CHAPTER 3

The room into which Johann conducted Grey was on the second floor, its windows overlooking the court. With the glare of the boulevards still in their eyes, the gloom of the darkened chamber was for a moment almost impenetrable. Grey was conscious of the presence of several persons, but they appeared more like shadows than realities, their outlines alone distinguishable. The room was very quiet, save for the sound of the laboured breathing which Johann had mentioned, and which came from a bed in an alcove to the left of the entrance. Grey stood hesitant just inside the doorway, while his vision grew accustomed to the semi-darkness; and Johann, hat in hand, stood behind him.

Presently from out of the dusk a figure approached, tiptoeing across the floor.

“He is dying!”

31 The words were whispered in German. The speaker, Grey observed, was of medium height, but broad of shoulder and of erect military bearing. The ends of his moustache were trained upward after the fashion affected by the German Emperor.

Grey nodded his head in token that he understood.

“Dr. Zagaie is here. He has just administered nitro-glycerine and tincture of aconite. We are hoping that he may regain consciousness.”

Objects were now becoming more clearly defined. Grey could see the bed now, though its occupant was hidden by the bulky form of the physician, who had his fingers on the dying man’s pulse, and by the black-clad, slender figure of a woman who was pressing a handkerchief to her eyes. At the foot of the bed stood a white-capped and white-cuffed nurse.

“Let us hope,” Grey responded.

The situation was most trying. He was with those who, it was apparent, knew him extremely well, and yet were to him utter strangers. He was almost afraid to speak lest he betray himself, and32 if the necessity for learning something concerning his associates and associations had not been so urgently important he would have retreated without waiting further developments. He was nervously a-tremble, his fingers were twitching involuntarily and alternately waves of hot and cold bathed him from head to heel. The atmosphere of the room stifled him; the stertorous breathing of the invalid oppressed him, the gloom and the whispers and the soft tread of the persons present drove him frantic. He was seized with an almost uncontrollable impulse to shout, to rush about, to pull back the curtains and let in some daylight. He gripped his hat until the brim cracked in his hand, the sound cutting the silence discordantly.

“Sit down, Herr Arndt. We are expecting the Reverend Father. I sent Lutz for him half an hour ago.”

Lutz! Had the dusk been less deep the surprise that came over Grey’s features must have been observed. Lutz! Could it be possible that his valet was here in Paris with him, he asked himself. And instantly he negatived the answer. Such a supposition was beyond reason. He had misunderstood,33 or it was another Lutz. The name was not uncommon.

He placed his hat on a table and took a chair near a window, from which he could look into the court below. The man who had addressed him joined the group at the bedside. Johann quietly opened the door and went out, closing it as quietly behind him. The silence became painful. The inhalations and exhalations of the patient grew less strident. The sobs of the Fraülein, which had at intervals punctured the stillness, were suppressed.

Then, of a sudden, there was a commotion about the bed. The dying man, who for hours had been gazing fixedly at the ceiling, turned his eyes upon his watchers and moved his head feebly. The doctor beckoned the nurse.

“Raise his head and shoulders a trifle. Quick, another pillow!”

Promptly and deftly the nurse obeyed.

“The stimulants are acting,” murmured the Herr Captain to the Fraülein: “he has responded, but it will be but temporary.”

She wiped her eyes with her wet handkerchief,34 but said nothing. The invalid’s gaze passed each of the four in turn. Then his lips moved, and the doctor, bending down, placed his ear close to his mouth.

“Monsieur Arndt,” the physician said, in a low tone, as he straightened himself, “it is Monsieur Arndt that he wants.”

The other three turned towards Grey. Captain Lindenwald raised his hand with a beckoning gesture.

“He wants you,” he whispered; and as the American approached the bed they made way for him. It was a face very thin and drawn that met Grey’s view. Very sallow, too, and parchment-like; the nose long and peaked, and the under lip, where it showed above the snow-white beard, darkly purple. A great shock of hair vied with the pillows in whiteness. In the tired eyes was a look of recognition.

“Lean over,” said Dr. Zagaie; “he wishes to speak to you. His voice is very weak.”

A sensation of repulsion had swept over Grey at sight of the old man, and now, to bring his face close to that of the invalid upon whom death had35 already set its mark was sickeningly repugnant. But with an effort of will he bent his head. A withered, wrinkled hand gripped his wrist and for the hundredth part of a second he recoiled. The voice that breathed into his ear was little more than a sigh, and he strained to gather the words.

“Take it,” he heard; “it is yours. The key——”

And then the utterances sank so low as to be unintelligible. That the old man had spoken in English was a circumstance over which Grey marvelled quite as much as he did over the ambiguous command. He stood erect again and would have stepped back, but the grip of the sufferer was still upon his arm. Then, from the glazing eyes came an appeal that was unmistakable, and again Grey bent his ear.

“The throne,” breathed the voice feebly; “it is yours. Take it!” This much the listener heard quite clearly, mentally commenting that the speaker was delirious. But from the sentences that followed he could only glean a word here and there. “Key” was mentioned again, and “box,”36 and he thought he heard “proofs,” and something that sounded like “Gare du Nord.”

At length the fingers on his wrist relaxed and the eyes of Herr Schlippenbach closed. Instantly and with professional celerity Dr. Zagaie plunged the needle of a hypodermic syringe into the fainting man’s arm. Simultaneously there was a gentle tap on the door, and without waiting to be bidden a florid-faced priest entered, carrying a small black leather case.

Grey resumed his place by the window, his brain teeming with problems so enigmatical as to defy even theoretical solution. The dying man was delirious, of course, he argued; therefore his words were unworthy of consideration. And yet, he answered himself, he had made a supreme effort to convey a message and he had chosen to phrase it in not his own tongue but his listener’s, to make sure that it would be understood. He felt like a man in a maze. At every turn there was some new surprise; and he was going on and on, getting farther and farther into the tangle, without as yet seeing any chance of extricating himself.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by him, preparations for37 the Sacrament of Extreme Unction were being hurriedly made. The priest had donned his alb and stole and poured from a cruet the holy oil. The next minute the voice of the cleric, clear and distinct, cleaving the hush of the room, startled Grey from his meditation. The droning of the Latin ritual, solemn and awesome, struck a new chord in his emotional being. He got to his feet and stood with clasped hands and bowed head. Now the priest was anointing the dying man’s eyes. With oily thumb he made the sign of the cross and recited the words: “Through this holy unction, and His most blessed mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed by thy sight, Amen.” And then his ears, his nose, his mouth, his hands, his feet were each in turn anointed with the same form of supplication.

The ceremony concluded, Dr. Zagaie again stepped forward, taking the place vacated by the priest. As he did so Herr Schlippenbach, who had been breathing softly, peacefully, with closed lids, opened his eyes wide with a look of sudden horror. There was a quick, convulsive movement38 that stirred the coverlet, a long deep-drawn sigh, and the aged man lay motionless.

Fraülein von Altdorf turned away, grief-stricken and horrified, from the spectacle of death, and Grey for the first time saw her face. It was more than pretty, he thought, with its big, sad blue eyes and its full, red-lipped mouth all a-quiver with emotion. And her hair, which shone even in the dusk of that darkened apartment with a lustre of its own imparting, was very abundant and very beautiful. He realised that she was coming towards him and he took a step forward to meet her. She raised her arms and stretched out her hands gropingly until they rested on his shoulders, and instinctively he knew that she had grown suddenly faint. He clasped her swaying figure about the waist and supported her to a couch.

“Dr. Zagaie,” he called, impatiently, “Mlle. von Altdorf requires a restorative.”

Captain Lindenwald, who had been speaking to the nurse, turned solicitously at the words.

“My dear,” he cried, kneeling beside the prostrate girl, “my dear, let me get you some wine; the strain has been too much for you.”

39 But the Fr?ulein motioned him away.

“I shall be quite myself presently,” she said.

Nevertheless Dr. Zagaie insisted on her taking a sedative.

After a little Grey withdrew, and not without some difficulty found his apartment, which was on the same floor, but in another part of the hotel. In his absence his room had been put in order, and there now lay upon the table a blue envelope, addressed in a distinctly English hand to “M. Max Arndt.” Though it was undoubtedly meant for him it was with rather a sense of impropriety that he took it up and tore off the end. Revelation after revelation had followed one another so rapidly that afternoon that he was growing callous to discovery, and when he read—

    My Dear Max:

    I shall be unable to dine with you tonight as I promised, but will meet you later in the Café Américain if you can arrange it—say between eleven and midnight. Jack.

—it was with scarcely a tremour of surprise. Indeed there was something in the tone of the scrawl—something, perhaps, in the penmanship, that gave him a sense of reassurance. The dying Herr Schlippenbach had affected him oddly. Nearness40 to him had produced a sort of emotional nausea, and for some reason which he could not explain he had experienced a violent antipathy to Captain Lindenwald. He realized that, surrounding the little company of which he had so strangely found himself one, there was a mystery which baffled his understanding. Then the last words of the old German recurred to him, and again he pondered as to whether they bore any significance or were merely the murmurings of dementia. As the clock on the mantel-shelf chimed seven, a knock sounded on the door, and in answer to his “Entrez!” Johann entered.

“Will Herr Arndt dress for dinner?” he asked. “Herr Captain Lindenwald is not dressing, and thought perhaps Herr Arndt would dine with him in the salle à manger. Fr?ulein von Altdorf is indisposed, and is having some tea and toast in her room.

“No, Johann,” Grey replied, after a moment’s consideration, “I won’t dress. Give my compliments to the Herr Captain, and say that I’m feeling a bit seedy and will dine here alone, if he will be so good as to excuse me.”

41 Johann bowed and was about to go, but stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

“Will Herr Arndt order his dinner now?” he queried; and Grey named the dishes.

His appetite, he all at once discovered, was excellent, and when the table had been spread and the courses followed one another in leisurely succession and with admirable service, he found himself eating with the relish that betokens good digestion. It seemed, too, when he had finished and lighted a cigarette that he could think more calmly and coherently. The windows of his room opened upon a narrow balcony, and placing a chair he stepped out and sat there meditative above the changeful tide of the boulevard which flowed unceasingly below.

He was no longer exercised over the possible effect of his cables, for he reflected that Carey Grey, so far as all Paris save one man knew, was still dead. A message or a messenger to the H?tel Grammont would find no such person. His changed appearance, his changed name, and his changed associates were a disguise that must prove quite impenetrable. He would therefore42 have ample time, unhampered by either enemies or friends, to delve into the perplexing riddle that confronted him. It would be policy, he argued, to delay his return to America until he could trace his movements abroad. The difficulties that he must encounter he did not pretend to belittle. When he strove to lay out a plan of action he was balked at the very outset. To ask questions was to betray himself, and yet it must be a very long and tedious, not to say perilous, procedure to attempt to drift blindly with the current without either chart or compass to warn him of rocks and shoals.

The twilight deepened into night, and as the stars sparkled into the darkening canopy above the electric lights flashed into a brighter brilliancy along the boulevard below. Grey’s cigarette had been tossed away, and he sat listlessly watching the vari-coloured lamps of the cabs as they passed to and fro—now a green, now a red, now a yellow. He had moved his chair to the space of balcony between the windows to escape an annoying draft, and from where he sat he could neither see into his room nor be seen from it. The scratching of a match inside, however, was plainly audible.43 Someone evidently was lighting his candles. And then the sound of voices came to him, and he pricked his ears.

“It is indeed a catastrophe,” he heard. The speaker was Johann. The accent was unmistakable.

“You have no idea. It is worse, a thousand times worse than you know——”

Grey, with difficulty, choked back an exclamation.

“Lutz!” he muttered to himself, in astonishment. “By all that’s good! Lutz! Here in Paris, and with me.”

“Yes,” the valet continued, “Herr Schlippenbach was necessary to Herr Arndt. Without Herr Schlippenbach, Herr Arndt is another man. He is mad, Johann, and filled with wild notions. He does not know his own people. He fancies he is someone else. Herr Schlippenbach was his balance wheel.”

“So!” murmured Johann. “So!”

“I have a great fear we shall never get him to Kürschdorf at all.”

“But the Herr Captain?”

44 “Oh, yes, the Herr Captain will do his best, I am sure,” Lutz assented; “but it will be a mad Prince, and not a sane one, he will have on his hands.”

The comment that Johann made was not distinguishable. They were going towards the door, which Grey next heard open and then close sharply, forced by the draft from the window.