THE WEB OF THE SPIDER
Bersonin walked on, fighting desperately with his ghastly spasm of
merriment.
It was a nervous affection which had haunted him for years. It dated
from a time when, in South America, in an acute crisis of desperate
personal hazard, he had laughed the first peal of that strange laughter
of which he was to be ever after afraid. Since then it had seized him
many times, unexpectedly and in moments of strong excitement, to shake
him like a lath. It had given him a morbid hatred of laughter in others.
Recently he had thought that he was overcoming the weakness--for in two
years past he had had no such seizure--and the recurrence to-night
shocked and disconcerted him. He, the man of brain and attainment, to be
held captive by a ridiculous hysteria, like a nerve-racked anæmic girl!
The cold sweat stood on his forehead.
Before long the paroxysms ceased and he grew calmer. The quiet road had
merged into a busier thoroughfare. He walked on slowly till his command
was regained. West of the outer moat of the Imperial Grounds, he turned
up a pleasant lane-like street and presently entered his own gate. The
house, into which he let himself with a latch-key, was a rambling,
modern, two-story structure of yellow stucco. The lower floor was
practically unused, since its tenant lived alone and did not entertain.
The upper floor, besides the hall, contained a small bedroom, a bath and
dressing-room and a large, barely-furnished laboratory. The latter was
lined on two sides with glass-covered shelves which gave glimpses of
rows of books, of steel shells, metal and crystal retorts and crucibles,
the delicate paraphernalia of organic chemistry and complicated
instruments whose use no one knew save himself--a fit setting for the
great student, the peer of Offenbach in Munich and of Bayer in Vienna.
Against the wall leaned a drafting-board, on which, pinned down by
thumb-tacks, was a sketch-plan of a revolving turret. From a bracket in
a corner--the single airy touch of delicacy in a chamber almost sordid
in its appointments--swung a bamboo cage with a brown _hiwa_, or
Japanese finch, a downy puff of feathers with its head under its wing.
In the upper hall Bersonin's Japanese head-boy had been sitting at a
small desk writing. Bersonin entered the laboratory, opened a safe let
into a wall, and put into it something which he took from his pocket.
Then he donned a dressing-gown the boy brought, and threw himself into a
huge leather chair.
"Make me some coffee, Ishida," he said.
The servant did so silently and deftly, using a small brass _samovar_
which occupied a table of its own. With the coffee he brought his master
a box of brown Havana cigars.
For an hour Bersonin sat smoking in the silent room--one cigar after
another, deep in thought, his yellow eyes staring at nothing. Into his
countenance deep lines had etched themselves, giving to his coldly
repellant look an expression of malignant force and intention. With his
pallid face, his stirless attitude, his great white fingers clutching
the arms of the chair, he suggested some enormous, sprawling batrachian
awaiting its more active prey.
All at once there came a chirp from the cage in the corner and its tiny
occupant, waked by the electric-light, burst into song as clear and
joyous as though before its free wing lay all the meads of Eden. A look
more human, soft and almost companionable, came into its master's
massive face. Bersonin rose and, whistling, opened the cage door and
held out an enormous forefinger. The little creature stepped on it, and,
held to his cheek, it rubbed its feathered head against it. For a moment
he crooned and whistled to it, then held his finger to the cage and it
obediently resumed its perch and its melody. The expert took a dark
cloth from a hook and threw it over the cage and the song ceased.
Bersonin went to the door of the room and fastened it, then unlocked a
desk and spread some papers on the table. One was a chart, drawn to the
minutest scale, of the harbor of Yokohama. On it had been marked a group
of projectile-shaped spots suggesting a flotilla of vessels at anchor.
For a long time he worked absorbedly, setting down figures, measuring
with infinite pains, computing angles--always with reference to a small
square in the map's inner margin, marked in red. He covered many sheets
of paper with his calculations. Finally he took another paper from the
safe and compared the two. He lifted his head with a look of
satisfaction.
Just then he thought he heard a slight noise from the hall. Swiftly and
noiselessly as a great cat he crossed to the door and opened it.
Ishida sat in his place scratching laboriously with a foreign pen.
Bersonin's glance of suspicion altered. "What are you working at so
industriously, Ishida?" he asked.
The Japanese boy displayed the sheet with pride.
It was an ode to the coming Squadron. Bersonin read it:
"Welcome, foreign men-of-war!
Young and age,
Man and woman,
None but you welcome!
And how our reaches know you but to satisfy,
Nor the Babylon nor the Parisian you to treat,
Be it ever so humble,
Yet a tidbit with our heart!
What may not be accomplishment Rising-Sun?
"_By H. Ishida, with best compliment._"
Bersonin laid it down with a word of approbation. "Well done," he said.
"You will be a famous English scholar before long." He went into the
dressing-room, but an instant later recollected the papers on the table.
The servant was in the laboratory when his master hastily reentered; he
was methodically removing the coffee tray.
Alone once more, Ishida reseated himself at his small desk. He tore the
poem carefully to small bits and put them into the waste-paper basket.
Then, rubbing the cake of India-ink on its stone tablet, he drew a mass
of Japanese writing toward him and, with brush held vertically between
thumb and forefinger, began to trace long, delicate characters at the
top of the first sheet, thus:
[Japanese: Ouryuu no fusetsusuirai ni oyobosu eikyou
hidarino toori kinji]
In the Japanese phrase this might literally be translated as follows:
cross-current of, laying water thunder on,
work-effect
left hand respectively
Which in conventional English is to say:
A STUDY OF CROSS-CURRENTS IN THEIR EFFECT ON
SUBMARINE MINES
SUBMITTED WITH DEFERENCE
This finished, he sealed it in an envelope, took a book from the breast
of his _kimono_ and began to read. Its cover bore the words: "Second
English Primer, in words of Two Syllables." Its inner pages, however,
belied the legend. It was Mahan's _Influence of Sea-Power on History_.
Yet Lieutenant Ishida of the Japanese Imperial Navy, one time student in
Monterey, California, now in Special Secret-Service, read abstractedly.
He was wondering why Doctor Bersonin should have in his possession a
technical naval chart and what was the meaning of certain curious
markings he had made on it.