CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE MASTER CARD.

We Visit Canvey Island.

The Jew had written to me, I say, and I had answered his letter. In a few brief sentences, worthy of the man and his story, he put me upon my honour and recited the compact between us.

“To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship.

“At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May. Fear nothing, as I am unafraid. The word is no less sacred to me than to you. I pass it and bid you come.”

Whence, then, had this strange letter been delivered, and how had I falsified the fine phrases of the police and communicated with the Jew? The truth shall be told with all the brevity I can command.

There is published thrice every month in Paris a pretendedly comic paper, called the Journal des Polissons. Ostensibly a journal pour rire, a poor man’s Punch and jester, it is, as I have long known, a sure means by which one thief may communicate with another, or any assassin make known his hiding place to his friends. This knowledge I employed directly it became plain to me that Valentine Imroth had escaped the meshes of the law’s clumsy net, and defied a police which vainly protested that there was no evidence against him. I advertised in the paper in the common cryptogram of the Polish societies. Making no effort to be clever, I intimated to the Master of the Ship that I could be of the greatest service to him if he, in his turn, were willing to be of some little service to me. This letter, so amazing and so many are the eyes which watch the Jew’s career, was answered before a week had run. In a sentence I learned that the so-called Master was in hiding on Canvey Island—that desolate marsh beyond Tilbury, familiar to all who go down to the Nore in ships. There he would see me and hear my news. There I must challenge him and be answered—ah, what would I not have given to know in what manner he would answer me!

It is not to be supposed that I claim any merit of this voyage or was unaware of its peculiar dangers. The Jew knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal, and I might reasonably argue that he would never be madman enough to attempt anything against me at a moment when I could render him a service of such magnitude as that I proposed. To be frank, I found the whole business not less humiliating than that former failure in mid-ocean, which will remain the supreme misfortune of my career. Here was I, who had set out to hunt this man down, about to say to him—“Go your way; I have done with you. The police say there is no evidence against you. It is their affair, and I will take no further part in it.” He, on his part, must guess that I came to him in some such mood. Canvey Island, I remembered, could be easily gained from the open sea, and just as easily from the shore of Essex. There would be a hundred eyes watching the coming of my launch, spies afloat and spies ashore, a launch of his own, perhaps, and certainly every expedient his subtle mind could contrive against any treachery that might be contemplated against him. He would trust me with a sword naked to his hand as it were. On my side, I might go safely while we agreed—but let us quarrel, and then heaven help me, I said.

Thus, in a word, the situation lay. I staked my life, not upon the honour of Valentine Imroth, but upon a human interest I believed powerful enough to protect me. And this step I took that I might return to Joan and say: “Here is the truth; here is the story which you and I will guard while we live.” The danger could be nothing to me in the face of that which success must mean. I was as a miner lifting his pick for the last time. What hopes and fears I carried to that lonely island, what a burden of doubt and dread!

I shall say nothing of my voyage down the Thames, nor of those scenes so often described, and with such feeling, by some of our later day novelists. To me the lower river is ever an echo of the voice of the agitated Pepys, or the more stately tones of the pious Evelyn. A changed river since the great ships deserted the wharves by London Bridge, none the less, she is, in a sense, still the great highway to the kingdoms of the world. Here is that water temple which the giant masts wall in; here all tongues are eloquent of the worship of the sea; here men of all nations commingle in that rare confraternity which has earned our wealth and established our greatness while the centuries have run. A river it is of curdling pools and racing tides, of towering stages and gabled houses; a river of mystery and of darkness, beloved of the city which has deserted her, inseparable from the story of its people. To her true disciples, then, be the keeping of the record. My launch carried me too speedily by creek and pool that I should claim to be of the elect.

Now, we had left St. Katherine’s wharf late in the afternoon, and it was almost dark when the great orb of the Chapman Light came to our view. A rough diagram on the back of the Jew’s letter had indicated to me where I must land upon the island, and at what point his servants would wait for me. Had I been in doubt, a green lantern swinging by the low wall of an ancient farmhouse—the first you see when the island comes to your view—would have called my attention to the place and invited me to go ashore there. I had by consent passed my word to take none but Okyada to the meeting, and faithful to the promise he alone followed me to the landing stage and prepared to go up to the house with me. The launch itself had been lent to me by Messrs. Yarrow, and was commanded by one of their engineers. I did not dare to ask even Captain Larry to be with me upon such a night—and as for my friend, the loquacious Timothy, it would have been madness to bring him. The Jew had told me in the plainest terms that my very life depended upon a faithful interpretation of the terms of the compact, and I knew my man too well to doubt his meaning. This lonely shore, I said again, would be watched by a hundred eyes. And what eyes! Truly a man might peer into those gloomy shadows and believe this to be the haven of ultimate Melancholy, the home of those unresting spirits the great river had carried out from the stress and storms of the city’s life. A chill hand of Nature’s death had touched it. Its very breath was as a pest.

An old negro stood on the landing stage as the launch came alongside, and he it was who carried the lantern. No one else appeared to be about, though I heard a whistle blown sharply, and answered by another toward the Essex shore. The negro himself hid his face as much as possible from me, nor did he utter a single word or betray the slightest emotion at my coming. I noticed, however, that he waited for the launch to cast a little way into the river before he moved from the stage; and when this was done and the whistle had been sounded a second time, he led the way up a narrow grassy path to the farmhouse, and quietly left me at its door. Night had quite come down by this time, and a dank white mist began to rise above the marshes. The farmhouse itself appeared to be a structure built by some honest Dutchman who had helped to save Canvey Island from the sea when Essex was still washed by the waters of the estuary. A single light burned in one of its windows, but elsewhere it was dark as the river which flowed so blackly before its gates.

I knocked three times upon an ancient door, and was answered immediately by a trim maidservant. Yes, she said, Mr. Imroth was at home and expecting me. And so she ushered me into the presence of that master criminal for whom the police had searched the cities of the world.

Seated in a low arm-chair in a little room at the front of the house—a poor, shabby apartment, furnished with no better taste than a Margate lodging house, I perceived that Valentine Imroth wore a green shade low over his eyes, but not so low as to impair his vision; while the chair he had placed for me and the lamp set upon the table would permit him to follow every passing thought of mine with the eyes of a human artist upon whom nothing is lost. Careless in his attitude, he smoked an immense cigar with evident satisfaction, and had by his side a black bottle, which, as I knew by its shape, should contain Hollands gin. In many ways a changed man from the Jew I had met upon the heights at Santa Maria, the ferocious aspect of him was but little abated; and as though to emphasise it, he had laid a great stick by the side of his chair while one of the ugliest boar hounds I have ever seen blinked at his feet, and lifted a savage head silently at my coming. These things I observed instantly, and drew my own conclusions from them, “He is not armed,” I said, “but somewhere near by his friends are concealed—the dog would hold me if he gave the word, and half a score of ruffians would do the rest.” A place of peril surely—and yet I had known that it must be so when I set out to meet him.

I put my hat upon the floor and drew the chair a little back from the table to which it had been drawn up.

“I am here,” I said shortly, “in answer to your letter. The conditions upon which we meet are faithfully observed between us. My servant is waiting for me at your door, and my launch is out in the river. Let us get to business at once. That, I hope, is your wish.”

He thrust the shade back upon his forehead, and showed me a pair of red-limned eyes, watery and blinking as the dog’s at his feet. The long thin hand which held the cigar seemed to be silver-backed like a brush, with nails as black as ebony. An immense diamond glittered upon his little finger. Like all his fellows, he had not conquered the love of personal display even at his age, which could not have been less than eighty years.

“It is my hope,” he repeated, not without dignity—which, however, he lost instantly in the manner of a broker of Houndsditch selling shabby furniture—“to see the great Dr. Fabos of London, to have him in my house; that is an honour for an humble old man. What have I done to deserve it?—how has this pleasure come into a poor old life?”

He tittered like some old witch making a peat fire by a roadside. But it was the laughter of a vanity not to be hushed, and I passed it by with a gesture.

“The pleasure came into your house at your own invitation,” I rejoined. “It will go again very shortly by the same road. Please give me your attention. I am here neither for mutual expressions of self-admiration nor the desire of your amiable company. In a word, I have come to ask you for the story of Joan Fordibras.”

He nodded his head, still tittering, and leaned back in his chair to survey me with a closer circumspection.

“The great Dr. Fabos of London,” he repeated, “here in the house of the poor old Jew! How I am complimented; how I am honoured! The great English doctor who has followed a poor old man all round the world, and has come here to beg a favour of him at last! Repeat your question, doctor—ask me many times. The words are music to me, I drink them in like wine—the words of my dear friend the doctor; how shall I ever forget them?”

It was horrible to hear him cackle; more horrible still to remember that a single word of his uttered aloud to the men who watched us (for I believe that we were watched) would have cost me my life upon the instant. How to continue I hardly knew. Long minutes passed and found him still worming and cackling in the chair as an old hag above a reddening fire. I had nothing further to say—it was for him to proceed.

“Yes, yes, my dear,” he continued presently, falling boldly into the language of his race. “Yes, yes; you are the great Dr. Fabos of London, and I am the poor old Jew. And you would know the story of the little Joan Fordibras! How small the world is that we should meet here in this shabby house—the poor old Jew and the rich doctor. And so you come to me after all for help! It is the Jew who must help you to your marriage; the Jew who shall save the little girl for her lover. Ah, my dear, what a thing is love, and what fools are men! The great rich doctor to leave his home, his friends, his country, to spend the half of his fortune upon a ship—all for love, and that he might see the poor old Jew again. I have never heard a better thing—God of my fathers, it is something to have lived for this!”

He repeated this many times as though the very words were meat and drink to him. I began to perceive that he was the victim of an inordinate vanity, and that my own failure was dearer to him than a gift of millions would have been.

“Do I want money?” he asked presently, turning upon me almost savagely. “Heaven hear me, it is as dirt beneath my feet. Do I want fine houses, halls of marble, and gowns of silk? Look at the room in which I live. Consider my circumstance, my fortune, my riches, the clothes upon my back, the servants who wait upon me! Money, no—but to see the great men humbled—to strike at their fortunes, at their hearts; ah, that is something the poor old Jew would die for!

“Here to-night my reward begins. The great Dr. Fabos comes to me upon his knees to beg me the gift of a woman’s heart. How many have so come since I was this doctor’s age—a young man, spurned by his people, a fool, living honestly, a worshipper in temples made by man? And to all, I have said as I say to him, no, a thousand times, no! Get you gone from me as they have gone. Admit that the Jew is your master after all. Live to remember him—bear the brand upon your heart, the curse which he has borne at your people’s will, at the bidding of their faith. So I answer you, Dr. Fabos. Such are my words to you—the last time we shall ever meet, who knows, perhaps the last day you may have to live.”

He leaned forward, and from his eyes there seemed to shine a light of all the fires of evil that ever burned in human breast. No man, I believe, has listened to such a threat as he uttered against me this night. The very tones of it could freeze the blood at the heart, the gestures were those of one who lusted for human blood with all the voracity of an animal. I will not deny that I shivered while I heard him. Remember the remote farmhouse, the lonely marsh, the silence of the night, the stake at issue between us. Who shall wonder if my words were slow to come?

“You threaten me,” I said with some composure, “and yet, as a student of your race, I should have thought that the hour for threats had not come. I am here to ask you to do me a service, but at the same time to suggest an equivalent that might not be unacceptable to you. Let us consider the matter from a purely business basis, and see if we cannot arrive at an understanding. You must be perfectly aware that I do not come empty-handed?——”

He interrupted me with a savage cry, so startling that it amazed me.

“Fool!” he cried; “I am the master of the fortunes of kings. What can you bring that is of any value to me?”

I answered him immediately?—

“The liberty of your wife, Lisette, who was arrested in Vienna this morning.”

It was as though I had struck a blow at his heart. The cry that escaped his lips might have come from the very depths of hell; I have never seen a human face so distorted by the conflicting passions of love and hate and anger. Gasping, a horrid sound in his throat, he staggered to his feet and felt nervously for the cudgel at his side—the great hound leaped up and stiffened every limb.

“Keep that dog back, or, by God! I will kill you where you stand,” I cried, and every word I spoke thrilling me as a desire gratified, I turned his mockery upon him. “Here is the great Dr. Fabos of London come into his own at last, you see. Fool, in your turn, did you think that you dealt with a child? The woman is in gaol, I say. My money has put her there—I alone can set her free—I alone, Valentine Imroth. Listen to that and beg her freedom on your knees—you devil amongst men; kneel to me or she shall pay the uttermost farthing. Now will you hear me, or shall I go? Your wife, Lisette, the little French brunette from Marseilles—did I not tell you at Santa Maria that I had the honour of her acquaintance? Fool to forget it—fool! for by her you shall pay.”

The words came from my lips in a torrent of mad eloquence I could not restrain. I had played the master card, and was as safe in this house from that moment as though a hundred of my friends were there to guard me. The Jew lay stricken at my feet. Ghastly pale, his hands palsied, his limbs quivering as with an ague, he sank slowly back into the chair, his eyes searching my own in terror, his whole manner that of one who had not many moments to live.

“My wife, Lisette—yes, yes—it would be by her. I am an old man, and you will have pity—speak and tell me you will have pity—you are Dr. Fabos of London! What harm has the poor old Jew done you? Oh, not her, for the love of God—I will tell you what you wish, give me time—I am an old man, and the light fades from my eyes—give me time and I will tell. Lisette—yes, yes—I am going to her at Buda, and she is waiting for me. Devil, you would not keep me from Lisette?——”

I poured some spirit into a glass and put it to his lips.

“Listen,” I said. “Your wife is arrested, but I can set her free. Write truly the story of Miss Fordibras, and a cable from me this night shall obtain her liberty. I will listen to no other terms. Joan Fordibras’ story—that is the price you must pay—here and now, for I will give you no second chance?——”

It would be vain to speak of the scene that followed, the muttering, the piteous entreaty, the hysterical outbursts. I had never made so astounding a discovery as that which told me, a week before I left England in my yacht, that this old man had married a young wife in Paris, and that—such are the amazing contrasts of life—he loved her with a devotion as passionate as it was lasting. The knowledge had saved me once already at Santa Maria; to-night it should save my little Joan, and take from her for ever the burden of doubt. Not for an instant did my chances stand in jeopardy. Every word that I spoke to this abject figure brought me one step nearer to my goal. They were as words of fire burning deep into a dotard’s heart.

“Lisette,” I continued, seeing him still silent. “Lisette is charged with the possession of certain jewels once the property of Lady Mordant. I am the witness who has identified those jewels. Your dupe, Harry Avenhill, who came up to rob my house in Suffolk, is the man who will charge this woman with her crime and establish the case against her. Whether we go to Vienna or persuade Lady Mordant to withdraw the charge, it is for you to say. I will give you just ten minutes by that clock upon your chimney. Use them well, I implore you. Think what you are doing before it is too late to think at all—the liberty this woman craves or the charge and punishment. Which is it to be, old man? Speak quickly, for my time is precious.”

For a little while he sat, his hands drumming the table, his eyes half closed. I knew that he was asking himself what would be the gain or the loss should he beckon some one from the shadows to enter the house and kill me. One witness would thus be removed from his path—but who would answer for the others? And was it possible that his old enemy, who had outwitted him so often, would be outwitted to-night? This seemed to me his argument. I watched him rise suddenly from his chair, peer out to the darkness, and as suddenly sit again. Whether his courage had failed him or this were the chosen moment for the attack, I shall never be able to say with certainty. For me it was an instant of acute suspense, of nervous listening for footsteps, of quick resolution and prompt decision. Let there be an echo of a step, but one sound without, I said, and I would shoot the man where he sat. Thus was I determined. In this dread perplexity did the instant pass.

“I cannot write,” he gasped at last. “Put your questions to me, and I will answer them.”

“And sign the document I have brought with me. So be it—the questions are here, in order. Let your answers be as brief.”

I sat at the head of the table and spread the document before me. The lamp shed a warm aureole of light upon the paper, but left the outer room in darkness. My words were few, but deliberate; his answers often but a mutter of sounds.

“Joan Fordibras, whose daughter is she?”

“The daughter of David Kennard of Illinois.”

“Her mother?”

“I am not acquainted with her name—a French Canadian. The records in Illinois will tell you.”

“How came she to be the ward of this man Fordibras?”

“His cowardice—his conscience, as men call it. Kennard was charged with the great safe robberies of the year 1885—he was innocent. They were my planning—my agents executed them. But Kennard—ah, he betrayed me, he would have stood in my path, and I removed him.”

“Then he was convicted?”

“He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. Fordibras, under the name of Changarnier—his real name—he is the cousin of that Changarnier who did France much mischief in the year 1870—Fordibras was then the Governor of the Sing Sing prison on the Hudson River. He was in my pay, but David Kennard had been his friend, and he took the daughter and brought her up as his own child. I did not forbid it—why should I? A woman, if she is pretty, is useful to my purposes. I wished to humble this man of iron, and I have done so. Pshaw, what a figure he cuts to-day! Skulking in Tunis like a paltry cutpurse—afraid of me, afraid but proud, my friend—proud, proud, as one of your great nobles. That is Hubert Fordibras. Speak a word to the police, and you may arrest him. Hush—I will send you evidence. He is proud, and there is heart in him. Tear it out, for he is a traitor. He has shut his eyes and held out his hands, and I have put money into them. Tear the heart out of him, for he will kill the woman you love.”

I ignored the savage treachery of this, its brutality and plain-spoken hatred. The General’s pride must have been a bitter burden to this creeping scoundrel with his insufferable vanities and his intense desire to abase all men before him. The quarrel was nothing to me—I could well wish that Hubert Fordibras might never cross my path again.

“Traitor or not—it is your concern,” I said. “There is another question here. When Joan Fordibras wore my stolen pearls in London, was the General aware that they were stolen?”

A smile, revoltingly sardonic, crossed his ashen face.

“Would he have the brains? She wore them at my dictation. I had long watched you—you did not know it, but knowledge was coming to you. I said that you must be removed from my path. God of heaven! Why were you not struck dead before Harry Ross lay dead on Palling beach?”

“The young seaman who was found with the Red Diamond of Ford Valley in his possession! The brother of Colin Ross who took your place upon the Ellida? I begin to understand—he was carrying those jewels to London, and an accident overtook him? That was a grave misfortune for you.”

He clenched his hands and looked me full in the face.

“Had he lived I would have torn him limb from limb. He stole the jewels from my dispatch boat and was drowned escaping to shore. My friend, the good God was merciful to him that He let him die.”

I could not but smile at piety so amazing. In truth a new excitement had seized upon me, and my desire to escape the house had now become a fever of impatience. What if an accident befell me, or an agent of evil stood suddenly between Joan and my tidings! How if the cup were dashed from my lips at the last moment! Good God! What an agony, even in imagination!

“Mr. Imroth,” I said, rising upon the impulse. “I will cable at once to Vienna, saying that I have no evidence to offer, and the girl Lisette will be discharged. Go where you will, but leave England. To-night I spare you. But should you cross my path again, I will hang you as surely as there is an Almighty God to judge your deeds and punish you for them. That is my last word to you. I pray with all my soul that I shall never see your face again.”

He did not move, uttered no sound, sat like a figure of stone in his chair. And so I left him and went out into the night.

For I was going to Joan, to bear to her the supreme tidings of my message, to lay this gift of knowledge at her feet, and in those eyes so dear to read the truth which, beyond all else on earth, was my desire.
EPILOGUE.

THE EPILOGUE OF TIMOTHY McSHANUS, JOURNALIST.

My friend Mulock in his “Magnus and Morna,” has written that “ye should drink at a wedding with discerning lest you lose the way upon a straight road afterwards.” ’Tis no man I am to quarrel with a precept so honest or a reflection upon matrimony so prudent. We shall drink at the Goldsmith Club this night to the lost liberty of my dear comrade Ean Fabos, and would that it could be with that same measure the poet speaks of. If I doubt me of the possibility, ’tis to remember with Horace, that wine is mighty to inspire new hopes, and able to drown the bitterness of cares. Shall we reflect upon this loss to our club, and to society, with parched throats, and a hand upon the soda-water syphon? Bacchus and the Corybantes forbid! We will drown it in the best—at my dear friend’s request, and, as he would wish it, ah, noble heart!—at his expense.

He was married at the Parish Church in Hampstead, you should know, and Timothy McShanus it was who gave the bride away. The little witch of a shepherdess that has carried honest men twice round the world and back again, set other women weeping, and come at last to that sure port which Destiny had built for her—was she changed from the black-eyed minx I saw at Kensington, less mischievous, less sprightly, more of a woman, not so much the pretty child of the school-books? No, I say, a thousand times, no! There is golden light about her path, and all the spirits of laughter shine in her eyes. Could I search all the cities for a wife for my friend, this is the dear heart I would choose for him; this the companion I would name for his blessing. She has won a brave man’s love, and is happy therein. God be good to her, says old Timothy—and he is one that has read the heart of women.

So am I cast out again to the familiar haunts, a wanderer once more, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. My dear friend, it is true, remembering that I have eaten the food of the law, drunk its port and paid its fees, would make of me a Government man and an official. But my heart fails me. I am grown old in the sin of indolence. If I have a merit, it is that I know the blessings of doing nothing and the salary that should be expected therefrom. Let me continue henceforth in paths so straight, in ways so ancient. My friendship for Ean Fabos is too precious that men should call me a gatherer of moss and a roller of stones.

And this is to say that henceforth I have no career; that like the little Jap, of whom my friend has almost made a son, henceforth my place is at the gate without. Must I be a “past” to Ean Fabos, dear to his memory, one of his household but voiceless as the night, unhonoured, unremembered, unsung? The gods forbid, I say. The book that I am writing upon our adventures in the South Seas—shortly to be published in one volume at six shillings—that book shall be my monument more lasting than brass. You will find many things in it, reader, much for the improvement of your mind, and the elevation of your intellect—but above all you shall find a love and devotion to Dr. Fabos which is the truest instinct of my eventful life.

And he is married and is gone to the West, and I am alone and in sorrow, and the doors of the Club are open to me. Many men and cities have I seen, but London—ah! blessed art thou, London, for the desolate shall make their home with thee, and the children that are orphans shall nestle at thy bosom. In the Metropolis of the British Empire, then, let this sorrow of mine be buried.

For hither shall my friend Ean return when the days of summer have waned, and his little wife begins to speak of home and of those who love him and have not forgotten.

The End