WHOM THE GODS DESTROY
There was one whose guilty eyes were closed to the red danger so near.
In the house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley, under the green mosquito
netting, Phil lay in a log-like slumber. The soft light of the paper
_andon_ flowed over the gay wadded _f'ton_, the handsome besotted face
with its mark of the satyr and, at one side, a little wooden pillow of
black lacquer. There was no sound save the sweep of the wind outside and
the heavy breathing of the unconscious man.
For three nights past, since his wild motor-ride from Nikko, he had not
slept, save in illusory snatches, from which he had waked with the sweat
breaking on his forehead. Short as were these, they had held horrid
visions, broken fragments of scenes that waved and clustered about the
lilied altar in the Ts'kiji cathedral, echoing to the solemn service of
the dead. Again and again there had started before him the stolid ring
of blue-clad coolie women, swaying as they had swayed to the straw-ropes
of the pile-driver in the moat-bottom with their weird chant--
_"Yó--eeya--kó--ra!_
_Yó--eeya--kó--ra!"_
And now they chanted a terrible refrain:
_"Thou--shalt--not--kill!"_
To-night, however, deeper potations had done their work. He was
dreaming--yellow dreams like the blackguard fancyings of the
half-world--visions in which he moved, a Prince of Largesse, through
unending pleasures of self-indulgence. He was on an European Boulevard,
riding with Haru by his side in silk and pearls, and people turned to
gaze as he went by.
But now, with sinister topsyturvydom, the dream changed. The _cocher_
drove faster and faster, into a mad gallop. He turned his head and Phil
saw that the face under the glazed hat was the face of his dead brother.
The staring pedestrians began to pursue the carriage. They showered blow
after blow on it, till the sound reverberated like thunder.
Not the ghosts of his dream, but a hand of flesh and blood was knocking.
It was on the outer _shoji_ and the frail dwelling shook beneath it. The
servant, sunk in bovine sleep, heard no sound, but the chauffeur in the
automobile that throbbed outside the wistaria gate, rose from his seat,
and across a bamboo wattle a dog barked and scrambled venomously.
Phil's eyes opened and he sat up giddily. He went unsteadily to the door
and unfastened the _shoji_, blinking at the great form that strode past
him into the inner apartment.
Bersonin's gaze swept the room. "The girl!" he said hoarsely. "Where is
she?"
Phil looked about him dazedly--at the tumbled _f'ton_, the deserted
wooden pillow. Haru gone? His senses, clouded by intoxication, took in
the fact dully, as a thing of no meaning.
The expert grasped him by his shoulder and shook him till the thin silk
of the _kimono_ tore under the enormous white fingers. The violence had
its effect. The daze fell away. Phil broke into loud imprecations.
"Did you tell her anything?"
Phil's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "What is--what makes you
think--" he stammered.
Bersonin's face was a greenish hue. His great hands shook.
"To-night," he said, in a whisper, "to-night--an hour ago--I saw her on
the street. I wasn't sure at first, but I know now it was she! A naval
officer was with her. _He took her into the house of the Minister of
Marine!_"
The other gave a low cry. A chalky pallor overspread his features.
"Haru?--no, Bersonin! You're crazy, I say. She--she would never tell!"
Fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. A sharp moan
came from his lips.
"So she _did_ know! You told her then! O, incredible fool!"
For an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. Phil
quailed before him. A frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt the
passion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in a
flame. His voice rose in a kind of scream:
"Don't look at me like that!" he raved. "I was a fool to trust her, but
it's done now. It's done, I tell you, and you can't undo it! What can
they do to us? They may find the machine, but what can they _prove_?
We're foreigners! They can't touch us without proof!"
He had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. All
the grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic.
He trembled excessively.
"Proof!" sneered Bersonin savagely. "There would have been none if--_it
happened_! I had arranged that! In its operation _the machine destroys
itself_! And neither of us is in Yokohama to-night."
Phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "What
is to be done? Can we still--"
"Listen," said the doctor. "A single hour more, even with your cursed
folly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and all
wires are down. I heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out of
order."
"Then--then--they can not--" Phil's voice shook with a nauseous
eagerness.
"Wait! When I saw the girl there, I was suspicious. I watched. In a
little while your friend Daunt came from the gate. In some way he
happened to be there. The _betto_ was flogging the horses like a crazy
man. He came in this direction!--Can't you understand? His aëroplane! He
is going to use it as a last chance. If he succeeds, we may spend our
lives in the copper mines. If he can be stopped, we may win yet! There
will be nothing but the tale of a Japanese drab--that and nothing else!"
Phil flung on his clothing in a madness of haste. The desperate dread
that had raged in him was become now a single fixed idea, frosted over
by a cold, demented fury. Unhealthy spots of red sprang in his white
cheeks; his eyes dilated to the mania of the paranoiac.
Hatless, he rushed through the little garden, cleared the rear hedge at
a bound, and fled, like a runaway from hell, toward the darkness of the
vast parade-ground.