"'The distribution of those red names among the black early attracted the attention of our chroniclers. Long before – centuries before – Mendel discovered the basic laws of heredity, the keepers of our records had observed a fatal regularity in the pattern of our tree. By the middle of the eighteenth century they were able to predict with reasonable accuracy what proportion of the offspring from a particular union would leave their names in red on our family tree. Strange recurrences along particular branches were noted, such as two reds together, then four blacks, then a red, a black, a red, and six blacks. The clean generations were necessarily as rythmically spaced as the tainted, as also were the partly clean and partly tainted. By the early nineteenth century the hideous law was revealed in its entirety. It could be evaded only by the extinction of our race, branch, trunk and root. But instinct is stronger then reason, and we continue to flourish.
"'Applying the empirical law to my father's brothers and sisters and to their children, I discovered that the inescapable toll had already been paid. Precisely one out of my father's immediate kin could expect, with a negligible probable error, to inherit the taint, and precisely one of all the children born to him, his brothers and sisters, could anticipate the same. His brothers and sisters were free beyond question. It was probable, then, that he was the predestined victim, doomed nearly nine hundred years before he was born.
"'The further application seemed to be equally sound. If my father unjustly accused me in his own case, and at the same time in that of James, the probability that he was wrong in both instances was strengthened. James, I concluded, was the true sufferer in my own generation.
"The law, I acknowledge, is only as exact as any human mathematics. But each verification of it lessens its expectancy of error. By numerous checks on our history in the past eight hundred years, I reached the considered verdict that James and my father, not I, as they asserted, were the inheritors of our blight.'"
"Logic," Vartan remarked to the fire, as Marjorie turned the page, "is dangerous stuff in human affairs. Personally I prefer to take the opinion of the four insanity experts who examined Mr. Brassey."
"How do we know," Shane doubted, "that they ever examined him?"
"We have his word for it. Go on, Miss Driscott. Mr. Brassey has cleared himself. I want to hear what happened to James."
"I'm coming to it now. 'My poor brother communicated with us only once after his arrival in India. True to his bitter vow, he wrote to us on the day of his death. James knew that he was about to die in a manner which only the purest martyrs can face with fortitude and equanimity. To support the horror of my brother's death demands all of my own courage. Often the darkness of my bedroom is an unendurable torture, as I live with James his last hour in the light of day.
"'Although he still believed that he had been betrayed, his affection for us and his inbred regard for the honor of Brassey House, prevailed in the hour of death. He remembered us in a way which he knew must make us remember him. The concluding sentences of his letter revealed his magnanimity in all its simple greatness, and showed that he had forgiven us all his imagined wrongs. This is what he wrote.
"The large packet of seeds enclosed with this letter is my last gift to Brassey House. For the honor of our House, propagate these strains with the utmost care. They will sow the name of Brassey broadcast over the earth in flowers of perfect beauty."
"Delphinium Brassci?" Shane asked.
"That, and a hundred others," Marjorie replied.
"What happened to the others?" Vartan inquired. "We saw only the delphinium."
"Yes," Shane seconded. "I never saw anything in the same class as the Brassei all the six months I worked at Brassey House."
"Perhaps I had better let Mr. Brassey tell it in his own way?" she suggested.
"Go ahead," said Vartan. "Hang it! There comes the rain." A sharp hiss from the fire announced the first enormous drop. Almost before Marjorie could scurry to her tent, the cold deluge descended and drowned the fire. In thirty seconds the camp was in total darkness, and the cheerful fire nothing but a pile of charred logs.
"Your climb seems to be off," Vartan remarked, groping for his cot.
"Not necessarily. This is only one of the usual mountain showers. Bet you a dollar it's all cleared off in half an hour."
"Still want to try it?"
"Sure. I'll be out of here by three."
"In that case you can have my cot, and I'll stay up to see that you get off properly. The men going with you will have to get my orders first. Also you will all need breakfast. That means kicking the cook out of his blankets. You had better turn in now."
"Confound it!" Shane muttered from the end of the cot. "I wish I hadn't put on this shirt and these clothes. I'll have to change at an unholy hour in the morning. What are you going to do to pass the time?"
"Think about James Brassey. Do you make him out yet?"
"Not quite, poor devil. He was a lot gamer about the whole ghastly business than I would have been, cracked or sane. What's your guess?"
"The same as yours, I imagine. Well, I won't keep you awake talking. I'll call you about one thirty."
"Fine. I'm glad it rained, as I'll need some sleep before tackling–"
He was already asleep.
CHAPTER 7
BLACK ICE
Inspector Ransome of Scotland Yard looked more like a physician than a detective, well groomed, about fifty years of age, suave, and inclined to be a trifle portly in his bearing. He and Charles Brassey were fixed friends of nearly thirty years' standing.
Originally destined for a business career, Ransome had quickly wearied of the monotonous grind of pounds, shillings and pence to which he was condemned as a very junior clerk in the Bank of England. A dishonest cashier gave Ransome his great opportunity, and he grasped it tenaciously. For some weeks shortly before young Ransome joined the staff at the Bank, the officials had been bothered by a slight, steady irregularity in one department which they were unable to trace. The pilfering continued, increasing gradually in volume as the thief became bolder with success, during Ransome's first six months at the Bank, and still the detectives failed to trap their man. The thefts affected the department in which young Ransome worked. After long deliberation the officials of the Bank, on the advice of Scotland Yard, took six of the junior clerks in the department into their confidence. Each was above suspicion. They were promised a substantial bonus for any information they might unearth leading to the detection of the thief. Ransome was one of the six. He got his man within three days. It was a brilliant piece of work, and it revealed Ransome's true talent. Within a week he was engaged at Scotland Yard as a prospective investigator. His two years' apprenticeship satisfactorily worked out, he was taken on as a regular employee. Thereafter his rise was rapid.
When James Brassey disappeared in India in 1917, Charles and his father appealed to Scotland Yard in an endeavor to learn something of his life. From James' bitter silence they inferred that all was not going well with him, and that he was too proud to write home for help. Young Ransome, being a friend of Charles Brassey, and therefore not altogether ignorant of the family's affairs, was assigned to the investigation.
Ordinarily such a problem would be solved in a month at the most. It was nearly three years before the Indian police discovered a trace of James Brassey. They reported to Scotland Yard that James had severed all relations with white people and had 'gone native'. When last heard of he was wandering from one native settlement to another in the 'hills' – the Himalayas – practically begging his way as a mendicant holy man. For James, they reported, had seen the Light of Asia shortly after his arrival in India, and had adopted the Buddhist faith. Of itself this was no disgrace and nothing to tarnish the family name. Many Englishmen in India, particularly those whose lives are passed in the overwhelming solitudes of the mountains and forests, embrace the religion best adapted to the serene unity of nature. Possibly it was James' inherited and cultivated love of all growing things that
prepared his eyes to see the light when it dawned.
Had James stopped at that point in his spiritual evolution, his father and brother would have had no complaint. If James preferred the poverty of a fakir to the decent comforts of a civilized Englishman, it was his own affair, and they would not meddle. From the India police they learned that James' bank account in Bombay had scarcely been touched since the day he deposited the very considerable sum with which he had left England. Money, therefore, was not his need.
But James did not remain content with his first clear revelation. For two years he disappeared completely. They inferred that he was wandering in inaccessible regions of the mountains, beyond reach of white communication, seeking greater holiness and peace in nature. Then, like a flash of lightning in the dark, came the almost unbearable news of his martyrdom. James, anything but a fanatic in his right mind, had sacrificed his life to his faith in a manner which, to his stricken father and brother, seemed needlessly hideous. The bulky package of tiny seeds or spores which James had enclosed in his letter almost broke their hearts. Had James been of a revengeful turn he could not have devised a more exquisite pain for those who had banished him.
James' letter was received in the spring of 1922. Mr. Brassey senior first showed signs of an unbalanced mind in the following autumn. During the six or seven months between the news of James' martyrdom and the onset of his own affliction, the older Brassey made no attempt to germinate any of the seeds which James had sent as his legacy to Brassey House. Almost exactly a year after the receipt of James' letter, the father died, and Charles Brassey abandoned his incipient scientific career to take charge of the business.
Not until nearly eight years after his father's death did Charles Brassey have the heart to open the package of seeds which James had bequeathed to the House. At last, on April 18, 1931, fourteen years to the day since James sailed for India, Charles broke the seal on the package of seeds. Thinking of his brother's tragic end, and wishing to perpetuate his memory in imperishable form, he had decided to attempt the germination of at least some of the seeds. Would they have retained their vitality after a lapse of eight years?
The seeds were almost inconceivably small. The dust of petunia or tobacco seed was coarse gravel in comparison with these. With the aid of a high powered lens, Charles observed at once that not one kind of seed was represented in the double handful of living dust but literally thousands. How had James, a mendicant holy man of the hills, contrived to amass this bewildering collection? And what species of plants were represented? Expert though he was, Brassey failed to recognize a single one of those tiny spores as the seed of any known plant. Provided they were still alive, those hundreds of thousands of seeds and their progeny might well cover the earth in two or three human generations. Were they alive? And, if so, were they of any value?
A month's delicate experimenting by the most skilful plant breeders in the Brassey experimental laboratories, proved conclusively that life still lingered in at least a fraction of all that uncountable multitude. They germinated with extraordinary slowness. The first plant that finally took root, however, grew with amazing, almost explosive speed. And when it bloomed, Charles Brassey and every expert in the laboratories knew that a find of the very first magnitude had fallen into their hands. This would indeed spread the fame of Brassey House to the farthest garden of the tropics.
It was planned to keep this great discovery secret until all the seeds had been tested in a similar manner. Then, when the last had germinated, bloomed, and seeded, Brassey House would transform the art of gardening, the world over, by announcing the propagation and sale of thousands of new species of flowers, the humblest of them fit to queen it over the proudest flower on earth.
Such was the plan. A careless or too enthusiastic laboratory worker confided a hint of the great secret to a professional friend, and the mischief was done. A year after the first seed germinated, the underground campaign against Brassey House began. It opened with a series of petty thefts. Presently the thieves extended their operations. Charles Brassey confided in his friend John Ransome, now Inspector Ransome, of Scotland Yard.
All this was thirteen years in the past. Ransome had worked on the case incessantly, and had not caught a single spy. According to his own admission he was completely baffled. The lack of a sane motive behind the incessant spying was the most mysterious feature of the case. For Ransome refused to believe that any business competitor would persist in such methods to learn a rival's trade secrets or, granting that it was not impossible, the mystery of those expert spies remained. The ease with which they eluded his sharpest men showed that they were no common criminals, but highly trained operatives in some agency to which expense was immaterial. Was it probable, he asked, that a private business could afford a thirteen years' campaign of such magnitude?
The spies appeared in every department of the business, but never twice successively in the same department. In its turn each division of the great establishment had been affected. From porters and draymen to office girls and experts in the laboratories, all had contributed their spy or two who had got safely away. Ransome professed to be completely in the dark about the whole case, and Brassey had no reason to doubt his friend's word.
"Give me time," Ransome had said after each failure, "and I'll get my man."
Brassey could only accede. If Ransome failed, it was unlikely that anyone could succeed. Ransome had this trait in common with the conservative physician whom he resembled outwardly: he never confided in his client – or patient – what were his real thoughts on the case in hand. Charles Brassey, by nature of a suspicious temperament, sometimes wondered whether his astute and sphynxlike friend was so completely in the dark as he professed to be.
The morning that Vartan's cablegram from Bombay came, Brassey hurried over with it to Scotland Yard. Ransome was alone at the time and at once received his friend. Brassey handed him Vartan's message. Ransome read it through carefully and handed it back.
"Well?"
"What am I to answer?"
"The truth, of course. Cable a plain 'No.'
"But I don't understand what is behind Vartan's question."
Ransome paced the length of the room, and halted.
"You trust these two – Shane and Vartan?" he demanded, suddenly wheeling about to observe Brassey.
"If they are spies like the rest who have applied from time to time, it is as much your fault as mine, John," Brassey retorted with some heat. "You started things going from this end for the investigation of their records, and you assured me the American agency was absolutely trustworthy and competent."
"Easy, Charles," Ransome admonished with a smile. "I haven't said yet that I distrust them. In fact I place a great deal of confidence in Mr. Grimsby's report by itself. He told enough about the past of that young scamp, Shane, alone to queer the pair with any finnicky employer. But you're not that kind," he chuckled.
"Pah!" Brassey exclaimed. "What is a handful of wild oats when a young chap plays straight?"
"A handful of wild oats," Ransome replied with quiet significance. "We make a specialty of that kind of crop here. Now, what does Miss Driscott report? She has had time to size up Shane pretty sharply, and she should have formed a fair first estimate of Vartan by now. What does she cable?"
Brassey began pacing the floor, his hands behind his back, his head bent in furious thought.
"She trusts Shane," he admitted at last. "Her first impression of Vartan is about as unfavorable as it could be."
"That I regard as most significant," Ransome exclaimed.
"Why?"
Ransome deliberately avoided the issue. "You have never had reason to think Miss Driscott stupid in the six years she has been with you?"
Brassey almost lost his poise under the sudden imputation against his business acumen.
"Miss Driscott," he all but snapped, "has proven herself not only efficient but also singularly intelligent. Do you suppose I would have sent her out to India as obs
erver if I had not tested her in a thousand exacting ways these past six years?"
"Of course not," Ransome soothed.
"Then what do you mean by insinuating that she isn't as clever as she might be?"
"Oh, nothing. I'm just that way – too much policing of third rate crooks. I see things that aren't there, perhaps. It struck me as rather peculiar that Miss Driscott should suspect Vartan and not Shane."
"Why?" Brassey demanded.
"These two men have been so closely associated in their South American explorations, that surely one would know by this time whether the other is or is not straight. A professional like myself would suspect both or neither of them. Miss Driscott, apparently, is more subtle, more psychological, as it were. I hope sex has nothing to do with her discriminations."
"She and Shane seemed to take a fancy to one another," Brassey recalled somewhat dubiously. "Still, if I know Miss Driscott, she isn't the sort to let an affair with a man obscure her judgment."
"I quite agree," Ransome seconded heartily. He studied his friend's face closely. "Something particular on your mind this morning?"
"That cable from Vartan gives me a vague feeling of danger."
"Let's see it again." Ransome's face betrayed no emotion whatever, not even indifference, as he read the message carefully through a second time. "There's nothing in this," he said. "Probably Vartan cabled at Shane's request before the party was about to lose touch with civilization. He naturally would be anxious."
"Of course," Brassey agreed. "How simple things are when one looks at them as they are, and not through – a haze of suspicions. But who can blame me, after what I've been through the last thirteen years? So you advise a straightforward answer?"
"Certainly. The truth, always. A plain 'No'. If there is anything deeper concealed under Vartan's inquiry, nothing will disconcert him so much as the truth. I make it a rule," he continued, "when handling expert crooks, to speak the direct truth. They never expect it, and they always think you are lying."
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