THE LAUGH
As Bersonin stood by the wistaria gate beside the pulsing motor,
confused thoughts rushed through his mind into an eddying
phantasmagoria. The fear and agitation which he had kept under only
by an immense self-control returned with double weight.
All was known--thanks to the brainless fool in whom he had relied! The
Government knew. The wild tale the Japanese girl had told had been
believed! Had there been suspicions before? He thought of the espionage
he had fancied had been kept of late on his movements, of the silent,
saturnine faces he had imagined dogged his footsteps. Even his servants,
even Ishida, with his blank visage and fantastic English, might be--
He looked sharply at the chauffeur. He was lighting a cigarette in the
hollow of his hands; the ruddy flare of the match lit the brown placid
face, the narrow, secret-keeping eyes.
He tried to _force_ his mind to a measure of control, to look the
situation in the face.
If Phil failed. If the aëroplane won against darkness and wind--if the
bungalow was reached in time, and the machine made harmless. Nothing
would happen. Who, then, would believe the girl's wild story? Who could
show that he had made it? He had worked at night, alone in his locked
laboratory. Besides, it would tell nothing. It would yield its secret
only to the master mind. And if its presence on the roof damned anybody,
it would not be him! _He_ had not put it there. _He had not been in
Yokohama in three days!_
If the aëroplane did not start--he remembered the look on Phil's face
when he rushed away!--or if it failed. With its own deadly ray, the very
machine would vanish. Phil had not known this--could not have told. The
searchers would find nothing! The news would have flashed along the
cables that must roll up for him vast sums in the panic of markets. And
there would be nothing to bring the deed home to him!
Nothing? The warning had been given _before the fact_. The Government
had taken alarm. Bureaus were buzzing already. Sooner or later the
accusation would be running through the street, swiftly and stealthily,
from noble to merchant, from coolie to beggar, from end to end of this
seething oriental city--wherein he was a marked man! What mattered it
whether there were evidence on which a court would condemn him? The
story of his huge _coup_ in the bourses would be told--would rise up
against him. He remembered suddenly a tale he had heard--of a traitor to
Japan cut to pieces in a tea-house. An icy sweat broke out on his limbs.
Where was there any refuge? On a foreign ship? There were many in the
bay. He longed with a desperate longing for the touch of a deck beneath
his feet, a bulwark of blue water between him and possible vengeance. At
Kisaraz' on the Chiba Road, a dozen miles to the north in the curve of
the bay, was his summer villa, his frequent resort for week-end. His
naphtha launch lay there, always ready for use. He could reach it in an
hour.
"Get into the tonneau," he said to the chauffeur. "I'll drive, myself."
He took the wheel the other resigned, threw on the clutch, and the
clamorous monster moved off down the quiet lane. Past ranks of darkened
_shoji_, with here and there a barred yellow square; by lanterned
tea-houses, alight and tinkling, past stolid, pacing watchmen in white
duck clothing, and sauntering groups of night-hawk students chanting
lugubrious songs--faster and faster, till the chauffeur clutched the
seat with uneasiness.
The fever of flight was on his master now. He began to imagine voices
were calling after him. From a police-box ahead a man stepped into the
roadway waving a hand. It was no more than a warning against over-speed,
but the gesture sent a thrill of terror through the big man at the
wheel. He swerved sharply around a corner, skidding on two wheels.
Bersonin muttered a curse as he peered before him, for the stretch was
brilliantly illuminated. He was on the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods,
which to-night seemed strangely alive with hubbub.
That afternoon, with the passing of the rain, there had been held a
neighborhood _hanami_, a "flower-viewing-excursion." A score of
families, with picnic paraphernalia, had trooped to the wistaria arbors
of far-distant Kameido, to return in the small hours laden with empty
baskets and somnolent babies. To-morrow, like to-day, would be holiday,
when school and work alike should be forgotten. The cavalcade had just
returned--afoot, since the trams had ceased running at midnight--the men
merry with _saké_, the women chattering. A few children, still wakeful,
scampered here and there.
The chauffeur leaned forward with an exclamation--they had all but run
down a hobbling figure.
"Keep your hands off!" snarled Bersonin. "Let them get out of the way!"
The automobile dashed on, the people scattering before it.
There was a small figure in the roadway, however, of whom no one took
account--a six year old. Ishikichi had not gone to the _hanami_ that
day. For many hours that long afternoon, while his mother cared for the
sick father, he had beat the tiny drum that soothed a baby's fret,
comforted by the promise that he should be waked in the great hour when
the crowd came home. Stretched on his worn _f'ton_ that night, he had
puzzled over the situation--the hard, blank fact that because they had
no money, they must give up the shop, which was the only home he knew.
When they took his father away to the _byo-in_, the sick-house, what
would he and his mother and the baby-_San_ do? Would they stand, like
the _kadots'ke_, playing a _samisen_ at people's doors? It was not
honorably pleasant to be a _kadots'ke_! Only men could earn money, and
it would be so long before he became a man. So he had been pondering
when he went to sleep. Now, standing in the road, he heard the hum of
the rushing motor, and a quick thought,--born of that instinct of
sacrifice for the parent, that is woven, a golden thread, in the woof of
the Japanese soul--darted into his baby brain. One of the big
fire-wagons of the _seiyo-jin_ was coming! When the carriage killed
Toru, his playmate, the foreigner had sent much money to Toru's house.
He was not sorry any more, because the white-faced man whom he liked,
who lived in the temple, had told him what a fine thing it had been. For
Toru's honorable father had been fighting with the _Gaki_, the
no-rice-devils--it was almost like a war--and Toru had died just as the
brave soldiers did in battle. A great purpose flooded the little soul.
Was he not brave, too?
So, as Bersonin, with a snarl, shook off the hand of the chauffeur and
threw the throttle wide open, Ishikichi did not scamper with the rest.
With his hands tightly clenched in his patched _kimono_, his huge clogs
clattering on the roadway, he ran straight into the path of the hurtling
mass of steel.
There was a sudden, sickening jolt. The car leaped forward, dragging
something beneath it that made no sound. The chauffeur hurled himself
across the seat on the gear, and the automobile stopped with a grinding
discord of screeching pistons. A surge of people came around it--a wave
without outcry, but holding a hushed murmur like the sea. _Shoji_ were
opening, doorways filling the street with light. A man bent and drew
something gently from between the wheels.
With a writhing oath the expert wrenched at the clutch.
"Go on!" he said savagely. "How dare you stop without my orders?"
The Japanese made no reply, but the arms that braced the wheel were
rigid as steel.
Bersonin sank back in his seat, his massive frame quivering, his eyes
glittering like flakes of mica. But for this, in ten minutes he would
have been clear of the city, flying along the Chiba Road! What if he
were detained? He felt strange, chilly tendrils plucking at his flesh,
and a hundred fiery needles seemed pricking through his brain.
Peering over his shoulder, with his horrible fear on him, he saw the
crowd part to admit a woman who, quite silently, but with haste, came
forward and knelt on the ground. There was no movement from the crowd.
In a hush like that of death, the mother rose with Ishikichi in her
arms. The white, still face looked pitifully small. One clog swayed from
its thong between the bare toes. The faded _kimono_ was stained with
red. She spoke no word. There was no tear on her face. But in the
dreadful silence, she turned slowly with her burden and looked steadily
at the twitching face in the car--looked and looked. The chauffeur swung
himself from the seat into the crowd.
An insane desire had been creeping stealthily on Bersonin. He had felt
it coming when he faced the truth in Phil's cringing admission. The
horrible compulsion to laughter was on him. The damnable man-hysteria
had him by the throat. He fought it desperately, as one fights a wild
beast in the dark.
In vain.
His jaws opened. He laughed--a dreadful peal of merriment that echoed up
and down the latticed street. And as he laughed, he knew that he raised
a peril nearer, more fearful even than that from which he had been
flying.
There was an instant's shocked calm, like the silence which follows the
distant spurt of blue flame from the muzzle of a Krupp gun. Then, like
its answering detonation--in such a menacing roar as might arise from
the brink of an Inferno--the silence of the quiet street burst into
awful sound.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later but a single lighted _shoji_ glimmered on the darkened
thoroughfare. The roadway was deserted save for a soldierly figure in
policeman's uniform who stood thoughtfully looking at a huddle in the
dim roadway--a mixture of wrenched and battered iron and glass, in the
midst of which lay an inert, shapeless something that might have been a
bundle of old clothes fallen from a scavenger's cart.