CLEARING THE AIR
“It is as difficult to be entirely bad as it is to be entirely good.”
Percy Roden, who had been to Utrecht and Antwerp, arrived home on the
evening of the day that saw Lord Ferriby's advent to The Hague. Though
the day had been fine enough, the weather broke up at sunset, and great
clouds chased the sun towards the west. Then the rain came suddenly and
swept across the plains in a slanting fury. A cold wind from the
south-east followed hard upon the heavy clouds, and night came in a
chaos of squall and beating rain. Roden was drenched in his passage
from the carriage to the Villa des Dunes, which, being a summer
residence, had not been provided with a carriage-drive across the dunes
from the road. He looked at his sister with tired eyes when she met him
in the entrance-hall. He was worn and thinner than she had seen him in
the days of his adversity, for Percy Roden, like his partner, had made
several false starts upon the road to fortune before he got well away.
Like many--like, indeed, nearly all--who have to try again, he had
lightened himself of a scruple or so each time he turned back.
Prosperity, however, seems to kill as many as adversity. Abundant
wealth is a vexation of spirit to-day as surely as it was in the time
of that wise man who, having tried it, said that a stranger eateth it,
and it is vanity.
“Beastly night,” said Roden, and that was all. He had been to Antwerp
on banking business, and had that sleepless look which brings a glitter
to the eyes. This was a man handling great sums of money. “Von Holzen
been here to-day?” he asked, when he had changed his clothes, and they
were seated at the dinner-table.
“No,” answered Dorothy, with her eyes on his plate.
He was eating little, and drank only mineral water from a stone bottle.
He was like an athlete in training, though the strain he sought to meet
was mental and not physical. He shivered more than once, and glanced
sharply at the door when the maid happened to leave it open.
When Dorothy went to the drawing-room she lighted the fire, which was
ready laid, and of wood. Although it was nearly midsummer, the air was
chilly, and the rain beat against the thin walls of the house.
“I think it probable,” Roden had said, before she left the dining-room,
“that Von Holzen will come in this evening.”
She sat down before the fire, which burnt briskly, and looked into it
with thoughtful, clever grey eyes. Percy thought it probable that Von
Holzen would come to the Villa des Dunes this evening. Would he come?
For Percy knew nothing of the organized attempt on Cornish's life which
she herself had frustrated. He seemed to know nothing of the grim and
silent antagonism that existed between the two men, shutting his eyes
to their movements, which were like the movements of chess-players that
the onlooker sees but does not understand. Dorothy knew that Von Holzen
was infinitely cleverer than her brother. She knew, indeed, that he was
cleverer than most men. With the quickness of her sex, she had long ago
divined the source and basis of his strength. He was indifferent to
women--who formed no part of his life, who entered in no way into his
plans or ambitions. Being a woman, she should, theoretically, have
disliked and despised him for this. As a matter of fact, the
characteristic commanded her respect.
She knew that her brother was not in Von Holzen's confidence. It was
probable that no man on earth had ever come within measurable distance
of that. He would, in all likelihood, hear nothing of the attempt to
kill Cornish, and Cornish himself would be the last to mention it. For
she knew that her lover was a match for Von Holzen, and more than a
match. She had never doubted that. It was a part of her creed. A woman
never really loves a man until she has made him the object of a creed.
And it is only the man himself who can--and in the long run usually
does--make it impossible for her to adhere to her belief.
She was still sitting and thinking over the fire when her brother came
into the room.
“Ah!” he said at the sight of the fire, and came forward, holding out
his hands to the blaze. He looked down at his sister with glittering
and unsteady eyes. He was in a dangerous humour--a humour for
explanations and admissions--to which weak natures sometimes give way.
And, looking at the matter practically and calmly, explanations and
admissions are better left--to the hereafter. But Von Holzen saved him
by ringing the front-door bell at that moment.
The professor came into the room a minute later. He stood in the
doorway, and bowed in the stiff German way to Dorothy. With Roden he
exchanged a curt nod. His hair was glued to his temples by the rain,
which gleamed on his face.
“It is an abominable night,” he said, coming forward. “Ach, Fräulein,
please do not leave us--and the fire,” he added; for Dorothy had risen.
“I merely came to make sure that he had arrived safely home.” He took
the chair offered to him by Roden, and sat on it without bringing it
forward. He had but little of that self-assurance which is so highly
cultivated to-day as to be almost offensive. “There are, of course,
matters of business,” he said, “which can wait till to-morrow.
To-night you are tired.” He looked at Roden as a doctor may look at a
patient. “Is it not so, Fräulein?” he asked, turning to Dorothy.
“Yes.”
“Except one or two--which we may discuss now.”
Dorothy turned and glanced at him. He was looking at her, and their
eyes met for a moment. He seemed to see something in her face that made
him thoughtful, for he remained silent for some time, while he wiped
the rain from his face with his pocket-handkerchief. It was a pale,
determined face, which could hardly fail to impress those with whom he
came in contact as the face of a strong man.
“Lord Ferriby has been at the works to-day,” he said; and then, with a
gesture of the hands and a shrug, he described Lord Ferriby as a
nonentity. “He went through the works, and looked over your books. I
wrote out a sort of certificate of his satisfaction with both, and--he
signed it.”
Roden was leaning forward over the fire with a cigarette between his
lips. He nodded shortly. “Good,” he said.
“Yesterday,” continued Von Holzen, “I met an old acquaintance--a Miss
Wade--one of the young ladies of a Pensionnat at Dresden, in which I
taught at one time. She is a daughter of the banker Wade, and told me,
reluctantly, that she is at The Hague with her father--a friend of
Cornish's. This morning I took a walk on the sands at Scheveningen;
there was a large fat man, among others, bathing at the Northern
bathing-station. It was Major White. It is a regular gathering of the
clans. I saw a German paper-maker--a big man in the trade--on the
Kursaal terrace this morning. It may be a mere chance, and it may not.”
As he spoke he had withdrawn from his pocket a folded paper, which he
was fingering thoughtfully. Dorothy, who knew that she had by her looks
unwittingly warned him, made no motion to go now. He would say nothing
that he did not deliberately intend for her ears as much as for her
brother's. Von Holzen opened the paper slowly, and looked at it as if
every line of it was familiar. It was a sheet of ordinary foolscap
covered with minute figures and writing.
“It is the Vorschrift, the--how do you say?--prescription for the
malgamite, and there are several in The Hague at this moment who want
it, and some who would not be too scrupulous in their methods of
procuring it. It is for this that they are gathering--here in The
Hague.”
Roden turned in his leisurely way, and looked over his shoulder towards
the paper. Von Holzen glanced at Dorothy. He had no desire to keep her
in suspense, but he wished to know how much she knew. She looked into
the fire, treating his conversation as directed towards her brother
only.
“I tried for ten years in vain to get this,” continued Von Holzen, “and
at last a dying man dictated it to me. For years it lived in the brain
of one man only--and he a maker of it himself. He might have died at
any moment with that secret in his head. And I,”--he folded the paper
slowly and shrugged his shoulders--“I watched him. And the last
intelligible word he spoke on earth was the last word of this
prescription. The man can have been no fool; for he was a man of little
education. I never respected him so much as I do now when I have learnt
it myself.” He rose and walked to the fire. “You permit me, Fräulein,”
he said, putting the logs together with his foot.
They burnt up brightly, and he threw the paper upon them. In a moment
it was reduced to ashes. He turned slowly upon his heel, and looked at
his companions with the grave smile of one who had never known much
mirth.
“There,” he said, touching his forehead, with one finger; “it is in
the brain of one man--once more.” He returned to the chair he had just
vacated. “And whosoever wishes to stop the manufacture of malgamite
will need to stop that brain,” he said, with a soft laugh. “Of course
there is a risk attached to burning that paper,” he continued, after a
pause. “My brain may go--a little clot of blood no bigger than a pin's
head, and the greatest brain on earth is so much pulp! It may be worth
some one's while to kill me. It is so often worth some one's while to
kill somebody else, even at a considerable risk--but the courage is
nearly always lacking. However, we must run these risks.”
He rose from his chair with a low and rather pleasant laugh, glancing
at the clock as he did so. It was evidently his intention to take his
leave. Dorothy rose also, and they stood for a moment facing each
other. He was a few inches above her stature, and he looked down at her
with his slow, thoughtful eyes. He seemed always to be making a
diagnosis of the souls of men.
“I know, Fräulein,” he said, “That you are one of those who dislike me,
and seek to do me harm. I am sorry. It is long since I discarded a
youthful belief that it was possible to get on in life without arousing
ill feeling. Believe me, it is impossible even to hold one's own in
this world without making enemies. There are two sides to every
question, Fräulein--remember that.”
He brought his heels together, bowed stiffly, from the waist, in his
formal manner, and left the room. Percy Roden followed him, leaving the
door open. Dorothy heard the rustle of his dripping waterproof as he
put it on, the click of the door, the sound of his firm retreating
tread on the gravel. Then her brother came back into the room. His
rather weak face was flushed. His eyes were unsteady. Dorothy saw this
in a glance, and her own face hardened unresponsively. The situation
was clearly enough defined in her own mind. Von Holzen had destroyed
the prescription before her on purpose. It was only a move in that game
of life which is always extending to a new deal, and of which women as
onlookers necessarily see the most. Von Holzen wished Cornish, and
others concerned, to know that he had destroyed the prescription. It
was a concession in disguise--a retrograde movement--perhaps _pour
mieux sauter_.
Percy Roden was one of those men who have a grudge against the world.
The most hopeless ill-doer is he who excuses himself angrily. There are
some who seem unconscious of their own failings, and for these there is
hope. They may some day find out that it is better to be at peace with
the world even at the cost of a little self-denial. But Percy Roden
admitted that he was wrong, and always had that sort of excuse which
seeks to lay the blame upon a whole class--upon other business men, upon
those in authority, upon women.
“It is excused in others, why not in me?”--the last cry of the
ne'er-do-well.
He glanced angrily at Dorothy now. But he was always half afraid of
her.
“I wish we had never come to this place,” he said.
“Then let us go away from it,” answered Dorothy, “before it is too
late.”
Roden looked at her in surprise. Did she expect him to go away now from
Mrs. Vansittart? He knew, of course, that Dorothy and the world always
expected too much from him.
“Before it is too late. What do you mean?” he asked, still thinking of
Mrs. Vansittart.
“Before the Malgamite scheme is exposed,” replied Dorothy, bluntly.
And, to her surprise, he laughed.
“I thought you meant something else,” he said. “The Malgamite scheme
can look after itself. Von Holzen is the cleverest man I know, and he
knows what he is doing. I thought you meant Mrs. Vansittart--were
thinking of her.”
“No, I was not thinking of Mrs. Vansittart.”
“Not worth thinking about,” suggested Roden, adhering to his method of
laughing for fear of being laughed at, which is common enough in very
young men; but Roden should have outgrown it by this time.
“Not seriously.”
“What do you mean, Dorothy?”
“That I hope you do not think seriously of asking Mrs. Vansittart to
marry you.”
Roden gave his rather unpleasant laugh again. “It happens that I do,”
he replied. “And it happens that I know that Mrs. Vansittart never
stays in The Hague in summer when all the houses are empty and
everybody is away, and the place is given up to tourists, and becomes a
mere annex to Scheveningen. This year she has stayed--why, I should
like to know.”
And he stroked his moustache as he looked into the fire. He had been
indulging in the vain pleasure of putting two and two together. A young
man's vanity--or indeed any man's vanity--is not to be trusted to work
out that simple addition correctly. Percy Roden was still in a
dangerously exalted frame of mind. There is no intoxication so
dangerous as that of success, and none that leaves so bitter a taste
behind it.
“Of course,” he said, “no girl ever thinks that her brother can succeed
in such a case. I suppose you dislike Mrs. Vansittart?”
“No; I like her, and I understand her, perhaps better than you do. I
should like nothing better than that she should marry you, but----”
“But what?”
“Well, ask her,” replied Dorothy--a woman's answer.
“And then?”
“And then let us go away from here.”
Roden turned on her angrily. “Why do you keep on repeating that?” he
cried. “Why do you want to go away from here?”
“Because,” replied Dorothy, as angry as himself, “you know as well as I
do that the Malgamite scheme is not what it pretends to be. I suppose
you are making a fortune and are dazzled, or else you are being
deceived by Herr von Holzen, or else----”
“Or else----” echoed Roden, with a pale face. “Yes--go on.” But she bit
her lip and was silent. “It is an open secret,” she went on after a
pause. “Everybody knows that it is a disgrace or worse--perhaps a
crime. If you have made a fortune, be content with what you have made,
and clear yourself of the whole affair.”
“Not I.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am going to make more. And I am going to marry Mrs.
Vansittart. It is only a question of money. It always is with women.
And not one in a hundred cares how the money is made.”
Which, of course, is not true; for no woman likes to see her husband's
name on a biscuit or a jam-pot.
“Of course,” went on Percy, in his anger. “I know which side you take,
since you are talking of open secrets. At any rate, Von Holzen knows
yours--if it is a secret--for he has hinted at it more than once.
You think that it is I who have been deceived or who deceive myself.
You are just as likely to be wrong. You place your whole faith in
Cornish. You think that Cornish cannot do wrong.”
Dorothy turned and looked at him. Her eyes were steady, but the color
left her face, as if she were afraid of what she was about to say.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“And without a moment's hesitation,” went on Roden, hurriedly, “you
would sacrifice everything for the sake of a man you had never seen six
months ago?”
“Yes.”
“Even your own brother?”
“Yes,” answered Dorothy.