CHAPTER VIII

“Did you see the London Times of–let me see–I believe it was the day before yesterday?” asked St. Hilary presently.

I shook my head. The question was apparently quite irrelevant, but I was accustomed to his sudden and startling changes of front in the discussion of any question.

“There was a remarkable robbery mentioned in that issue. A Bond Street jeweler appealed to his creditors for an extension of time in which to pay his debts. When he was denied that, he warned them that he should on a certain day go into bankruptcy. The night before he was to declare himself a bankrupt, however, when he was in his shop very late at night, puzzling out his accounts, he was attacked by thieves, and after being bound and gagged, his safe was blown open and rifled.”

“A very ordinary robbery,” I commented.

“Yes. But the thief was his confidential clerk.”

“Who else should know so well the combination of the safe?” I asked indifferently.

84“If you would only be a little more patient, Hume, you would not esteem my words so lightly. There is generally some intention behind them. As I was saying, he was robbed by his own clerk, but the extraordinary feature of the case is that the confidential clerk robbed the master with the master’s consent and at his instigation. Substitute the son for the clerk, and you have a case of history repeating itself.”

“Then the Doge was right. Da Sestos was the thief?”

“Consider for a moment the character of this Messer Giovanni. He is an artist, but an artist eccentric to the verge of madness. Sanudo again and again refers to it. Granting, then, that he is mad, in what form will this madness manifest itself? Essentially in the very traits and qualities that make up the artistic temperament. These traits will be developed abnormally. They will be pushed just over the narrow borderland. How would you define the artistic temperament, Hume?”

“Answering at random, I suppose the distinguishing traits of Giovanni’s mind would be love for his work, irrespective of reward or gain, pride in it, patient thought, boldness in conceiving the idea, and skill in the working out of detail.”

85“Excellent. These are the traits of the sane artist. Now develop them, exaggerate them, make them abnormal. To take our goldsmith:

“For nearly two years he had been working on this casket. It is a masterpiece. It is his chef d’?uvre. He has never made anything quite so wonderful. Any artist is reluctant to give up his handiwork. But Giovanni has not merely the egotism of the artist; his is the egotism of the madman. He can not bear the thought of giving up the casket. He longs to keep it for himself. He at last decides to do so. But without the jewels it is but a meaningless thing. It is a mere box. With them, it is one of the wonders of the world. This longing for the stones becomes at last insupportable. He must have them for himself, and at any cost. For, remember, he is not a common thief. If the jewels were simply precious jewels, however priceless, they might not have tempted him. But a ring of Cellini’s, a cameo of Domenico’s, a carved gem of Caradossa, they tortured him, they tempted him, as they tempt me, as they torture me.”

“And when once he has determined to possess these jewels, his cunning, his capacity for detail, his patience, all the qualities of the artist, serve 86him now as the thief–is that the idea?” I interrupted.

St. Hilary nodded affirmatively and continued:

“The Doge unconsciously furthers his plans by his intense fear lest the fact that he possesses the jewels be made known. Only da Sestos, his son, and the Doge, indeed, knew the gems were in Venice. He has been told the very room in which the Doge is to receive from him the wonderful casket. He has thoroughly reconnoitered the ground. He knows that this bed-chamber of the Doge looks out on a court, which, in the dead of night, will surely be quite deserted. And so, with a coil of rope about his waist and a dagger beneath his blouse, he keeps the appointment.

“The guard, no doubt, was an unpleasant surprise. He did not count on him. But, after all, he has the advantage, for the guard has no suspicion of treachery.

“And so, in due time, he picks his quarrel. He has planned that carefully long ago. The Doge had written him that he can not make the last payment until he has disposed of some of the gems. Da Sestos had professed himself quite willing to wait.

“But now, when once the jewels are in the box, when once the cover is closed and it can not 87be opened for twelve hours, he quite unexpectedly demands this last payment.

“The Doge indignantly reminds him that he had confessed himself willing to wait indefinitely. But he is obstinate. He refuses to leave the Ducal Palace without his just wage. If that is not forthcoming, he takes the casket with him. The Doge at last (as da Sestos has foreseen) is compelled to leave the room, under the pretense of getting the money. But, as he himself confessed to the Signory, it is really to summon the guard.

“Hardly has the cautious Doge drawn the bolts after him, before the dagger of the mad goldsmith has done its dread work. The rope is uncurled in the twinkling of an eye. It is lowered over the balcony, and to it is attached the casket and its precious contents. Below waits the confederate.”

“And this confederate?” I asked breathlessly.

“Again the dagger is lifted,” continued St. Hilary, ignoring my question. “This time it is against himself. It is worth a little pain, this glorious plunder.

“And so his plan succeeds. The jewels are his. After a few short weeks he will enjoy the reward of his cunning.

“But, unfortunately, suspicion is aroused in 88the Doge’s breast. For the old man, as we know, was not so guileless a fool as the jeweler thought him. Thief or no thief, da Sestos is imprisoned–at first in a dungeon, with tortures, then in his own house. He could stand the tortures. He could endure the awful heat and thirst under the leads of the Ducal Palace. But slowly came the knowledge, the certainty, that he was imprisoned, not for a month, a year, but for a lifetime. The vengeance of the Doge was implacable.

“Then if he must perish, was the secret of the casket to be sealed on his lips forever? The egotism of the madman made that thought intolerable. Then must he confess? Is his enemy to triumph at last? That thought was equally impossible. But, before he dies, he will indeed tell where the casket is hidden. Even after his death the secret shall be told. It shall be told daily, hourly; but so cunningly that though all the world listen, it shall not understand.”

“But the confederate?” I interrupted again.

“It was his son, of course. He knew. He had helped to make the casket. He had helped to purloin it, and he it was who had hidden it. But not even to his faithful son would the mad jeweler leave the jewels. His cunning plan had become infinitely dear to him; and because this son knew, he must be sacrificed. So that after 89he had worked side by side with his father on the clock, and had returned from his last errand in summoning the Doge, it was only to meet death at last. For we can not doubt that the father poisoned his son as well as himself. And so the hiding-place of the casket and the jewels is hidden in the clock for no man to guess unless he be such a man as da Sestos–one who has something of the very madness of desire and cunning that possessed the goldsmith.”

“Unless–unless that son played the father false! There, there is the doubt on which your ingenious fabric totters!” I cried. I felt myself grow pale at the thought.

“You fool,” he answered violently, “do you think I have not thought of that? But one never has a certainty in this world. One must take something on trust. And, by heaven, I am staking all on that son’s loyalty to his mad father.”

He sat in my armchair, huddled up, his face very pale and haggard in the dim candle-light. But his eyes were burning like those of the jeweler Giovanni. Then he roused himself and began to walk slowly about the room. At last, in the most commonplace tone in the world, he asked:

“Do you know anything of automaton clocks?”

90“Nothing, except that they do extraordinary things.”

“Things most extraordinary. You have never heard perhaps of the clock made by Le Denz?”

I shook my head.

“Really? That was a chef d’?uvre of the bizarre and wonderful. An automaton child wrote everything that was dictated to it–everything.”

“Impossible!”

“I am telling you facts, my dear fellow, that you may verify for yourself in any cyclopedia. Then there was a man called Vancouver, who amused himself making a clock whose figures at certain hours played on the tambour de flacque–droll, very droll, that.”

“An affair like that I saw once at Maskelyne’s, I suppose,” I said with assumed indifference. “I remember it was an automaton figure called Psyche, a whist-player. I played a game with her myself one dull afternoon.”

“Tut, tut,” exclaimed St. Hilary irritably, “I am not speaking of the tricks of the music-halls. There’s the chess-player, for that matter, but all the world knows that a human being is concealed inside of those clumsy toys. I am speaking of veritable automatons, such as the clock you are to show me presently. Then there was a crazy 91genius who made an automaton that would lull him to sleep with an air as gentle as spring zephyrs, and awaken him with a crashing march. There are automatons that sing and dance and talk without number. And one clock-maker wrote a book of instructions for keeping the mechanism of his clock in order after his death.”

“All this, I take it,” I said, lighting my cigar, which had repeatedly gone out, “is apropos of our clock. At every hour, as old Luigi said, it tells its secret.”

“That is it,” replied St. Hilary. “And when you and I, Hume, shall have mastered those twelve secrets, we shall know where our jewels are hidden. And now, have you still curiosity to know whether this is a legend or a fact?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will help me to look for it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We may fail.” He looked at me keenly.

“Of course.”

“I like your monosyllables. I believe you are really in earnest.”

“Yes; I am in earnest.”

“Good again. Then we pool our interests. If we are successful, we share alike. Is that fair?”

92“It is more than fair.”

“That’s settled then. And now let us have a look at your clock.”

“Marruchi, the clock-maker on the Piazza, has it. I left it with him to see if it could be repaired.”

He settled himself in the armchair, and pulled a rug over his knees.

“Marruchi, my boy, will be able to do nothing with it. It is a job above his caliber. And now to sleep, to sleep. You and I have a long journey ahead of us to-morrow.”

“A journey? Where?”

“I shall be off to Amsterdam; you, to St. Petersburg. Good night.”

“St. Petersburg?” I demanded stormily. “St. Petersburg! Why the devil St. Petersburg?”

But St. Hilary was already asleep–or pretended to be.