CHAPTER XV.

THE ALARM.

Dr. Fabos is Made a Prisoner.

The Jew seemed unable to utter a sound, but the men who came up out of the cave made the night resound with their horrid cries.

What happened to me in that instant of fierce turmoil, of loud alarm, and a coward’s frenzy, I have no clear recollection whatever. It may have been that one of the men struck me, and that I fell—more possibly they dragged me down headlong into the pit, and the press of them alone saved me from serious hurt. The truth of it is immaterial. There I was presently, with a hundred of them about me—men of all nations, their limbs dripping with sweat, their eyes ablaze with desire of my life, their purpose to kill me as unmistakable as the means whereby they would have contrived it.

It has been my endeavour in this narrative to avoid as far as may be those confessions of purely personal emotions which are incidental to all human endeavour. My own hopes and fears and disappointments are of small concern to the world, nor would I trespass upon the patience of others with their recital. If I break through this resolution at this moment, it is because I would avoid the accusation of a vaunted superiority above my fellows in those attributes of courage which mankind never fails to admire. The men dragged me down into the pit, I say and were greedy in their desire to kill me. The nature of the death they would have inflicted upon me had already been made clear by the words the Jew had spoken. The pain of fire in any shape has always been my supreme dread, and when the dazzling white light shone upon me from the unspeakable furnaces, and I told myself that these men would shrink from no measure which would blot out every trace of their crime in an instant, then, God knows, I suffered as I believe few have done. Vain to say that such a death must be too horrible to contemplate. The faces of the men about me belied hope. I read no message of pity upon any one of them—nothing but the desire of my life, the criminal blood-lust and the anger of discovery. And, God be my witness, had they left me my revolver, I would have shot myself where I stood.

An unnameable fear! A dread surpassing all power of expression! Such terror as might abase a man to the very dust, send him weeping like a child, or craving mercy from his bitterest enemy. This I suffered in that moment when my imagination reeled at its own thoughts, when it depicted for me the agony that a man must suffer, cast pitilessly into the bowels of a flaming furnace, and burned to ashes as coal is burned when the blast is turned upon it. Nothing under heaven or earth would I not have given the men if thereby the dread of the fire had been taken from me. I believe that I would have bartered my very soul for the salvation of the pistol or the knife.

Let this be told, and then that which follows after is the more readily understood. The men dragged me down into the pit and stood crying about me like so many ravening wolves. The Jew, forcing his way through the press, uttered strange sounds, incoherent and terrible, and seeming to say that he had already judged and condemned me. In such a sense the men interpreted him, and two of them moving the great levers which opened the furnace doors, they revealed the very heart of the monstrous fire, white as the glory of the sun, glowing as a lake of flame, a torrid, molten, unnameable fire toward which strong arms impelled me, blows thrust me, the naked bodies of the human devils impelled me. For my part, I turned upon them as a man upon the brink of the most terrible death conceivable. They had snatched my revolver from me. I had but my strong arms, my lithe shoulders, to pit against theirs; and with these I fought as a wild beast at bay. Now upon my feet, now down amongst them, striking savage blows at their upturned faces, it is no boast to say that their very numbers thwarted their purpose and delayed the issue. And, more than this, I found another ally, one neither in their calculations nor my own. This befriended me beyond all hope, served me as no human friendship could have done. For, in a word, it soon appeared that they could thrust me but a little way toward the furnace doors, and beyond that point were impotent. The heat overpowered them. Trained as they were, they could not suffer it. I saw them falling back from me one by one. I heard them vainly crying for this measure or for that. The furnace mastered them. It left me at last alone before its open doors, and, staggering to my feet, I fell headlong in a faint that death might well have terminated.

A cool air blowing upon my forehead gave me back my senses—I know not after what interval of time or space. Opening my eyes, I perceived that men were carrying me in a kind of palanquin through a deep passage of the rock, and that torches of pitch and flax guided them as they went. The tunnel was lofty, and its roof clean cut as though by man and not by Nature. The men themselves were clothed in long white blouses, and none of them appeared to carry arms. I addressed the nearest of them, and asked him where I was. He answered me in French, not unkindly, and with an evident desire to be the bearer of good tidings.

“We are taking you to the Valley House, monsieur—it is Herr Imroth’s order.”

“Are these the men who were with him down yonder?”

“Some of them, monsieur. Herr Imroth has spoken, and they know you. Fear nothing—they will be your friends.”

My sardonic smile could not be hidden from him. I understood that the Jew had found his tongue in time to save my life, and that this journey was a witness to the fact. At the same time, an intense weakness quite mastered my faculties, and left me in that somewhat dreamy state when every circumstance is accepted without question, and all that is done seems in perfect accord with the occasion. Indeed, I must have fallen again into a sleep of weakness almost immediately, for, when next I opened my eyes, the sun was shining into the room where I lay, and no other than General Fordibras stood by my bedside, watching me. Then I understood that this was what the Frenchman meant by the Valley House, and that here the Jew’s servants had carried me from the cave of the forges.

Now, I might very naturally have looked to see Joan’s father at an early moment after my arrival at Santa Maria; and yet I confess that his presence in this room both surprised and pleased me. Whatever the man might be, however questionable his story, he stood in sharp contrast to the Jew and the savages with whom the Jew worked, up yonder in the caves of the hills. A soldier in manner, polished and reserved in speech, the General had been an enigma to me from the beginning. Nevertheless, excepting only my servant Okyada, I would as soon have found him at my bedside as any man upon the island of Santa Maria; and when he spoke, though I believed his tale to be but a silly lie, I would as lief have heard it as any common cant of welcome.

“I come to ask after a very foolish man,” he said, with a sternness which seemed real enough. “It appears that the visit was unnecessary.”

I sat up in bed and filled my lungs with the sweet fresh air of morning.

“If you know the story,” I said, “we shall go no further by recalling the particulars of it. I came here to find what you and your servants were doing at Santa Maria, and the discovery was attended by unpleasant consequences. I grant you the foolishness—do me the favour to spare me the pity.”

He turned away from my bedside abruptly and walked to the windows as though to open them still wider.

“As you will,” he said; “the time may come when neither will spare the other anything. If you think it is not yet?——”

“It shall be when you please. I am always ready, General Fordibras. Speak or be silent; you can add very little to that which I know. But should you choose to make a bargain with me?——?”

He wheeled about, hot with anger.

“What dishonour is this?” he exclaimed. “You come here to spy upon me; you escape from my house like a common footpad, and go up to the mines?——”

“The mines, General Fordibras?”

“Nowhere else, Dr. Fabos. Do you think that I am deceived? You came to this country to steal the secrets of which I am the rightful guardian. You think to enrich yourself. You would return to London, to your fellow knaves of Throgmorton Street, and say, ‘There is gold in the Azores: exploit them, buy the people out, deal with the Government of Portugal.’ You pry upon my workmen openly, and but for my steward, Herr Imroth, you would not be alive this morning to tell the story. Are you the man with whom I, Hubert Fordibras, the master of these lands, shall make a bargain? In God’s name, what next am I to hear?”

I leaned back upon the pillow and regarded him fixedly with that look of pity and contempt the discovery of a lie rarely fails to earn.

“The next thing you are to hear,” I said quietly, “is that the English Government has discovered the true owners of the Diamond Ship, and is perfectly acquainted with her whereabouts.”

It is always a little pathetic to witness the abjection of a man of fine bearing and habitual dignity. I confess to some sympathy with General Fordibras in that moment. Had I struck him he would have been a man before me; but the declaration robbed him instantly even of the distinction of his presence. And for long minutes together he halted there, trying to speak, but lacking words, the lamentable figure of a broken man.

“By what right do you intervene?” he asked at last. “Who sent you to be my accuser? Are you, then, above others, a judge of men? Good God! Do you not see that your very life depends upon my clemency? At a word from me?——”

“It will never be spoken,” I said, still keeping my eyes upon him. “Such crimes as you have committed, Hubert Fordibras, have been in some part the crimes of compulsion, in some of accident. You are not wholly a guilty man. The Jew is your master. When the Jew is upon the scaffold, I may be your advocate. That is as you permit. You see that I understand you, and am able to read your thoughts. You are one of those men who shield themselves behind the curtain of crime and let your dupes hand you their offerings covertly. You do not see their faces; you rarely hear their voices. That is my judgment of you—guess-work if you will, my judgment none the less. Such a man tells everything when the alternative is trial and sentence. You will not differ from the others when the proper time comes. I am sure of it as of my own existence. You will save yourself for your daughter’s sake?——”

He interrupted me with just a spark of reanimation, perplexing for the moment, but to be remembered afterwards by me to the end of my life.

“Is my daughter more than my honour, then? Leave her out of this if you please. You have put a plain question to me, and I will answer you in the same terms. Your visit here is a delusion; your story a lie. If I do not punish you, it is for my daughter’s sake. Thank her, Dr. Fabos. Time will modify your opinion of me and bring you to reason. Let there be a truce of time, then, between us. I will treat you as my guest, and you shall call me host. What comes after that may be for our mutual good. It is too early to speak of that yet.”

I did not reply, as I might well have done, that our “mutual good” must imply my willingness to remain tongue-tied at a price—to sell my conscience to him and his for just such a sum as their security dictated. It was too early, as he said, to come to that close encounter which must either blast this great conspiracy altogether or result in my own final ignominy. The “truce of time” he offered suited me perfectly. I knew now that these men feared to kill me; my own steadfast belief upon which I had staked my very life, that their curiosity would postpone their vengeance, had been twice justified. They spared me, as I had foreseen that they would, because they wished to ascertain who and what I was, the friends I had behind me, the extent of my knowledge concerning them. Such clemency would continue as long as their own uncertainty endured. I determined, therefore, to take the General at his word, and, giving no pledge, to profit to the uttermost by every opportunity his fears permitted to me.

“There shall be a truce by all means,” I said; “beyond that I will say nothing. Pledge your honour for my safety here, and I will pledge mine that if I can save you from yourself, I will do so. Nothing more is possible to me. You will not ask me to go further than that?”

He replied, vaguely as before, that time would bring us to a mutual understanding, and that, meanwhile, I was as safe at Santa Maria as in my own house in Suffolk.

“We shall keep you up here at the Chalet,” he said. “It is warmer and drier than the other house. My daughter is coming up to breakfast. You will find her below if you care to get up. I, myself, must go to St. Michael’s again to-day—I have urgent business there. But Joan will show you all that is to be seen, and we shall meet again to-morrow night at dinner if the sea keeps as it is.”

To this I answered that I certainly would get up, and I begged him to send my servant, Okyada, to me. Anxiety for the faithful fellow had been in my mind since I awoke an hour ago; and although my confidence in his cleverness forbade any serious doubt of his safety, I heard the General’s news of him with every satisfaction.

“We believe that your man returned to the yacht last night,” he said. “No doubt, if you go on board to-day, you will find him. The Irish gentleman, Mr. McShanus, was in Villa do Porto inquiring for you very early this morning. My servants can take a message down if you wish it.”

I thanked him, but expressed my intention of returning to the yacht—at the latest to dinner. He did not appear in any way surprised, nor did he flinch at my close scrutiny. Apparently, he was candour itself; and I could not help but reflect that he must have had the poorest opinion both of my own prescience and of my credulity. For my own part, I had no doubts at all about the matter, and I knew that I was a prisoner in the house; and that they would keep me there, either until I joined them or they could conveniently and safely make away with me.

Nor was this to speak of a more dangerous, a subtler weapon, which should freely barter a woman’s honour for my consent, and offer me Joan Fordibras if I would save a rogue’s neck from the gallows.