Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “It is bestial — incredible.”

  “Bestial? Tut! I play the part of God and even surpass Him. I put you face to face with a temptation through which you shall come to know yourself. You lose a dream; you gain a fact. It is well. Shame will guard the secret in your heart — and the State will benefit. Still you see that I am paternal — merciful. I do not punish you for your past obstinacy. I still give you a choice. Bertha, will you marry as I wish, or will you force me to play the part of God?”

  “I shall not marry.”

  “Ah, you will wait for God to make up the difference. It is well — very well; le Dieu c’est moi. Ha! That is greater than the phrase of Louis XIV. You shall have still more time, but the moment the sun goes down, if I do not hear from you, I shall ring a bell that will send my secret police out to seize a man indiscriminately from the masses of the city. I shall not even stipulate that he be young. My trust in nature is — absolute. Adieu!”

  She made up her mind the moment he left the room. She drew on her cloak. Before the pier glass she paused.

  “Aye,” she murmured, “I could not match the first farmer’s daughter. But still there must be one man in the world — and God will make up the difference!”

  She threw open the door which gave on a passage leading to a side entrance. A grenadier of the palace guard jumped to attention and presented arms.

  “Pardon,” he said.

  He completely blocked the hall; the prince had left nothing to chance. She started to turn back and then hesitated and regarded the man carefully.

  “Fritz!” she said at last, for she recognized the peasant who had been a stable-boy on her father’s estate before he took service in the grenadiers. “You are Fritz Barr!”

  He flushed with pleasure.

  “Madame remembers me?”

  “And my little black pony you used to take care of?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  He grinned and nodded; and then she noted a revolver in the holster at his side.

  “What are your orders, Fritz?”

  “To let no one pass down this hall. I am sorry, madame.”

  “But if I were to ask you for your revolver?”

  He stirred uneasily and she took money from her purse and gave it to him.

  “With this you could procure another weapon?”

  He drew a long breath; the temptation was great.

  “I could, madame.”

  “Then do so. It will never be known from whom I received the gun — and my need is desperate — desperate!”

  He unbuckled the weapon without a word, and with it in her hand she returned to the room.

  There was a tall western window, and before this she drew up a chair to watch the setting of the sun.

  “Will he ring the bell when the edge of the sun touches the hills or when it is completely set?” she thought.

  The white circle grew yellow; then it took on a taint of orange, bulging oddly at the sides into a clumsy oval. From the gardens below came a stir of voices and then the thrill of a girl’s laughter. She smiled as she listened, and, leaning from the window, the west wind blew to her the scent of flowers. She sat there for a long time, breathing deeply of the fragrance and noting all the curves of the lawn with a still, sad pleasure. The green changed from bright to dark; when she looked up the sun had set.

  As she turned from the gay western sky, the room was doubly dim and the breeze of the evening set the curtains rustling and whispering. Silence she was prepared for, but not those ghostly voices, not the shift and sweep of the shadows. She turned the electric switch, closing her eyes to blur the shock of the sudden deluge of light. The switch clicked, but when she opened her eyes the room was still dark; they had cut the connecting wires.

  Thereafter her mind went mercifully blank, for what she faced was, like birth and death, beyond comprehension. Noise at the windows roused her from the daze at last and she found that a number of workmen were sealing the room so that neither light nor sound could enter or escape. The only air would be from the ventilator. And still she could not realize what had happened, what was to happen, until the last sounds of the workmen ceased and the deep, dread silence began; silence that had a pulse in it — the beating of her heart.

  She was standing in the middle of the room when the first shapes formed in the black night, and terror hovered about her suddenly, touching her as with cold fingers. She felt her way back to a corner and crouched there against the wall, waiting, waiting. They had seized the doomed man long before this. They must have bound and gagged him and carried him to the palace.

  A thousand types of men passed before her inward eye — thin-faced clerks, men as pale as the belly of a dead fish; bearded monsters, gross and thick-lipped, with thunderous laughter; laborers, stamped with patient weariness — and all whom she saw carried the sign of the beast in their eyes. She tried to pray, but the voice of the prince rang in her ears: “Le Dieu, c’est moi!” and when she named God in her prayers, she visualized Alexander’s face, the pale, small eyes, the colorless hair, the lofty brow, the mouth whose tight lips could not be disguised by even the careful mustache. When a key turned in a door, she sprang to her feet with a cry of horror.

  “It is I,” said the prince.

  “I am dying; I cannot stay here; I will marry whom and when you will.”

  “Ah, my dear, you should have spoken before sunset. I warned you, and I never change my mind. It is only for three days, remember. Also, it is in the interest of science. Beyond that, I have quite taken a fancy to playing God for you for three days. Do you understand?”

  The even, mocking tones guided her to him. She fell at his feet and strained his thin knees against her breast.

  “Come! Be reasonable, Bertha. This is justice.”

  “Sire, I want no justice. For God’s sake, be merciful.”

  She heard the shaken breath of his soundless laughter.

  “Is it so? You should be grateful to me. Trust me, child, I am bringing you the love of which you have dreamed. Ha! Ha! Le Dieu, c’est moi!”

  The clanking of the chain which he carried stilled her voice. It hushed even the thunder of her heart. She rose and waited patiently while the manacle was affixed to her wrist. The prince crossed the room and tapped on the door, which opened, and by a faint light from without Bertha discovered two men carrying a third into the room. She strained her eyes, but could make out no faces. The burden was laid on the floor; a metallic sound told her that she was fettered to the unknown.

  The prince said: “You are a brave girl. All may yet be well. Then human nature is finer than I think. We shall see. As for your lover, your gift from God, he is sleeping soundly now. It may be an hour before the effects of the drug wear away. During that time you can think of love. Food will be placed three times a day within the door yonder. You can readily find it by feeling your way around the wall. Farewell.”

  When the door closed she started to retreat to her corner, but the chain instantly drew taut with a rattle. Strangely enough, much of her fear left her now that she was face to face with the danger; temptation, the prince had called it. She smiled as she remembered. When the man awoke and learned their situation, she had no doubt as to how he would act. She had seen the sign of the beast in the eyes of many men, great and small; she had seen it and understood. The revolver might save her for a time, but what if she slept? She knew it would be almost impossible to remain awake during three days and nights.

  The moment her eyes closed the end would come. It seemed better that she should fire the bullet now.

  When he recovered his senses, it would be difficult to shoot effectively in the dark, for this was not the gloom of night — it was an absolute void, black, thick, impenetrable. She could not make out her hand at the slightest distance from her eyes. He might even attack her from behind and knock the revolver from her hand before she could shoot. Sooner or later the man must die. Even if she did not kill him it would be accomplished by the command of the prince a
t the end of the three days.

  Far better that it should be done at once — that he should never awaken from his sleep. She reached the decision calmly and crept forward to him. Very lightly she passed her hand over his clothes. She had to move his arm to uncover the breast over his heart; the arm was a limp weight, but the muscles were firm, round, and solid. The first qualm troubled her as she realized that this must be a young man, at least a man in the prime of his physical strength.

  Then it occurred to her that often bullets fired into the breast are deflected from the heart by bones; it would be far more certain to lay the muzzle against the temple — press the trigger — the soul would depart.

  The soul! She paused with a thrill of wonder. A little touch would loose the swift spirit. The soul! For the first time she saw the tragedy from the viewpoint of the unknown man. His life was cut in the middle; truly a blind fate had reached out and chosen him from a whole city. Yet she was merely hastening the inevitable. She reached out and found his forehead.

  It was broad and high. Tracing it lightly with the tips of her fingers she discovered two rather prominent lumps of bony structure over the eyes. Some one had told her that this represented a strong power of memory. She tried to visualize that feature alone, and very suddenly, as a face shows when a man lights his cigarette on the street at night, she saw in memory the figure of Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Young Painter.” He sits at his drawing board, his pencil poised, ready for the stroke which shall give vital character to his sketch. There is only one high light, falling on the lower part of the face. Inspiration has tightened the sensitive mouth; the questing eyes peer out from the shadow of the soft cap. She broke off from her vision to realize with a start that when she touched the trigger she would be stepping back through the centuries and killing her dream of the original of Rembrandt’s picture. A foolish fancy, truly, but in the dark a dream may be as true, as vivid as reality.

  The unconscious man sighed. She leaned close and listened to his breathing, soft, hurried, irregular as if he struggled in his sleep, as if the subconscious mind were calling to the conscious: “Awake! Death is here!”

  At least there was plenty of time. She need not fire the shot until he moved. She laid the revolver on her lap and absently allowed her hands to wander over his face, lingering lightly on each feature. She grew more alert after a moment. Every particle of her energy was concentrated on seeing that face — on seeing it through her sense of touch. The blind, she knew, grow so dextrous that the delicate nerves of their finger tips record faces almost as accurately as the eyes of the normal person.

  Ah, for one moment of that power! She tried her best. The nose, she told herself, was straight and well modeled. The eyes, for she traced the bony structure around them, must be large; the cheek bones high, a sign of strength; the chin certainly square and prominent; the lips full and the mouth rather large; the hair waving and thick; the throat large. One by one she traced each detail and then, moving both hands rather swiftly over the face, she strove to build the mental picture of the whole — and she achieved one, but still it was always the young painter whom great Rembrandt had drawn. The illusion would not go out of her mind.

  An artist’s hands, it is said, must be strong and sinewy. She took these hands and felt the heavy bones of the wrist and strove to estimate the length of the fingers. It seemed to her that this was an ideal hand for a painter — it must be both strong and supple.

  He sighed again and stirred; she caught up the weapon with feverish haste and poised it.

  “Ah, it is well,” said the sleeper in his dream.

  She made sure that he was indeed unconscious and then leaned low, whispering: “Adieu, my dear.”

  At some happy vision he laughed softly. His breath touched her face. Surely he could never know; he had so short a moment left for living; perhaps this would pass into his latest dream on earth and make it happy.

  “Adieu!” she whispered again, and her lips pressed on his.

  She laid the muzzle of the revolver against his temple, and, summoning all her will power, she pressed the trigger. It seemed as if she were pulling against it with her full strength, and yet there was no report. Then she realized that all her might was going into an inward struggle. She summoned to her aid the voice of the prince as he had said: “We put a mask on nature and call it love; we name an abstraction and call it God. Le Dieu, c’est moi!” She placed the revolver against the temple of the sleeper; he stirred and disturbed the surety of her direction. She adjusted the weapon again.

  Up sprang the man, shouting: “Treason! Help!”

  Then he stood silent a long moment; perhaps he was rehearsing the scene of his seizure.

  “This is death,” he muttered at last, “and I am in hell. I have always known what it would be — dark — utter and bitter loss of light.”

  As his hand moved, the chain rattled. He sprang back with such violence that his lunging weight jerked her to her feet.

  “It is useless to struggle,” she cried.

  “A woman! Where am I?”

  “You are lost.”

  “But what has happened? In God’s name, madame, are we chained together?”

  “We are.”

  “By whose power? By whose right and command?”

  “By one against whom we cannot appeal.”

  “My crime?”

  “None.”

  “For how long—”

  “Three days.”

  He heaved a great sigh of relief.

  “It is merely some practical joke, I see. That infernal Franz, I knew he was meditating mischief! Three days — and then free?”

  “Yes, for then you die.”

  Once more he was silent.

  Then: “This is a hideous dream. I will waken from it at once — at once. My dear lady—”

  She heard him advancing.

  “Keep the chain taut, sir, I am armed; I will fire at the slightest provocation.”

  He stopped and laughed.

  “Come, come! This is not so bad. You have been smiling in your sleep at me. Up with the lights, my dear. If Franz has engaged you for this business, let me tell you that I’m a far better fellow than he must have advertised me. But what a devil he is to rig up such an elaborate hoax! By Jove, this chain — this darkness — it’s enough to turn a fellow’s hair white! The black night gets on my nerves. Lights! Lights! I yearn to see you; I prophesy your beauty by your voice! Still coy? Then we’ll try persuasion!”

  His breast struck the muzzle of the revolver.

  She said quietly: “If I move my finger a fraction of an inch you die, sir. And every word I have spoken to you is the truth.”

  “Well, well! You do this finely. I shall compliment Franz on rehearsing you so thoroughly. Is this the fair Daphne of whom he told me—”

  And his hand touched her shoulder.

  “By everything that is sacred, I will fire unless you stand back — back to the end of the chain.”

  “Is it possible? The Middle Ages have returned!”

  He moved back until the light chain was taut.

  “My mind whirls. I try to laugh, but your voice convinces me. Madame, will you explain my situation in words of one syllable?”

  “I have explained it already. You are imprisoned in a place from which you cannot escape. You will be confined here, held to me by this chain, for three days. At the end of that time you die.”

  “Will you swear this is the truth?”

  “Name any oath and I will repeat it.”

  “There’s no need,” he said. “No, it cannot be a jest. Franz would never risk the use of a drug, wild as he is. Some other power has taken me. What reason lies behind my arrest?”

  “Think of it as a blind and brutal hand which required a victim and reached out over the city to find one. The hand fell upon you. There is no more to say. You can only resign yourself to die an unknown death.”

  He said at last: “Not unknown, thank God. I have something which will
live after me.”

  Her heart leaped, for she was seeing once more the artist from Rembrandt’s brush.

  “Yes, your paintings will not be forgotten.”

  “I feel that they will not, and the name of—”

  “Do not speak of it!”

  “Why?”

  “I must not hear your name.”

  “But you know it already. You spoke of my painting.”

  “I have never seen your face; I have never heard your name; you were brought to me in this room darkened as you find it now.”

  “Yet you knew—”

  Her voice was marvelously low: “I touched your face, sir, and in some way I knew.”

  After a time he said: “I believe you. This miracle is no greater than the others. But why do you not wish to know my name?”

  “I may live after you, and when I see your pictures I do not wish to say: ‘This is his work; this is his power; this is his limitation.’ Can you understand?”

  “I will try to.”

  “I sat beside you while you were unconscious, and I pictured your face and your mind for myself. I will not have that picture reduced to reality.”

  “It is a delicate fancy. You are blind? You see by the touch of your hands?”

  “I am not blind, but I think I have seen your face through the touch.”

  “Here! I have stumbled against two chairs. Let us sit down and talk. I will slide this chair farther away if you wish. Do you fear me?”

  “No, I think I am not afraid. I am only very sad for you. Listen: I have laid down the revolver. Is that rash?”

  “Madame, my life has been clean. Would I stain it now? No, no! Sit here — so! My hand touches yours — you are not afraid? — and a thrill leaps through me. Is it the dark that changes all things and gives eyes to your imagination, or are you really very beautiful?”

  “How shall I say?”

  “Be very frank, for I am a dying man, am I not? And I should hear the truth.”

  “You are a profound lover of the beautiful?”

  “I am a painter, madame.”

  She called up the image of her face — the dingy brown hair, long and silken, to be sure; the colorless, small eyes; the common features which the first red-skinned farmer’s daughter could overmatch.