Talham had proposed to Yvonne Yale. It had followed many meetings, many calls at the house in Upper Curzon Street, many lengthy orations on the future of applied mechanics delivered to Mrs. Yale, who took what might be termed a shareholder’s interest in such matters, and the end of it was that Talham, after a sleepless night, called upon the Yales at five o’clock in the morning.
This statement is made in all seriousness, because it is true. At this outrageous hour Captain Talham, a tall, handsome figure of a man, tanned and debonair, knocked at the door of the Yale ménage.
He had knocked half a dozen times before the shuffling of slippered feet told him that his efforts had succeeded. A sleepy servant admitted him, albeit reluctantly. She asked him to stand in the hall while she went to arouse her mistress.
“Remember,” said Talham, solemnly, “that it is only Miss Yvonne that I wish to see.”
The servant came down again in her wrapper and led him to the drawing-room.
Talham, with deplorable familiarity, pulled the blinds up.
In five minutes the girl came in. She wore a long kimono of dark blue, edged with Russian embroidery, and she had hidden the glory of her hair under a boudoir cap.
She looked singularly beautiful—he had never seen her more so.
She was worried, too. Naturally, she could only interpret this unexpected call into a recurrence of the perils which she had already experienced.
“I have called to see you, Miss Yale,” said Talham, gravely, “on a most important matter.” She nodded and waited.
“Last night, or, rather, in the early hours of this morning, I had an interview with a Mr. de Costa,” said Talham.
He went on to give particulars of that interview. She seemed more than ordinarily interested. It was rather as though she were eager for all he could tell her. The light of sympathy was in her eyes. She sat on one of those hard, straight-backed chairs which are to be found in London drawing-rooms, and are designed to discourage lengthy visits, her hands clasping her crossed knees, as step by step, concealing nothing, exaggerating nothing, omitting nothing—except, perhaps, his own foresight and resourcefulness—Talham took her through the act of his “just piracy,” as he described it. He went on to tell the full story of the Emperor’s tomb. When he had finished, there was a pause. Then she said gently:
“I understand, Captain Talham, and I appreciate your confidence. I am glad you have told me, because Mr. de Costa himself sent me a version last night which was not as complimentary to yourself as you have made it.” She frowned a little as at some unpleasant memory. De Costa had threatened her—she did not tell him this. Now, in a panic, she realised that the information for which the old man had asked and which she had not at the moment possessed, was now hers!
“Why, oh why, have you come?” she asked.
“You are entitled to know that,” said Talham. “I must hurry forward all my arrangements and go back to China. I cannot go back until I know one thing. I cannot wait a day,” he said, vehemently, “with one doubt in my mind. Miss Yale——”
He leant forward, his hands tightly clasped, his face tense and drawn, a new Talham, and a Talham she had never seen before—the strong, clean soul of the man shone in his face.
“I want a partner,” he said. “I want—you!”
He jerked the last word.
She rose slowly, and looked down at him still in the same attitude in which he had made his plea—and a look of pity and something else came over her face.
“I am sorry, Captain Talham,” she said in a low voice. “I cannot agree, though I recognise how great an honour you have done me.”
He got up and drew a long breath.
“You cannot agree,” he repeated.
She did not trust herself to speak, but shook her head slowly.
Then a pause—one of those seemingly interminable pauses so trying to the nerves. Neither of the two spoke. Talham’s eyes were on the floor; hers, filled with pity, were on his face. It seemed that five minutes passed like this, though, as a matter of fact, the period was less.
Then Talham said, “Oh!”
That was all he said. It was not an “Oh” of pain, or an “Oh” of surprise, or “Oh” of indifference; it was just “Oh!”
When Talham left the house that memorable morning to return to the hotel after his fantastic and fruitless quest, Yvonne Yale sat for quite a long time in the little drawing-room.
It was not an apartment which shone in the merciless grey light of early morning. At such an hour you saw the mark of the cleaner’s vacuum-brush—the discolourations where an amateur varnisher had endeavoured to renovate the chipped chairs—the thinness of the carpet here and there, and, most appalling of all, the blatant artificiality of the “Gloire de Dijon” roses which Mrs. Yale had brought back from Ostend with her the previous year.
Yvonne had taken a seat by the window and was sitting on it sideways, one arm thrown across the back and the other twisting and untwisting a piece of loose embroidery upon her kimono.
She was thankful, at that moment, that her mother was a heavy sleeper and had not been aroused by the summons.
Yvonne Yale hoped that she was a dutiful daughter. There were times when she came perilously near being glad that she was not. This was a moment when the presence of her mother would have sent her to her room.
It was good to be here alone, in the silence and in the sweet light of the early day, to think this problem over—for Talham had become a problem.
A fortnight ago, she would have dismissed his proposal with a laugh—and found relief in the sight of his disappearing back.
But now, this tall, brown man, with his obvious sincerity, his interminable speeches, his earnestness, which verged upon pomposity, had taken a place with her.
He filled a niche no other man had occupied, could occupy, to do Talham justice, for Nature does not create duplicates of his quality.
Exactly where was that niche? This speculation puzzled her. If she could have answered that question after long deliberation and self-analysis, the problem was a problem no longer.
Where did he stand? At that moment of time she had no feeling of love, as young people understand love, no quickening of the pulse at his approach, no blotting out of her soul’s sun at his departure—no gnawing ache or unsatisfied voidance of soul at his continued absence.
Indeed, she had none of the conventional symptoms, and might be excused the belief that, so far as love was concerned, there was no bond between Talham and her.
And yet——
She walked to the French windows and, opening them, stepped out on to the little stone balcony. She looked up and down the street; there was nobody in sight; it would be little short of a social crime for any of the inhabitants of Upper Curzon Street to be seen abroad at that hour, save in evening dress.
Insensibly, she found herself looking long, and a little wistfully, in the direction which she knew Talham must have taken.
He was something more to her than a friend, though he was not even a friend in the accepted sense. The confidences, which mark the growth of friendship, had been all one-sided. It had been Talham who had talked—be sure of that. She had listened excellently.
Talham’s passion was an inspiration, a thing born of a momentary glance—love at first sight, though the term is hateful.
To fulfil the requirements of the ideal, those two souls should have leapt together to light, as two chemical elements dormant apart, will, on impact, forsake their independent properties and mingle riotously in the creation of a newer element.
But Talham had done all the leaping. The girl had been but the passive agent, a screen to reflect his brilliancy—Talham was a dazzling searchlight that played on Yvonne Yale. She, herself, produced no increase in the power of illumination.
It was absurd to say that she was cold. All women are cold—just as all men are liars. In a dark room a diamond is undistinguishable from half a brick. People who, when groping in the gloom of ignorance, in a vain search for the furnace, which they felt must burn within the heart of the girl, not infrequently came up against the refrigerating plant, and retired in disorder, composing wicked little epigrams.
She stood for a long time on the balcony—then returned to the room.
The servant, who had admitted her, still waited resentfully. Her name was Martha Ann, and she had in her colourless composition no romance. Her hour for rising was seven, and she had risen at five. That was all.
“Do you want me, miss?” she asked, with offensive patience.
Yvonne shook her head, and the girl went off.
“I don’t suppose I shall get to sleep now,” she said bitterly. “A nice time in the morning for a gentleman to call.”
She said many other things, but was careful to wait until her voice was only represented to the girl below by a succession of incomprehensible sounds, the tenor of which might be grasped from the fact that each sentence ended on a high note.
When Martha came down at the conventional hour she found her young mistress fully dressed, moreover, dressed for the street.
“I am going to Covent Garden to buy some flowers, Martha,” said Yvonne.
Martha tightened her lips and said nothing until she heard the door close behind the girl.
“What a house!” said Martha, and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
It was a glorious morning. The air was sweet and clean; the flood of golden sunlight which bathed the green spaces of the city squares and made ornate avenues of the long orderly streets, was a veritable elixir of life.
There was a spring even in the hard, asphalt pavement that morning, and the girl found herself singing quietly to herself as she walked along.
Covent Garden Market was no great distance from the hotel which housed Talham. An hour later she was standing in the Strand, her arms filled with dewy blooms, looking with a thoughtful eye upon the great block of buildings which constituted the caravanserai.
Breakfast was seldom a pleasant meal in Upper Curzon Street. The urbanity, the graciousness, and the Foreign Office manner of Mrs. Yale were never on view at so early an hour. The great hostess of eleven p.m. became the vinegary housekeeper of nine a.m.
It was as though Nature had reversed her processes, and had evolved from the overnight butterfly a most business-like grub.
There was a pile of letters by the side of Mrs. Yale’s plate when she came down to breakfast. Yvonne had already begun her meal, and the elder woman gave her a slight peck in the region between the eye and the superior maxilla, which signified the automatic continuance of her devotion.
She flounced into her chair, unfolded her napkin, glanced at her papers, and criticised the bacon at one and the same time.
Yvonne glanced at her idly. Instinctively, she had closed all the sound-proof doors of her mind on her stepmother’s entrance.
“Bills,” said Mrs. Yale grimly. “We shall have to draw in our horns.”
Yvonne had never completely satisfied herself as to what were the horns to which Mrs. Yale invariably referred. If it was the cornucopian horn, it was generally drawn in empty.
“Here’s this exasperating broker of mine,” said the elder woman, looking at a long statement of account. “I told him particularly not to sell Long Island Gas until it reached eighty-four—and here he has sold it at eighty-one!”
“It is now seventy-six,” said Yvonne, drily. “If you had waited for your eighty-four you might have lost much more money.”
She had taken to a study of the Share Market and its report from sheer self-defence.
Mrs. Yale opened another letter. It was very short and, apparently, unpleasant.
“Good heavens!” said she.
Her language at breakfast was generally violent. It was, in a sense, an act of devotion, since it had been acquired from her militant husband, who long since had carried his sword to heaven.
“What is the matter? From the bank?” asked Yvonne.
Mrs. Yale invariably kept her most violent expletives for the bank.
“He says I am eighty pounds overdrawn—will I put this right at once!”
Mrs. Yale glared at her unoffending stepdaughter.
“It’s absurd,” she said, “ridiculous! Eighty pounds overdrawn! Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life.”
Yvonne smiled. She, at any rate, had had this experience before.
“I know what it is,” said Mrs. Yale, with sudden decision. “They’ve got one of those wretched horse-racing bank clerks who is robbing the bank. He’s filching my account because he knows I am so careless. I suspected it all along!”
“The last time, mother,” said Yvonne quietly, “you thought Martha had been using your blank cheques. Why don’t you fill up your counterfoils, and then you would know how much money you had?”
Mrs. Yale offered no reply. She made a further rapid survey of the morning’s post without finding satisfaction. She reserved two obviously private letters for the last. These she opened and read carefully. Then she folded them up, placed them in their envelopes, and slipped them into a bag which hung at her side—for all the world like a sabretache.
She scrutinised Yvonne with a long and approving scrutiny.
“My dear,” she said finally, “you’ve got to make a good marriage.”
“Have I?” said the girl coolly. “I thought only people in novelettes made good marriages. What do you mean by making a good marriage, exactly?”
“Now, don’t be tiresome, Yvonne,” said Mrs. Yale. “I’ve been a good mother to you. I’ve done my best to bring around you the most eligible men in London. I’ve spent money like water—which reminds me, we shall have to have that kitchen range seen to; Martha tells me it’s smoking again, and she can’t get the oven hot. Where was I?—Oh, I was saying, I have spent money like water, and I think I am entitled to some return. Not,” she hastened to say, “that I expect any monetary reward for my sacrifices——”
Yvonne had heard all this before. In one form or another this conversation was almost a daily feature of her life.
“I can’t help thinking, my dear,” said Mrs. Yale, putting her head on one side and looking at her stepdaughter with her pale blue eyes opened to their widest extent. “I cannot help thinking that you have not always appreciated my efforts. That new dress, for instance, which I bought at the summer sales—you have never worn it.”
“It’s totally unsuitable for me, mother,” said Yvonne. “I thought I told you so. It’s not the kind of dress that I should care to be seen walking in. I’d always much rather choose my own.”
“That’s pique,” said her stepmother. “That’s naughty pique.”
Yvonne made no reply. It was useless to argue the point.
“Then, the other night, when Mr. de Costa called to congratulate you on your rescue from those horrid China people”—Yvonne’s lips curled scornfully—“you came down absolutely without a jewel on. Yet, in your room, on your own table, for you to wear, are my own pearls—my own bangles.”
Yvonne smiled.
“My dear mother,” she said, “I will not wear imitation pearls, even to please you, and most certainly I will not wear any kind of jewel which everybody, who is in the habit of coming to this house, has seen round your neck at least a dozen times. You see they are rather unmistakable,” she said carefully. “If they were real, they could not be worth less than fifty thousand pounds.”
“There is a certain finesse in these things,” said Mrs. Yale vaguely; but she did not pursue the topic.
She waited until her own meal was nearly at an end, and the girl was folding her serviette preparatory to leaving the table, before she returned to the attack.
“What about young De Costa?” she asked.
“What about him?”
“Has he proposed to you?”
“I really forget,” said Yvonne carelessly. “These people do propose in a way—almost mechanically. I don’t like him—he is rather a worm.”
Mrs. Yale frowned.
“A most unkind description,” she said severely. “His father is immensely rich. He gave you a beautiful bangle which I never see you wearing, by the way.” She paused for an explanation, but Yvonne offered none. “And what of Captain Talham?”
Yvonne rose from the table.
“I don’t propose to discuss these matters at breakfast, mother,” she said. “You know, it takes all the romance out of a thing. It reduces love and marriage to the level of cold bacon.”
“But has he?” persisted Mrs. Yale.
“Has he what?” the girl evaded.
“Has he proposed to you, my dear? Let me impress upon you this fact—that though Captain Talham is not enormously wealthy, he has prospects, and he is enormously generous. I hope you have not forgotten the fact that he rescued you from the hands of those terrible persons.”
“He has proposed,” interrupted the girl, “if that is what you mean. In fact, he called this morning at five o’clock to make his proposal.”
Mrs. Yale gasped.
“Proposed this morning!” she repeated incredulously. “At five o’clock!”
“He called at five this morning,” said the girl, “as Martha Ann will tell you, if you have any doubts.”
“Why was I not aroused?” asked Mrs. Yale, with a sense of grievance that she had missed something.
“Because he wasn’t proposing to you,” said the girl calmly. “It was my affair entirely.”
Mrs. Yale got up from the table, a little hurt.
“I think, Yvonne,” she said, with a sort of stagey gentleness, “that you might remember my anxieties and sacrifices.”
“I do not forget them,” said her stepdaughter; “only, unfortunately, this is my anxiety and my sacrifice.”
Mrs. Yale sniffed, and searched aimlessly for her handkerchief, but thought better of it. After all, Yvonne was not the sort of girl to be moved by tears. She did not need to have this fact again impressed upon her. She was hard. The dear colonel, her father, had shown similar callousness of tears, and had laid down the perfectly dreadful theory that the more one wept the less one perspired. And indeed, he had written a paper on the subject, and had invited the Royal Society to allow him to read it—a request which was respectfully declined.
The subject of her marriage, as Yvonne had so truly said, had formed a periodic matter for argument—only unfortunately, in the present instance, it was absolutely necessary that Mrs. Yale should know where she stood.
She had hinted as much—indeed, had said as much—before; but now she could say so in very truth. The eccentric behaviour of Long Island Gas was as nothing to the monstrous conduct of an oil well in Southern Russia.
Quite a lot of Mrs. Yale’s money had gone from time to time towards the sinking of a bore hole upon what the directors invariably and carefully referred to as “The Property.”
When they wrote to Mrs. Yale they referred to themselves as “Your Directors.” It gave the good lady the comforting feeling that they were distant relations—though what satisfaction accrued to her from that, Heaven only knows.
“Your Directors,” who had started out on their career joyful and optimistic, making conservative estimate of future profits, which were beyond the dreams of avarice, had grown rather gloomy of late. “Your Directors” had been probing the bowels of the earth without any great profit to themselves, and apparently without any great inconvenience to the earth. The oil, in its furtive, sneaking way, seemed to have got wind of “Your Directors’ ” intentions, and moved off to a neighbouring oil field.
“Your Directors”—sharp and cunning fellows—were not to be evaded. They purchased the neighbouring oil field, and told Mrs. Yale, by private letter, that the prospects were of the brightest, and they hoped soon to make a definite statement.
After six months they made a definite statement—but the prospects were no longer of the brightest. The oil, in a panic, had retired some thirty versts.
“Your Directors” were considering their position. Mrs. Yale was impressed by the whole-hearted devotion of “Your Directors” to her interests, and the employment of the blessed word “versts” brightened her up. After all, it looked as if there was a mine somewhere, and undoubtedly it was in a foreign country where “miles” had a special name of their own, and so many other extraordinary things happened.
In one way or another, as a result of poetic folders and disinterested advice from Mr. Macdougal and other outside brokers with names reminiscent of the Old Testament, Mrs. Yale had lost some eight hundred pounds; not a considerable sum to most of the people who lived in Upper Curzon Street, and not one to bother even a woman circumstanced as Mrs. Yale was—the morning after the loss.
Yvonne knew nothing of her stepmother’s folly, or she would have worried much more than did Mrs. Yale. As a matter of fact, that amiable lady did not greatly distress herself. She was obsessed with the idea that she was a born financier. She adjusted things. She had learnt the financier’s trick—which is, not to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, but to borrow from Peter, pay half of Paul’s demands, and utilise the other half for playing margin on sure enough stock.
In this way the debt both to Peter and Paul may be discharged with a bit of luck, and anyway Paul has had something on account.
Mrs. Yale spent the day shopping pleasantly; Yvonne dreamt away the hours in reverie. She thought of Talham, that first meeting in the park, the adventures that followed her parting with the jade bracelet, and all he had said that morning. She acted on a sudden impulse and sent him a wire.
So the day wore on, bringing Mrs. Yale back from her precious bargain sales, weary but triumphant, and the possessor of many articles for which she had no particular use, but which were undeniably cheap.
Just before dinner the second visitor was announced.
Yvonne read the card and frowned. “Mr. Raymond de Costa,” said the pasteboard elaborately. He had called for an answer to his letter.
It was not the hour that visitors usually called, unless they were invited to dinner, and, as Martha Ann can testify, the dinner that night was of significant frugality. Mrs. Yale, dining alone (and it was tantamount to dining alone when she had no other companion at the table but her stepdaughter), was an exponent of the simple life.
Martha Ann ushered the visitor into the drawing-room, then flew to find Mrs. Yale, to warn her that three chops and a pint of dessicated soup was very poor preparation for a dinner-party, if it were to include Mr. de Costa.
Yvonne was dressing, but came down within a few minutes of his arrival. The old man rose and favoured her with a bow as she came in.
“I have called for your answer, Miss Yale,” said De Costa.
“I have no answer to give you now, that I was not prepared to give you yesterday,” said the girl, quietly. “I could not, even if I knew, put you in possession of the information you require.”
De Costa shrugged his shoulders.
“It means such a lot to you,” he said, “and to your mother. I am sure she would persuade you——”
“My mother could not persuade me to do anything I thought was dishonourable and unworthy,” she replied, with a note of hauteur in her voice.
“You know the consequences?” asked the old man.
“I know what you threaten,” said the girl, steadily. “That you will have Captain Talham arrested, and that you will subpœna me, and force me to tell you what was inscribed on the bracelet.”
The old man nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “that is my intention. You can save your friend a lot of trouble, and save me a great deal of inconvenience, by telling me all you know.”
She was silent.
“By hook or by crook, I am going to learn what you have to tell,” said De Costa savagely. “This man has done me a grievous wrong, and I intend repaying myself for all the inconvenience to which he has put me, and for all the money which I have lost as a result of his act of theft. The bracelet was not yours; it is not his.”
“There is no Court of Law in England that would force me to say what I did not wish to say,” she said firmly. “Legally—however unfortunate it was your son should have given it to me—it was mine. It is now out of my hands. I cannot tell you anything about it without Captain Talham’s permission.”
De Costa shrugged.
“Your refusal to answer will be accepted as an answer unfavourable to the prisoner. If you lie, the judges and the jury will know.”
“Have no fear,” she said haughtily. “I shall not say anything which is not true.”
It was at that tense moment that Mrs. Yale came in. She boasted her ability to take in a situation at a glance. Now she sought to justify that boast.
“Ah!” she said pleasantly, with a genial smile which comprehended both the old man and her stepdaughter. “I see you have succeeded in persuading my obstinate daughter.”
“I have not yet, madam,” said De Costa, putting on his mask of courtesy. “I do not doubt we shall succeed eventually,” he added, with a smile. “I have had to take a very serious line with Miss Yale, and I know that you will support me in my action.”
“You may be sure, Mr. de Costa,” said the lady fervently, “that whatever action you take you have the approval of one who is not only a fond and doting mother, but is also sufficiently a woman of the world to realise the disinterestedness of your action.”
It was a speech almost worthy of Talham. She turned to the girl.
“Yvonne,” she said, with proper sadness, “I have never yet exercised that authority which my position and my age and the regard in which I was held by that hero who has long since carried his sword to Heaven”—she dabbed her eyes automatically—“entitles me. Yet I feel,” she said firmly, as she drew herself erect as a queen-mother would draw herself erect, “that I must, in this present instance, insist upon your taking a certain line of conduct—a line of conduct which will be beneficial to us all, and which will be creditable and worthy of the name you bear. Mr. de Costa has honoured me with his confidence.”
There was a little exchange of bows between the two.
“He has told me what steps he would take in certain eventualities. For the honour of the house——!” She laid her hand with dramatic effect on the girl’s shoulder.
Yvonne heaved a deep sigh. She put up her hand and took that of her mother’s. It was not so much to demonstrate her affection as to relieve an intolerable, melodramatic situation.
“There is no profit in talking to me like that, mother,” she said quietly. “You do not help me or help Mr. de Costa. The honour of the house, you may be sure, is safely in my keeping,” she said, with her little chin tilted upward proudly. “It is indeed more in my keeping than it is in yours.”
“But think of the court; think of the newspapers!” wailed Mrs. Yale. “Think of the scandal!”
“I have thought of all that,” said Yvonne with a little smile. “I do not relish the prospect any more than you. If Mr. de Costa does this disgraceful thing,” she shrugged her shoulders, “what else can I do but endure? Under any circumstances”—she faced the old man squarely—“I will not tell you what I know about Captain Talham’s plans.”
The opposition he was encountering had fanned the fury of the old man to a white heat of rage. The veins in his forehead were swelling, his voice trembled when he addressed her:
“I will know!” he said. “I will know what that bracelet said. If you don’t tell me I’ll find a way——”
He stopped suddenly, and looked over the girl’s shoulder at the doorway, his mouth open, his eyes staring, for Talham had brushed aside the agitated Martha Ann, and had stood there, unannounced, for quite a minute.
The girl, following the direction of the old man’s eyes, looked round. Her face went pink and white, her hands clasped and unclasped about her crumpled handkerchief.
He came forward with his shoulders bent a little forward, his eyes peering from left to right, a trick of his when he was facing a peril, the extent of which he did not know.
“I thought I heard my name mentioned,” he said softly. “I intrude for the second time this day, but I come to take farewell——”
He did not directly address Yvonne, nor did he look at her.
Whatever faults the old man De Costa had, cowardice was not one of them.
“I mentioned your name,” he said loudly, “and I am telling you now, Captain Talham, what I have told this young lady: that if you restore that bracelet which you have purloined, I am prepared to take no further action; but otherwise, I shall apply for a warrant for your arrest.”
It was, of course, the maddest kind of bluff to put on a man of Talham’s calibre.
“Indeed!”
Talham was monstrously polite. The girl’s eyes were fixed on him, and her face was a little drawn with anxiety. He smiled at her, an encouraging and an understanding smile.
“We are under the impression,” he said regally, “that you have already applied for the warrant, but that the authorities have refused to supply you with the necessary instrument to remove us. As for the bracelet”—he smiled again—“we are prepared, at this moment, to tell you exactly the wording on that extraordinary ornament; but alas! it is in the hands of our excellent friend Tillizinni.”
There was an awkward pause. The old man made as if to go.
“You shall hear again from me, Captain Talham,” he breathed. “Although I admit the warrant has not been granted, yet in a day or two the necessary affidavits will be received from China.”
“We shall be ready to answer any charge you may bring against us,” said Talham, “and we would remark that it is no part of our desire to shrink from the ordeal of a public trial. We have supreme and complete faith in the justice of our cause, and we do not shrink from the judgment of our peers.”
Evidently De Costa was not anxious to hear the conclusion of the speech. He had long left the room before Talham reached his peroration, which he had so skilfully and adroitly adjusted as to render the presence of the other unnecessary to its dramatic effect.
The girl listened with patience which was beyond praise, though her mind and her heart were in a ferment, and though every moment’s delay was torture to her.
As for Mrs. Yale, that wonderful and adaptable woman, she became the sole audience, as far as Talham was concerned. It was she who supplied the murmured applause, who agreed with the deductions he made and the inferences he assumed, though they were tolerably incomprehensible to her. She sat with the proud and happy smile of the well-tested friend who had seen her loyalty vindicated.
At last Talham’s address came to an end.
“I want to see you alone,” said Yvonne.
There was hardly a break between his last words and her request, so quick she was to take advantage of the silence.
“I have to explain why I wired to you,” she said.
Mrs. Yale tiptoed from the room with ostentatious discretion.
“I wired to you,” said the girl at last, “because I wanted to see you.”
He nodded.
“These people weren’t worrying you, were they?” he asked; “because you need not——”
“I know!” she said hastily. “I know! But I’m afraid of what they will do; that they will force me to go out as witness against you. But I will never tell,” she said. “Never! never!”
Talham was looking at her in perturbation. It was a new Yvonne Yale he saw; such a one as he had never dreamt of. She took his breath away; he felt himself shaking from head to foot, and at that moment he cursed what he thought was a recurrence of malarial fever. But there was no malarial germ in Talham’s veins at that moment. There was something within her that spoke to him, some message which went out in vibrant waves and shook the very centre of life within him.
For the first time in his life, Talham was speechless. He could say nothing; his tongue refused its duty, and Yvonne Yale was in no better case. For her throat had gone dry and husky; it sounded queerly hoarse when she spoke, and she was short of breath, though she had made no recent or unusual exertion.
“Captain Talham,” she managed to say, “I wanted to tell you something.… That is why I sent for you. It is a very extraordinary thing I want to say. Suppose they arrest you?”
He shook his head. Even that possibility did not lend him words.
“Suppose they arrest you,” she went on in her new, breathless way, with her eyes shining and moist, and her lips parted because of the very physical discomfort of breathing. “Suppose they ask me to go into the witness-box to testify against you… there is a law in England, do you know it—that no—no——”
Again she stopped; the words were so difficult and so impossible.
“There is a law in England,” she went on again, “that a wife cannot testify against her husband.”
The last words were in a whisper.
For a moment their eyes met. He held them for a breathing space——
When De Costa went back to his house he was determined at all costs to revenge himself upon the man who had slighted him, and who had brought such misery to his son.
He was prepared to brave any consequences—for an angry man is neither logical nor reasonable, and until his temper cooled he was wilfully blind to the danger which he himself might incur through the publicity of a trial. That was his mood when he reached the gloomy house in Kensington.
Over a frugal dinner he reviewed all the happenings of the past few weeks, and bitterly cursed his luck. Yet the planning and the scheming of years had not altogether ended in nought.
Armed with the information which he was able to give them, his exploration parties would soon be on their way to Mount Li.
The books which were open to Tillizinni were open equally to him. Within a rough radius he also had located the mountain of the Emperor.
His house was in disorder: holland sheets covered most of the furniture, his valuables had been removed to the bank, and his heavy baggage already stood roped and corded for the journey which he had set himself.
He intended travelling across the Trans-Siberian Railway, and sending his trunks on to Shanghai to a trusted agent. The tickets necessary for the journey were in his desk, and his sleeping berth had been booked for some weeks past. This thought made the old man pause: it might be three weeks or a month before he could bring Talham to trial, even supposing that he persuaded the Public Prosecutor to act, and a month was a long time. He decided to sleep on it before taking any further action.
Half-way through dinner, Gregory de Costa paid him an unexpected visit. For two weeks Gregory had seldom been at home except to sleep, and that night, as the old man knew, he had an engagement to dine with a party at a fashionable West End restaurant.
“Hullo!” said the old man, not unkindly. “What has happened to you?”
The young man sank listlessly into a chair by the table.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just sick of things—that’s all!”
“After dining with Soumerez?”
Gregory shook his head. “No,” he said, “Soumerez bores me, and I don’t feel that I could sit down to dinner at the same table to-night.”
There was a little silence, then the young man asked:
“What do you want me to do whilst you’re away?”
“Do!” replied his father. “Why, do what you’ve been doing for the last year or two—just fool around London. I have taken a flat for you in Jermyn Street.”
The young man played with a salt-cellar moodily.
“I’d rather go with you,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” said De Costa hurriedly. “I’ve got to go into a country where all sorts of privations and discomforts have to be encountered, and you’re not fit for it. You’re a young man, I know,” he said gently, “but I’ve had the life; I have lived in most of these wild places, and my present position is due to the fact. In my young days I undertook certain risks and underwent certain hardships. I have no wish that you should have any of the experiences which were mine as a young man.”
Gregory looked at his father curiously.
“I suppose you had a pretty rotten life, didn’t you, when you were young?”
Raymond replied with a nod of his head. His son had chosen an appropriate word, for “rotten” indeed was the life De Costa had lived.
There was not an unsavoury transaction in the Philippines or in the far-away trading-places of Asia with which he had not been associated. He had financed more purely illegal schemes, had been behind more piratical expeditions, and had been associated with more heartless villainy than any other of his kind.
Not even the bad old traders of the South Sea Islands could show such a record as his, and even the sanctified odour of Kensington had not altogether dispersed the sinister atmosphere of his early days.
“It is quite impossible for you to come,” he went on. “There are all sorts of dangers to be encountered. This is my last expedition.”
The young man reached out and took a few grapes from the silver centre-piece, and ate them thoughtfully.
“I am very fond of you,” he said suddenly.
The old man did not conceal his pleasure.
“I think,” he said softly, “that that is a mutual fondness.”
The boy rose after a while and looked at his watch.
“I suppose I had better go along and invent some lie,” he said. “Anyway, the dinner will be nearly finished, and I shall be in time for whatever fun there is going after.”
His father accompanied him to the door, and watched the disappearing tail-light of the taxi; then he returned to his study.
He spent an hour poring over the translation of the document which was now in Tillizinni’s hands. Had he but the jade bracelet, how easy might it be; but he had enough to work on.
Some of the references puzzled him. What were the “spirit steps,” for instance; and what of these gigantic cross-bows which were to discharge titanic arrows at the intruder? Possibly two thousand years of rust and decay would have robbed them of their potency.
He picked up some newspaper cuttings dealing with Soo, and smiled, as again and again he came across the phrase which spoke of the “bottling up” of the fugitive. Very well; had these clever English policemen bottled up a man who was now in America, he thought.
He tidied away his documents, and was slipping a rubber band around one little dossier when he stopped, and raised his head, listening.
It was the faintest sound, a tiny, hushed, buzz from one corner of the room.
Now there was only one noise like this in the world that he knew. It was the sound of the secret buzzer which he had had installed communicating with a tiny push near the area door. It had been specially put in to allow his confederates to signal their presence when his servants were out, as they invariably were when visitors of this kind arrived.
Who could it be? He took from his desk a revolver, and made his way noiselessly downstairs to the little hallway which led from the area to the servants’ domain.
He crept to the door and listened; there was no sound. The bolts were always kept well oiled. He slipped them back noiselessly and opened the door. Two men were standing there—two small men who made no sound.
“Come in!” he said; but still they made no sign. Then he knew that they were Chinese.
“Come in!” he said again, addressing them in their own language.
He waited until they had closed the door behind, and turning on the electric switch, he flooded the passage with light.
“You!” he gasped.
Well might he be surprised, for these were the two agents of his whom he thought were on their way to China, the men who called themselves “Happy Child” and “Hope of Spring”—who were wanted by the police for the murder of the Chinese Ambassador, and greatly wanted by Soo T’si, for the treacherous slaughter of their comrade—his brother.
“Why do you come here?” he asked angrily.
He spoke in the hissing Canton dialect.
They shuffled uneasily, and the smaller of the two asked sullenly: “Where were we to go, master? Though we escaped the English police, yet Soo T’si has set his society against us, and we have been turned from one refuge to another.”
“Why didn’t you leave the country?”
“Lord, it was impossible,” said the other. “There were men watching boats and trains; we were warned.”
“You can’t stay here!” said De Costa.
They offered no alternative suggestion, and he led the way upstairs to his room. There they sat on the edge of the two chairs, forlorn, miserable, with that peculiar hunted, haggard look which criminals of all classes assume from necessity.
“Soo is in America now,” said De Costa. “If he could get away, why shouldn’t you?”
“Master, we were warned,” said the taller man again. “A servant from the boat told Hophee,” he gave the small man his nickname, “that they were looking for us.”
De Costa’s mind worked quickly; he had been in some peculiarly dangerous situations before. He must get these men away as quickly as possible.
“You want some money, I suppose,” he said, and the smaller man, who seemed to be the ruling spirit, answered monosyllably.
De Costa turned out his pockets and gave him a handful of silver and gold.
“Come to-morrow night,” he said, “at the same hour, and I will let you know exactly what plans I have made for you. Is there any danger until to-morrow?”
The small man shook his head.
“You will find your way out, you know the way,” said De Costa. “I will come down later and bolt the door after you.”
Noiselessly the two men left the room, and De Costa sat at his desk in no enviable mood. He thought he heard the two men speaking together as they went down the stairs to the basement. In his state of tension he imagined that one had called to him sharply, and he opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
“Did you speak?” he asked, and a voice from the basement answered briefly, “No.”
He had waited to hear the door open, but realised that so perfectly had it been prepared for midnight visitors that no sound would reach him, and he returned to his desk again.
These men must be got rid of at all hazards; he wondered how. Perhaps now that the attention had been directed towards Soo they might be smuggled out of the country. They had escaped Soo, that was something, for Soo would make short work of them if he knew how grossly he had been betrayed.
The translation of the stolen document still lay on his desk before him, and he folded it up carefully.
“This, at any rate, is something,” he said aloud.
“But not all,” answered a quiet voice.
He looked up startled.
Before him, in the centre of the room, with his arms folded so that his hands were concealed in his sleeves, stood Soo T’si, and there was a smile upon his face which was not pleasant to see.
“Don’t touch your revolver,” he said, “for I can shoot you through my sleeve with the greatest of ease.”
“I thought you were in America,” stammered De Costa.
“I suppose you did,” said the other.
He spoke easily in English, a fact which he evidently thought called for some comment.
“I have been speaking nothing but Chinese for the last week or two,” he said, “and I was afraid of my English getting stale. Do you mind if I practise it on you?”
He was so affable, and so friendly, that De Costa lost some of his misapprehension.
“I am glad to see you,” he said. “I was afraid you had got into serious trouble.”
Soo shook his head.
“No, indeed,” he said lightly, “one never gets into serious trouble; I got into a particularly foul canal, which compares very favourably with some of the streams of my native land.”
He did not attempt to sit down; he did not even move from where he stood, or change his attitude.
“What are your plans?” asked De Costa. “I suppose you know that the police are searching for you?”
Soo nodded.
“I have reason to believe that they are,” he said sardonically.
“Can I be of any assistance to you?” asked De Costa.
Soo shook his head.
“I’m afraid that you are absolutely useless to me,” he said quietly. “What is that interesting document you have there?”
De Costa would have snatched up the translation from the table, but there was a cold menace in the Chinaman’s eye which prevented him.
“It’s a little thing,” he said vaguely.
“So I see,” replied the other. “Turn it round so that I can read it, please.”
Like a man fascinated, De Costa obeyed, and Soo took a step nearer the table. He read the sheet through carefully, without moving his hands from the inside of his sleeves, and De Costa wondered why, until he remembered that Soo had threatened him with a concealed pistol.
“You don’t seem to trust me.” De Costa put a note of reproach into his voice.
“I have very good reasons for not trusting you, De Costa. The last time I was here you swore to me that you had not seen this document, that you had no idea as to where it was. I have discovered since,” he went on meditatively, “that you had it all the time, and that you were directly responsible for the treachery of my men, and indirectly for the death of my brother; you told your servants to bring the paper to you at any cost—my brother’s life paid for that order.”
His voice was even and colourless, and he spoke like a man who was reciting a lesson.
“You are wrong—you are wrong,” protested De Costa violently. “I know nothing whatever about it. This paper only came to me a few days ago. I tried to find you——”
Soo shook his head.
“Why do you lie?” he said. “To me, who come from the land of liars, and am skilled in their detection. I know, because the two men you employed, and whom I have been tracking for the last three weeks, have confessed.”
“Confessed!” gasped De Costa.
Soo nodded slowly.
“But they have just left,” stammered the other.
“They have not left,” said Soo quietly, and withdrew his hands from the veiling sleeves.
De Costa went as white as death, for the hands of Soo T’si were scarlet with blood.…
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later a constable slowly patrolling his beat came to the front of the house De Costa occupied, and automatically threw the light of his lamp over the front door. It seemed in order, and he passed on. He had not gone a dozen yards when he heard a sharp crack, and turned to see a tongue of fire leap from the window of the house he had passed, for even as he had stood watching it, the flames were eating their way through the wooden shutters which covered the window, and the body of old De Costa lay wrapped in a fiery sheet.
The landscape which the travellers beheld was an especially uninviting one; the country was flat, except about the horizon, where a range of low hills were half veiled in mist.
Dreary paddy fields stretched left and right, and the roadway that led down into the village from the slope on which they stood was little more than an uneven track.
“That is our objective,” said one of the horsemen.
He looked around for the escort and the mule caravan which was following leisurely behind. There was no sign of either. Five li back there was a particularly difficult piece of road to negotiate, and he gathered that with true Chinese philosophy and imperturbability, the muleteers were waiting for the rain to stop.
“That is the village of Cha-k’eo,” said the taller of the men.
They were both dressed in the conventional costume of China—thick felt shoes and white stockings, wadded silk coats and padded skirts. On the breast of one was embroidered a fantastic pheasant, and on the top of his little cap he wore a sky-blue button.
That same button had carried them through many seemingly impossible situations.
“It will be raining again in a minute,” said Talham with a glance at the sky. “Let us see what Cha-k’eo offers in the way of accommodation.”
He cantered down the slope, his sure-footed pony making light of the natural obstacles in the path, and trotted through the one grimy street of the grimy village, ankle deep in black mud.
He drew rein before a dwelling which might have been, in a western clime, a respectable cattle shed. There were two big windows, one of which was half filled up with loose flat bricks, and the other denude of any covering. The door gave entrance to the uninviting interior, but before he could reach the door the proprietor came out.
“How far are we from Shan Shi?” demanded Talham.
“Lord, you are fifty li,” said the man with a profound bow. “I would advise your excellencies to stay here for the night, for the road is very difficult, and is, moreover, patrolled by bad characters.”
He glanced nervously up at Talham as he spoke, for, for all he knew, this might be one of those bad characters against whom he felt it his duty to warn the unwary.
“The advice of the ‘chink’ in his native habitation,” orated Talham as he dismounted slowly, “is liable to be self-interested. On this occasion, however, I think his natural desire to rob us of our cash runs hand in hand with a proper appreciation of real danger.”
He spoke in English, and then turned to the fawning landlord.
“My friend,” he said benevolently, “tell me the name of the men who patrol this road.”
The landlord hesitated. He was evidently afraid to speak openly, yet the authority of Talham’s tone, the undeniable rank which he held, and, moreover, the familiarity of the stranger with the dialect of the district, compelled confidence.
“It is the honourable Society of the Bannermen of Heaven,” he said humbly. “As your Excellency knows, the city of Taupan, one hundred lis south, is having much trouble. There is a rebellion, and His Excellency the Governor has been killed. It is said, too, that his honourable son has returned from the land of the foreign devils.”
Talham interrupted him sharply.
“You shall not say,” he said, “Iang kuei-tsi, but Iang-ren, for I am a foreigner, and your speech is offensive to me.”
The man bowed low. He was frightened almost to death, and was shaking in every limb, for the stories of the foreigner, and the events which had followed the taking of Pekin, had been exaggerated up and down the country. Moreover, as he knew, Iang-ren filled the Chinese army, holding high positions, as this great one evidently did.
“Lord, it was a slip of my tongue,” he said naïvely, “as we used to speak of foreigners in the days of Ihoch’uan.”
He gave the Boxers their full title, and Talham nodded.
“Take the horses and let them be cleaned and fed,” he said. “My friend and I desire your best room.”
The man led the way with many apologies into the interior of his shed. To Talham’s surprise, there was an interior room which had few of the objectionable features which Chinese caravanserai frequently present. It was tolerably clean, and free from the disagreeable odour of opium smoke.
A long, low kang occupied the full length of one wall, and when an hour later the mule train came up, and rugs were spread upon the Chinese equivalent for bedstead, and a brazier of burning charcoal was brought in, the travellers had good reason for congratulating themselves upon the comfort of their lodging.
That the arrival of foreigners in a tiny village would attract the entire population goes without saying, but a word from Talham dismissed the rabble, and the landlord was placed outside the door with two of the escort to see that the foreign “lords” were not disturbed.
“You may say,” said Talham, “that we have now reached the most critical portion of our journey.”
Tillizinni was examining a map by the light of a Chinese lamp.
“If your surmises are right,” he said, “the Mount Li described in the Second Emperor’s account, is that somewhat insignificant hill that we saw as we came over the rise to the village.”
Talham nodded.
“I am satisfied that it is,” he said.
He seemed less inclined to orate than Tillizinni had ever remembered him. Indeed, so marked was his depression that presently the detective referred to it.
“I know,” said the other uncomfortably; “but the fact is, I am not too satisfied with the progress we have made, and less satisfied——did you hear what he said?”
He jerked his head in the direction of the landlord.
“I did,” said Tillizinni. “But, fortunately, my knowledge of the dialect isn’t as good as yours. I find that a conversance with ‘Mandarin Chinese’ isn’t always as useful as it might be.”
“He said that there had been a revolt in Taupan,” said Talham, “and that His Excellency the Governor had been killed, and that his son occupied what amounted to the kingship of this district. Do you realise who that man is?”
“Not Soo?” asked the detective.
Talham nodded.
“That’s just who it is,” he said, “and he has tricked us.” He was silent for a moment, then, “Anyway, I’m glad he’s here,” he said. “I’ve been getting jumpy about Yvonne.”
The thought that Soo might be within six or seven days’ journey had troubled him.
“It is better he should be here than there.”
He was almost cheerful at the thought.
“He’ll hear to-morrow that we’re in the district,” he went on, “and then the fun is going to begin.”
Before he went to sleep that night, Tillizinni saw that his revolver was loaded, and placed it under his pillow within reach of his hand. News travels fast in a country which does not depend so much upon the up-to-date telegraph, as upon some mysterious means of communication which is peculiarly the secret of a semi-barbarian people.
They were not to be disturbed that night, however, and Tillizinni woke to find the day broken and rain still falling heavily. Breakfast was prepared by the servant whom Talham had engaged at Shanghai, but in spite of the wretched surroundings and the unpleasant prophecy of the day, the two men made a good meal.
“Our immediate danger,” said Talham, “lies in the fact that we are going straight to Hoo Sin, a city which is in some way allied to our friend’s stronghold. What makes it rather awkward is the fact that Hoo Sin must be our base for a week or two, or, at any rate, until we can locate the tomb.”
Tillizinni nodded.
“I know the mandarin personally,” Talham went on. “An Oriental of exceeding affability, and it would seem to me that the possibility of the Oriental mind——”
He might have developed his speech into a discourse on Chinese metaphysics, but Tillizinni interrupted him.
“We have to go,” he said, “and the roads are pretty bad.”
They were worse than the men anticipated, and the progress along the wild and tortuous path, which was dignified by the name of road, was a painful experience.
The two leaders of the expedition could not afford to leave their escort. They were in an enemy’s country, and although the fifty soldiers which the First Mandarin of the Empire had supplied them was a formidable body, Talham knew the Chinamen well enough to know that they could not be depended upon if they were convinced that the object of his trip was the desecration of a grave.
He would gain nothing by explaining to them that he had no intention of robbing the grave of its treasures, or that he sought some wonderful mechanical secret which the dead years held—that was too supple a distinction for words.
He had sent messengers ahead a week before to collect as many of the soldiers who had served in his regiment as could be found, to meet him at Hoo Sin. Soo might send a story flaming through the bazaar that would set the city of Hoo Sin in a ferment—if he dared. That reservation was Talham’s only hope.
If Soo himself had designs upon the tomb, desired exact knowledge as to its location, and wished for himself to unravel the mystery and to take the treasures of the dead king, he would be silent. Once he set the city in a ferment he might spoil whatever chance Talham had of achieving his object, but he would just as assuredly defeat his own ends, and might, moreover, call down upon the city of Hoo Sin a detachment of Imperial troops, to say nothing of commissions of enquiry.
The thought comforted Talham as he jogged along, the rain falling in sheets above his head, the pony under him stumbling across rocks and through pools of liquid mud, towards the blurred horizon.
There is no more cheerless sight in the world than a Chinese landscape; on either side the flat black land stretched drearily to the stunted hills.
Now and again they would pass a half-ruined temple or a collection of squalid huts, too tiny it seemed to bear the long name which custom had given to them.
Night was falling when they clattered up the broad irregular street, littered with garbage, and passed through the high, gaunt city gates of Hoo Sin.
The rain had ceased, and the city was filled with people who looked curiously at the “foreign devils,” whom no Chinese costume could disguise. No demonstration was made, however, as the two men and their escort rode up to the Yamen and dismounted.
There was the inevitable delay.
The Mandarin’s assistant who interviewed him in the courtyard of the Yamen at Talham’s request for an interview had disappeared. He returned in a few minutes full of apologies and regrets. His Excellent Lio-le was indisposed, and regretted that he was unable to see the honourable visitors.
Talham turned to Tillizinni and said in English: “That is pretty ominous. If old Lio-le won’t see us, it is because he is afraid of our friend Soo.”
“Is it necessary that we should see him?” asked Tillizinni.
Talham nodded. He turned again to the secretary.
“You will go at once to His Excellency and say a Mandarin of the Empire, and a bearer of the Imperial Banner, desires an immediate audience in the name of the Daughter of Heaven, the Dowager Empress.”
The man bowed low and went back to the Yamen.
He returned almost immediately with the request that the two should follow him.
They passed through the big, cold entrance-hall into the throne-room of the Yamen. As they entered, a man, sitting in solitary state at one end of the room, fanning himself mechanically, rose and shuffled forward, stopping within a few paces of his visitors to give the customary Chinese kow-tow.
The old Mandarin was stout and ordinarily jovial, but now his face wore a troubled and fretful expression.
“Why do you come to this city?” he asked with asperity. “Where do you come from? How many miles have you travelled by road?” and so through the whole gamut of questions which are conventionally asked by those in authority of those who come within their sphere.
The servants brought tea—little cups and placed them handy. Tillizinni, to whom a cup of tea would have been very refreshing at that moment, almost mechanically stretched out his hand to take one, when Talham stopped him.
“To take tea,” he said, “is a sign that the interview is finished, and I have much to ask our friend before the tea-drinking stage arrives.”
“Does the honourable stranger intend staying in our perfectly beastly little village for any time?” asked the Mandarin.
Talham bowed.
“Though we are unworthy to walk through the beautiful streets of this most divine city,” he said, “we wish your noble citizens to tolerate our disagreeable presence for the space of a moon.”
The Mandarin eyed him coldly.
“At this season of the year,” he said significantly, “my mean and despicable city is very unhealthy for the honourable foreigner.”
“Yet we will stay,” answered Talham promptly, “if your Excellency will afford protection to two insignificant animals who, by the fortune of the gods, are very precious to the Daughter of Heaven, the Dowager Empress. So much does the Daughter of Heaven regard us,” he continued, “that though we are as dirt under her feet, every moon there will come a courier from Pekin to your glorious community to seek information as to our welfare, and if”—he was apologetic—“if we are so base and horrible that we cannot find health in so salubrious a spot, the courier will return to the Daughter of Heaven with news of our misfortune.”
It was threat for threat, and Talham carried the heavier guns. His passport was in order, and he was commended by the highest in the land, and at the end ran the “tremble and obey” of an exalted Prince of the Royal House.