were one or two first-class through carriages on it, which, for a French
railway, were unusually empty. In one of them I saw at the window the
head of the German, and from a certain subdued radiance in his
expression, I judged that he must be carrying off a considerable "pile"
from the gaming-table. His personality was not of the most attractive,
and there was something in his squat nose suggestive of stertorous
possibilities which, under ordinary circumstances, would have held me
aloof from him. But--shall I confess it?--he had for me a certain
sentimental attraction, because he was associated in my mind with that
first meeting with my forty-eight hours' friend. I looked into his
compartment; an overcoat and valise lay in the opposite corner from his,
showing that seat to be engaged, but two corners were still left me to
choose from. I installed myself in one of them, face to face with the
valise and overcoat, and awaited the signal to start. The cry of "En
voiture, messieurs!" soon came, and a lithe figure sprang into the
carriage. It was my Fascinating Friend! For a single moment I thought
that a flash of annoyance crossed his features on finding me there, but
the impression vanished at once, for his greeting was as full of
cordiality as of surprise. We soon exchanged explanations. He, like
myself, had been called away by telegram, not to Genoa, but to Rome; he,
like myself, had left a note expressing his heartfelt regret at our
sudden separation. As we sped along, skirting bays that shone burnished
in the evening light, and rumbling every now and then through a
tunnel-pierced promontory, we resumed the almost affectionate converse
interrupted only an hour before, and I found him a more delightful
companion than ever. His exquisitely playful fantasy seemed to be acting
at high pressure, as in the case of a man who is talking to pass the
time under the stimulus of a delightful anticipation. I suspected that
he was hurrying to some peculiarly agreeable rendezvous in Rome, and I
hinted my suspicion, which he laughed off in such a way as to confirm
it. The German, in the mean time, sat stolid and unmoved, making some
pencilled calculations in a little pocket-book. He clearly did not
understand English.
As we approached Ventimiglia my friend rose, took down his valise from
the rack, and, turning his back to me, made some changes in its
arrangement, which I, of course, did not see. He then locked it
carefully and kept it beside him. At Ventimiglia we had all to turn out
to undergo the inspection of the Italian _dogana_. My friend's valise
was his sole luggage, and I noticed, rather to my surprise, that he gave
the custom-house official a very large bribe--two or three gold
pieces--to make his inspection of it purely nominal, and forego the
opening of either of the inside compartments. The German, on the other
hand, had a small portmanteau and a large dispatch box, both of which he
opened with a certain ostentation, and I observed that the official's
eyes glittered under his raised eyebrows as he looked into the contents
of the dispatch-box. On returning to the train we all three resumed our
old places, and the German drew the shade of a sleeping-cap over his
eyes and settled himself down for the night. It was now quite dark, but
the moon was shining.
"Have you a large supply of the 'gems' in your valise?" I asked,
smiling, curious to know his reason for a subterfuge which accorded ill
with his ordinary straight-forwardness, and remembering that tobacco is
absolutely prohibited at the Italian frontier.
"Unfortunately, no," he said; "my 'gems' are all gone, and I have only
my common cigarettes remaining. Will you try them, such as they are?"
and he held out his case, both sides of which were now filled with the
flat cigarettes. We each took one and lighted it, but he began giving me
an account of a meeting he had had with Lord Beaconsfield, which he
detailed so fully and with so much enthusiasm, that, after a whiff or
two he allowed his cigarette to go out. I could not understand his taste
in tobacco. These cigarettes which he despised seemed to me at once more
delicate and more peculiar than the others. They had a flavour which was
quite unknown to me. I was much interested in his vivid account of the
personality of that great man, whom I admired then, while he was yet
with us, and whom, as a knight of the Primrose League, I now revere; but
our climb of the morning, and the scrambling departure of the afternoon,
were beginning to tell on me, and I became irresistibly drowsy.
Gradually, and in spite of myself, my eyes closed. I could still hear my
companion's voice mingling with the heavy breathing of the German, who
had been asleep for some time; but soon even these sounds ceased to
penetrate the mist of languor, the end of my cigarette dropped from
between my fingers and I knew no more.
* * * * *
My awakening was slow and spasmodic. There was a clearly perceptible
interval--probably several minutes--between the first stirrings of
consciousness and the full clarification of my faculties. I began to be
aware of the rumble and oscillation of the train without realizing what
was meant. Then I opened my eyes and blinked at the lamp, and vaguely
noted the yellow oil washing to and fro in the bowl. Then the white
square of the "Avis aux Voyageurs" caught my eye in the gloom under the
luggage-rack, and beneath it, on the seat, I saw the light reflected
from the lock of the German's portmanteau. Next I was conscious of the
German himself still sleeping in his corner, but no longer puffing and
grunting as when I had fallen asleep. Then I raised my head, looked
round the carriage, and the next moment sprang bolt upright in dismay.
Where was my Fascinating Friend?
Gone! vanished! There was not a trace of him. His valise, his
great-coat, all had disappeared. Only in the little cigar-ash box on the
window-frame I saw the flat cigarette which he had barely lighted--how
long before? I looked at my watch: it must have been about an hour and a
half ago.
By this time I had all my faculties about me. I looked across at the
German, intending to ask him if he knew anything of our late
travelling-companion. Then I noticed that his head had fallen forward in
such a way that it seemed to me suffocation must be imminent. I
approached him, and put down my head to look into his face. As I did so
I saw a roundish black object on the oil-cloth floor not far from the
toe of his boot. The lamplight was reflected at a single point from its
convex surface. I put down my hand and touched it. It was liquid. I
looked at my fingers--they were not black, but red. I think (but am not
sure) that I screamed aloud. I shrank to the other end of the carriage,
and it was some moments before I had sufficient presence of mind to look
for a means of communicating with the guard. Of course there was none. I
was alone for an indefinite time with a dead man. But was he dead? I had
little doubt, from the way his head hung, that his throat was cut, and a
horrible fascination drew me to his side to examine. No; there was no
sign of the hideous fissure I expected to find beneath the gray bristles
of his beard. His head fell forward again into the same position, and I
saw with horror that I had left two bloody fingermarks upon the gray
shade of his sleeping-cap. Then I noticed for the first time that the
window he was facing stood open, for a gust of wind came through it and
blew back the lapel of his coat. What was that on his waistcoat? I tore
the coat back and examined: it was a small triangular hole just over the
heart, and round it there was a dark circle about the size of a
shilling, where the blood had soaked through the light material. In
examining it I did what the murderer had not done--disturbed the
equilibrium of the body, which fell over against me.
At that moment I heard a loud voice behind me, coming from I knew not
where. I nearly fainted with terror. The train was still going at full
speed; the compartment was empty, save for myself and the ghastly object
which lay in my arms; and yet I seemed to hear a voice almost at my ear.
There it was again! I summoned up courage to look round. It was the
guard of the train clinging on outside the window and demanding
"Biglietti!" By this time, he, too, saw that something was amiss. He
opened the door and swung himself into the carriage. "Dio mio!" I heard
him exclaim, as I actually flung myself into his arms and pointed to the
body now lying in a huddled heap amid its own blood on the floor. Then,
for the first time in my life, I positively swooned away, and knew no
more.
When I came to myself the train had stopped at a small station, the name
of which I do not know to this day. There was a Babel of speech going on
around, not one word of which I could understand. I was on the platform,
supported between two men in uniform, with cocked hats and cockades. In
vain I tried to tell my story. I knew little or no Italian, and, though
there were one or two Frenchmen in the train, they were useless as
interpreters, for on the one hand my power of speaking French seemed to
have departed in my agitation, and on the other hand none of the
Italians understood it. In vain I tried to make them understand that a
"giovane" had travelled in the compartment with us who had now
disappeared. The Italian guard, who had come on at Ventimiglia,
evidently had no recollection of him. He merely shook his head, said
"Non capisco," and inquired if I was "Prussiano." The train had already
been delayed some time, and, after a consultation between the
station-master, the guard, the syndic of the village, who had been
summoned in haste, it was determined to hand the matter over to the
authorities at Genoa. The two carabinieri sat one on each side of me
facing the engine, and on the opposite seat the body was stretched out
with a luggage tarpaulin over it. In this hideous fashion I passed the
four or five remaining hours of the journey to Genoa.
The next week I spent in an Italian prison, a very uncomfortable yet
quite unromantic place of abode. Fortunately, my friends were by this
time in Genoa, and they succeeded in obtaining some slight mitigation of
my discomforts. At the end of that time I was released, there being no
evidence against me. The testimony of the French guard, of the
booking-clerk at Monaco, and of the staff of the Hotel de Paris,
established the existence of my Fascinating Friend, which was at first
called in question; but no trace could be found of him. With him had
disappeared his victim's dispatch-box, in which were stored the proceeds
of several days of successful gambling. Robbery, however, did not seem
to have been the primary motive of the crime, for his watch, purse, and
the heavy jewelry about his person were all untouched. From the German
Consul at Genoa I learned privately, after my release, that the murdered
man, though in fact a Prussian, had lived long in Russia, and was
suspected of having had an unofficial connection with the St. Petersburg
police. It was thought, indeed, that the capital with which he had
commenced his operation at Monte Carlo was the reward of some special
act of treachery; so that the anarchists, if it was indeed they who
struck the blow, had merely suffered Judas to put his thirty pieces out
to usance, in order to pay back to their enemies with interest the
blood-money of their friends.
IV
About two years later I happened one day to make an afternoon call in
Mayfair, at the house of a lady well known in the social and political
world, who honours me, if I may say so, with her friendship. Her
drawing-room was crowded, and the cheerful ring of afternoon tea-cups
was audible through the pleasant medley of women's voices. I joined a
group around the hostess, where an animated discussion was in progress
on the Irish Coercion Bill, then the leading political topic of the day.
The argument interested me deeply; but it is one of my mental
peculiarities that when several conversations are going on around me I
can by no means keep my attention exclusively fixed upon the one in
which I am myself engaged. Odds and ends from all the others find their
way into my ears and my consciousness, and I am sometimes accused of
absence of mind, when my fault is in reality a too great alertness of
the sense of hearing. In this instance the conversation of three or four
groups was more or less audible to me; but it was not long before my
attention was absorbed by the voice of a lady, seated at the other side
of the circular ottoman on which I myself had taken my place.
She was talking merrily, and her hearers, in one of whom, as I glanced
over my shoulder, I recognized an ex-Cabinet Minister, seemed to be
greatly entertained. As her back was toward me, all I could see of the
lady herself was her short black hair falling over the handsome fur
collar of her mantle.
"He was so tragic about it," she was saying, "that it was really
_impayable_. The lady was beautiful, wealthy, accomplished, and I don't
know what else. The rival was an Australian squatter, with a beard as
thick as his native bush. My communicative friend--I scarcely knew even
his name when he poured forth his woes to me--thought that he had an
advantage in his light moustache, with a military twirl in it. They were
all three travelling in Switzerland, but the Australian had gone off to
make the ascent of some peak or other, leaving the field to the foe for
a couple of days at least. On the first day the foe made the most of his
time, and had nearly brought matters to a crisis. The next morning he
got himself up as exquisitely as possible, in order to clinch his
conquest, but found to his disgust that he had left his dressing-case
with his razors at the last stopping-place. There was nothing for it but
to try the village barber, who was also the village stationer, and
draper, and ironmonger, and chemist--a sort of Alpine Whiteley, in fact.
His face had just been soaped--what do you call it?--lathered, is it
not? and the barber had actually taken hold of his nose so as to get his
head into the right position, when, in the mirror opposite, he saw the
door open, and--oh, horror!--who should walk into the shop but the fair
one herself! He gave such a start that the barber gashed his chin. His
eyes met hers in the mirror; for a moment he saw her lips quiver and
tremble, and then she burst into shrieks of uncontrollable laughter, and
rushed out of the shop. If you knew the pompous little man, I am sure
you would sympathize with her. I know I did when he told me the story.
His heart sank within him, but he acted like a Briton. He determined to
take no notice of the _contretemps_, but return boldly to the attack.
She received him demurely at first, but the moment she raised her eyes
to his face, and saw the patch of sticking-plaster on his chin, she was
again seized with such convulsions that she had to rush from the room.
'She is now in Melbourne,' he said, almost with a sob, 'and I assure
you, my dear friend, that I never now touch a razor without an impulse,
to which I expect I shall one day succumb, to put it to a desperate
use.'"
There was a singing in my ears, and my brain was whirling. This story,
heartlessly and irreverently told, was the tragedy of my life!
I had breathed it to no human soul--_save one_!
I rose from my seat, wondering within myself whether my agitation was
visible to those around me, and went over to the other side of the room
whence I could obtain a view of the speaker. There were the deep, dark
eyes, there were the full sensuous lips, the upper shaded with an
impalpable down, there was the charcoal-black hair! I knew too well that
rich contralto voice! It was my Fascinating Friend!
Before I had fully realized the situation she rose, handed her empty
tea-cup to the Cabinet-Minister, bowed to him and his companion, and
made her way up to the hostess, evidently intending to take her leave.
As she turned away, after shaking hands cordially with Lady X----, her
eyes met mine intently fixed upon her. She did not start, she neither
flushed nor turned pale; she simply raised for an instant her finely
arched eyebrows, and as her tall figure sailed past me out of the room,
she turned upon me the same exquisite and irresistible smile with which
my Fascinating Friend had offered me his cigarette-case that evening
among the olive-trees.
I hurried up to Lady X----.
"Who is the lady who has just left the room?" I asked.
"Oh, that is the Baroness M----," she replied. "She is half an
Englishwoman, half a Pole. She was my daughter's bosom friend at
Girton--a most interesting girl."
"Is she a politician?" I asked.
"No; that's the one thing I don't like about her. She is not a bit of a
patriot; she makes a joke of her country's wrongs and sufferings. Should
you like to meet her? Dine with us the day after to-morrow. She is to be
here."
* * * * *
I dined at Lady X----'s on the appointed day, but the Baroness was not
there. Urgent family affairs had called her suddenly to Poland.
A week later the assassination of the Czar sent a thrill of horror
through the civilized world.
* * * * *
"Don't you think your friend might be held an accessory after the fact
to the death of the German?" asked the Novelist, when all the flattering
comments, which were many, were at an end. "And an accessory before the
fact to the assassination of the Czar?" chimed in the Editor. "Why
didn't he go straight from Lady ----'s house to the nearest
police-station and put the police on the track of his 'Fascinating
Friend'?" "What a question!" the Romancer exclaimed, starting from his
seat and pacing restlessly about the deck. "How could any man with a
palate for the rarest flavours of life resist the temptation of taking
that woman down to dinner? And, besides, hadn't he eaten salt with her?
Hadn't he smoked the social cigarette with her? Shade of De Quincey! are
we to treat like a vulgar criminal a mistress of the finest of the fine
arts? Shall we be such crawling creatures as to seek to lay by the heels
a Muse of Murder? Are we a generation of detectives, that we should do
this thing?" "So my friend put it to me," said the Critic dryly, "not
quite so eloquently, but to that effect. Between ourselves, though, I
believe he was influenced more by consideration of his personal safety
than by admiration for murder as a fine art. He remembered the fate of
the German, and was unwilling to share it." "He adopted a policy of
non-intervention," said the Eminent Tragedian, who in his hours of
leisure, was something of a politician. "I should rather say of _laissez
faire_, or, more precisely, of _laissez assassiner_," laughed the
Editor. "What was the Fascinating Friend supposed to have in her
portmanteau?" asked Beatrice. "What was she so anxious to conceal from
the custom-house officers?" "Her woman's clothes, I imagine," the Critic
replied, "though I don't hold myself bound to explain all the ins and
outs of her proceedings." "Then she _was_ a wonderful woman," replied
the fair questioner, as one having authority, "if she could get a
respectable gown and 'fixings,' as the Americans say, into a small
portmanteau. But," she added, "I very soon suspected she was a woman."
"Why?" asked several voices simultaneously. "Why, because she drew him
out so easily," was the reply. "You think, in fact," said the Romancer,
"that however little its victim was aware of it, there was a touch of
the _Ewig-weibliche_ in her fascination?" "Precisely."
THE LOST ROOM
FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN
It was oppressively warm. The sun had long disappeared, but seemed to
have left its vital spirit of heat behind it. The air rested; the leaves
of the acacia-trees that shrouded my windows hung plumb-like on their
delicate stalks. The smoke of my cigar scarce rose above my head, but
hung about me in a pale blue cloud, which I had to dissipate with
languid waves of my hand. My shirt was open at the throat, and my chest
heaved laboriously in the effort to catch some breaths of fresher air.
The noises of the city seemed to be wrapped in slumber, and the
shrilling of the mosquitos was the only sound that broke the stillness.
As I lay with my feet elevated on the back of a chair, wrapped in that
peculiar frame of mind in which thought assumes a species of lifeless
motion, the strange fancy seized me of making a languid inventory of the
principal articles of furniture in my room. It was a task well suited to
the mood in which I found myself. Their forms were duskily defined in
the dim twilight that floated shadowily through the chamber; it was no
labour to note and particularize each, and from the place where I sat I
could command a view of all my possessions without even turning my head.
There was, _imprimis_, that ghostly lithograph by Calame. It was a mere
black spot on the white wall, but my inner vision scrutinized every
detail of the picture. A wild, desolate, midnight heath, with a spectral
oak-tree in the centre of the foreground. The wind blows fiercely, and
the jagged branches, clothed scantily with ill-grown leaves, are swept
to the left continually by its giant force.
A formless wrack of clouds streams across the awful sky, and the rain
sweeps almost parallel with the horizon. Beyond, the heath stretches off
into endless blackness, in the extreme of which either fancy or art has
conjured up some undefinable shapes that seem riding into space. At the
base of the huge oak stands a shrouded figure. His mantle is wound by
the blast in tight folds around his form, and the long cock's feather in
his hat is blown upright, till it seems as if it stood on end with fear.
His features are not visible, for he has grasped his cloak with both
hands, and drawn it from either side across his face. The picture is
seemingly objectless. It tells no tale, but there is a weird power about
it that haunts one, and it was for that I bought it.
Next to the picture comes the round blot that hangs below it, which I
know to be a smoking-cap. It has my coat of arms embroidered on the
front, and for that reason I never wear it; though, when properly
arranged on my head, with its long blue silken tassel hanging down by my
cheek, I believe it becomes me well. I remember the time when it was in
the course of manufacture. I remember the tiny little hands that pushed
the coloured silks so nimbly through the cloth that was stretched on the
embroidery-frame,--the vast trouble I was put to to get a coloured copy
of my armorial bearings for the heraldic work which was to decorate the
front of the band,--the pursings up of the little mouth, and the
contractions of the young forehead, as their possessor plunged into a
profound sea of cogitation touching the way in which the cloud should be
represented from which the armed hand, that is my crest, issues,--the
heavenly moment when the tiny hands placed it on my head, in a position
that I could not bear for more than a few seconds, and I, kinglike,
immediately assumed my royal prerogative after the coronation, and
instantly levied a tax on my only subjects which was, however, not paid
unwillingly. Ah! the cap is there, but the embroiderer has fled; for
Atropos was severing the web of life above her head while she was
weaving that silken shelter for mine!