by Jerry
He trusts me; he tells me everything. His brain is wonderful, but his heart is a little child’s. When he knows all—for I shall confess all—he will forgive me.
I am too well acquainted with you and your purpose to think that you will yield. I know you now for an enemy; you need not have told me that. You offer me one more chance; I decline it. You hint that you will find means to compel me to abide by our compact. That is impossible. You speak of the penalty that I shall incur. I repeat that your threats will not intimidate me.
You will understand why I prefer to leave this letter unsigned.
(Ethergram from Wilhelm von Beaulieu to Professor Clinton-Grey.)
I AM right and you are wrong. Beware the woman; she is a traitress. Am writing.
VON BEAULIEU.
(Ethergram from Professor Clinton-Grey to Wilhelm von Beaulieu)
YOU are an insulting ass. I married Alexandra this morning. To-morrow we start.
CLINTON-GREY.
PART II.
GOD DISPOSES.
(From Professor Clinton-Grey to Wilhelm von Beaulieu.)
MY DEAR VON BEAULIEU,—No doubt your eyes were amongst the first to see the news. My undertaking has ended in these frightful episodes.
Could anything more extraordinary be imagined—anything more terrible? I am half stunned; I keep thinking that I am in a nightmare’s grip, that presently I shall awake. All round me are ethergrams and letters; for the world which was so hostile to my plans shows now a face of charity and sympathy. I am going to tell you exactly what happened.
When I had made Alexandra my wife I promptly dismissed the subject from my mind, since my proposed flight through space required much preparation. I did not see Alexandra for some five or six hours after leaving the church; then, having a spare quarter of an hour, I went in search of her. She was not in the house; no one had any clear idea as to what had become of her. I went out, expecting to find her in the near neighbourhood.
Evening was over the downs. My house is built in quite a solitary part; it is always so still there that the tinkle of a sheep’s bell, the lowing of oxen, the sound of a motor horn, or the whirr of an aeroplane, can be heard with distinctness. There is a clump of wood behind the house; the sun fires it in the morning, in the evening it becomes black and forbidding.
Suddenly I perceived two figures pass across an opening in a hedge, and I recognised my wife, who was walking with a man whose face I failed to see at that distance. First my curiosity was aroused, then a jealous feeling. To crush the second I resolved to satisfy the first. Moving quietly across a stretch of down-land, I gained the near side of the hedge. I had no right whatever to play the part of spy; but I was a little piqued by my wife’s absence at that time, and I yielded to a weakness that was unworthy of me.
I moved with caution round the hedge, which was being stripped of its leaves by the autumn decay. By that time it was almost dark. The rooks in the wood uttered occasional caws that sounded like sardonic laughs. Suddenly I heard my wife’s voice; she was speaking in anger.
“If you have come so far to make me change my purpose, you have come in vain. I will have nothing more to do with you, neither must you attempt to see me again.”
When I heard those words the slumbering jealousy broke into a flame. I suffered a dreadful pang. Then the man spoke.
“It is all very well for you to adopt this high tone towards me. You know that you are pledged.”
Astonishment held me rigid. I had recognised the voice. The speaker was Justus Oppenheim. What was he doing there? What right had my wife given him that he dared to address her in this way? Her answer came quickly.
“I reject our compact which has made me to despise myself.”
“And you have informed Clinton-Grey of the matter?” said Oppenheim, and his voice was shaking with passion.
“That does not concern you,” replied my wife haughtily.
“Look here, if you imagine that I shall let you alone, you are vastly mistaken. When I tell your husband that you tried to win, in order to betray, him, that for a certain sum you were pledged to give to me his secret, what will he say, what will he do?”
At these words a sudden trembling seized me, a deadly sickness. Would she deny the charge? No, she was silent, silent!
“Come, come,” went on this pretty villain. “It is not too late even now. Give me the help I want, and I in turn will give you, here, in banknotes, the sum of one thousand pounds. He need never know. I swear to you that I will keep silent.”
“You have my answer. Why will you not go?” cried my wife, stamping her foot, “Two thousand, then.”
“Not for two millions.”
He drew a long breath. “Very well,” said he. “Be sure I shall not let the matter rest here.”
It was then that I interfered. Calling out the scoundrel’s name, I forced a way through the hedge, cutting myself somewhat in the process. Oppenheim turned on me like a wild beast.
“Eavesdropper!” he snarled.
“You rascal!” I retorted. “Get off my grounds, or I will summon a keeper and have you flung into that ditch.”
For answer he snatched at something in his pocket. I saw a dull gleam; then my wife uttered a piercing cry, and threw herself before me. There was a red spurt of flame, a whip-like crack. The ball which was meant for me entered my wife’s body. I felt her shudder, heard her moan. Then Oppenheim was swallowed by the dark night, and I was left, crying loudly for help, not daring to leave the dear form in my arms. Her face was ashy white, and she kept gasping my name. God! it was awful.
Twenty minutes later my wife was under the surgeon’s care. She was in that condition when life and death hang equal in the balance.
Then, my dear friend, I went mad. You know that I am by nature of a mild disposition, holding it supreme foolishness to waste in any emotional excess that nerve force which is the stay of all character; but I will confess that on this occasion I gave full liberty to my passions. My one desire was to find Justus Oppenheim, that I might kill him. I rushed from the house with this intent. A wonderful scene met my eyes.
The police had been notified of the matter, and a dozen officers were already on the roads on motor cycles. News of the affair had flown here, there, and everywhere. It had reached Brighton, in which town for hours past a stream of visitors had been gathering with the purpose of witnessing the commencement of my flight that was to take place from the grounds without my house. And all these people—an enormous crowd, mounted on bicycles, motor cycles, automobiles of every possible description, and on horseback—had come in haste to the scene of the crime that they might assist in discovering the villain who had done me so great a wrong, and who had disappointed them of the spectacle which they had come from all parts of the country to observe.
I wish that you could have seen that wonderful sight. Far over the winding roads, amongst the down-land, shone thousands of lamps, illumining the otherwise black night. The tinkle of bells, the tooting of motor horns, sounded incessantly. The deep hum of the voices of that immense gathering drowned the cry of the sea that was beating a full tide against the chalk cliffs. The darkened fields swarmed with searchers bearing lanterns. What would happen if this angry host caught Oppenheim? They would tear him to pieces.
Unwilling to mingle with this army of sympathetic friends, I resolved to wait and abide events, but insensibly the excitement of the search drew me from the house. The flames from a burning barn were reflected against the stars. The building had been fired by some madman under the impression that the fugitive was concealed there. The handful of police were now looking for the fellow who had destroyed the barn.
An hour passed, and Oppenheim had not been discovered. Suddenly a man’s voice addressed me.
“Is that you, Professor?”
I at once recognised Inspector Reddish, of the police. He was on horseback. A body of men was under his control, but he had lost them in the darkness and confusion. He sat with his horse backed against a brier
hedge, and he wiped his face, which was streaming with perspiration.
“Ever see anything like it?” said he.
I was about to make some remark when a harsh, deep-throbbing sound pulsated through the still air. The inspector turned his face to the sky, expecting to perceive an aerocar driven by a petrol motor; but nothing met his gaze save a multitude of stars in the quiet heavens.
“That’s funny,” he observed, when I interrupted him with a shout.
“Oh, fools! fools!” I cried out.
“What is the matter?”
“That sound! I should know it amongst a hundred!”
He appeared to snatch at my thought. “What, you believe——”
“That someone is starting the electric motors of my airship!”
“And that someone is possibly——”
“Is most certainly Oppenheim himself—the man we seek. For pity’s sake, quick! quick!”
“Will you get up behind me?” he asked, and I at once accepted the offer. It was only a quarter of a mile back to my house, and the horse covered the distance in a few minutes. An avenue of trees led to the building. We tore along it. At the house I dismounted. “This way!” I cried, Tuning round to the out-building where I had constructed my airship.
The latter had been run out from the shed that evening into an open meadow. A canvas tent had been roughly erected to protect it from the dew. This was thrown down. A terrible noise issued from the bowels of the airship. I had but a single hope—that Oppenheim’s knowledge of the intricacies of the huge machine would not prove sufficient to enable him to start it. When at a distance of fifty yards we saw the arc light of one of the airship’s lamps flame into the opaque gloom. At the same instant the pounding of the impatient motors was redoubled.
“Too late! He’s off!” I cried, shaking my fists in impotent rage.
A loud laugh of mockery rang out. Oppenheim had beaten us.
The inspector so far forgot himself as to curse with vigour.
Then something occurred which was unexpected, unparalleled, frightful. The airship leaped into space—higher—higher—moving at a great velocity, silhouetted against the stars like an enormous bird. It seemed at that moment that the fugitive was safe from justice, that no power could avail against him. But he was far from understanding properly the complex mechanism of my airship, and—possibly in an endeavour to attain a greater speed, or to check the progression which he had already attained—he contrived, in his haste or his nervousness, to give full vent to the motive-force that could impel the machine with the pace and power of a meteor.
The result was that the airship became a projectile; that the thin air, which is so impalpable to our touch, resisted the tremendous velocity of the flying machine; that the friction developed by that resistance heated the metal—red hot, white hot—and finally dissolved it in a streak of glowing vapour!
And as we stood gazing into the eastern skies, from a point between Andromeda and the Pleiades a star fell. It was my airship, with its occupant, fused in ten seconds of time into nothingness!
The inspector fell face downwards, burying his face in his horse’s mane, groaning with sheer horror. I dropped upon my knees, yet I was too appalled to think, to speak, to pray.
* * * * *
I will anticipate your question, my dear von Beaulieu. You are saying, “Will these misadventures daunt him? Will he resign this project that might have made us masters of space and time?”
These few additional lines to my long letter are penned after the lapse of three days. My dear wife is now out of danger, and her complete recovery is promised. She faced death that she might save me. How much care, how deep a devotion do I owe her.
Secondly, the end of Justus Oppenheim, while it has not shaken my nerve, has yet made me pause. The upper void swallowed him so easily; the forces of space annihilated him as callously as we destroy, by a movement of the hand, the tip of phosphorus on a match. And I ask myself that old question—Shall we not make the present bright rather than dream of gilding the future? I may be wrong. Alexander, when he sighed for new worlds to conquer, may have shown the greater spirit. Anyhow, my project is shelved for a long time to come.
Do not be angry and call me hard names. I send you a quotation from a nineteenth century poet, which will help to explain my present mood: “The whole round world is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”—My dear von Beaulieu, Yours, etc.,
JAMES CLINTON-GREY.
THE SULTANA’S DREAM
Roquia Sakhawat Hossein
ONE EVENING I was lounging in an easy chair in my bedroom and thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood. I am not sure whether I dozed off or not. But, as far as I remember, I was wide awake. I saw the moonlit sky sparkling with thousands of diamondlike stars, very distinctly.
All on a sudden a lady stood before me; how she came in, I do not know. I took her for my friend, Sister Sara.
‘Good morning,’ said Sister Sara. I smiled inwardly as I knew it was not morning, but starry night. However, I replied to her, saying, “How do you do?”
‘I am all right, thank you. Will you please come out and have a look at our garden?’
I looked again at the moon through the open window, and thought there was no harm in going out at that time. The men-servants outside were fast asleep just then, and I could have a pleasant walk with Sister Sara.
I used to have my walks with Sister Sara when we were at Darjeeling. Many a time did we walk hand in hand and talk lightheartedly in the botanical gardens there. I fancied Sister Sara had probably come to take me to some such garden, and I readily accepted her offer and went out with her.
When walking I found to my surprise that it was a fine morning. The town was fully awake and the streets alive with bustling crowds. I was feeling very shy, thinking I was walking in the street in broad daylight, but there was not a single man visible.
Some of the passers-by made jokes at me. Though I could not understand their language, yet I felt sure they were joking. I asked my friend, ‘What do they say?’
‘The women say that you look very mannish.’
‘Mannish?’ said I, ‘What do they mean by that?’
‘They mean that you are shy and timid like men.’
‘Shy and timid like men?’ It was really a joke. I became very nervous when I found that my companion was not Sister Sara but a stranger. Oh, what a fool had I been to mistake this lady for my dear old friend, Sister Sara.
She felt my fingers tremble in her hand, as we were walking hand in hand.
‘What is the matter, dear?’ she said affectionately.
‘I feel somewhat awkward,’ I said in a rather apologizing tone, ‘as being a purdahnishin woman I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled.’
‘You need not be afraid of coming across a man here. This is Ladyland, free from sin and harm. Virtue herself reigns here.’
By and by I was enjoying the scenery. Really it was very grand. I mistook a patch of green grass for a velvet cushion. Feeling as if I were walking on a soft carpet, I looked down and found the path covered with moss and flowers.
‘How nice it is,’ said I.
‘Do you like it?’ asked Sister Sara. (I continued calling her ‘Sister Sara’, and she kept calling me by my name).
‘Yes, very much; but I do not like to tread on the tender and sweet flowers.’
‘Never mind, dear Sultana; your treading will not harm them; they are street flowers.’
‘The whole place looks like a garden,’ said I admiringly. ‘You have arranged every plant so skilfully.’
‘Your Calcutta could become a nicer garden than this if only your countrymen wanted to make it so.’
‘They would think it useless to give so much attention to horticulture while they have so many other things to do.’
‘They could not find a better excuse,’ said she with smile.
I became very curious to know where the men were. I met more than a hundred
women while walking there, but not a single man.
‘Where are the men?’ I asked her.
‘In their proper places, where they ought to be.’
‘Pray let me know what you mean by “their proper places”.’
‘Oh, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.’
‘Just as we are kept in the zenana?’
‘Exactly so.’
‘How funny’ I burst into a laugh. Sister Sara laughed, too.
‘But dear Sultana, how unfair it is to shut in the harmless women and let loose the men.’
‘Why? It is not safe for us to come out of the zenana, as we are naturally weak.’
‘Yes, it is not safe so long as there are men about the streets, nor is it so when a wild animal enters a marketplace.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Suppose, some lunatics escape from the asylum and begin to do all sorts of mischief to men, horses and other creatures; in that case what will your countrymen do?’
‘They will try to capture them and put them back into their asylum.’
‘Thank you! And you do not think it wise to keep sane people inside an asylum and let loose the insane?’
‘Of course not!’ said I, laughing lightly.
‘As a matter of fact, in your country this very thing is done! Men, who do, or at least are capable of doing, no end of mischief, are let loose and the innocent women shut up in the zenana! How can you trust those untrained men out of doors?’