conditions. Imagination is the worst part of that I fancy, and I suggest that we don't think of what is going to happen when this time is over—whether it goes well or ill—we'll fill these twenty minutes with every decent thought we've got, we'll think of every fine thing that we know of, and every beautiful thing, and everything that is of good report."
"All I pray," said Dunbar, "is that I may have one last dash at that lunatic before good-bye. He can have a hundred Japs around him but I'll get at him somehow. Harkness, you're a brick. I brought you into this. I had no right to, but I'm not going to apologise. We're here. The thing's done, and if it hadn't been for that rotten fog——But you're right, Harkness. We'll think of all the ripping things we know. With me it's simple enough. Because the beginning and the middle and the end of it is Hesther. Hesther first and Hesther second and Hesther all the time."
He didn't look at her, but stared out of the window.
"By Jove, the sun's coming. It's been up round the corner ever so long. It will just about hit the ​window in another ten minutes. It seems kind of stupid to stand here doing nothing."
He stepped forward and felt the bars. "Take hours to get through that, and then there's a drop of hundreds of feet. No, you're about right, Harkness. There's nothing to be done here but to say good-bye as decently as possible."
He sighed. "I didn't want to kick the bucket just yet, but there it is, it can happen to anybody. A fellow can be as strong as a horse, forget to change his socks and next day be finished. This is better than pneumonia anyway! All the same I can't help feeling we missed our chance just now when we had him alone in here——"
"No," said Harkness, "I was watching him. That's what he wanted, for us to go for him. I am sure that he had the Japs handy somewhere, and I think he wanted to hurt us in front of Hesther. But his brain works queerly. He's formulated a kind of book of rules for himself. If we take such and such a step then he will take such and such another. A sort of insane sense of justice. He's worked it all out to the minute. Half the fun for him has been the planning of it, and then the deliberate slowness of it, watching us, calculating what we'll do. Really a cat with mice. There's nothing for deliberate consecutive thinking like a madman's brain."
Hesther broke in:
​"We're wasting time. I know—I feel as you do—that it's going to be all right, but however he fails with you he can carry me off somewhere, and so it is very likely that I don't see either of you again for some time. And if that's so—if that's so, I just want to say that you've been the finest men in the world to me.
"And I want you to know that whatever turns up for me now—yes, whatever it is—it can't be as bad as it was before yesterday. I can't ever again be as unhappy as I was now that I've known both of you as I've known you this night.
"I didn't realise, David, how I felt about you until Mr. Harkness showed me. I've been so selfish all these years, and I suppose I shall go on being selfish, because one doesn't change all in a minute, but at least I've got the two best friends a woman ever had."
"Hesther," Dunbar said, turning towards her, "if we get free of this and you can get rid of that man—I ask you as I've asked you every week for the last ten years—will you marry me?"
"Yes," she said. But for the moment she turned to Harkness. He was looking through the bars out to the sky where the mist was now very faintly rose like the coloured smoke of far distant fire. She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping her other hand in Dunbar's.
"I don't know why you said you were so much ​older than we are. You're not. Do you promise to be the friend of both of us always?"
"Yes," he said. Something mockingly repeated in his brain, "It is a far far better thing that I do——"
He burst out laughing. The macaw awoke, put up his head and screamed.
"You are both younger by centuries than I," he said. "I was born old. I was born with the Old Man of Europe singing in my ears. I was born to the inheritance of borrowed culture. The gifts that the fairies gave me at my cradle were Michael Angelo's 'David,' Rembrandt's 'Gold-weigher's Field,' the 'Temples at Pæstum,' the Da Vinci 'Last Supper,' the Breughels at Vienna, the view of the Jungfrau from Mürren, the Grand Canal at dawn, Hogarth's prints, and the Quintet of the Meistersinger. Yes, the gifts were piled up all right. But just as they were all showered upon me in stepped the Wicked Fairy and said that I should have them all—on condition that I didn't touch! Never touch—never. At least I've known that they were there, at least I've bent the knee, but—until last night—until last night...."
He suddenly took Hesther's face between his two hands, kissed her on the forehead, on the eyes, on the mouth:
"I don't know what's coming in a quarter of an hour. I don't like to think. To tell you the truth I'm in the devil of a funk. But I love you, I love ​you, I love you. Like an uncle you know or at least like a brother. You've taken a match and set fire to this old tinder-box that's been dry and dusty so long, and now it's alight—such a pretty blaze!"
He broke away from them both with a smile that suddenly made him look young as they'd never seen him:
"I've danced the town, I've climbed rocks, I've dared the devil, I've fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me. I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it, it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can die any more!"
The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings.
"Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress."
The red-lacquered clock struck the quarter, and at the same moment the sun hit the window. Strange to see how instantly that room with the coloured pagodas, the fantastic temple, the gilt chairs and the purple carpet shivered into tinsel. The dust floated on the ladder of the sun: the blue ​of the early morning sky was coloured faintly like a bird's wing.
The sun flooded the room, wrapping them all in its mantle.
"Let's sit down," said Dunbar, pulling three of the gilt chairs into the centre of the room where the sun shone brightest. "I've a kind of idea that we'll need all the strength we've got in a few minutes. That's fine what you said, Harkness, about being alive, although I didn't follow you altogether.
"I'm not very artistic. A man who's been on the sea since he was a small kid doesn't go to many picture galleries and he doesn't read books much either. To tell you the truth there's always such a lot to do, and when I've finished the Daily Mail there doesn't seem time for much more, except a shocker sometimes. The sort of mess we're in now wouldn't make a bad shocker, would it? Only you'd never be able to make Crispin convincing. All I know is, if I wrote a book about him I'd have him tortured at the end with little red devils and plenty of pincers. However, I get what you mean, Harkness, about being alive.
"I felt something of the same thing in the war sometimes. At Jutland, although I was in the devil of a funk all the time, I was sort of pleased with myself too. Life's always seemed a bit unreal since the armistice, until last night. And it's a funny thing, but when I was helping Hesther climb out ​of that window and expecting Crispin Junior to poke his head up any minute I had just that same pleased-all-over feeling that I had at Jutland. So that's about the same as you feel, Harkness, only different, of course, because of your education.... Hesther, if we win out of this and you marry me I'll be so good to you—so good to you—that——"
He beat his hands desperately on his knees.
"Here's the time slipping and we don't seem to be doing anything with it. It's always been my trouble that I've never been able to say what I mean—couldn't find words, you know. I can't now, but it's simple enough what I mean——"
Hesther said: "If we only have ten minutes like this it's so hard to choose what you would say, but I'd like you to know, David, that I remember everything we've ever done together—the time I missed the train at Truro and was so frightened about father, and you said you'd come in with me, and father hadn't even noticed I'd been away; and the time you brought me the pink fan from Madrid; and the time I had that fever and you sat up all night outside my room, those two days father was away; and the day Billy fell over the Bring Rock and you climbed down after him; and the time you brought me that Sealyham and father wouldn't let me have him; and the time just before you went off to South Africa and I wouldn't say good-bye. I've hurt you so many times and you've never been angry ​with me once—or only that once. Do you remember the day I struck you in the face because you said I was more like a boy than a girl? I thought you were laughing at me because I was so untidy and dirty and so I hit you. And do you remember you sprang on me like a tiger, and for a moment I thought you were going to kill me? You said no one had ever struck you without getting it back. Then suddenly you pulled yourself in—just like going inside and shutting your door.
"I've never seen you until to-night, David. I've been blind to you. You've been too close to me for me to see you. It will be all right. We'll come out of this and then we'll have such times—such wonderful times——"
She came up to him, drew his head to her breast. He knelt on the floor at her feet, his arms round her, his head on her bosom. She stroked his hair, looking out beyond him to the blue of the sky.
Harkness felt a mad wildness of impatience. He went to the window and tugged at the bars. In despair his hands fell to his side.
"The only chance, Dunbar, is to go straight for him the moment we're out of this room, even if those damned Japs are with him. We can't do much, but we may smash him up a bit first. Then there's Jabez. We've forgotten Jabez. Where's he been all this time?"
​Dunbar looked up. "I expect he went home after we went off."
"No," said Harkness, "he was to be there till six. He told me. What's happened to him? At any rate he'll give the alarm if we don't turn up."
"No, he'll think we got safely off."
"Yes, I suppose he will. My God, it's five to six. Look here, stand up a moment."
They stood up.
"Let's take hands. Let's swear this. Whatever happens to us now, whether some of us survive or none, whether we die now or live happily ever afterwards, we'll be friends forever, nothing shall ever separate us, for better or worse we're together for always."
They swore it.
"And see here. If I don't come out of this don't have any regrets either of you. Don't think you brought me into this against my will. Don't think that whichever way it goes I regret a moment of it. You've given me the finest time."
Dunbar laughed. "I sort of feel we're going to have a chance yet. After all, he's been probably playing with us, trying to frighten us. There'll be nothing in it, you see. Anyway I'll get a crack at his skull, and now that I've got you, Hesther, I wouldn't give up this night for all the wealth of the Indies. I don't know about life or death. I've never thought much about it, to tell you the honest ​truth, but I bet that any one who's as fond of any one as I am of you can't be very far away whatever happens to their body."
"There goes six."
The red lacquer clock struck. Hesther flung her arms around Harkness and kissed him, then Dunbar.
They all stood listening. Just as the clock ceased there was a knock at the door.
V
Harkness went to the door and opened it; not Crispin, as he had expected, but one of the Japanese.
For the first time he spoke:
"Beg your pardon, sir. The master would be glad you see him upstairs." Harkness did not look back. He knew that Dunbar and Hesther were clasped tightly in one another's arms. He walked out closing the door behind him. He stood with the Japanese in the small space waiting. It was a dim subdued light out here. You could only see the thick stone steps of the circular staircase winding upwards out of sight. Harkness's brain was working now with feverish activity. Whatever Crispin's devilish plan might be he would be there to watch the climax of it. If Harkness and Dunbar were quick enough they could surely have Crispin throttled before the Japanese were in time; without Crispin it was likely enough that the Japanese would ​be passive. This was no affair of theirs. They simply obeyed their master's orders.
He wondered why he had not attempted something in that room just now, why, indeed, he had prevented Dunbar; but some instinct had told him then that Crispin was longing to shame them in some way before Hesther. He had then an almost overpowering impulse to turn back, run into that room, fling his arms about Hesther and hold her until those devils pulled them apart. It was an impulse that rose blinding his eyes, deafening his ears, stunning his brain. He half turned. The door opened and Dunbar came out. Harkness sighed with relief. At the sight of Dunbar the temptation left him.
They mounted the stairs, one Japanese in front of them, the other behind. At the next break in the flight the Japanese turned and opened a door on the left.
"In here, gentlemen, if you please," he said, bowing.
They entered a small room with no windows, quite dark save for one dim electric light in the ceiling, and without furniture save for two wicker chairs.
They stood there waiting. "The master," said the Japanese, "he much obliged if you gentlemen will kindly take your clothes off."
For a moment there was silence. They had not ​realised the words. Then Dunbar broke out: "No, by God, no! Strip for that swine! Harkness come on! You go for that fellow, I'll take this one!" and instantly he had hurled himself on the Japanese nearest the door.
Harkness flung at the one who had spoken. He was conscious of his fingers clutching at the thin cotton stuff of the clothes, and, beneath the clothes, the cold hard steel of the limbs. His arms gripped upwards, caught the cloth of the shirt, tore it, slipped on the smooth hairless chest. Then in his left forearm there was a pain, sharp as though some ravenous animal had bitten him there, then an agony in the middle of his back, then in his left thigh.
Against his will he cried out; the pain was terrible—awful. Every nerve in his body was rebelling so that he had neither strength nor force. He slipped to the floor, writhing involuntarily with the agony of the twisted muscle and, even as he slipped, he saw sliding down over him, impervious, motionless, fixed like a shining mask, the face of the Japanese.
He lay on the floor; panic flooded him. His helplessness, the terror of what was coming next, the fright of the dark—it was all he could do at that moment not to burst into tears and cry like a child.
He was lying on the floor, and the Japanese, ​kneeling beside him, had one arm under him as though to make his position more comfortable.
"Very sorry," the Japanese murmured in his ear; "the master's orders."
As the pain withdrew he felt only an intense relief and thankfulness. He did not care about what had gone before nor mind what followed. All he wished was to be left like that until the wild beating of his heart softened and his pulse was again tranquil.
Then he thought of Dunbar. He turned his head and saw that Dunbar also was lying on the floor, on his side. Not a sound came from him. The other Japanese was bending over him.
"Dunbar!" Harkness cried in a voice that to his own surprise was only a whisper, "wait. It's no good with these fellows. We'll have our chance later."
Dunbar replied, the words gritted from between his teeth: "No—it's no good—with these devils. It's all right though. I'm cheery."
Harkness saw then that the Japanese had been stripping Dunbar, and he noticed with a curious little wonder that his clothes had been arranged in a neat tidy pile—his socks, his collar, his braces, on his shirt and trousers. He saw the Japanese move forward as though to help Dunbar to his feet; there was a movement as though Dunbar were pushing him away. He rose to his feet, naked, strong, his ​head up, swung out his arms, pushed out his chest.
"No bones broken with their monkey tricks. Hurry up, Harkness, We may as well go into the sea together. I bet the water's cold."
But no. The Japanese said something. Dunbar broke out:
"I'm damned if I will." Then, turning to Harkness: "He says I've got to go on by myself. It seems they're going to separate us. Rotten luck, but there's no fighting these two fellows here. Well, cheerio, Harkness. You've been a mighty fine pal, if we don't meet again. Only that rotten fog did us in."
Harkness struggled to his knees. "No, no, Dunbar. They shan't separate us. They shan't——" but there was a touch of a hand on his arm and instantly, as though to save at all costs another pressure of that nerve, he sank back.
Dunbar went out, one of the Japanese following him. The door closed.
Now indeed Harkness needed all his fortitude. He had never felt such loneliness as this. From the beginning of the adventure there had been an element so fantastic, so improbable, that except at certain moments he had never believed in the final reality of it. There was something laughable, ludicrous about Crispin himself; he had been like a child playing with his toys. Now absolutely Harkness was face to face with reality.
​Crispin did mean all that he had threatened. And what that might be——!
The Japanese was beginning to take off his clothes, very lightly and gently pulling his coat from under him. Harkness sat up and assisted him. This did not matter. Of what significance was it whether he had clothes or no? What mattered was that he should be out of this horrible room where there was neither space nor light nor company. Anything anywhere was better. The Japanese' cool hard fingers slipped about his body. He himself undid his collar and mechanically dropped his collar-stud into the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, where he always put it when he was undressing. He bent forward and took off his shoes.
The Japanese gravely thanked him. There was a small hole in his right sock and he slipped it off quickly, covering it with his other hand. He was ashamed for the Japanese to see it.
His clothes were piled as neatly as Dunbar's. He stood up feeling freshened and cool.
Then the Japanese, bowing, moved to the door. Harkness followed him.
They climbed the stairs once more, the stone striking cold under Harkness's bare feet. They must now be reaching the very top of the Tower. There was a sense of space and height about them and a stronger light.
The Japanese paused, pushed back a door and ​sharply jerked Harkness forward. Harkness nearly fell, but was caught by some one else, closed his eyes involuntarily against a flood of light into which he seemed, with a curious sensation as though he had dived from a great height, to be sinking ever deeper and deeper, then to be struggling up through bursting bubbles of colour. His eyes were still closed against the sun that pressed like a warm palm upon the lids.
He felt hands moving about him. Then that he was held back against something cold, then that he was being bound, gently, smoothly; the bands did not hurt his flesh. There was a pause. He still kept his eyes closed. Was this death then? The sun beat upon his body warm and strong. The cool of the pillar to which he was bound was pleasant against his back. There were boards beneath his feet, and on their dry, friendly surface his toes curled. A delicious soft lethargy wrapped him round. Was this death? One sharp pang like the pressure of an aching tooth and then nothing. Sinking into dark silence through this shaft of deep and burning sunlight....
He opened his eyes. He cried aloud with astonishment. He was in what was plainly the top room of the Tower, a high white place with a round ceiling softly primrose. One high window went the length from floor to ceiling, and this window, which was without bars, blazed with sun and shone ​with the colours of the early morning blue. The room was white—pure virgin white—round, and bare of furniture. Only—and this was what had caught the cry from Harkness—three pillars supported the ceiling, and to these three pillars were bound by white cord, first himself, then Dunbar, then, naked as they, Jabez.
The fisherman stood there facing Harkness—a gigantic figure. Yesterday afternoon on the hill, last night in the garden Harkness had not recognised the man's huge proportions under his clothes. Now, bound there, with his black hair and beard, his great chest, the muscle of his arms and thighs, the sunlight bathing him, he was mighty to see.
His eyes were mild and puzzled like the eyes of a dog who has been chained against reason. He was making a strange restless motion from side to side as though he were testing the white cords that held him. His face above his beard, his neck, the upper part of his chest, his hands, his legs beneath the knees, were a deep russet brown, the rest of him a fair white, striking strangely with the jet blackness of his hair.
He smiled as he saw Harkness's astonishment.
"Aye, sir," he said. "It wasn't me you was expectin' to see here, and it wasn't myself that was expectin' to be here neither."
They were alone—no Japanese, no Crispin.
"I've been in here half an hour before you come," ​he went on. "And I can tell you, sir, I was mighty sorry to see them bringin' both you gentlemen in. Whatever happens to me, I said, they've got clear away. It never kind of struck me that the fog was going to worry you."
"Why didn't you get away yourself, Jabez?" Harkness asked him.
"They was down on me about an hour after. The fog had come on pretty thick and I was walkin' up and down out there thinkin'. I hadn't no more than another hour of it and pleasin' myself to think how mad that old devil would be when he'd found out what had happened and me safe in my own house with the mother, when all of a sudden I hear the car snortin'. 'Somethin' up,' I says, and three seconds later, as you might say, they was on me. If it hadn't been for that fog I might of got clear, but they was on me before I knew it. I had a bit of a struggle with they dirty stinkin' foreigners, but they got a lot of dirty tricks an Englishman would be ashamed of using. Anyway they had me down on the ground pretty quick and hurt me too.
"They trussed me up like a fowl, carried me into the hall, and didn't the old red-headed devil spit and curse? You've never seen nothing like it, sir. Sure raving mad he was that time all right. And he came and kicked me on the face and pulled my beard and spat in my eyes. I don't know what's coming to us right now, but I pray the Almighty ​Father to give me just one turn with my fist. I'll land him.
"Then, sir, they carried me upstairs and tumbled me into a dark room. There I was for I wouldn't like to say how long. Then they came in and took my things off me, the dirty foreigners. It's only a foreigner would think of a thing like that. I struggled a bit, but what's the use? They put their thumb in your back and they've got you. Then they tied me up here. I had to laugh, I did really. Did you ever see such a comic picture as all three of us without a stitch between us tied up here at six in the morning?
"When I tell mother about it she'll laugh all right. Like the show down to St. Ives when they have the boxing. I suppose we'll be getting out of this all serene, sir, won't we?"
"Of course we will," said Dunbar. "Don't you worry, Jabez. He's been doing all this to frighten us. He daren't touch us really. Why, he'll have the county about his ears as it is. Don't you worry."
"Thank you, sir," said Jabez, still moving from side to side within the bands, "because you see, sir, I wouldn't like anything to happen to me just now. Mother's expectin' an addition to the family in a month or so and there's six on 'em already, an' it needs a bit of doing looking after them all. I wouldn't have been working for this dirty black​guard here if it hadn't been for there being so many of us—not that I'd have one of them away if you understand me, sir."
"You needn't be afraid, Jabez," Dunbar said. "When we get out of this Mr. Harkness and I will see that you never have any anxiety again. You've been a wonderful friend to us to-night and we're not likely to forget it."
"Oh, don't you mistake me, sir," said Jabez. "It wasn't no help I was asking for. I'm doing very well with the boat and the potatoes. It was only I was thinking I wouldn't like nothing exactly to happen to me along of this crazy lunatic here if you understand me, sir.... I'm not so sure if they give me time I couldn't get through these bits of rope here. I'm pretty strong in the arm, or used to be—not so dusty even now. If I could work at them a bit——"
The door opened and Crispin came in.
He appeared to Harkness as he stepped in, quietly closing the door behind him, like some strange creature of a dream. He seemed himself, in the way that he moved with his eyes nearly closed, somnambulistic. He was wearing now only his white silk pyjamas, and of these the sleeves were rolled up showing his fat white arms. His red hair stood on end like an ill-fitting wig. In one hand he carried a curved knife with a handle of worked gold.
​In the room, blazing with sunlight, he was like a creature straight from the boards of some neighbouring theatre, even to the white powder that lay in dry flakes upon his face.
He opened his eyes, staring at the sunlight, and in their depths Harkness saw the strangest mingling of terror, pathos, eager lust, and a bewildered amazement, as though he were tranced. The gaze with which he turned to Harkness had in it a sudden appeal; then that appeal sank like light quenched by water.
He was wrung up on the instant to intensest excitement. His whole body trembled. His mouth opened as though he would speak, then closed again.
He came close to Harkness. He put out his hand and touched his neck.
"We are alone," he said, in his soft beautiful voice. He stroked Harkness's neck. The soft boneless fingers. Harkness looked at him, and, strangely, at that moment their eyes were very close to one another. They looked at one another gently. In Harkness's eyes was no malice; in Crispin's that strange mingling of lust and unhappiness.
Harkness only said: "Crispin, whatever you do to us leave that girl alone. I beg you leave her...."
He closed his eyes then. God helping him he would not speak another word. But a triumphant ​exultation surged through him because he knew that he was not afraid.
There was no fear in him. It was as though the warm sun beating on his body gave him courage.
Standing behind the safeguard of his closed eyes his real soul seemed to slip away, to run down the circular staircase into the hall and pass happily into the garden, down the road to the sea.
His soul was free and Crispin's was imprisoned.
He heard Crispin's voice: "Will you admit now that I have you in my hand? If I touch you here how you will bleed—bleed to death if I do not prevent it. Do you remember Shylock and his pound of flesh? 'Oh! upright Judge!' But there is no judge here to stay me!"
The knife touched him. He felt it as though it had been a wasp's sting—a small cut it must be—and suddenly there was the cool trickle of blood down his skin. Then his right shoulder—a prick! Now a cut again on his arm. Stings—nothing more. But the end had really come then at last? His hands beneath the bonds moved suddenly of their own impulse. It was not natural not to strive to be free, to fight for his life.
He opened his eyes. He was bleeding from five or six little cuts. Crispin was standing away from him. He saw that Dunbar, crimson in the face, was struggling frantically with his cords and was shouting. Jabez, too, was calling out. The room, ​hitherto so quiet, was alive with movement. Crispin now stood back from him watching him The sight of blood had completed what these weeks had been preparing.
With that first touch of the knife on Harkness's body Crispin's soul had died. The battle was over. There was an animal here clothed fantastically in human clothes like a monkey or a dog at a music-hall show. The animal capered, stood on its hind legs, mowed in the air with its hands. It crept up to Harkness and, whining like a dog, pricked him with the knife point now here, now there, in a hundred places.
Harkness looked out once more at the great window with its splash of glorious sky, then ceased to struggle with his cords. His lips moved in some prayer perhaps, and once more, surely now for the last time, he closed his eyes. He had a strange vision of all the moving world beyond that window. At that moment at the hotel the maids would be sweeping the corridors, people would be stirring and rubbing their eyes and looking at their watches; in the town family breakfasts would be preparing, men would be sauntering down the narrow streets to their work; the connection with the London train would be running in with the London papers, already the men and women would be in the fields, the women would be waiting perhaps for the fishing-fleet to ​come in, Mrs. Jabez would be at the cottage door looking up the road for her husband....
His heart pounded into his mouth, with a mighty impulse he drove it back. Crispin was laughing. The knife was raised. His face was wrinkled. He was running round the room, round and round, making with the knife strange movements in the air. He was whispering to himself. Round and round and round he ran, words pouring from his mouth in a thick unending stream. They were not words, they were sounds, and once and again a strange sigh like a catch of the breath, like a choke in the throat. He ran, bending, not looking at the three men, bending low as though as he ran he were looking for something on the floor.
Then quite suddenly he straightened himself, and with a growl and a snarl, the knife raised in one hand, hurled himself at Jabez.
All followed then quickly. The knife flashed in the sunlight. It seemed that the hands caught at Jabez's eyes, first one and then another, but there had been more than the hands because suddenly blood poured from those eyes, spouting over, covering the face, mingling with the beard.
With a great cry Jabez put forth his strength. Stung by agony to a power that he had never known until then his body seemed to rise from the ground, to become something superhuman, immortal. The great head towered, the limbs spread out, it seemed ​for a moment as though the pillar itself would fall.
The cord that tied him to the pillar snapped and his hands were free. He tottered, the blood pouring from his face. He moved, blindly, staggering. Not a sound had come from him since that first cry.
His hands flung out, and in another moment Crispin was caught into his arms. He raised him. The little fat hands fluttered. The knife flashed loosely and fell to the ground. The giant swung into the middle of the room blinded, but holding to himself ever tighter and ever tighter the short fat body.
Crispin, his head tossed back, his legs flung out in an agony now of terror, screamed with a strange shrill cry like a rabbit entrapped.
Jabez turned, and now he had Crispin's soft chest against his bleeding face, the arms fluttering above his head. As he turned his shoulder touched the glass of the window. He pushed backward with his arm and the window swung open, some of the broken glass tinkling to the ground. There was a great rush of air.
That strange thing, like no human body, the white silk, the brown slippers, the red hair, swung. For one second of time, suspended as it were on the thread of that long animal scream, so shrill and yet so thin and distant, the white face, its little eyes staring, the painted mouth open, hung towards Harkness. Then into the air like a coloured bundle of worthless junk, for a moment a dark shadow ​across the steeple of sunlight, and then down, down, into fathomless depths of air, leaving the space of sky stainless, the morning blue without taint....
Jabez stood for a moment facing them, his chest heaving in convulsive pants. Then crying, "My eyes! My eyes!" crumpled to the floor.
VI
First Harkness was conscious of a wonderful silence. Then into the silence, borne in on the back of the sea breeze, he heard the wild chattering of a multitude of birds. The room was filled with their chatter, up from the trees, crowding the room with their life.
Straight past the window, like an arrow shot from a bow, flashed a sea-gull. Then another more slowly wheeled down, curving against the blue like a wave released into air.
He recognized all these things, and then once again that wonderful blessed stillness. All was peace, all repose. He might rest for ever.
After, it seemed, an infinity of time, and from a vast distance, he caught Dunbar's voice:
"... Jabez! Jabez! Jabez, old fellow! The man's fainted. Harkness, are you all right? Did he hurt you?"
"No," Harkness quietly answered. "He didn't hurt me. He meant to, though...." Then a green curtain of dark thick cloth swept through the ​heavens and caught him into its folds. He knew nothing more. The last thing he heard was the glorious happy chattering of the birds.
VII
He slowly climbed an infinity of stairs, up and up and up. The stairs were hard to climb, but he knew that at their summit there would be a glorious view, and, for that view, he would undergo any hardship. But oh! he was tired, desperately tired. He could hardly raise one foot above another.
He had been walking with his eyes closed because it was cooler that way. Then a bee stung him. Then another. On the chest. Now on the arm. Now a whole flight. He cried out. He opened his eyes.
He was lying on a bed. People were about him. He had been climbing those stairs naked. It would never do that those strangers should see him. He must speak of it. His hand touched cloth. He was wearing trousers. His chest was bare, and some one was bending over him touching places here and there on his body with something that stung. Not bees after all. He looked up with mildly wondering eyes and saw a face bending over him—a kindly bearded face, a face that he could trust. Not like—not like—that strange mask face of the Japanese. ... That other....
He struggled on to his elbow crying: "No, no. I ​can't any more. I've had enough. He's mad, I tell you——"
A kind rough voice said to him: "That's all right, my friend. That's all over. No harm done——"
My friend! That sounded good. He looked round him and in the distance saw Dunbar. He broke into smiles holding out his hand.
"Dunbar, old man! That's fine. So you're all right?'
Dunbar came over, sat on his bed, putting his arm around him.
"All right? I should think so. So are we all. Even Jabez isn't much the worse. That devil missed his eyes, thank heaven. He'll have two scars to the end of his time to remind him, though."
Harkness sat up. He knew now where he was, on a sofa in the hall—in the hall with the tattered banners and the clock that coughed like a dog. He looked at the clock—just a quarter to seven! Only three-quarters of an hour since that awful knock on the door.
Then he saw Hesther.
"Oh, thank God!" he whispered to himself. "Nunc dimittis...."
She came to him. The three sat together on the sofa, the bearded man (the doctor from the village under the cliff, Harkness afterwards found) standing back, looking at them, smiling.
​"Now tell me," Harkness said, looking at Dunbar, "the rest that I don't know."
"There isn't much to tell. We were only there another ten minutes. When you fainted off I felt a bit queer myself, but I just kept together, and then heard some one running up the stairs.
"I thought it was one of the Japs returning, but there was a great banging on the door and then shouting in a good old Cornish accent. I called back that I was tied up in there and that they must break in the door. That they did and burst in—two fishermen and old Possiter the policeman from Duntrent. He's somewhere about the house now with two of the Treliss policemen. Well, it seems that a fellow. Jack Curtis, was going up the hill to his morning work in the Creppit fields above the wood here when he heard a strange cry, and, turning the corner of the road, finds on the path above the rocks, Crispin—pretty smashed up you know. He ran—only a yard or two—to the Possiters' cottage. Possiter was having his breakfast and was up here in no time. They got into the house through a window and saw the two Japanese clearing off up the back garden. Curtis chased them but they beat him and vanished into the wood. They stopped two other men who were passing and then came on Hesther tied up in the library. She sent them to the Tower."
​"Well—and then?" said Harkness.
"There isn't much more. Except this. They got up the doctor, had poor old Jabez's face looked to and cleared him off down to his cottage, were examining your cuts—all this down here. Suddenly a car comes up to the door and in there bursts—young Crispin! The two Treliss policemen had turned up three minutes earlier in their car and were here alone except for Possiter examining Crispin Senior—who was pretty well smashed to pieces I can tell you.
"Crispin Junior breaks through, gives one look at his father, shouts out some words that no one can understand, puts a revolver to his temple and blows the top of his head off before any one can stop him. Topples right over his father's body. The end of the house of Crispin!
"I saw all this from the staircase. I was just coming down after looking at you. I heard the shot, saw old Possiter jump back and got down in time to help them clear it all up.
"No one knows where he'd been. To Truro, I imagine, looking for all of us. He must have cared for that madman, cared for him or been hypnotised by him—I don't know. At least he didn't hesitate——"
"And now, sir, would you mind telling me...?" said the stout red-faced Treliss policeman, advancing towards them.
VIII
He was free; it was from the moment that the red-faced policeman, smiling upon him benevolently, had informed him that, for the moment, he had had from him all that he needed, his one burning and determined impulse—to get away from that hall, that garden, that house with the utmost possible urgency.
He had not wished even to stay with Hesther and Dunbar. He would see them later in the day, would see them, please God, many many times in the years to come.
What he wanted was to be alone—absolutely alone.
The cuts on the upper part of his body were nothing—a little iodine would heal them soon; it seemed that there had come to him no physical harm—only an amazing all-invading weariness. It was not like any weariness that he had ever before known. He imagined—he had had no positive experience—that it resembled the conditions of some happy doped trance, some dream-state in which the world was a vision and oneself a disembodied spirit. It was as though his body, stricken with an agony of weariness, was waiting for his descent, but his soul remained high in air in a bell of crystal glass beyond whose surface the colours of the world floated about him.
​He left them all—the doctor, the policeman, Dunbar and Hesther. He did not even stop at Jabez's cottage to inquire. That was for later. As half-past seven struck from the church tower below the hill he flung the gate behind him, crossed the road, and struck off onto the Downs above the sea.
By a kind of second sight he knew exactly where he would go. There was a path that crossed the Downs that ran slipping into a little cove, across whose breast a stream trickled, then up on to the Downs again, pushing up over fields of corn, past the cottage gardens up to the very gate of the hotel.
It was all mapped in his mind in bright clear-painted colours.
The world was indeed as though it had only that morning been painted in green and blue and gold. While the fog hung, under its canopy the master-artist had been at work. Now from the shoulder of the Downs a shimmer of mist tempered the splendour of the day. Harkness could see it all. The long line of sea on whose blue surface three white sails hovered, the bend of the Downs where it turned to deeper green, the dip of the hill out of whose hollow the church spire like a spear steel-tipped gesticulated, the rising hill with the wood and the tall white tower, the green Downs far to the right where tiny sheep like flowers quivered in the early morning haze.
All was peace. The rustling whisper of the sea. ​the breeze moving through the taller grasses, the hum of tiny insects, a lark singing, two dogs barking in rivalry, a scent of herb and salt and fashioned soil, all these things were peace.
Harkness moved a free man as he had never been in all his life as yet. He was his own master and God's servant too. Life might be a dream—it seemed to him that it was—but it was a dream with a meaning, and the events of that night had given him the key.
His egotism was gone. He wanted nothing for himself any more. He was, and would always be, himself, but also he had lost himself in the common life of man. He was himself because his contact with beauty was his own. Beauty belonged to all men in common, and it was through beauty that they came to God, but each man found beauty in his own way, and, having found it, joined his portion of it to the common stock.
He had been shy of man and was shy no longer; he had been in love, was in love now, but had surrendered it; he had been afraid of physical pain and was afraid no longer; he had looked his enemy in the eyes and borne him no ill-will.
But he was conscious of none of these things—only of the freshness of the morning, of the scents that came to him from every side, and of this strange disembodied state so that he seemed to float, like gossamer, on air.
​He went down the path to the little cove. He watched the ripple of water advance and retreat. The stream of fresh water that ran through it was crystal clear and he bent down, made a cup with his hands and drank. He could see the pebbles, brown and red and green like jewels, and thin spires of green weed swaying to and fro.
He buried his face in the water, letting it wash his eyes, his forehead, his nostrils, his mouth.
He stood up and drank in the silence. The ripple of the sea was like the touch on his arm of a friend. He kneeled down and let the fine sand run, hot, through his fingers. Then he moved on.
He climbed the hill: a flock of sheep passed him, huddling together, crying, nosing the hedge. The sun touched the outline of their fleece to shining light. He cried out to the shepherd:
"A fine morning!"
"Aye, a beautiful morning!"
"A nasty fog last night."
"Aye, aye—all cleared off now though. It'll be a warm day."
The dog, his tongue out, his eyes shining, ran barking hither, thither. They passed over the hill, the sheep like a cloud against the green.
He pushed up, the breeze blowing more strongly now on his forehead.
He reached the cottage gardens, and the smell of roses was once more thick in his nostrils. The ​chimneys were sending silver skeins of smoke into the blue air. Bacon smells and scent of fresh bread came to him.
He was at the hotel gates. Oh! but he was weary now! Weary and happy. He stumbled up the path smelling the roses again. Into the hall. The gong was ringing for breakfast. Children, crying out and laughing, raced down the stairs, passed him. He reached his room. He opened the door. How quiet it was! Just as he had left it.
Ah! there was the tree of the "St. Gilles," and there the grave friendly eyes of Strang leaning over the etching-table to greet him.
Just as they were—but he!—not as he had been! He caught his face in the glass smiling idiotically.
He staggered to his bed, flung himself down still smiling. His eyes closed. There floated up to him a face—a little white face crowned with red hair, but not evil now, not animal—friendly, lonely, asking for something....
He smiled, promising something. Lifted his hand. Then his hand fell, and he sank deep, deep, deep into happy, blissful slumber.
THE END.