The silly world shrieks madly after Fact,
Thinking, forsooth, to find therein the Truth;
But we, my love, will leave our brains unracked,
And glean our learning from these dreams of youth:
Should any charge us with a childish act
And bid us track out knowledge like a sleuth,
We'll lightly laugh to scorn the wraiths of History,
And, hand in hand, seek certitude in Mystery.
--_When the Halcyon Broods_.
The house of the occultist was one of a long row, all alike, which
reminds the observer of an exercise in perspective, as one glances down
the stretch of balustraded piazzas. Amidon walked straight across the
street from the hotel, and counted the flights of stairs up to the
fourth floor. There was no elevator. The denizens of the place gave
him a vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts. A glimpse of
an interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork,
and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi
exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand
Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of
cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the
impression. On the fourth floor the scent shaded off toward
sandalwood, the sounds toward silence, Bohemia toward Benares. He
walked in twilight, on inch-deep nap, to a door on which glowed in
soft, purple, self-emitted radiance, the words:
MADAME Le CLAIRE
ENTER
The invitation was plain, and he opened the door. As he did so, the
deep, mellow note of a gong filled the place with a gentle alarum. It
was sound with noise eliminated, and matched, to the ear, the velvet of
the carpet.
The room into which he looked was dark, save for light reflected from a
marble ball set in a high recess in the ceiling. None of the lamps,
whose rays illuminated the ball, could be seen, and the white globe
itself was hung so high in the recess that none of its direct rays
reached the corners of the apartment. A Persian rug lay in the center,
and took the fullest light. There were no sharp edges of shadow, but
instead there was a softly graduated penumbra, deepening into murk.
Straight across was a doorway with a portiere, beyond was another, and
still farther, a third, all made visible in silhouette by the light in
a fourth room, seen as at the end of a tunnel.
Across this gossamer-barred arch of light, a black figure was
projected, and swelled as it neared in silent approach. It came
through the last portiere, on into the circle of light, and stood, a
turbaned negro, bowing low toward the visitor.
"Madame le Claire," said Amidon feebly, "may I speak with her?"
There was no reply, unless a respectful scrutiny might be taken for
one. Then the dumb Sudanese, carrying with him the atmosphere of a
Bedouin tent, disappeared, lingered, reappeared, and beckoned Amidon to
follow. As they passed the first portiere, that mellow and gentle
gong-note welled softly again from some remote distance. At the second
archway, it sounded nearer, if not louder. At the third, as Amidon
stepped into the lighted room, it filled the air with a golden
vibrancy. It was as if invisible ministers had gone before to announce
him.
Amidon took one long look at the scene in the fourth room, and a great
wave of unbelief rolled across his mind. Through this long day of
shocks and surprises, he had reached that stage of amazedness where the
evidential value of sensory impressions is destroyed. He covered his
eyes with his hands, expecting that the phantasms before him might pass
with vision, and that with vision's return might come the dear,
familiar commonplaces of his commonplace life.
The room seemed to have no windows, and the roar of the New York street
outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were hung
with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor
was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes
emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on
a kind of dais, sat a woman--a woman whose eyes sought his in a steady
regard which flashed a thrill through his whole body as he gazed. For
she seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a butterfly from the
chrysalis.
[Illustration: She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a
butterfly from the chrysalis.]
Her dress was of some combination of black and yellow which carried
upward the tones of the great rug. Her bare arms--long, and tapering
to lithe wrists and hands--were clasped by dull-gold bracelets of
twisted serpents. Over shapely shoulders, the flesh of which looked
white and young, there was thrown a wrap like feathery snow, from under
which drooped down over the girlish bosom a necklace that seemed of
pearl. The face was fair, its pallor tinged with red at lips, and rose
on cheeks. The eyes, luminous and steady, shone out through heavy dark
lashes, from under brows of black, and seemed, at that first glance, of
oriental darkness. A great mass of dark-brown hair encircled the
rather small face, and even in his first look, he noted at the temples
twin strands of golden-blond which, carried out like rays in the fluffy
halo about her brow, reappeared in all the twistings and turnings of
the involved pile which crowned the graceful head. The
yellow-and-black of the tiger appeared thus, from head to foot. It was
afterward that he found out something of the secret of the peculiar
fascination in the great dark eyes. One of them was gray, with that
greenish tinge which has been regarded as the token of genius. The
other was of a mottled golden-brown, with lights like those in the
tiger's eye. In both, in any but strong light, the velvet-black pupils
spread out, and pushed the iris back to a thin margin; and thus they
varied, from gray or brown, to that liquid night, which Amidon now saw
in them, as he stepped within the doorway, and looked so long on her,
as she sat like a model for the Queen of the Jungle, that under other
circumstances the gaze would have seemed rude. Some sense of this,
breaking through his bewilderment, made him bow.
"Madame le Claire?" said he.
"The same," said she. "How can I serve you, sir?"
The voice, a soft contralto, was the complement of the steady regard of
the eyes. As she spoke, she rose and stepped toward him, down from the
little dais to the rug. She rose, not with the effort which marks the
act in most, but lightly, as a flower rises from the touch of a breeze.
She was tall and lithe, and all the curves of her figure were long and
low--once more suggesting the soft strength of the tigress. But when
speech parted the lips, the smile which overspread her face won him.
"How can I serve you, my friend?" she repeated.
"I am in great trouble," said he.
"Yes," she purred.
"I saw your sign," he went on. "And I want you to tell me where I have
been since June, 1896--and who is Eugene Brassfield? Did I kill
him--or only rob him? And who is Elizabeth?"
She had stepped close to him now, as if to catch the scent of some
disturbing influence which might account for such incoherence; but
Amidon's breath was innocent of taint.
"Yes!" said she, "I think we shall be able to tell you all. But, are
you well?"
"I have had no breakfast," said he. "When I found that I had lost five
years--I forgot. And--once--I fainted. I'm not quite--well, I'm
afraid!"
Madame le Claire stepped to the wall and pushed a button. The turbaned
Sudanese reappeared at once.
"Aaron," said she, "tell Professor Blatherwick that Mr.--Mr.----"
"Amidon," said Florian hastily--"Amidon is my name."
"--Amidon will dine with us," Madame le Clair continued smoothly. "He
has some very interesting things for us to look into. And have dinner
served at once."
Aaron! and dinner! and Blatherwick! The delicious vulgarity of the
names was sweet music. For be it remembered that Florian was a banker,
and a man of position; and sandalwood, Sudanese, Bedouins and illusions
were ill for the green wound of his mystery--which, in all conscience,
was bad enough in and of itself! Some confidence in the realities of
things returned to him, but he followed Madame le Claire like a
faithful hound.
V