"I hadn't thought of those possibilities," he admitted drily. "Brassey said we should be followed. Doubtless he thought of the same things," he continued searching her face for the truth. "You would throw your future to the winds, and go back to Srinagar with Shane, if you knew he was dangerously ill?"
She seemed to resent the implied doubt in his question.
"I would," she asserted firmly, "without a second thought of myself, my future, or anything but him. As he is not in danger," she concluded with a flash of defiance, "I shall obey Mr. Brassey's orders, and see that you are not robbed. That is," she added maliciously, "if you ever find what you are looking for."
She walked stiffly away, and Vartan rejoined Shane. The latter lost no time in delivering his farewell message.
"I'm leaving that lump of black ice – it's water by now – with you, because it might get lost on a wild trip like this, with me on my back and unable to boss things. Don't lose it. Dry out the black powder and carry it in a bottle where thieves won't think of looking for it."
"Your head – feels a little queer still?" Vartan suggested.
"Queer nothing. I'm not raving. When your preposterous hypothesis about the origin of those fossil beds blows up, I'll tell you how they really happened. And when our friend Brassey is no good for growing prize delphiniums, or anything else, I'll tell him why."
"All right, old man." Vartan laughed. "I'll carry that bottleful of black dust next to my heart till we meet again. Take good care of yourself. So long!"
The little party moved briskly off, back over the hardwon trail, and Vartan ordered Ali to get the pack train started.
"Oh, by the way," he added as an afterthought, "send one of the men to me with that bottle of black water. The ice, you know, that Mr. Shane sent down from the glaciers."
Vartan had almost forgotten it in the first five minutes after Shane's departure, so little importance did he attach to his friend's request. It was probably but the vagary of a man still not quite in his right mind. Old Ali hurried off to execute his orders. In ten minutes he was back, empty handed.
"Gone," he announced, with an expressive gesture.
"The devil you say. Have you looked everywhere? Carefully?"
"Everywhere. Twice. The bottle I found. But no water."
"All right," said Vartan. "Never mind. Some careless kitchen hand probably threw it out, thinking it was just dirty water. It doesn't matter. Get the men off; we must do a double march today to make up some of our lost time."
"Brassey and Miss Driscott seem to be right after all," Vartan mused as he strolled up the trail. "If that black ice of Shane's really was of any value. That's the question. Was it? And if so who of our party would know enough to steal it? I had better tell Miss Driscott." She also had not waited for the pack train, and was sauntering ahead of Vartan. "Oh, Miss Driscott," he called. She turned and waited for him.
"What is it, Mr. Vartan?" she asked when he overtook her.
He briefly explained.
"I don't like this," she said. "It begins to look serious."
"You mean we are harboring a spy?"
"It looks that way, whether Mr. Shane's black ice is or is not of any value. A spy naturally would attempt to steal any specimens collected by either you or Mr. Shane. Can't you see?"
"I begin to," he admitted uneasily. "You say you are Brassey's observer. Presumably you have been keeping your eyes open. Suspect anyone?"
She scanned his face long and doubtfully before confiding her suspicions.
"You will only laugh when I tell you."
"No I shan't, Miss Driscott. This is important. Whom do you suspect?"
"The headman."
"Ali Baba?" Vartan questioned incredulously. Then he burst into a roar of laughter. Marjorie reddened and walked off in a huff. "Excuse me," he begged, overtaking her "but I really couldn't help it. Poor old Ali is such a guileless soul. He's just like a tough old gray tomcat that's been battered about all his life, only to find one human being in his declining years in whom he can trust. I'm his find; he's taken a strong fancy to me, and I wouldn't disillusionize the poor old chap for anything. Honestly, Miss Driscott," he continued seriously, "you must be joking."
"I am not," she asserted firmly.
"No?" he queried with a bewildered frown. "Then if you were in my place, what would you do?"
"Order him back at once to Srinagar. You have a good excuse. Mr. Shane, you can say, needs the best possible attention."
Vartan walked on in silence for several minutes.
"This is your honest opinion?" She nodded gravely. "Why do you suspect Ali rather than one of the porters?"
"Because he is the most intelligent of all the natives. I think it is a safe rule," she said slowly, "to distrust superior intelligence in one's supposed inferiors. However, you, not I, are in command of the expedition. I merely gave advice when I was asked. You must make the decision."
"Quite right. Thanks for the advice, even if I am not going to take it."
"You will keep this man?"
"Yes. I'll bank on it that Ali is exactly what he professes to be – a highly competent headman. And let me say, Miss Driscott," he continued gravely, "that I fully understand your own case. Six years of the poisoned atmosphere of Brassey House have made you unduly suspicious of your fellow human beings. Confess, now: you still distrust me? Own up; you do, don't you?"
"I–I don't know," she faltered in a voice that was barely audible. "Sometimes I believe I know you, and the next moment you are as much of a mystery as ever."
"But," Vartan protested, "I'm no neurotic. And besides, incomprehensibility is a woman's prerogative."
"Do you understand me?" she smiled.
"Perfectly," he answered coolly. "As I said, too much suspicion has made you distrustful without cause."
"Like poor Mr. Brassey," she sighed. She walked on in silence for some moments, and then faced him abruptly.
"Could we sit here and talk for an hour, and catch up with the pack train by nightfall?"
"Easily," he replied, wondering.
"Then let us sit here," she said, "where all the sunlight of the world billows down over those lower ranges, and where we can see the level horizon, ages away in the distance, like a faint silver thread across infinity."
"I'm willing," he agreed, still puzzled.
"Look at the sky," she continued calmly. "Is it more to you than a vastness of blue, that you look at every day and never see?"
"If you mean–" he began, but she did not let him finish.
"Would you miss it if your eyes were burned out? Men have done such things to their own kind. And some have done it to themselves in the name of holiness." She extracted Charles Brassey's confession from the botanical collector's case which she habitually carried. "Do you remember that horrible fakir in the gutter at Bombay? Yes? So do I. He was not blind. You and I can still see. To go blind is one tragedy to a man who has loved the sky, and who has seen the mountains and all their flowers. To lose forever the surge of the wind in the forests is another. And still another is to forego forever the sharp, clean smell of burning wood, or of smouldering leaves. To know in one awful last second that the sky, the mountains, the wind and the myriads of flashing, living colors, vivid as they never were in all of conscious life, are to be annihilated though life itself persists, is worse than death."
"You refer to James Brassey?"
"Yes. I chose this place for you to hear the story of his martyrdom, so that you can see and hear the things that James loved and cast aside because he imagined he had seen the only light of the world. What did he see when the sky went out and he no longer felt the wind on his cheek? Was his sacrifice rewarded? I think not," she concluded with a bitter laugh. "The wages of folly is death."
"James may not have thought it folly," he objected. "And he may have found the true life after all."
"He did not! Listen to this, if you feel inclined to go behind your verdict on that fakir we saw in Bombay. I admired an
d respected you that day. Please don't spoil it all now." She turned the leaves of the manuscript till she found what she wanted. "I shall omit a considerable part of what Mr. Brassey has written here, as it tells only of long experiments with the seeds which James had sent home, and of the beginning of the persecution by spies. There is just one significant detail," she said, glancing up, "and I wish you to remember this particularly, Everyone of all those celestial flowers – please do not smile, they were so beautiful that no meaner description is worthy of them – all of those celestial flowers that bloomed from James Brassey's all but microscopic seeds were barren."
Vartan sat up suddenly, startled.
"You mean to say," he demanded, "that the flowers never seeded?"
"Not one." Her blue eyes grew luminous with sheer intelligence as she scanned his face. "Are you surprised?"
"Surprised is not the right word. I'm shocked."
I thought you would be," she said with a low, musical laugh. "While I was waiting for you and Mr. Shane in Bombay, Mr. Brassey cabled all about your 'sealed orders', although he disbelieved what you seemed to hint they might be. And he told me how happy he was in having met at last a man as mad as himself."
"Yes, I remember," Vartan admitted. "But how on earth can you possibly know that what you have just told me proves that I'm off the right track?"
"You are aiming for your own project." she countered.
"I am. But you must believe me, Miss Driscott, that until a moment ago, I was convinced that the solution of my own problem would give me the answer to Brassey's as a mere corollary."
"It would tell you the origin of that delphinium?"
"If it were right. Presumably the delphinium is barren like all the rest of the plants that Brassey has grown from James' seeds?"
"Undoubtedly. And, Mr. Vartan, it is the last. There are no seeds left. Not all germinated, of course. Only about a tenth of them produced healthy plants."
"I begin to see daylight. The reason for this expedition is not so crazy as I thought it was."
"Are you sure?" she questioned. "You have yet to learn Mr. Brassey's motive. But your theory – if you had one – is destroyed by the barrenness of those flowers?"
"Destroyed? It is abolished. At least so far as Brassey's end of it is concerned. I still have faith in my own application. By the way," he added reflectively, "Shane has maintained from the beginning that he alone has the right clue."
She smiled mysteriously. "We shall see. Now, shall I read?"
He nodded, and she began.
"'You who read this will understand why I, Charles Brassey, cannot endure the darkness. Never since the day that I read my brother's letter have I slept in an unlighted room. You will recall that I have already told you that the darkness of my bedroom is a torture not to be endured. I have slept in darkness only when the tiny night light has died while I slept, and I have wakened in an agony of prayer that my dear brother indeed is dead.
"'Not content with the more usual acerbations of his cruel faith, James took the last, irretrievable step on the harsh road to holiness. In the full flower of his manhood, in complete possession of his bodily faculties, although his mind, I am convinced, had broken irremediably before he left England – in the pride of his life, I say, James condemned himself to a living death.
"'Do you who read this know, as I have learned to know, the meaning of the word 'immured', as fanatics use it?
"'Immured.
"'It means to be walled in; to be shut up for the term of one's natural life in total darkness, in a cell whose walls are so thick that no sound can penetrate them.
"'It means a lingering death in life of perhaps fifty years.
"'It means the gradual decay of the optic nerves, as the eyes rebel at the perpetual darkness, so that the living-dead no longer has the capacity to feel the light on his whitened eyeballs, should war or earthquake set him free from his hideous martyrdom.
"'Immured.
"'It means that a man shall lose all sense of time. He will not know when the rice and water are thrust into his black cell at the long, narrow hole near the base of the four-foot wall. No light, not even the visibility of darkness, can enter by that narrow channel, four feet long.
"'Immured.
"'It means the intolerable accumulation, through perhaps fifty years, in a cell, without light or sound, of the waste products of the body, and the abnegation of our human, pitiful attempts to be as clean as the animals who rove free and unafraid, in the sun, under the open blue of heaven. To be lower than the lowest brute; that is what it means, in the name of selfish holiness.
"'It means the slow atrophy of the nerves, of the skin, and of the brain which animated them, so that no longer can the dying shell feel heat or cold, or sense the rhythm of summer and autumn, winter and spring.
"'It means that on one last morning, in the full glory of the sun, with the breeze on his cheek, a man shall enter his tomb. Facing the light, as the masons wall up the entrance, he shall see the last slit vanish, and find himself alone, forever, in total darkness and in absolute silence.
"'Silence. For though he repents of his folly, no man will ever know of his repentance. The outside world is dead to him; he is dead to the outside world. The wails of the damned could scarce be heard through those walls. Only when the rice and water no longer are removed from the bowls, thrust into the black hole on spatulas, do the holy acolytes of the holiest men surmise that he is at last lost in the true Nirvana.
"'They are not hasty. The holy man may be too weak to reach his rice and water. On the fourteenth day, provided he is still too feeble from sickness to eat or drink, he will die. The masons again will approach the door, this time to undo their work.
"'And, it may be, a younger crew of stone workers will break down the entrance to the holy tomb. They may be the sons, or even the grandsons, of those who walled up the entrance. For it is known that one holy man lived in his lightless tomb for seventy five years. He had entered it on his twenty sixth birthday. James was thirty three; he may live the full century – sixty seven years of it, in hell.
"'They will say he has attained Nirvana. Then they will cast his withered, foul husk of a body to the jackals.
"'James loved flowers, the wind, mountains, the noonday skies and the last, sea-green light of the lingering day. So, I have no doubt, has every martyr who has given his eyes to the fiendish faith which claimed my brother. Did my brother recover his sanity in the silent darkness of his tomb? Was his refusal of the food and water voluntary – if indeed he has refused them by now?
"'Immured.
"'To become suddenly sane, and to realize that one's mad fanaticism was all a bitter jest and a black blasphemy against nature; to beat upon the walls, and no one hear; to shout, and receive no answer; to curse God and live; to reject the rice and water until weakness enthralls the body and makes the desire to repent a second time, and live, futile; to die in silence, this is the meaning of 'immured'.
"'Therefore I shall immortalize the living vision of James Brassey as no man's dead vision has been immortalized. I will sow his name in beauty over the earth.
"'I trust that he is dead.'"
She restored the manuscript to her case. Without a word, Vartan rose and followed her, to overtake the caravan.
CHAPTER 9
BUTTERFLIES AND BEETLES
Six weeks to the day after he had bade Vartan goodbye, Shane was carried into Srinagar. The party had not made nearly such good time as Ali Baba and Vartan had confidently predicted, and for this lag Shane himself was to blame.
Three days after starting back, Shane found that his broken ankles caused him hardly any pain if he loosened the bandages slightly. Taking advantage of his discovery, he decided to prolong the return to civilization and make his forced retreat as profitable as possible. Over the mutinous protests of the headman in charge of the bearers, Shane ordered four of them off on a side trip, to climb an all but inaccessible peak and bring back samples of the snow and ice
from its summit. This maneuver was repeated half a dozen times at irregular intervals, until Shane had a small collection of samples in bottles and old cans, and the party was behind its schedule with no hope of retrieving the squandered time.
On being carried into the inn, Shane's first act was to write out a cable to Brassey, briefly stating the facts and asking for instructions. His next was to go to bed and send for a doctor. Having safely delivered their invalid, the headman and his eight porters marched off unconcernedly to report themselves at Brathwaites'.
The arrival of a lonely white man on a litter naturally caused a buzz of speculation among the idling tourists at the inn. Who was this pale, interesting looking man, what had he been doing, and where had he been doing it? The clerk could only tell them that the invalid's name was Shane, that he was an American, and that he had probably fallen down a mountain side while sight-seeing with his party of friends. The less venturesome tourists shuddered and walked thoughtfully away. Finally only one lingered, little Miss Tappan, who had become quite friendly with the manager during her stay of over seven weeks at the inn.
"Do you suppose he's really badly hurt?" she asked.
"Seems to be, Miss Tappan. We'll know more when the doctor comes. Ah, here he is now. You can go right up, Doctor Wemyss. The patient is in the large front room-number 20."
While Shane was submitting to what Dr. Wemyss considered necessary, Miss Tappan quietly slipped out to the telegraph and cable office. Her innocently worded little message was not addressed to Scotland Yard, nor to Inspector Ransome, but to a confidential address and a fictitious name which were details, but highly important ones, of the code between Ransome and herself. Within two hours of Shane's arrival in Srinagar, Ransome was informed of the fact twice, first by Miss Tappan's cable, and then by telephone message from Charles Brassey.
"Better come over at once, Charles," he replied.
In the brief interview which followed in Ransome's private office, the inspector did not consider it necessary to inform Brassey that the news was old. Brassey however noted his friend's preoccupation and commented on it.
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