IV. THE BOTTOMLESS WELL
In an oasis, or green island, in the red and yellow seas of sandthat stretch beyond Europe toward the sunrise, there can be found arather fantastic contrast, which is none the less typical of such aplace, since international treaties have made it an outpost of theBritish occupation. The site is famous among archaeologists forsomething that is hardly a monument, but merely a hole in theground. But it is a round shaft, like that of a well, and probably apart of some great irrigation works of remote and disputed date,perhaps more ancient than anything in that ancient land. There is agreen fringe of palm and prickly pear round the black mouth of thewell; but nothing of the upper masonry remains except two bulky andbattered stones standing like the pillars of a gateway of nowhere,in which some of the more transcendental archaeologists, in certainmoods at moonrise or sunset, think they can trace the faint lines offigures or features of more than Babylonian monstrosity; while themore rationalistic archaeologists, in the more rational hours ofdaylight, see nothing but two shapeless rocks. It may have beennoticed, however, that all Englishmen are not archaeologists. Manyof those assembled in such a place for official and militarypurposes have hobbies other than archaeology. And it is a solemnfact that the English in this Eastern exile have contrived to make asmall golf links out of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortableclubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other.They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because itwas by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposesunfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be countedmost literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it intheir interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of themhad just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazingsomewhat moodily into the well.
Both the Englishmen wore light clothes and white pith helmets andpuggrees, but there, for the most part, their resemblance ended. Andthey both almost simultaneously said the same word, but they said iton two totally different notes of the voice.
"Have you heard the news?" asked the man from the club. "Splendid."
"Splendid," replied the man by the well. But the first manpronounced the word as a young man might say it about a woman, andthe second as an old man might say it about the weather, not withoutsincerity, but certainly without fervor.
And in this the tone of the two men was sufficiently typical ofthem. The first, who was a certain Captain Boyle, was of a bold andboyish type, dark, and with a sort of native heat in his face thatdid not belong to the atmosphere of the East, but rather to theardors and ambitions of the West. The other was an older man andcertainly an older resident, a civilian official--Horne Fisher; andhis drooping eyelids and drooping light mustache expressed all theparadox of the Englishman in the East. He was much too hot to beanything but cool.
Neither of them thought it necessary to mention what it was that wassplendid. That would indeed have been superfluous conversation aboutsomething that everybody knew. The striking victory over a menacingcombination of Turks and Arabs in the north, won by troops under thecommand of Lord Hastings, the veteran of so many striking victories,was already spread by the newspapers all over the Empire, let aloneto this small garrison so near to the battlefield.
"Now, no other nation in the world could have done a thing likethat," cried Captain Boyle, emphatically.
Horne Fisher was still looking silently into the well; a momentlater he answered: "We certainly have the art of unmaking mistakes.That's where the poor old Prussians went wrong. They could only makemistakes and stick to them. There is really a certain talent inunmaking a mistake."
"What do you mean," asked Boyle, "what mistakes?"
"Well, everybody knows it looked like biting off more than he couldchew," replied Horne Fisher. It was a peculiarity of Mr. Fisher thathe always said that everybody knew things which about one person intwo million was ever allowed to hear of. "And it was certainly jollylucky that Travers turned up so well in the nick of time. Odd howoften the right thing's been done for us by the second in command,even when a great man was first in command. Like Colborne atWaterloo."
"It ought to add a whole province to the Empire," observed theother.
"Well, I suppose the Zimmernes would have insisted on it as far asthe canal," observed Fisher, thoughtfully, "though everybody knowsadding provinces doesn't always pay much nowadays."
Captain Boyle frowned in a slightly puzzled fashion. Being cloudilyconscious of never having heard of the Zimmernes in his life, hecould only remark, stolidly:
"Well, one can't be a Little Englander."
Horne Fisher smiled, and he had a pleasant smile.
"Every man out here is a Little Englander," he said. "He wishes hewere back in Little England."
"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm afraid," said theyounger man, rather suspiciously. "One would think you didn't reallyadmire Hastings or--or--anything."
"I admire him no end," replied Fisher. "He's by far the best manfor this post; he understands the Moslems and can do anything withthem. That's why I'm all against pushing Travers against him, merelybecause of this last affair."
"I really don't understand what you're driving at," said the other,frankly.
"Perhaps it isn't worth understanding," answered Fisher, lightly,"and, anyhow, we needn't talk politics. Do you know the Arab legendabout that well?"
"I'm afraid I don't know much about Arab legends," said Boyle,rather stiffly.
"That's rather a mistake," replied Fisher, "especially from yourpoint of view. Lord Hastings himself is an Arab legend. That isperhaps the very greatest thing he really is. If his reputation wentit would weaken us all over Asia and Africa. Well, the story aboutthat hole in the ground, that goes down nobody knows where, hasalways fascinated me, rather. It's Mohammedan in form now, but Ishouldn't wonder if the tale is a long way older than Mohammed. It'sall about somebody they call the Sultan Aladdin, not our friend ofthe lamp, of course, but rather like him in having to do with geniior giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded thegiants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher aboveall the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said whenthey built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower ofBabel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, comparedwith old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven--a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and riseabove it, and go on rising for ever and ever. And Allah cast himdown to earth with a thunderbolt, which sank into the earth, boringa hole deeper and deeper, till it made a well that was without abottom as the tower was to have been without a top. And down thatinverted tower of darkness the soul of the proud Sultan is fallingforever and ever."
"What a queer chap you are," said Boyle. "You talk as if a fellowcould believe those fables."
"Perhaps I believe the moral and not the fable," answered Fisher."But here comes Lady Hastings. You know her, I think."
The clubhouse on the golf links was used, of course, for many otherpurposes besides that of golf. It was the only social center of thegarrison beside the strictly military headquarters; it had abilliard room and a bar, and even an excellent reference library forthose officers who were so perverse as to take their professionseriously. Among these was the great general himself, whose head ofsilver and face of bronze, like that of a brazen eagle, were oftento be found bent over the charts and folios of the library. Thegreat Lord Hastings believed in science and study, as in othersevere ideals of life, and had given much paternal advice on thepoint to young Boyle, whose appearances in that place of researchwere rather more intermittent. It was from one of these snatches ofstudy that the young man had just come out through the glass doorsof the library on to the golf links. But, above all, the club was soappointed as to serve the social conveniences of ladies at least asmuch as gentlemen, and Lady Hastings was able to play the queen insuch a society almost as much as in her own ballroom. She waseminently calculated and, as some said, eminently inclined to playsuch a part. She was much
younger than her husband, an attractiveand sometimes dangerously attractive lady; and Mr. Horne Fisherlooked after her a little sardonically as she swept away with theyoung soldier. Then his rather dreary eye strayed to the green andprickly growths round the well, growths of that curious cactusformation in which one thick leaf grows directly out of the otherwithout stalk or twig. It gave his fanciful mind a sinister feelingof a blind growth without shape or purpose. A flower or shrub in theWest grows to the blossom which is its crown, and is content. Butthis was as if hands could grow out of hands or legs grow out oflegs in a nightmare. "Always adding a province to the Empire," hesaid, with a smile, and then added, more sadly, "but I doubt if Iwas right, after all!"
A strong but genial voice broke in on his meditations and he lookedup and smiled, seeing the face of an old friend. The voice was,indeed, rather more genial than the face, which was at the firstglance decidedly grim. It was a typically legal face, with angularjaws and heavy, grizzled eyebrows; and it belonged to an eminentlylegal character, though he was now attached in a semimilitarycapacity to the police of that wild district. Cuthbert Grayne wasperhaps more of a criminologist than either a lawyer or a policeman,but in his more barbarous surroundings he had proved successful inturning himself into a practical combination of all three. Thediscovery of a whole series of strange Oriental crimes stood to hiscredit. But as few people were acquainted with, or attracted to,such a hobby or branch of knowledge, his intellectual life wassomewhat solitary. Among the few exceptions was Horne Fisher, whohad a curious capacity for talking to almost anybody about almostanything.
"Studying botany, or is it archaeology?" inquired Grayne. "I shallnever come to the end of your interests, Fisher. I should say thatwhat you don't know isn't worth knowing."
"You are wrong," replied Fisher, with a very unusual abruptness, andeven bitterness. "It's what I do know that isn't worth knowing. Allthe seamy side of things, all the secret reasons and rotten motivesand bribery and blackmail they call politics. I needn't be so proudof having been down all these sewers that I should brag about it tothe little boys in the street."
"What do you mean? What's the matter with you?" asked his friend."I never knew you taken like this before."
"I'm ashamed of myself," replied Fisher. "I've just been throwingcold water on the enthusiasms of a boy."
"Even that explanation is hardly exhaustive," observed the criminalexpert.
"Damned newspaper nonsense the enthusiasms were, of course,"continued Fisher, "but I ought to know that at that age illusionscan be ideals. And they're better than the reality, anyhow. Butthere is one very ugly responsibility about jolting a young man outof the rut of the most rotten ideal."
"And what may that be?" inquired his friend.
"It's very apt to set him off with the same energy in a much worsedirection," answered Fisher; "a pretty endless sort of direction, abottomless pit as deep as the bottomless well."
Fisher did not see his friend until a fortnight later, when he foundhimself in the garden at the back of the clubhouse on the oppositeside from the links, a garden heavily colored and scented with sweetsemitropical plants in the glow of a desert sunset. Two other menwere with him, the third being the now celebrated second in command,familiar to everybody as Tom Travers, a lean, dark man, who lookedolder than his years, with a furrow in his brow and something moroseabout the very shape of his black mustache. They had just beenserved with black coffee by the Arab now officiating as thetemporary servant of the club, though he was a figure alreadyfamiliar, and even famous, as the old servant of the general. Hewent by the name of Said, and was notable among other Semites forthat unnatural length of his yellow face and height of his narrowforehead which is sometimes seen among them, and gave an irrationalimpression of something sinister, in spite of his agreeable smile.
"I never feel as if I could quite trust that fellow," said Grayne,when the man had gone away. "It's very unjust, I take it, for he wascertainly devoted to Hastings, and saved his life, they say. ButArabs are often like that, loyal to one man. I can't help feeling hemight cut anybody else's throat, and even do it treacherously."
"Well," said Travers, with a rather sour smile, "so long as heleaves Hastings alone the world won't mind much."
There was a rather embarrassing silence, full of memories of thegreat battle, and then Horne Fisher said, quietly:
"The newspapers aren't the world, Tom. Don't you worry about them.Everybody in your world knows the truth well enough."
"I think we'd better not talk about the general just now," remarkedGrayne, "for he's just coming out of the club."
"He's not coming here," said Fisher. "He's only seeing his wife tothe car."
As he spoke, indeed, the lady came out on the steps of the club,followed by her husband, who then went swiftly in front of her toopen the garden gate. As he did so she turned back and spoke for amoment to a solitary man still sitting in a cane chair in the shadowof the doorway, the only man left in the deserted club save for thethree that lingered in the garden. Fisher peered for a moment intothe shadow, and saw that it was Captain Boyle.
The next moment, rather to their surprise, the general reappearedand, remounting the steps, spoke a word or two to Boyle in his turn.Then he signaled to Said, who hurried up with two cups of coffee,and the two men re-entered the club, each carrying his cup in hishand. The next moment a gleam of white light in the growing darknessshowed that the electric lamps had been turned on in the librarybeyond.
"Coffee and scientific researches," said Travers, grimly. "All theluxuries of learning and theoretical research. Well, I must begoing, for I have my work to do as well." And he got up ratherstiffly, saluted his companions, and strode away into the dusk.
"I only hope Boyle is sticking to scientific researches," said HorneFisher. "I'm not very comfortable about him myself. But let's talkabout something else."
They talked about something else longer than they probably imagined,until the tropical night had come and a splendid moon painted thewhole scene with silver; but before it was bright enough to see byFisher had already noted that the lights in the library had beenabruptly extinguished. He waited for the two men to come out by thegarden entrance, but nobody came.
"They must have gone for a stroll on the links," he said.
"Very possibly," replied Grayne. "It's going to be a beautifulnight."
A moment or two after he had spoken they heard a voice hailing themout of the shadow of the clubhouse, and were astonished to perceiveTravers hurrying toward them, calling out as he came:
"I shall want your help, you fellows," he cried. "There's somethingpretty bad out on the links."
They found themselves plunging through the club smoking room and thelibrary beyond, in complete darkness, mental as well as material.But Horne Fisher, in spite of his affectation of indifference, was aperson of a curious and almost transcendental sensibility toatmospheres, and he already felt the presence of something more thanan accident. He collided with a piece of furniture in the library,and almost shuddered with the shock, for the thing moved as he couldnever have fancied a piece of furniture moving. It seemed to movelike a living thing, yielding and yet striking back. The next momentGrayne had turned on the lights, and he saw he had only stumbledagainst one of the revolving bookstands that had swung round andstruck him; but his involuntary recoil had revealed to him his ownsubconscious sense of something mysterious and monstrous. There wereseveral of these revolving bookcases standing here and there aboutthe library; on one of them stood the two cups of coffee, and onanother a large open book. It was Budge's book on Egyptianhieroglyphics, with colored plates of strange birds and gods, andeven as he rushed past, he was conscious of something odd about thefact that this, and not any work of military science, should be openin that place at that moment. He was even conscious of the gap inthe well-lined bookshelf from which it had been taken, and it seemedalmost to gape at him in an ugly fashion, like a gap in the teeth ofsome sinister face.
A run brought them in a f
ew minutes to the other side of the groundin front of the bottomless well, and a few yards from it, in amoonlight almost as broad as daylight, they saw what they had cometo see.
The great Lord Hastings lay prone on his face, in a posture in whichthere was a touch of something strange and stiff, with one elbowerect above his body, the arm being doubled, and his big, bony handclutching the rank and ragged grass. A few feet away was Boyle,almost as motionless, but supported on his hands and knees, andstaring at the body. It might have been no more than shock andaccident; but there was something ungainly and unnatural about thequadrupedal posture and the gaping face. It was as if his reason hadfled from him. Behind, there was nothing but the clear blue southernsky, and the beginning of the desert, except for the two greatbroken stones in front of the well. And it was in such a light andatmosphere that men could fancy they traced in them enormous andevil faces, looking down.
Horne Fisher stooped and touched the strong hand that was stillclutching the grass, and it was as cold as a stone. He knelt by thebody and was busy for a moment applying other tests; then he roseagain, and said, with a sort of confident despair:
"Lord Hastings is dead."
There was a stony silence, and then Travers remarked, gruffly: "Thisis your department, Grayne; I will leave you to question CaptainBoyle. I can make no sense of what he says."
Boyle had pulled himself together and risen to his feet, but hisface still wore an awful expression, making it like a new mask orthe face of another man.
"I was looking at the well," he said, "and when I turned he hadfallen down."
Grayne's face was very dark. "As you say, this is my affair," hesaid. "I must first ask you to help me carry him to the library andlet me examine things thoroughly."
When they had deposited the body in the library, Grayne turned toFisher and said, in a voice that had recovered its fullness andconfidence, "I am going to lock myself in and make a thoroughexamination first. I look to you to keep in touch with the othersand make a preliminary examination of Boyle. I will talk to himlater. And just telephone to headquarters for a policeman, and lethim come here at once and stand by till I want him."
Without more words the great criminal investigator went into thelighted library, shutting the door behind him, and Fisher, withoutreplying, turned and began to talk quietly to Travers. "It iscurious," he said, "that the thing should happen just in front ofthat place."
"It would certainly be very curious," replied Travers, "if the placeplayed any part in it."
"I think," replied Fisher, "that the part it didn't play is morecurious still."
And with these apparently meaningless words he turned to the shakenBoyle and, taking his arm, began to walk him up and down in themoonlight, talking in low tones.
Dawn had begun to break abrupt and white when Cuthbert Grayne turnedout the lights in the library and came out on to the links. Fisherwas lounging about alone, in his listless fashion; but the policemessenger for whom he had sent was standing at attention in thebackground.
"I sent Boyle off with Travers," observed Fisher, carelessly; "he'lllook after him, and he'd better have some sleep, anyhow."
"Did you get anything out of him?" asked Grayne. "Did he tell youwhat he and Hastings were doing?"
"Yes," answered Fisher, "he gave me a pretty clear account, afterall. He said that after Lady Hastings went off in the car thegeneral asked him to take coffee with him in the library and look upa point about local antiquities. He himself was beginning to lookfor Budge's book in one of the revolving bookstands when the generalfound it in one of the bookshelves on the wall. After looking atsome of the plates they went out, it would seem, rather abruptly, onto the links, and walked toward the old well; and while Boyle waslooking into it he heard a thud behind him, and turned round to findthe general lying as we found him. He himself dropped on his kneesto examine the body, and then was paralyzed with a sort of terrorand could not come nearer to it or touch it. But I think very littleof that; people caught in a real shock of surprise are sometimesfound in the queerest postures."
Grayne wore a grim smile of attention, and said, after a shortsilence:
"Well, he hasn't told you many lies. It's really a creditably clearand consistent account of what happened, with everything ofimportance left out."
"Have you discovered anything in there?" asked Fisher.
"I have discovered everything," answered Grayne.
Fisher maintained a somewhat gloomy silence, as the other resumedhis explanation in quiet and assured tones.
"You were quite right, Fisher, when you said that young fellow wasin danger of going down dark ways toward the pit. Whether or no, asyou fancied, the jolt you gave to his view of the general hadanything to do with it, he has not been treating the general wellfor some time. It's an unpleasant business, and I don't want todwell on it; but it's pretty plain that his wife was not treatinghim well, either. I don't know how far it went, but it went as faras concealment, anyhow; for when Lady Hastings spoke to Boyle it wasto tell him she had hidden a note in the Budge book in the library.The general overheard, or came somehow to know, and he went straightto the book and found it. He confronted Boyle with it, and they hada scene, of course. And Boyle was confronted with something else; hewas confronted with an awful alternative, in which the life of oneold man meant ruin and his death meant triumph and even happiness."
"Well," observed Fisher, at last, "I don't blame him for not tellingyou the woman's part of the story. But how do you know about theletter?"
"I found it on the general's body," answered Grayne, "but I foundworse things than that. The body had stiffened in the way ratherpeculiar to poisons of a certain Asiatic sort. Then I examined thecoffee cups, and I knew enough chemistry to find poison in the dregsof one of them. Now, the General went straight to the bookcase,leaving his cup of coffee on the bookstand in the middle of theroom. While his back was turned, and Boyle was pretending to examinethe bookstand, he was left alone with the coffee cup. The poisontakes about ten minutes to act, and ten minutes' walk would bringthem to the bottomless well."
"Yes," remarked Fisher, "and what about the bottomless well?"
"What has the bottomless well got to do with it?" asked his friend.
"It has nothing to do with it," replied Fisher. "That is what Ifind utterly confounding and incredible."
"And why should that particular hole in the ground have anything todo with it?"
"It is a particular hole in your case," said Fisher. "But I won'tinsist on that just now. By the way, there is another thing I oughtto tell you. I said I sent Boyle away in charge of Travers. It wouldbe just as true to say I sent Travers in charge of Boyle."
"You don't mean to say you suspect Tom Travers?" cried the other.
"He was a deal bitterer against the general than Boyle ever was,"observed Horne Fisher, with a curious indifference.
"Man, you're not saying what you mean," cried Grayne. "I tell you Ifound the poison in one of the coffee cups."
"There was always Said, of course," added Fisher, "either for hatredor hire. We agreed he was capable of almost anything."
"And we agreed he was incapable of hurting his master," retortedGrayne.
"Well, well," said Fisher, amiably, "I dare say you are right; but Ishould just like to have a look at the library and the coffee cups."
He passed inside, while Grayne turned to the policeman in attendanceand handed him a scribbled note, to be telegraphed fromheadquarters. The man saluted and hurried off; and Grayne, followinghis friend into the library, found him beside the bookstand in themiddle of the room, on which were the empty cups.
"This is where Boyle looked for Budge, or pretended to look for him,according to your account," he said.
As Fisher spoke he bent down in a half-crouching attitude, to lookat the volumes in the low, revolving shelf, for the whole bookstandwas not much higher than an ordinary table. The next moment hesprang up as if he had been stung.
"Oh, my God!" he cried.
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p; Very few people, if any, had ever seen Mr. Horne Fisher behave as hebehaved just then. He flashed a glance at the door, saw that theopen window was nearer, went out of it with a flying leap, as ifover a hurdle, and went racing across the turf, in the track of thedisappearing policeman. Grayne, who stood staring after him, soonsaw his tall, loose figure, returning, restored to all its normallimpness and air of leisure. He was fanning himself slowly with apiece of paper, the telegram he had so violently intercepted.
"Lucky I stopped that," he observed. "We must keep this affair asquiet as death. Hastings must die of apoplexy or heart disease."
"What on earth is the trouble?" demanded the other investigator.
"The trouble is," said Fisher, "that in a few days we should havehad a very agreeable alternative--of hanging an innocent man orknocking the British Empire to hell."
"Do you mean to say," asked Grayne, "that this infernal crime is notto be punished?"
Fisher looked at him steadily.
"It is already punished," he said.
After a moment's pause he went on. "You reconstructed the crimewith admirable skill, old chap, and nearly all you said was true.Two men with two coffee cups did go into the library and did puttheir cups on the bookstand and did go together to the well, and oneof them was a murderer and had put poison in the other's cup. But itwas not done while Boyle was looking at the revolving bookcase. Hedid look at it, though, searching for the Budge book with the notein it, but I fancy that Hastings had already moved it to the shelveson the wall. It was part of that grim game that he should find itfirst.
"Now, how does a man search a revolving bookcase? He does notgenerally hop all round it in a squatting attitude, like a frog. Hesimply gives it a touch and makes it revolve."
He was frowning at the floor as he spoke, and there was a lightunder his heavy lids that was not often seen there. The mysticismthat was buried deep under all the cynicism of his experience wasawake and moving in the depths. His voice took unexpected turns andinflections, almost as if two men were speaking.
"That was what Boyle did; he barely touched the thing, and it wentround as easily as the world goes round. Yes, very much as theworld goes round, for the hand that turned it was not his. God, whoturns the wheel of all the stars, touched that wheel and brought itfull circle, that His dreadful justice might return."
"I am beginning," said Grayne, slowly, "to have some hazy andhorrible idea of what you mean."
"It is very simple," said Fisher, "when Boyle straightened himselffrom his stooping posture, something had happened which he had notnoticed, which his enemy had not noticed, which nobody had noticed.The two coffee cups had exactly changed places."
The rocky face of Grayne seemed to have sustained a shock insilence; not a line of it altered, but his voice when it came wasunexpectedly weakened.
"I see what you mean," he said, "and, as you say, the less saidabout it the better. It was not the lover who tried to get rid ofthe husband, but--the other thing. And a tale like that about a manlike that would ruin us here. Had you any guess of this at thestart?"
"The bottomless well, as I told you," answered Fisher, quietly;"that was what stumped me from the start. Not because it hadanything to do with it, because it had nothing to do with it."
He paused a moment, as if choosing an approach, and then went on:"When a man knows his enemy will be dead in ten minutes, and takeshim to the edge of an unfathomable pit, he means to throw his bodyinto it. What else should he do? A born fool would have the sense todo it, and Boyle is not a born fool. Well, why did not Boyle do it?The more I thought of it the more I suspected there was some mistakein the murder, so to speak. Somebody had taken somebody there tothrow him in, and yet he was not thrown in. I had already an ugly,unformed idea of some substitution or reversal of parts; then Istooped to turn the bookstand myself, by accident, and I instantlyknew everything, for I saw the two cups revolve once more, likemoons in the sky."
After a pause, Cuthbert Grayne said, "And what are we to say to thenewspapers?"
"My friend, Harold March, is coming along from Cairo to-day," saidFisher. "He is a very brilliant and successful journalist. But forall that he's a thoroughly honorable man, so you must not tell himthe truth."
Half an hour later Fisher was again walking to and fro in front ofthe clubhouse, with Captain Boyle, the latter by this time with avery buffeted and bewildered air; perhaps a sadder and a wiser man.
"What about me, then?" he was saying. "Am I cleared? Am I not goingto be cleared?"
"I believe and hope," answered Fisher, "that you are not going to besuspected. But you are certainly not going to be cleared. There mustbe no suspicion against him, and therefore no suspicion against you.Any suspicion against him, let alone such a story against him, wouldknock us endways from Malta to Mandalay. He was a hero as well as aholy terror among the Moslems. Indeed, you might almost call him aMoslem hero in the English service. Of course he got on with thempartly because of his own little dose of Eastern blood; he got itfrom his mother, the dancer from Damascus; everybody knows that."
"Oh," repeated Boyle, mechanically, staring at him with round eyes,"everybody knows that."
"I dare say there was a touch of it in his jealousy and ferociousvengeance," went on Fisher. "But, for all that, the crime would ruinus among the Arabs, all the more because it was something like acrime against hospitality. It's been hateful for you and it's prettyhorrid for me. But there are some things that damned well can't bedone, and while I'm alive that's one of them."
"What do you mean?" asked Boyle, glancing at him curiously. "Whyshould you, of all people, be so passionate about it?"
Horne Fisher looked at the young man with a baffling expression.
"I suppose," he said, "it's because I'm a Little Englander."
"I can never make out what you mean by that sort of thing," answeredBoyle, doubtfully.
"Do you think England is so little as all that?" said Fisher, with awarmth in his cold voice, "that it can't hold a man across a fewthousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, myyoung friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, andwith no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always wentright with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendoculminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong withus here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjurewith, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough thata gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's noearthly English interest to serve, and all hell beating up againstus, simply because Nosey Zimmern has lent money to half the Cabinet.It's bad enough that an old pawnbroker from Bagdad should make usfight his battles; we can't fight with our right hand cut off. Ourone score was Hastings and his victory, which was really somebodyelse's victory. Tom Travers has to suffer, and so have you."
Then, after a moment's silence, he pointed toward the bottomlesswell and said, in a quieter tone:
"I told you that I didn't believe in the philosophy of the Tower ofAladdin. I don't believe in the Empire growing until it reaches thesky; I don't believe in the Union Jack going up and up eternallylike the Tower. But if you think I am going to let the Union Jack godown and down eternally, like the bottomless well, down into theblackness of the bottomless pit, down in defeat and derision, amidthe jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, andthat's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twentymillionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Ministermarried twenty Yankee Jewesses, not if Woodville and Carstairs hadshares in twenty swindling mines. If the thing is really tottering,God help it, it mustn't be we who tip it over."
Boyle was regarding him with a bewilderment that was almost fear,and had even a touch of distaste.
"Somehow," he said, "there seems to be something rather horrid aboutthe things you know."
"There is," replied Horne Fisher. "I am not at all pleased with mysmall stock of knowledge and reflection. But as it is partlyresponsible for your not being hanged, I don't know that
you needcomplain of it."
And, as if a little ashamed of his first boast, he turned andstrolled away toward the bottomless well.
The Man Who Knew Too Much Page 4