WE HEAR OF THE JEW AGAIN.
_Once More in London._
I am not one of those who touch the posts by Temple Bar with that rare
delight which betrays the true-blue Londoner. Foreign scenes are ever a
safer tonic to me than any fret and striving of our own cities; and
gladly as I turn to London sometimes, it is rarely that I do not quit
her shadows with a greater pleasure. Perhaps I am conscious of a subtle
change creeping upon her, and destroying much of her charm. To me she
seems as the great growing child which has lost its strength in the act.
Vast beyond all belief, her energies are perceptibly weakening. She is
no longer an example to the provinces; they do not imitate her fashions,
and are ready to scoff at her pretensions. The old London of the gloomy
theatres, the narrow, dirty streets, the London of Simpson’s and Evans’,
and the decent supper rooms, was a thousand times more romantic a city
in my eyes than this County Council Babylon, with its raucous prophets
and its perpetual cant of moralities. Let the blame be on my head which
dares to think such treason. I am lonely in wide streets, and the gospel
of modernity depresses me.
Unrepentant, I write these lines, and yet they can conjure up for me a
vision of London so desired that all the years will never blot it from
my memory. I had been in England two months then. A littered writing
table in my private sitting-room at a great Strand hotel bore witness to
my activities—an untasted elixir in a wineglass by my side spoke of a
woman’s anxieties and of her devotion. Certainly my dear sister Harriet
had sufficiently impressed upon these people the necessity of treating
all carpets and curtains by an antiseptic process, and the profound
wisdom of warming the interiors of those hats which subsequently were to
adorn the heads of males. Her debates with a German Prince in command,
neither understanding the tongue of the other, were a little protracted,
and not always without heat. She was determined that I should not cut my
finger-nails with unaired scissors, and convinced that the only way of
saving me from the troubles which beset the path of my indifference lay
in the frequent administration of advertised tonics, and a just sampling
of the whole of them. I suffered her and was happy. Is it not something
that there should be one woman in all the world who lives for us a life
so wholly unselfish that no thought of her own needs ever enters into
it?
To my dear sister, then, be this well-earned tribute paid. Doubly
fortunate, I might write down another name and spare no encomiums. Joan
Fordibras, my little Joan of Dieppe and the sunshine, was with us in the
hotel, and no less a slave of mine than the other. Every day, when I
came down to breakfast, it was Joan who had been across to Covent Garden
for the flowers I like best to have about me—it was Joan’s clever
fingers which delved amidst the mass of littered papers and unfailingly
extracted therefrom the erring document; Joan who told me at night what
had happened during the day in this dismal world of politics and
art—the world in which we amuse ourselves by calling those who differ
from us knaves and decrying all merit save that which makes its own
appeal to us. Rarely did I find her in that merry mood of girlhood in
which I caught her—how long ago it seemed!—at the Fête at Kensington.
If her face betrayed the sea’s dower of heightened colour and eyes
unspeakably blue, she had become less the child and more the woman, and
she lived as one tortured between two rivers of doubt—knowing the past
and fearing the future, but unconscious of the present. Between us there
stood the impassable barrier of the truce we arrived at upon the deck of
my yacht, _White Wings_. I was never again to tell her what she was and
must be to me—never to speak of a man’s love prevailing above all else,
more precious to him than all else under God’s fair sky; never to speak
of it until I could carry the secret to her and say—“This is your
birthright, such were the days of your childhood.” I had pledged my
word, and the bond was of honour. Time might redeem it or time might
bring the ultimate misfortune upon me—I knew not nor had the courage to
prophesy.
So London became the city of my desire, and in London my work began. I
saw Joan every day, heard the music of her laughter, and was conscious
of her presence about me as man is ever aware of the spirit of happiness
which hovers so rarely about a busy life. The littered table in my
private room bore witness to my activities, and the animation with which
I had pursued them. Many ambitions have I set before me to worship in
the years of the old time, but never such a task as this; whose
achievement must bring a reward beyond price; whose failure, I was
aware, would separate me finally and for ever from the woman I love.
To say that I laboured at it incessantly, indeed, is to do little
justice to actuality. The mystery went with me wherever I turned. I
wrestled with it through nights of bitter dreaming; it followed me to
the streets, to the theatres, to the houses of my friends. It prevailed
above every other occupation; it would start up even in the blue eyes
which daily asked the unspoken question; it would envelop little Joan
herself as a veil which hid her true self from me; it would stand out
black and clear upon every page that I wrote—a sentence irrevocable, a
very torture of the doubt. The secret, or the years of darkness, said
the voice. I hid myself from the light and still I heard its message. It
spoke to me above the city’s clamour and the hum of throngs. The secret,
or the night! What an alternative was that!
I was to go to Joan and to say to her—You are the daughter of this man
or that, but not of General Fordibras. I was to tell her that none of
hers had part or lot in the great conspiracy of crime whose fringe I had
touched, whose arch-priest I had named. Here was the task in a nutshell,
so simple seemingly that any dunce might have entered upon it with
confidence or any child sat down to master it. Yet, witness the
uncertain steps I had followed, and judge then what kind of a task it
was and what the peculiar nature of my difficulties. Judge then if I
misrepresent the circumstance or claim for myself that which truth has
not justified.
We had made a fair passage home from the Azores and come straight to
London. Losing none of the precious hours, I went immediately to
Scotland Yard, and from Scotland Yard to a friendly Minister’s room at
Whitehall, and there I told this story as it is written in this book,
and as time has not changed it. If I met with incredulity, I blame no
one. My cables home had warned the police of much that I would tell
them, and more that remained mere surmise. Murray himself—my old friend
Murray, whose suppositions had sent me upon an errand as strange as any
in his calendar—Murray assured me that the police of France, of
Germany, of America, and of Portugal were already advised of that which
had been done, and of the evidence upon which it was being done. But
even he had begun to lose faith.
“We have searched the houses you named in Paris,” he said, “and there
are half a dozen men under lock and key. They have arrested five in
Berlin, and the world has read the story of the coup made in New York.
To be frank with you, that is all we can do. This Jew of yours appears
in none of these successes. He is not named anywhere. There is no trace
of him—not a word, or a letter, or a trinket. The Governor of the
Island of Santa Maria declares that the mines there are just what they
pretend to be; that he has been over them with General Fordibras, and
that he finds the General a very simple, soldierly gentleman. As to your
Diamond Ship—they will believe in that when she comes to port. I have
traced the various steamers you have named to me, and their papers are
in all cases correct. To be candid, Dr. Fabos, if the Jew himself had
come to this office, I should have had no evidence to offer against him.
There is only one of his company threatened so far by your revelations,
and she is Miss Fordibras.”
We laughed together, and I showed him at once that I was not
disappointed.
“You are face to face with a master,” I exclaimed, “and you expect to
find childs’ toys in his hands. If Valentine Imroth is to be hanged by
any thieves’ den in Germany or in Paris—to say nothing of London—then
he is a hundred miles from being the man I met at Santa Maria, or that
brother Jew who commands the Diamond Ship. Do not believe it, Murray.
The success of this organisation is a success of delegation. Nine out of
ten men in Imroth’s employ have never heard his name, never seen him, or
become aware of his existence. The greater rogues, who form his cabinet,
are as little likely to be taken in any _café des assassins_ as the Jew
himself is likely to make a speech at Westminster. We have touched the
fringe of a splendid fabric, but threads of it only are in our hands.
To-day, at the Admiralty, Sir James Freeman tells me that a second
cruiser will be despatched to the South Atlantic next week. If they
discover the derelict, I shall be astounded. Ask me for a reason and I
can give you none. It is mere premonition. Sitting here in London I can
depict that sagging hulk as clearly as if I watched her from the deck of
my own yacht. She is drifting there, peopled by devils, a ship of blood
and death—drifting God knows where, without hope, or idea, or haven.
She may so drift to the Day of Judgment, but man will never discover
her. That is my belief. I have no reason for it—I admit freely that it
is ridiculous.”
Murray did not quarrel with my point of view, but assuredly he could not
help me. No trace of Imroth had been discovered; Fordibras had not been
arrested, nor had any news of him come from Santa Maria. The house
there, I understood, was shut up, and the so-called miners had left many
weeks ago in a steamer for Europe. The most diligent search had revealed
none of those caverns of treasure which I believed (and still believe)
to exist. There were implements for drilling and blasting, forges,
cranes, and cartridges, but of secret habitation, none. The Valley House
was declared to be an American’s whim, the mountain passage one of old
existence, and perfectly well known to every inhabitant. Such simplicity
I judged to have been bought at a handsome price. Gold alone could have
set these people’s tongues wagging so pleasantly.
“They are bought to a man, Murray,” I said; “and unless we care to pay a
higher price, we may trouble them no more. In my view they are not the
only recipients of this man’s oily bounty. I would venture to say that
he has friends enough in some of the South American republics to save an
army from the gallows. We will take it at that and leave it there. If
the Park Lane people do not care to carry it further, I have no
interest. You cannot arrest this man, you say, because there is no
evidence against him. That must be told him when we meet—it shall be
part of the price I pay for his secret. Such a secret I am determined to
force from him if I lose my life in the venture. Nothing else concerns
me now, Murray. Let a thousand criminals go down to the sea in ships,
and I am unmoved. His secret—my task begins and ends with that.”
He did not understand me wholly, nor would I unbosom myself to him. The
partial failure of my voyage could not but result in such incredulity as
I met everywhere at home. Nor might I blame a shrewd officer for saying
frankly that there was at present no evidence that could be read in
court against Valentine Imroth. His treasure had been successfully
hidden from every human eye. A friendly Government sheltered him; his
dupes seemed unable to betray him. The spell that he cast had been
powerful to protect him even in his absence. I saw more plainly than
ever that the final scene must be between the arch-rogue and
myself—even at the peril of my life.
And how should this be, you ask? How might I draw from the shadows a man
fearing the light; one for whom the police of five nations were supposed
to be seeking—a man who would as soon come to England, you might say,
as venture into the jaws of hell? Let the circumstance answer me. I had
a letter from the Jew himself three days after Murray assured me that
all the talent of Europe could not discover him. Twenty-four hours later
one of the fastest steam launches on the River Thames carried me from
London Bridge to a house which should give all or deny me all before
another dawn had broken. These were the truths, and they need no
ornament of mine. I was going to the Jew’s house, and Okyada, my little
Jap, alone went with me. Let the circumstance speak, I say, for it is
worth a thousand guesses. The greatest criminal alive, as I believed
this man to be, had asked me to go to him, and I had answered “yes.” So
shall the record stand—even, as it would seem, this surpassing
folly—for a woman’s sake, as so much folly and wisdom have been since
man’s world began.