by Guy Thorne
CHAPTER THREE
Rolston's revelation, utterly unexpected, came to me with the suddennessof a blow over the heart. For a few seconds I was incapable ofconsecutive thought, though I don't think my face showed anything of it.
The lad was watching me anxiously and I had to do something with him atonce. Fortunately, I thought of the obvious thing.
"Leave me now, Mr. Rolston," I said. "Go to the room down the passagemarked 'Mr. Williams' on the door, and ask him to put you into a room byyourself. Then please, as quickly as possible, write me out a newspaper'story' setting out fully all the facts you have told me. Remember thatyou've got to interest the public in the very first paragraph in what isundoubtedly a most sensational piece of news."
"How many words, sir?" he asked me--I liked that, it was professional.
"A thousand. And when you've done that bring it straight in to me."
He was out of the room in a minute and I sat down to think.
In the first place I didn't doubt his story for a moment, there wassomething transparently honest about the boy, and, unless I was verymuch mistaken, there was great ability in him also. When there was timefor it I expected I should hear a breathless story of his adventures inthe search of this stuff. He had hinted that his life had been indanger.... I began to think--hard. Assuming that was true, that Morsehad been seized with this extraordinary whim, how did I stand in thematter? At a first view it appeared that I was rather badly snookered.Morse, always assuming young Rolston was correct, had spent a hugefortune in keeping his secret. Moreover, the Government was in it withhim. It would hardly be the way to recommend myself to Juanita'sfather--whose good opinion I desired to gain more than that of any otherperson in the world, save one--by giving his cherished secret to theworld in order to increase the prestige and circulation of the _EveningSpecial_.
If I did publish it, it was odds on that I never saw Juanita again. Onething occurred to me with relief--it wasn't a case in which I _had_ topublish, in the public interest. By suppressing news I was not failingmy duty as an editor, only losing a big scoop, though that was hardenough. What was to be done? As I asked myself that question I confessthat for a brief moment--thank Heaven it did not last long--it occurredto me that I was now in a position to put considerable pressure upon themillionaire. I could hold out inducements....
Fortunately, I crushed all such ugly thoughts without much effort, andthen the real solution came. When I had questioned Rolston a little moreand was bedrock certain that he was right, I would see Morse at once andtell him all I had learnt without reserve. I would present the thing tohim as one in which I claimed no personal interest, and my attitudewould be that I felt he ought to be warned. I would engage to publishnothing without his wish, but he must look to it--if he wished topreserve his secret--that other people were not upon the same track.That could do me no harm whatever. It was the straight thing to do, andat the same time it would certainly help me with him. I thought, andthink still, that this was a fair advantage to take. It is only a foolwho throws away a legitimate weapon in love or war.
I rang up the Ritz Hotel and asked for Mr. Morse. There was some littledelay at the Hotel Bureau, and then I was switched on to the telephoneof the private apartments.
"Who's that?" asked a cold, characterless voice.
"Sir Thomas Kirby of the _Evening Special_ speaking. Who are you?"
"Secretary to Mr. Morse"--now the voice was a little warmer.
"Is Mr. Morse at home?"
"I can see that he gets a message very shortly, Sir Thomas, if thematter is of importance."
"It is of very considerable importance or I shouldn't have troubled toring Mr. Morse up, especially as I shall be meeting him in a day or twoat a social engagement."
"Wait a moment, please."
I knew by this that I had struck lucky and that Morse was in the hotel,and within a minute I heard his calm, resonant voice in my ear.
"Good afternoon, Kirby. My secretary says you wanted to speak to me."
"Thank you, I am most anxious to have a conversation."
"Well, shall we hold the wire?"
"I daren't discuss my business over the wire, Mr. Morse."
There was a short silence and then:
"Please forgive me, but you know how busy I am. Could you give me theleast indication of what you wish to talk to me about?"
I had an inspiration.
"Towers," I said in a low voice.
A quiet "Ah!" came to me over the wire, and then:
"I think I understand, Sir Thomas, you wish--?"
"To tell you something that I feel sure you ought to know, in your owninterests."
"Pass, _Friend_!" was the reply, followed by a little chuckle in which Ithought--I might have been mistaken--I detected a note of relief.
"When shall we meet?" I asked.
"Look here, Kirby," was the reply, "can you come here at elevento-night? I'll give orders that you are to be taken up to my rooms atonce. I can't guarantee that I shall be in at the moment. I also havesomething of considerable importance on hand, but if you will wait--I'mafraid I'm asking a great deal--I'll be certain to be with you sooner orlater. My daughter may be at home and, if she is, no doubt she'll giveyou a cup of coffee or something while you wait. Do you think you canmanage this?"
"I shall be delighted," I answered, trying to control my voice, and Ihardly heard the quiet "Good-by" that concluded our conversation.
Well, I had done better for myself than I had hoped, and, so vain areall of us, I felt a kind of satisfaction in having "played the game" andat the same time won the trick. I did not reflect till afterwards thatif Morse had been some one else and not the father of Juanita, I shouldnot have hesitated for a moment to fill the _Special_ with scareheadlines.
I sat down again in my chair, ordered a cup of tea, drank it withsplendid visions of a _tete-a-tete_ with Juanita that very night, andwas leaning back in my chair lost in a rosy dream when the door openedand the odd little man with the red hair appeared at my side, holdingtwo or three sheets of typewritten copy.
"The story, sir," he said.
I took it from him mechanically, it would never be published now, in allprobability, but it would at least serve to show Morse how much I knew.I began to read.
At the end of the first paragraph I knew that the stuff was going to beall right. At the end of the second and third I sat up in my chair andabandoned my easy attitude. When I had read the whole of the thousandwords I knew that I had discovered one of the best journalistic brainsof the day! The boy could not only ferret out news, but he could_write_! Every word fell with the right ring and chimed. He was terse,but vivid as an Alpine sunset. He made one powerful word do the work often. He suggested atmosphere by a semicolon, and there were feweradjectives in his stuff than one would have believed possible. Therewere not four other men in Fleet Street who could have done as well. Andbeyond this, beyond my pleasure at the discovery of a genius, thearticle had a peculiar effect upon me. I felt that somehow or other thematter was not going to die with my interview to-night at the RitzHotel. The room in which I sat widened. There was a glimpse of farhorizons....
I folded the copy carefully and placed it in my breast pocket.
"Mr. Rolston," I said, "I engage you from this moment as a member of myregular staff. Your salary to begin with will be ten pounds a week, andof course your expenses that you may incur in the course of your work.Do you accept these terms?"
Poor Bill Rolston! I mustn't give away the man who afterwards became mymost faithful friend and most daring companion in hours of frightfulperil, and a series of incredible adventures. Still, if he _did_ burstinto tears that's nothing against him, for I didn't realize tillsometime afterwards that he was half starved and at the very end of histether.
He pulled himself together in a moment or two, took a cup of tea and letme cross-question him. What he told me in the next half-hour I cannotset down here. It will appear in its proper place, but it is enough tosay that in the whole
of my experience I never listened to a moremysterious and more enthralling recital.
I think that from that moment I realized that my fate was to be in someway linked with the three towers on Richmond Hill, and the sense ofexcitement which had been with me all the afternoon, grew till it wasalmost unbearable.
"Now, first of all," I said, when he had told me everything, "you arenot to breathe a word of this to any human soul without my permission.While you have been absent I have already been taking steps, the natureof which I shall not tell you at present. Meanwhile, lock up everythingin your heart."
I had a flash of foresight, well justified in the event.
"I may want you at any moment," I told him, "and therefore, with yourpermission, I'm going to put you up at my flat in Piccadilly, where youwill be well looked after and have everything you want. I'll telephonethrough to my man, Preston, giving him full instructions, and you hadbetter take a taxi and get there at once. Preston will send a messengerto your lodgings to bring up any clothes and so forth you may require."
He blushed rosy red, and I wondered why, for his story had been told tome in a crisp, man-of-the-world manner that made him seem far older thanhe was.
Then he shrugged his shoulders, put his hand in his trousers pocket andpulled out--one penny.
"All I have in the world," he said, with a rueful smile.
I scribbled an order on the cashier and told him to cash it in theoffice below, and, with a look of almost doglike fidelity and gratitude,the little fellow moved towards the door.
Just at that moment it opened and Julia Dewsbury came in.
Rolston's jaw dropped and his eyes almost started out of his head inamazement, and I saw a look come into my secretary's eyes that I shouldhave been glad to inspire in the eyes of one woman.
"There, there," I said, "be off with you, both of you. Miss Dewsbury,take Mr. Rolston, now a permanent member of the staff, into your ownroom and tell him something about the ways of the office."
For half an hour I walked up and down the editorial sanctum arranging mythoughts, getting everything clear cut, and when that was done Itelephoned to Arthur Winstanley, asking him, if he had nothingparticular on, to dine with me.
His reply was that he would be delighted, as he had nothing to do tilleleven o'clock, but that I must dine with him. "I have discovered adelightful little restaurant," he said, "which isn't fashionable yet,though it soon will be. Don't dress; and meet me at the Club athalf-past seven."
* * * * *
My dinner with Arthur can be related very shortly, for, while it hasdistinct bearing upon the story, it was only remarkable for oneincident, though, Heaven knows, that was important enough.
I met him at our Club in Saint James' and we walked together towardsSoho.
"You are going to dine," said Arthur, "at 'L'Escargot d'Or'--The GoldenSnail. It's a new departure in Soho restaurants, and only a few of usknow of it yet. Soon all the world will be going there, for the cookingis magnificent."
"That's always the way with these Soho restaurants, they beginwonderfully, are most beautifully select in their patrons, and then therush comes and everything is spoiled."
"I know, the same will happen here no doubt, though lower Bohemia willnever penetrate because the prices are going to be kept up; and thisplace will always equal one of the first-class restaurants in town.Well, how goes it?"
I knew what he meant and as we walked I told him, as in duty bound, allthere was to tell of the progress of my suit.
"Met her once," I said, "had about two minutes' talk. There's just achance, I am not certain, that I may meet her to-night, and not in acrowd--in which case you may be sure I shall make the very most of myopportunities. If this doesn't come off, I don't see any other chance ofreally getting to know her until September, at Sir Walter Stileman's,and I have to thank you for that invitation, Arthur."
He sighed.
"It's a difficult house to get into," he said, "unless you are one ofthe pukka shooting set, but I told old Sir Walter that, though youweren't much good in October and that pheasants weren't in your line,you were A1 at driven 'birds.'"
"But I can't hit a driven partridge to save my life, unless by afluke!"
"I know, Tom, I don't say that you'll be liked at all, but you won thetoss and by our bond we're bound to do all we can to give you youropportunity. I need hardly say that my greatest hope in life is thatshe'll have nothing whatever to say to you. And now let's change thatsubject--it's confounded thin ice however you look at it--and enjoy ourlittle selves. I have been on the 'phone with Anatole, and we are goingto _dine_ to-night, my son, really _dine_!"
The Golden Snail in a Soho side street presented no great front to theworld. There was a sign over a door, a dingy passage to be traversed,until one came to another door, opened it and found oneself in a long,lofty room shaped like a capital L. The long arm was the one at whichyou entered, the other went round a rectangle. The place was very simplydecorated in black and white. Tables ran along each side, and the onlydifference between it and a dozen other such places in the foreignquarter of London was that the seats against the wall were not of redplush but of dark green morocco leather. It was fairly full, of a mixedcompany, but long-haired and impecunious Bohemia was conspicuouslyabsent.
A table had been reserved for us at the other end opposite the door, sothat sitting there we could see in both directions.
We started with little tiny oysters from Belon in Brittany--I don'tsuppose there was another restaurant in London at that moment that wasserving them. The soup was asparagus cream soup of superlativeexcellence, and then came a young guinea-fowl stuffed with mushrooms,which was perfection itself.
"How on earth do you find these places, Arthur?" I asked.
"Well," he answered, "ever since I left Oxford I've been going aboutLondon and Paris gathering information of all sorts. I've lived amongthe queerest set of people in Europe. My father thinks I'm a waster, buthe doesn't know. My mother, angel that she is, understands me perfectly.She knows that I've only postponed going into politics until I have hadmore experience than the ordinary young man in my position gets. Iabsolutely refused to be shoved into the House directly I had come downwith my degree, the Union, and all those sort of blushing honors thickupon me. In a year or two you will see, Tom, and meanwhile here's theMoulin a Vent."
Anatole poured out that delightful but little known burgundy for ushimself, and it was a wine for the gods.
"A little interval," said Arthur, "in which a cigarette is clearlyindicated, and then we are to have some slices of bear ham, stewed inchampagne, which I _rather_ think will please you."
We sat and smoked, looking up the long room, when the swing doors at theend opened and a man and a girl entered. They came down towards us,obviously approaching a table reserved for them in the short arm of therestaurant, and I noticed the man at once.
For one thing he was in full evening dress, whereas the only otherdiners who were in evening kit at all wore dinner jackets and blackties. He was a tall man of about fifty with wavy, gray hair. His facewas clean shaved, and a little full. I thought I had never seen ahandsomer man, or one who moved with a grace and ease which were soperfectly unconscious. The girl beside him was a pretty enough youngcreature with a powdered face and reddened lips--nothing about her inthe least out of the ordinary. When he came opposite our table, his facelighted up suddenly. He smiled at Arthur, and opened his mouth as if tospeak.
Arthur looked him straight in the face with a calm and stony stare--Inever saw a more cruel or explicit cut.
The man smiled again without the least bravado or embarrassment, gave analmost imperceptible bow and passed on towards his table without any onebut ourselves having noticed what occurred. The whole affair was aquestion of some five or six seconds.
He sat down with his back to us.
"Who is he?" I asked of Arthur.
He hesitated for a moment and then he gave a little shudder of disgust.I thought, also, tha
t I saw a shade come upon his face.
"No one you are ever likely to meet in life, Tom," he replied, "unlessyou go to see him tried for murder at the Old Bailey some day. He is afellow called Mark Antony Midwinter."
"A most distinguished looking man."
"Yes, and I should say he stands out from even his own associates in apreeminence of evil. Tom," he went on, with unusual gravity, "deep downin the soul of every man there's some foul primal thing, some troglodytethat, by the mercy of God, never awakes in most of us. But when it doesin some, and dominates them, then a man becomes a fiend, lost, hopeless,irremediable. That man Midwinter is such an one. You could not find hislike in Europe. He walks among his fellows with a panther in his soul;and the high imagination, the artistic power in him makes him doublydangerous. I could tell you details of his career which would make yourblood run cold--if it were worth while. It isn't.
"But I perceive our bear's flesh stewed in Sillery is approaching. Let'sforget this intrusion."
Well, we dined after the fashion of Sybaris, went to the Club for anhour and smoked, and then Arthur returned to his chambers in JermynStreet to dress. I went back to mine, found from Preston that little Mr.Rolston was safely in bed and fast asleep, changed into a dinner jacketand walked the few yards to the Ritz Hotel, my heart beating high withhope.
I was shown up at once to the floor inhabited by the millionaire, andknew, therefore, that I was expected. The man who conducted me knockedat a door, opened it, and I entered. I found myself in a comfortableroom with writing tables and desks, telephone and a typewriter. A youngman of two or three and twenty was seated at one of the tables smoking acigarette.
He jumped up at once.
"Oh, Sir Thomas," he said, "Mr. Morse has not yet returned, and I thinkit quite likely he may be some little time. But the Senora Balmaceda andMiss Morse are in the drawing-room and perhaps you would like to--"
"I shall be delighted," I said, cutting him short, but who on earth wasSenora Balmaceda? The chaperone, I supposed, confound it!
The obliging young man led me through two or three very gorgeouslyfurnished rooms and at last into a large apartment brilliantly lit fromthe roof, and with flowers everywhere. At one end was a little alcove.
"I have brought Sir Thomas, Senora," he said, looking about the room,but there was no one remotely resembling a Senora there. Nevertheless,directly he spoke, some one stepped out of the conservatory from behinda tropical shrub in a green tub, and came towards us.
It was Juanita, and she was alone. The secretary withdrew and I advancedto meet her.
"How do you do, Sir Thomas," she said in her beautiful, bell-like voice."Father said you might be coming and I'm afraid he won't be in just yet.And it's so tiresome, poor Auntie has gone to bed with a bad headache."
"I'm very sorry, Miss Morse," I answered as we shook hands, "I must dowhat I can to take her place," and then I looked at her perfectlystraight.
Yes, I dared to look into those marvelous limpid eyes and I know she sawthe hunger in mine, for she took her hand away a little hurriedly.
"What a charming room! Is that a little conservatory over there? It mustlook out over the Green Park?"
"Yes, it does," she replied almost in a whisper.
"Then do let's sit there, Miss Morse."
Was I acting in a play or what on earth gave me this sense of confidenceand strength? Heaven only knows, but I never faltered from the firstmoment that I entered the room. Oh, the gods were with me that night!
We went to the alcove without a further word, and she sat down upon acouch. I have described her once, at Lady Brentford's ball, but at thismoment I am not going to attempt to describe her at all.
For half a minute we said nothing and then I took her hand and pressedit to my lips.
"Juanita," I said, "there are mysterious currents and forces in thisworld stronger than we are ourselves. This is the third time that I'veseen you, but no power on earth can prevent me from telling you--"
She was looking at me with parted lips and eyes suffused with an angelictenderness and modesty. My voice broke in my throat with unutterablejoy. I was certain that she loved me.
And then, just as I was about to say the sealing words--remember, I hadinvoked the gods--there was the sound of a door opening sharply.
I stiffened and rose to my feet. From where we sat we could survey thewhole, rich room. Through the open door--I must say there were severaldoors in the room--came a tall man, _walking backwards_.
He was in full evening dress with a camellia in his button-hole.
He stepped back lightly with cat-like steps, his arms a little curved,his fingers all extended.
I saw his face. It was convulsed with the satanic fury of an oldJapanese mask. Line for line, it was just like that, and it was also theface of the bland and smiling man I had seen two hours before at therestaurant of The Golden Snail.
I felt something warm and trembling at my side. Juanita was clinging tome and I put my arm around her waist. Through the open door there nowcame another figure.
A quiet, resonant voice cut into the tense, horrible silence.
"Quick, Mark Antony Midwinter--that's your door, quick--quick!"
The big man paused for an instant and a hissing spitting noise came fromhis mouth.
There was a sharp crack and a great mirror on the wall shivered inpieces. There was another, and then the big man turned and literallybounded over the soft carpet, flung himself through the door anddisappeared.
Gideon Mendoza Morse advanced into the drawing-room, smiling to himselfand looking down at a little steel-blue automatic in his hand.
Then Juanita and I came out of the alcove, hand in hand, and he saw us.