A SICILIAN KNIFE
The day had come when the Dictator was to dine with that 'happy
warrior,' the Soldier of Fortune.
Captain Sarrasin and his wife lived in an old-fashioned house on the
farther fringe of Clapham Common. The house was surrounded by trees, and
had a pretty lawn, not as well kept as it might be, for Captain Sarrasin
and his wife were wanderers, and did not often make any long stay at
their home in the southern suburbs of London. There were many Scotch
firs among the trees on the lawn, and there was a tiny pool within the
grounds which had a tinier islet on its surface, and on the tiny islet a
Scotch fir stood all alone. The place had been left to Mrs. Sarrasin
years and years ago, and it suited her and her husband very well. It
kept them completely out of the way of callers and of a society for
which they had neither of them any manner of inclination. Mrs. Sarrasin
never remained actually in town while she was in London--indeed, she
seldom went into London, and when she did she always, however late the
hour, returned to her Clapham house. Sarrasin often had occasion to stay
in town all night, but whenever he could get away in time he was fond of
tramping the whole distance--say, from Paulo's Hotel to the farther side
of Clapham Common. He loved a night walk, he said.
Business and work apart, he and his wife were company for each other.
They had no children. One little girl had just been shown to the light
of day--it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up
eyes doomed never to open--and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They
never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the
effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each
secretly grumbles at the other--or if one only repines, that comes to
much the same thing in the end--or else they are both drawn together
with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife
would have given to the child is now concentrated on the husband, and
all the love the husband would have given to the infant is stored up for
the wife. A first cause of difference, or of coldness, or of growing
indifference between a married pair is often on the birth of the first
child. If the woman is endowed with intense maternal instinct she
becomes all but absorbed in the child, and the husband, kept at a little
distance, feels, rightly or wrongly, that he is not as much to her as he
was before. Before, she was his companion; now she has got someone else
to look after and to care about. It is a crisis which sensible and
loving people soon get over--but all people cannot be loving and
sensible at once and always--and there does sometimes form itself the
beginning of a certain estrangement. This probably would not have
happened in the case of the Sarrasins, but certainly if they had had
children Mrs. Sarrasin would no longer have been able to pad about the
round world wherever her husband was pleased to ask her to accompany
him. If in her heart there were now and again some yearnings for a
child, some pangs of regret that a child had not been given to her or
left with her, she always found ready consolation in the thought that
she could not have been so much to her husband had the Fates imposed on
her the sweet and loving care of children.
The means of the Sarrasins were limited; but still more limited were
their wants. She had a small income--he had a small income--the two
incomes put together did not come to very much. But it was enough for
the Sarrasins; and few married couples of middle age ever gave
themselves less trouble about money. They were able to go abroad and
join some foreign enterprise whenever they felt called that way, and,
poor as he was, Sarrasin was understood to have helped with his purse
more than one embarrassed cause or needy patriot. The chief ornaments
and curios of their house were weapons of all kinds, each with some
story labelled on to it. Captain Sarrasin displayed quite a collection
of the uniforms he had worn in many a foreign army and insurgent band,
and of the decorations he had received and doubtless well earned. Mrs.
Sarrasin, for her part, could show anyone with whom she cared to be
confidential a variety of costumes in which she had disguised herself,
and in which she had managed either to escape from some danger, or, more
likely yet, to bring succour of some sort to others who were in danger.
Mrs. Sarrasin was a woman of good family--a family in the veins of which
flowed much wild blood. Some of the men had squandered everything early,
and then gone away and made adventurers of themselves here and there.
Certain of these had never returned to civilisation again. With the
women the wild strain took a different line. One became an explorer, one
founded a Protestant sisterhood for woman's missionary labour, and
diffused itself over India, and Thibet, and Burmah, and other places. A
third lived with her husband in perpetual yachting--no one on board but
themselves and the crew. A steady devotion to some one object which had
nothing to do with the conventional purposes or ambitions or comforts of
society, was the general characteristic of the women of that family.
None of them took to mere art or literature or woman's suffrage. Mrs.
Sarrasin fell in love with her husband, and devoted herself to his wild,
wandering, highly eccentric career.
Mrs. Sarrasin was a tall and stately woman, with an appearance decidedly
aristocratic. She had rather square shoulders, and that sort of
repression or suppression of the bust which conies of a woman's
occupying herself much in the more vigorous pursuits and occupations
which habitually belong to a man. Mrs. Sarrasin could ride like a man as
well as like a woman, and in many a foreign enterprise she had adopted
man's clothing regularly. Yet there was nothing actually masculine about
her appearance or her manners, and she had a very sweet and musical
voice, which much pleased the ears of the Dictator.
Oisin mentioned the fact of his wife's frequent appearance in man's
dress with an air of pride in her versatility.
'Oh, but I haven't done that for a long time,' she said, with a light
blush rising to her pale cheek. 'I haven't been out of my petticoats for
ever so long. But I confess I did sometimes enjoy a regular good gallop
on a bare-backed horse, and riding-habits won't do for that.'
'Few men can handle a rifle as that woman can,' Sarrasin remarked, with
another gleam of pride in his face.
The Dictator expressed his compliments on the lady's skill in so many
manly exercises, but he had himself a good deal of the old-fashioned
prejudice against ladies who could manage a rifle and ride astride.
'All I have done,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'was to take the commands of my
husband and be as useful as I could in the way he thought best. I am not
for Woman's Rights, Mr. Ericson--I am for wives obeying their husbands,
and as much as possible effacing themselves.'
The Dictator did not quite see that following one's husband to the wars
in man's clothes was exactly an act of complete self-effacement on the
part of a woman. But he could see at a glance that Mrs. Sarrasin was
absolutely serious and sincere in her description of her own condition
and conduct. There was not the slightest hint of the jocular about her.
'You must have had many most interesting and extraordinary experiences,'
the Dictator said. 'I hope you will give an account of them to the world
some day.'
'I am already working hard,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'putting together
materials for the story of my husband's life--not mine; mine would be
poor work indeed. I am in my proper place when I am acting as his
secretary and his biographer.'
'And such a memory as she has,' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'I assure your
Excellency'--Ericson made a gesture as if to wave away the title, which
seemed to him ridiculous under present circumstances, but Sarrasin, with
a movement of polite deprecation, repeated the formality--'I assure your
Excellency that she remembers lots of things happening to me----'
'Or done by you,' the lady interposed.
'Well, or done by me; things that had wholly passed out of my memory.'
'Quite natural,' Mrs. Sarrasin observed, blandly, 'that you should
forget them, and that I should remember them.' There was something
positively youthful about the smile that lighted up her face as she said
the words, and Ericson noticed that she had a peculiarly sweet and
winning smile, and that her teeth could well bear the brightest light of
day. Ericson began to grow greatly interested in her, and to think that
if she was a little of an oddity it was a pity we had not a good many
other oddity women going round.
'I should like to see what you are doing with your husband's career,
Mrs. Sarrasin,' he said, 'if you would be kind enough to let me see. I
have been something of a literary man myself--was at one time--and I
delight in seeing a book in some of its early stages. Besides, I have
been a wanderer and even a fighter myself, and perhaps I might be able
to make a suggestion or two.'
'I shall be only too delighted. Now, Oisin, my love, you must _not_
object. His Excellency knows well that you are a modest man by nature,
and do not want to have anything made of what you have done; but as he
wishes to see what I am doing----'
'Whatever his Excellency pleases,' Captain Sarrasin said, with a grave
bow.
'Dinner is served,' the man-servant announced at this critical moment.
'You shall see it after dinner,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, as she took the
Dictator's arm, and led him rather than accompanied him out of the
drawing-room and down the stairs.
'What charming water-colours!' the Dictator said, as he noticed some
pictures hung on the wall of the stairs.
'Oh, these? I am so pleased that you like them. I am very fond of
drawing; it often amuses me and helps to pass away the time. You see, I
have no children to look after, and Oisin is a good deal away.'
'Not willingly, I am sure.'
'No, no, not willingly. Dear Oisin, he has always my approval in
everything he does. He is my child--my one child--my big child--so I
tell him often.'
'But these water-colours. I really must have a good look at them
by-and-by. And they are so prettily and tastefully framed--so unlike the
sort of frame one commonly sees in London houses.'
'The frames--yes--well, I make them to please myself and Oisin.'
'You make them yourself.'
'Oh, yes; I am fond of frame-making, and doing all sorts of jobs of that
kind.'
By this time they had reached the dining-room. It was a very pretty
little room, its walls not papered, but painted a soft amber colour. No
pictures were on the walls.
'I like the idea of your walls,' Ericson said. 'The walls are themselves
the decoration.'
'Yes,' she said, 'that was exactly our idea--let the colour be the
decoration; but I don't know that I ever heard anyone discover the idea
before. People generally ask me why I don't have pictures on the
dining-room walls, and then I have to explain as well as I can that the
colour is decoration enough.'
'And then, I suppose, some of them look amazed, and can't understand how
you----'
'Oh, indeed, yes,' she answered.
The dinner was simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect
in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entrée or two, a bit of venison, a
sweet--with good wines, but not too many of them.
'You have a good cook, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said.
'I am made proud by your saying so. We don't keep a cook--I do it all
myself--am very fond of cooking.'
The Dictator looked round at her in surprise. Was this a jest? Oh, no;
there was no jesting expression on Mrs. Sarrasin's face. She was merely
making a statement of fact. Ericson began to suspect that the one thing
which the lady had least capacity for making, or, perhaps, for
understanding, was a jest. But he was certainly amazed at the
versatility of her accomplishments, and he frankly told her so.
'You see, we have but a small income,' she explained quietly, 'and I
like to do all I can; and Oisin likes my cookery--he is used to it. We
only keep two maids and this man'--alluding to the momentarily absent
attendant--'and he was an old soldier of Oisin's. I will tell you his
story some time--it is interesting in its way.'
'I think everything in this house is interesting,' the Dictator declared
in all sincerity.
Captain Sarrasin talked but little. He was quite content to hear his
wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to
believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he
assumed as a matter of course--everybody must be pleased with that
woman.
After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a
marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was
written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully
copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as
good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was
rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no
trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole
volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.
'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs.
Sarrasin.
'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success.
Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.
'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'
'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some
money.'
'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you
will?'
'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my
husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen--I am a poor
writer.'
'Then the work is really all your own?'
'Oh, yes; _he_ has no time; I could not have him worried. It is my wish
altogether, and he yields to it--only to please me. He does not care in
the least for publicity--I do, for _him_.'
The Dictator began to be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition
of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a
great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There
was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and
the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be
to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism
could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless
spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or his wife had either of them any
of the gift--if it be a gift and not a curse--which turns at once to the
ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why,
of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon
have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of
person, whom she was puffing and booming to an unconscionable degree,
and whom people were laughing at. Captain Sarrasin would have seen that
his wife was unconsciously 'bossing the show,' and while professing to
act entirely under his command was really doing everything for him--was
writing his life while declaring to everybody that he was writing it
himself. Now they were like two children--like brother and
sister--wrapped up in each other, hardly conscious of any outer world,
or, perhaps, still more like two child-lovers--like Paul and Virginia
grown old in years, but not in feelings. The Dictator loved humour, but
he began to feel just now rather glad that there were some mortals who
did not see the ridiculous side of life. He felt curiously touched and
softened.
Suddenly the military butler came in and touched his forehead with a
sort of military salute.
'Telegram for his Excellency,' he said gravely.
Ericson took the telegram. 'May I?' he asked of Mrs. Sarrasin, who made
quite a circuitous bow of utter assent.
Ericson read.
'Will you meet me to-night at eleven, on bridge, St. James's Park. Have
special reason.--Hamilton.'
Ericson was puzzled.
'This is curious,' he said, looking up at his two friends. 'This is a
telegram from my friend and secretary and aide-de-camp, and I don't know
what else--Hamilton--asking me to meet him in St. James's Park, on the
bridge, at eleven o'clock. Now, that is a place I am fond of going
to--and Hamilton has gone there with me--but why he should want to meet
me there and not at home rather puzzles me.'
'Perhaps,' Captain Sarrasin suggested, 'there is someone coming to see
you at your hotel later on, for whose coming Mr. Hamilton wishes to
prepare you.'
'Yes, I have thought of that,' Ericson said meditatively; 'but then he
signs himself in an odd sort of way.'
'Eh, how is that?' Sarrasin asked. 'It _is_ his name, surely, is it
not--Hamilton?'
'Yes, but I had got into a way years ago of always calling him "the
Boy," and he got into a way of signing himself "Boy" in all our
confidential communications, and I haven't for years got a telegram from
him that wasn't signed "Boy."'
Mrs. Sarrasin sent a flash of her eyes that was like a danger signal to
her husband. He at once understood, and sent another signal to her.
'Of course I must go,' Ericson said. 'Whatever Hamilton does, he has
good reason for doing. One can always trust him in that.'
Captain Sarrasin was about to interpose something in the way of caution,
but his wife flashed another signal at him, and he shut up.
'And so I must go,' the Dictator said, 'and I am sorry. I have had a
very happy evening; but you will ask me again, and I shall come, and we
shall be good friends. Shall we not, Mrs. Sarrasin?'
'I hope so,' said the lady gravely. 'We are devoted to your Excellency,
and may perhaps have a chance of proving it one day.'
The Dictator had a little brougham from Paulo's waiting for him. He took
a kindly leave of his host and hostess. He lifted Mrs. Sarrasin's long,
strong, slender hand in his, and bent over it, and put it to his lips.
He felt drawn towards the pair in a curious way, and he felt as if they
belonged to a different age from ours--as if Sarrasin ought to have been
another Götz of Berlichingen, about whom it would have been right to
say, 'So much the worse for the age that misprizes thee'; as if she were
the mail-clad wife of Count Robert of Paris.
When he had gone, up rose Mrs. Sarrasin and spake:--
'Now, then, Oisin, let _us_ go.'
'Where shall we go?' Oisin asked rather blankly.
'After him, of course.'
'Yes, of course, you are quite right,' Sarrasin said, suddenly waking up
at the tone of her voice to what he felt instinctively must be her view
of the seriousness of the situation. 'You don't believe, my love, that
that telegram came from Hamilton?'
'Why, dearest, of course I don't believe it--it is some plot, and a very
clumsy plot too; but we must take measures to counterplot it.'
'We must follow him to the ground.'
'Of course we must.'
'Shall I bring a revolver?'
'Oh, no; this will be only a case of one man. We shall simply appear at
the right time.'
'You always know what to do,' Sarrasin exclaimed.
'Because I have a husband who has always taught me what to do,' she
replied fervently.
Then the military butler was sent for a hansom cab, and Sarrasin and his
wife were soon spinning on their way to St. James's Park. They had ample
time to get there before the appointed moment, and nothing would be done
until the appointed moment came. They drove to St. James's Park, and
they dismissed their cab and made quickly for the bridge over the pond.
It was not a moonlight night, but it was not clouded or hazy. It was
what sailors would call a clear dark night. There was only one figure on
the bridge, and that they felt sure was the figure of the Dictator. Mrs.
Sarrasin had eyes like a lynx, and she could even make out his features.
'Is it he?' Sarrasin asked in a whisper. He had keen sight himself, but
he preferred after long experience to trust to the eyes of his wife.
'It is he,' she answered; 'now we shall see.'
They sat quietly side by side on a bench under the dark trees a little
away from the bridge. Nobody could easily see them--no one passing
through the park or bound on any ordinary business would be likely to
pay any attention to them even if he did see them. It was no part of
Mrs. Sarrasin's purpose that they should be so placed as to be
absolutely unnoticeable. If Mr. Hamilton should appear on the bridge she
would then simply touch Sarrasin's arm, and they would quietly get up
and go home together. But suppose--what she fully expected--that someone
should appear who was not Hamilton, and should make for the bridge, and
in passing should see her husband and her, and thereupon should slink
off in another direction, then she should have seen the man, and could
identify him among a thousand for ever after. In that event Sarrasin and
she could then consider what was next to be done--whether to go at once
to Ericson and tell him of what they had seen, or to wait there and keep
watch until he had gone away, and then follow quietly in his track until
they had seen him safely home. One thing Mrs. Sarrasin had made up her
mind to: if there was any assassin plot at all, and she believed there
was, it would be a safe and certain assassination tried when no watching
eyes were near.
The Dictator meanwhile was leaning over the bridge and looking into the
water. He was not thinking much about the water, or the sky, or the
scene. He was not as yet thinking even of whether Hamilton was coming or
not. He was, of course, a little puzzled by the terms of Hamilton's
telegram, but there might be twenty reasons why Hamilton should wish to
meet him before he reached home, and as Hamilton knew well his fancy for
night lounges on that bridge, and as the park lay fairly well between
Captain Sarrasin's house and the region of Paulo's Hotel, it seemed
likely enough that Hamilton might select it as a convenient place of
meeting. In any case, the Dictator was not by nature a suspicious man,
and he was not scared by any thoughts of plots, and mystifications, and
personal danger. He was a fatalist in a certain sense--not in the
religious, but rather in the physical sense. He had a sort of
wild-grown, general thought that man is sent into the world to do a
certain work, and that while he is useful for that work he is not likely
to be sent away from it. This was, perhaps, only an effect of
temperament, although he found himself often trying to palm it off on
himself as philosophy.
So he was not troubling himself much about the doubtful nature of the
telegram. Hamilton would come and explain it, and if Hamilton did not
come there would be some other explanation. He began to think about
quite other things--he found himself thinking of the bright eyes and the
friendly, frank, caressing ways of Helena Langley.
The Dictator began somehow to realise the fact that he had hitherto been
leading a very lonely life. He was seldom alone--had seldom been alone
for many years; but he began to understand the difference between not
being alone and being lonely. During all his working career his life had
wanted that companionship which alone is companionship to a man of
sensitive nature. He had been too busy in his time in Gloria to think
about all this. The days had gone by him with a rush. Each day brought
its own sudden and vivid interest. Each day had its own decisions to be
formed, its own plans to be made, its own difficulties to be
encountered, its own struggles to be fought out. Ericson had delighted
in it all, as a splendid exhilarating game. But now, in his enforced
retirement and comparative restlessness, he looked back upon it and
thought how lonely it all was. When each day closed he had no one to
whom he could tell all his thoughts about what the day had done or what
the next day was likely to bring forth. Someone has written about the
'passion of solitude'--not meaning the passion _for_ solitude, the
passion of the saint and the philosopher and the anchorite to be alone
and to commune with outer nature or one's inner thought--no, no, but the
passion _of_ solitude--the raging passion born of solitude which craves
and cries out in agony for the remedy of companionship--of some sweet
and loved and trusted companionship--like the fond and futile longing of
the childless mother for a child.
Eleven! The strokes of the hour rang out from Big Ben in the Clock Tower
of Westminster Palace--the Parliament House of which Ericson, in his
collegiate days, had once made it his ambition to be a member. The sound
of the strokes recalled his mind for the moment to those early days,
when the ambition for a seat in Parliament had been the very seamark of
his utmost sail. How different his life had been from what his early
ideas would have constructed it! And now--was it all over? Had his
active career closed? Was he never again to have his chance in
Gloria--in Gloria which he had almost begun to love as a bride? Or was
he failing in his devotion to his South American Dulcinea del Toboso?
Was the love of a mortal woman coming in to distract him from his love
to that land with an immortal future?
It pleased him and tantalised him thus to question himself and find
himself unable to give the answers. But he bore in mind the fact that
Hamilton, the most punctual of living men, was not quite punctual this
time. He turned his keen eyes upon the Clock Tower, and could see that
during his purposeless reflections quite five minutes had passed.
'Something has happened,' he thought. 'Hamilton is certainly not coming.
If he meant to keep the appointment he would have been here waiting for
me five minutes before the time. Well, I'll give him five minutes more,
and then I'll go.'
Several persons had passed him in the meanwhile. They were the ordinary
passengers of the night time. The milliner's apprentice took leave of
her lover and made for her home in one of the smaller streets about
Broad Sanctuary. The artisan, who had been enjoying a drink in one of
the public-houses near the Park, was starting for his home on the south
side of the river. Occasionally some smart man came from St. James's
Street to bury himself in his flat in Queen Anne's Mansions. A belated
Tommy Atkins crossed the bridge to make for the St. James's Barracks.
One or two of the daughters of folly went loungingly by--wandering, not
altogether purposeless, among the open roads of the Park. None of all
these had taken any notice of the Dictator.
Suddenly a step was heard near, just as the Dictator was turning to go,
and even at that moment he noticed that several persons had quite lately
passed, and that this was the first moment when the place was solitary,
and a thought flashed through his mind that this might be Hamilton, who
had waited for an opportunity. He turned round, and saw that a short and
dapper-looking man had come up close beside him. The man leaned over the
bridge.
'A fine night, governor,' he said.
'A very fine night,' Ericson said cheerily, and he was turning to go
away.
'No offence in talking to you, I hope, governor?'
'Not the least in the world,' Ericson said. 'Why should there be? Why
shouldn't you talk to me?'
'Some gents are so stuck-up, don't you know.'
'Well, I am not very much stuck-up,' Ericson said, much amused; 'but I
am not quite certain whether I exactly know what stuck-up means.'
'Why, where do you come from?' the stranger asked in amazement.
'I have been out of England for many years. I have come from South
America.'
'No--you don't mean that! Why, that beats all! Look here--I have a
brother in South America.
'South America is a large place. Where is your brother?'
'Well, I've got a letter from him here. I wonder if you could tell me
the name of the place. I can't make it out myself.'
'I dare say I can,' said Ericson carelessly. 'Come under this gas-lamp
and let me see your letter.' The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out
a folded letter. He had something else in his hand, as the keen eyes of
the watching Mrs. Sarrasin could very well see.
'Another second,' she whispered to her husband.
The Dictator took the letter good-naturedly, and began to open it under
the light of the lamp which hung over the bridge. The stranger was
standing just behind him. The place was otherwise deserted.
'Now,' Mrs. Sarrasin whispered.
Then Captain Sarrasin strode forward and seized the stranger by the
shoulder with one hand, and by his right arm with another.
'What are you a-doin' of?' the stranger asked angrily.
'Well, I want to know who you are in the first place. I beg your
Excellency's pardon for intruding on you, but my wife and I happened to
be here, and we just came up as this person was talking to you, and we
want to know who he is.'
'Captain Sarrasin! Mrs. Sarrasin! Where have you turned up from? Tell
me--have you really been benignly shadowing me all this way?' Ericson
asked with a smile. 'There isn't the slightest danger, I can assure you.
This man merely asked me a civil question.'
The civil man, meanwhile, was wrestling and wriggling under Sarrasin's
grip. He was wrestling and wriggling all in vain.
'You let me go,' the man exclaimed, in a tone of righteous indignation.
'You hain't nothin' to do with me.'
'I must first see what you have got there in your hand,' Sarrasin said.
'See--there it is! Look here, your Excellency--look at that knife!'
Sarrasin took from the man's hand a short, one-bladed,
delicately-shaped, and terrible knife. It might be trusted to pierce its
way at a single touch, not to say stroke, into the heart of any victim.
'That's the knife I use at my trade,' the man exclaimed indignantly. 'I
am a ladies' slipper-maker, and that's the knife I use for cutting into
the leathers, because it cuts clean, don't you see, and makes no waste.
Lord bless you, governor, what a notion you have got into your 'ead! I
shall amuse my old woman when I tell her.'
'Why did you have the knife in your hand?' Sarrasin sternly asked.
'Took it out, governor, jest by chance when I was taking put the
letter.'
'You don't carry a knife like that open in your pocket,' Sarrasin said
sternly. 'It closes up, I suppose, or else you have a sheath for it. Oh,
yes, I see the spring--it closes this way and I think I have seen this
pretty sort of weapon before. Well, look here, you don't carry that sort
of toy open in your pocket, you know. How did it come open?'
'Blest if I know, governor--you are all a-puzzlin' of me.'
'Show me the knife,' the Dictator said, taking for the first time some
genuine interest in the discussion.
'Look at it,' Sarrasin said. 'Don't give it back to him.'
The Dictator took the knife in his hand, and, touching the spring with
the manner of one who understood it, closed and opened the weapon
several times.
'I know the knife very well,' he said; 'it has been brought into South
America a good deal, but I believe it is Sicilian to begin with. Look
here, my man, you say you are a ladies' slipper-maker?'
'Of course I am. Ain't I told you so?'
'Whom do you work for?'
'Works for myself, governor.'
'Where is your shop?'
'Down in the East End, don't you know?'
'I want to talk to you about the East End,' Mrs. Sarrasin struck in with
her musical, emphatic voice. 'Tell me exactly where you live.'
'Out Whitechapel way.'
'But please tell me the exact place. I happen to know Whitechapel pretty
well.'
'Off Whitechapel Road there.'
'Where?'
He made a sulky effort to evade. Mrs. Sarrasin was not to be so easily
evaded.
'Tell me,' she said, 'the name of the street you live in, and the name
of any streets near to it, and how they lie with regard to each other.
Come, don't think about it, but tell me; you must know where you live
and work.'
'I don't want to have you puzzlin' and worritin' me.'
'Can you tell me where this street is'--she named a street--'or this
court, or that hospital, or the nearest omnibus stand to the hospital?'
No, he didn't remember any of these places; he had enough to do mindin'
of his work.
'This man doesn't live in Whitechapel,' Mrs. Sarrasin said composedly.
She put on no air of triumph--she never put on any airs of triumph or
indeed airs of any kind.
'Well, there ain't no crime in giving a wrong address,' the man said.
'What business have you with where I live? You don't pay for my lodging,
anyhow.'
'Where were you born?' Mrs. Sarrasin asked.
'Why, in London, to be sure.'
'In the East End?'
'So I'm told--I don't myself remember.'
'Well, look here, will you just say a few words after me?'
'I ain't got no pertickler objection.'
The cross-examination now had passed wholly into the hands of Mrs.
Sarrasin. Captain Sarrasin looked on with wonder and delight--Ericson
was really interested and amused.
'Say these words.' She repeated slowly, and giving him plenty of time to
get the words into his ears and his mind, a number of phrases in which
the peculiar accent and pronunciation of the born Whitechapel man were
certain to come out. Ericson, of course, comprehended the meaning of the
whole performance. The East End man hesitated.
'I ain't here for playing tricks,' he mumbled. 'I want to be getting
home to my old woman.'
'Look here,' Sarrasin said, angrily interfering. 'You just do as you are
told, or I'll whistle for a policeman and give you into custody, and
then everything about you will come out--or, by Jove, I'll take you up
and drop you into that pond as if you were a blind kitten! Answer the
lady at once, you confounded scoundrel!'
The small eyes of the Whitechapel man flashed fire for an instant--a
fire that certainly is not common to Cockney eyes--and he made a sudden
grasp at his pocket.
'See there!' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'The ladies' slipper-maker is grasping
for his knife, and forgets that we have got it in our possession.'
'This is certainly becoming interesting,' Ericson said. 'It is much more
interesting than most plays that I have lately seen. Now, then, recite
after the lady, or confess thyself.'
It had not escaped the notice of the Dictator that when once or twice
some wayfarer passed along the bridge or on one of the near-lying paths
the maker of ladies' slippers did not seem in the least anxious to
attract attention. He appeared, in fact, to be the one of the whole
party who was most eager to withdraw himself from the importunate notice
of the casual passer-by. A man conscious of no wrong done or planned by
him, and unjustly bullied and badgered by three total strangers, would
most assuredly have leaped at the chance of appealing to the
consideration and the help of the passing citizen.
Mrs. Sarrasin remorselessly repeated her test words, and the man
repeated them after her.
'That will do,' she said contemptuously; 'the man was never born in
Whitechapel--his East End accent is mere gotten up stage-play.' Then she
spoke some rapid words to her husband in a _patois_ which Ericson did
not understand. The Whitechapel man's eyes flashed fire again.
'You see,' she said to the Dictator, 'he understands me! I have been
saying in Sicilian _patois_ that he is a hired assassin born in England
of Sicilian parents, and brought up, probably, near Snow Hill--and this
Whitechapel gentleman understood every word I said! If you give him the
alternative of going to the nearest police-station and being charged, or
of talking Sicilian _patois_ with me, you will see that he prefers the
alternative of a conversation in Sicilian _patois_ with me.
'I propose that we let him go,' the Dictator said decisively. 'We have
no evidence against him, except that he carries a peculiar knife, and
that he is, as you say, of Sicilian parents.'
'Your Excellency yourself gave me the hint I acted on,' Mrs. Sarrasin
said deferentially, 'when you made the remark that the knife was
Sicilian. I spoke on mere guess-work, acting on that hint.'
'And you were right, as you always are,' Captain Sarrasin struck in with
admiring eyes fixed on his wife.
'Well, he is a poor creature, anyhow,' the Dictator said--and he spoke
now to his friends in Spanish--'and not much up to his work. If he were
worth anything in his own line of business he might have finished the
job with that knife instead of stopping to open a conversation with me.'
'But he has been set on by someone to do this job,' Sarrasin said, 'and
we might get to know who is the someone that set him on.'
'We shall not know from him,' the Dictator replied; 'he probably does not
know who are the real movers. No; if there is anything serious to come
it will come from better hands than his. No, my dear and kind friends,
we can't get any further with _him_. Let the creature go. Let him tell
his employers, whoever they are, that I don't scare, as the Americans
say, worth a cent. If they have any real assassins to send on, let them
come; this fellow won't do; and I can't have paragraphs in the papers to
say that I took any serious alarm from a creature who, with such a knife
in his hand, could not, without a moment's parley, make it do his work.'
'The man is a hired assassin,' Sarrasin declared.
'Very likely,' the Dictator replied calmly; 'but we can't convict him of
it, and we had better let him go his blundering way.' The Dictator had
meanwhile been riveting his eyes on the face of the captive--if we may
call him so--anxious to find out from his expression whether he
understood Spanish. If he seemed to understand Spanish then the affair
would be a little more serious. It might lead to the impression that he
was really mixed up in South American affairs, and that he fancied he
had partisan wrongs to avenge. But the man's face remained
imperturbable. He evidently understood nothing. It was not even, the
Dictator felt certain, that he had been put on his guard by his former
lapse into unlucky consciousness when Mrs. Sarrasin tried him and
trapped him with the Sicilian _patois_. No, there was a look of dull
curiosity on his face, and that was all.
'We'll keep the knife?' Sarrasin asked.
'Yes; I think you had better keep the knife. It may possibly come in as
a _pièce de justification_ one of these days. What's the value of your
knife?' he asked in English, suddenly turning on the captive with a
stern voice and manner that awed the creature.
'It's well worth a quid, governor.'
'Yes; I should think it was. There's a quid and a half for you, and go
your ways. We have agreed--my friends and I--to let you off this time,
although we have every reason to believe that you meant murder.'
'Oh, governor!'
'If you try it again,' the Dictator said, 'you will forfeit your life
whether you succeed or fail. Now get away--and set us free from your
presence.'
The man ran along the road leading eastward--ran with the speed of some
hunted animal, the path re-echoing to the sound of his flying feet.
Ericson broke into a laugh.
'You have in all probability saved my life,' the Dictator said. 'You
two----'
'All _her_ doing,' Sarrasin interposed.
'I think I understand it all,' Ericson went on. 'I have no doubt this
was meant as an attempt. But it was a very bungling first attempt. The
planners, whoever they were, were anxious first of all to keep
themselves as far as possible out of responsibility and suspicion, and
instead of hiring a South American bravo, and so in a manner bringing it
home to themselves, they merely picked up and paid an ordinary Sicilian
stabber who had no heart in the matter, who probably never heard of me
before in all his life, and had no partisan hatred to drive him on. So
he dallied, and bungled; and then you two intervened, and his game was
hopeless. He'll not try it again, you may be sure.'
'No, he probably has had enough of it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'and of
course he has got his pay beforehand. But someone else will.'
'Very likely,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'They will manage it on a
better plan next time.'
'We must have better plans, too,' Sarrasin said warmly.
'How can we? The only wise thing in such affairs is to take the ordinary
and reasonable precautions that any sane man takes who has serious
business to do in life, and then not to trouble oneself any further.
Anyhow, I owe to you both, dear friends,' and the Dictator took a hand
of each in one of his, 'a deep debt of gratitude. And now I propose that
we consider the whole incident as _vidé_, and that we go forthwith to
Paulo's and have a pleasant supper there and summon up the boy Hamilton,
even should he be in bed, and ask him how he came to send out telegrams
for belated meetings in St. James's Park, and have a good time to repay
us for our loss of an hour and the absurdity of our adventure. Come,
Mrs. Sarrasin, you will not refuse my invitation?'
'Excellency, certainly not.'
'You can stay in the hotel, dear,' Sarrasin suggested.
'Yes, I should like that best,' she said.
'They won't expect you at home?' the Dictator asked.
'They never expect us,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered with her usual sweet
gravity. 'When we are coming we let them know--if we do not we are never
to be expected. My husband could not manage his affairs at all if we
were to have to look out for being expected.'
'You know how to live your life, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, much
interested.
'I have tried to learn the art,' she said modestly.
'It is a useful branch of knowledge,' Ericson answered, 'and one of the
least cultivated by men or women, I think.'
They were moving along at this time. They crossed the bridge and passed
by Marlborough House, and so got into Pall Mall.
'How shall we go?' the Dictator asked, glancing at the passing cabs,
some flying, some crawling.
'Four-wheeler?' Sarrasin suggested tentatively.
'No; I don't seem to be in humour for anything slow and creeping,' the
Dictator said gaily. 'I feel full of animal spirits, somehow. Perhaps it
is the getting out of danger, although really I don't think there was
much'--and then he stopped, for he suddenly reflected that it must seem
rather ungracious to suggest that there was not much danger to a pair of
people who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his
life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that
first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the
future. No; I must spin in a hansom--it is the one thing I specially
love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take
charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find
your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin--and let us see who gets
there first.'