THE NINE DAYS OF SILENCE.
_Dr. Fabos Comes to Certain Conclusions._
We were nine days together at the Valley House without any word or sign
from those without. The evil of this conspiracy I found almost less to
be condemned than the childish folly of it. There is nothing more
remarkable in the story of crime than the senile mistakes of some of its
masters—men, shrewd to the point of wonder in all other affairs, but
betraying their mental aberration in some one act at which even the very
ignorant might smile. So it was with this sham story of the valley and
the pretended accident which kept me from the ship. Every day, with a
punctuality as amusing as the tale was plausible, the old negro and the
servants below apologised for the accident which alone, they declared,
prevented my return to the ship.
A disaster had overtaken the valley bridge; the passage by the mountains
was never used but by General Fordibras alone! That was their tale. As
for the General, his desolation would be beyond words when he heard of
it. Unfortunately he had been detained at St. Michael’s, and they could
only imagine that the rough seas of the last few days were answerable
for it. All that was humanly possible, they felt sure, was being done by
the engineers below. Fortunate that the mining operations in the
mountains had brought so many workmen to the island. My release, they
said, and that of their young mistress could be but a matter of a few
hours.
* * * * *
Now, I have turned up my diary for those nine days, and I find that upon
the first of them I came to certain definite conclusions which may be of
interest to my readers. They were these:
(1) The criminals feared nothing from the presence of my yacht. Either
the island was watched by some powerful and speedy armed ship of their
own, or they had convinced Captain Larry that all was well with me.
(2) They were in league with the local Portuguese officials of Villa do
Porto, who, I did not doubt, had been richly rewarded for a little
diligent blindness.
(3) They believed that I had fallen in love with Joan Fordibras, and for
her sake would either hold my peace for ever or join them. This was
their master stroke. It was also the apotheosis of their folly.
Imagine, at the same time, my own difficulties. Save for two ancient
servants, a maid and a negro, this young girl and I were alone at the
châlet and seemingly as remote from the world as though we had been
prisoners of an Eastern despotism. She knew and I knew with what hopes
and designs this clumsy trap had been contrived. Let us find solace in
each other’s society, and our human passion must prove stronger than any
merely moral impulse directed against Valentine Imroth and his
confederates. Such was the argument employed by our enemies. They would
expose me to the condemnation of the world if I withstood them, or
secure my silence if I assented to their plans. The thing was so daring,
so utterly unexpected, that I do believe it would have succeeded but for
one plain fact these men had overlooked. And that was nothing less than
the good commonsense and real womanly courage which my little companion
brought to our assistance, and offered me unflinchingly in that amazing
hour.
For you must understand that we had talked but in enigmas hitherto, both
at Dieppe and at the Villa San Jorge, where I went upon landing from my
yacht. Now, it fell upon me to speak to her as to one who must share my
secrets and be the confidante of them. Cost me what it might, let there
be a great love for her growing in my heart, I resolved that not one
word of it should be uttered at Santa Maria. So much I owed both to
myself and her. There were subjects enough, God knows, upon which a man
might be eloquent. I chose the story of her own life to begin with, and
heard her story as no other lips could have told it so sweetly.
This was upon the second day of our captivity, a warm, sunny day with a
fresh breeze blowing in from west by north and a glorious heaven of blue
sky above us. I remember that she wore a gown of lace and had a
turquoise chain about her throat. We had breakfasted together and heard
the servants’ familiar apologies. The General would certainly return
from St. Michael’s to-day, they said; the engineers could not fail to
restore the bridge by sunset. Joan heard them with ears that tingled. I
did not hear them at all, but going out with her to the gardens, I asked
her if she had always known General Fordibras, and what her
recollections of that association were. To which she replied that she
remembered him as long as she remembered anyone at all.
“There was another face—so long ago, so very long ago,” she said,
almost wearily. “I have always hoped and believed that it was my
mother’s face. When I was a very little girl, I lived in a house which
stood by a great river. It must have been Hudson River, I think; General
Fordibras used to visit the house. I was very young then, and I wonder
that I remember it.”
“You left this house,” I put it to her, “and then you went to school.
Was that in America or London?”
“It was first in New York, then in London, and to finish in Paris. I
left school three years ago, and we have been all over the world since.
General Fordibras never stops long in one place. He says he is too
restless. I don’t know, Dr. Fabos. I have given up trying to think about
it.”
“And hate me accordingly for my questions. I will make them as brief as
possible. How long is it since you knew Mr. Imroth, and where did you
first meet him?”
This reference plainly embarrassed her. I saw that she answered my
question with reluctance.
“Please do not speak of Mr. Imroth. I am afraid of him, Dr. Fabos; I do
believe that I am more afraid of him than of anybody I have ever known.
If evil comes to me, Mr. Imroth will send it.”
“A natural antipathy. Some day, Joan, you will look upon all this and
thank God that a stranger came to your island. I shall have done with
Mr. Valentine Imroth then. There will be no need at all to fear him.”
She did not understand me, and plied me with many questions, some
exceedingly shrewd, all directed to one end, that she might know the
best or the worst of the life that they had been living and what part
the General had played in it. To this I responded that I could by no
means judge until the case both for and against him were wholly known to
me.
“He may be but a dupe,” I said; “time and opportunity will tell me. You
owe much to him, you say, for many kindnesses received during childhood.
I shall not forget that when the day of reckoning comes. Joan, I shall
forget no one who has been kind to you.”
Her gratitude was pretty enough to see, and I witnessed it many times
during the long hours of those hazardous days. From morn to night she
was my little companion of the gardens. I came to know her as a man
rarely knows a woman who is not a wife to him. Every bush, every path,
every tree and shrub of our kingdom we named and numbered. Grown
confident in my protection, her sweet laughter became the music of the
valley, her voice the notes of its song, her presence its divinity. If I
had discerned the secret of her fearlessness, that must be a secret to
me also, locked away as a treasure that a distant day will reveal. My
own anxieties were too heavy that I dared to share them with her. The
yacht, my friends, my servant, where were they? What happened beyond
that monstrous curtain of the mountains, that precipice which hid the
island world from us? Had they done nothing, then, those comrades in
whose loyalty I trusted? Was it possible that even the faithful Okyada
had deserted me? I did not believe it for an instant. My eyes told me
that it was not true. A voice spoke to me every day. I read it as a man
reads a book of fate—an image cast upon the waters, a sign given which
shall not be mistaken.
He who pits his life against the intelligence of criminals, must be
equipped with many natural weapons. Nothing, certainly, is more
necessary than the habit of observation. To watch every straw the winds
of conspiracy may blow, to read every cryptic message the hand of crime
may write, to be ever alert, vigilant, resourceful, is something more
than mere equipment. It is very salvation to the investigator. Trained
in all these qualities by long years of patient study, there were signs
and omens of the valley for me which another might have passed by
without remark. Strange footprints upon the darkest paths, shrubs
disturbed, scraps of paper thrown down with little caution—not one of
them escaped me. But beyond them all, the rampart of the foaming water
enchained my attention and fascinated me as at some human call to
action. _Day by day the volume of the water in the boiling river was
growing less._ I first remarked it on the third day of our imprisonment;
I made sure of it on the fifth day. Inch by inch, from ledge to ledge,
it sank in its channel. Another, perhaps, would have attributed this to
some natural phenomenon. I had too much faith in the man who served me
to believe any such thing. Okyada was at work, I said. The hour of my
liberty was at hand.
You may imagine how this discovery affected me, and how much it was in
my mind when I spoke to Joan of our approaching days of freedom. To my
question, whether she would visit me again at my house in Suffolk, she
replied chiefly by a flushing of her clear cheeks and a quick look from
those eyes which could be so eloquent.
“Your sister did not like me,” she rejoined evasively; “the dear old
thing, I could see her watching me just as though I had come to steal
you from her.”
“Would you have felt very guilty if you had done so, Joan?”
“Yes,” she said, and this so seriously that I regretted the question;
“guilty to my life’s end, Dr. Fabos.”
I knew that she referred to the story of her own life and the men among
whom destiny had sent her. Here was a barrier of the past which must
stand between us to all time, she would have said. The same thought had
disquieted me often, not for my sake but for her own.
“I would to God, Joan,” said I, “there were no greater guilt in the
world than this you speak of. You forbid me to say so. Shall I tell you
why?”
She nodded her head, looking away to the patch of blue water revealed by
the gorge of the mountains. I lay at her side and had all a man’s
impulse to take her in my arms and tell her that which my heart had
prompted me to say so many days. God knows, I had come to love this
fragile, sweet-willed child of fortune beyond any other hope of my life
or ambition of the years. Day by day, her eyes looked into my very soul,
awakening there a spirit and a knowledge of whose existence I had been
wholly ignorant. I loved her, and thus had fallen into the snare my
enemies had set upon me. How little they understood me, I thought.
“You forbid me to say so, Joan,” I ran on, “because you do not trust
me.”
“Do not trust you, Dr. Fabos?”
“Not sufficiently to say that I am about to save you from all
dangers—even the danger of past years.”
“You cannot do that—oh, you cannot do it, Dr. Fabos.”
I covered her hand with my own, and tried to compel her to look me in
the face.
“When a woman learns to love and is loved she has no past,” I said. “All
that should concern her is the happiness of the man to whom she has
given her life. In your own case, I believe that we shall read the story
of bygone years together and find it a sweet story. I do not know, Joan;
I am only guessing; but I think it will be a story of a woman’s love and
a father’s suffering, and of an innocent man upon whom the gates of
prison were long closed. Say that the child of these two, entitled to a
fortune in her own right, became the prey of a villain, and we shall be
far upon our way. That’s the thought of your prophet. He would give
much, Joan, if the facts were as he believes them to be.”
Be sure she turned her head at this and looked me full in the face. I
have never seen so many emotions expressed upon a childish face—joy,
doubt, love, fear. Quick as all her race to read an enigma, she
understood me almost as soon as I had spoken. A light of wondrous
thankfulness shone in her eyes. There were long minutes together when we
sat there in silence, and the only sound was that of her heart beating.
“Oh,” she cried, “if it were true, Dr. Fabos, if it were true!”
“I will prove it true before we have been in England a month.”
She laughed a little sadly.
“England—England. How far is England away? And my own dear America?”
“Seven days in my yacht, _White Wings_.”
“If we were birds to fly over the hills!”
“The hills will be kind to us. To-day, to-morrow, whenever it is, Joan,
will you cross the hills with me?”
She promised me with a warmth that betrayed her desire. Fearing longer
to dwell upon it, I left and went again to the little river to see what
message it had for me. Did the waters still ebb away or had my fancy
been an hallucination?
Standing this day upon the very brink of the chasm through which the
river flowed, I knew I was not mistaken. The stream had subsided by
another foot at the least; it no longer raced and tumbled through the
gorge; it was scarcely more than warm to the hand. Someone without had
diverted its course and would dam it altogether when the good hour came.
When that hour might be I had no means of knowing. But my course was
clear. I must rest neither night nor day while deliverance was at hand;
there must be neither sleeping nor waking for me until Okyada called me
and the gate stood open.
And what of Joan, what of my promise to her? Should I leave her the
prisoner of the valley or take her over the hills as I had promised? The
responsibility was greater than any I had ever faced. Let her go with
me, and what a tale these villains would have to tell the world! Let her
remain, and what cruelty, what persecution might she not suffer at the
Valley House! I knew not what to do. It may be that Fortune wished well
to me when she took the matter out of my hands and left me no
alternative but to go alone. However it be, I shall relate in a word the
simple fact that Okyada, my servant, entered my bedroom at ten o’clock
that very night, and that, when I crossed the landing to wake Joan, she
did not answer me, nor could my diligent search discover her to be in
the house at all.
And the minutes of my opportunity were precious beyond all reckoning.
“Good God!” I cried, “that I must leave her to such men and to such a
judgment!”
For I knew that it must be so, and that by flight alone, and the perils
of flight, would our salvation be won.