THE FACE OF DEES
On going into my sitting-room at the guest-court I beheld Langler
already there, with a busy pen in his hand and his hat still on his
head; he said nothing, nor could I guess what he was at, till, getting
up sharply, he handed me to read a note to Herr Tschudi in something
like the following words:--"Sir, you have, to my certain knowledge, one
Father Max Dees unlawfully confined in Schweinstein Castle, of which you
are the governor, his dungeon being the cell at the bottom of the
north-west tower. For such an act of flagrant unrighteousness there can
be no excuse whatever, and I have to address to you, in the pretended
absence of the castle-lord, the warning that, if within the next
twenty-four hours your prisoner is not released, then my friend, Mr
Templeton, and I will know how to coerce and duly punish you...."
I was never more surprised!--every word of it was surprising! My first
words were: "but by what means are we to coerce and duly punish him?"
"Oh, we shall find a way," said Langler: "I intend to be no longer
tentative and tolerant; Dees must now be set at liberty, or I shall act
with a certain rigour."
"But, Aubrey----"
"No; Arthur, we have already been sluggish and patient, we have lost
time--time. It is for us now to put our powers brusquely to the test."
"I agree," said I: "let us put our powers to the test, let us act with a
certain rigour. But how? I confess that I don't understand you. Tell me
first how on earth you can know that Dees is not only still a prisoner,
but in the north-west tower?"
"As to his being still a prisoner, that is on the surface of things," he
answered: "the slightest criticism applied to the words and manner of
Herr Tschudi would unveil the man's consciousness of that fact. He has
even caught the contemptuous, frank trick of his master, and was hardly
at the pains to be a hypocrite. When you said to him, 'but is Father
Dees still a prisoner, if one may ask?' his answer was: 'surely one may
ask; but all that was five long years ago, of course.' Very '_long_'
years--'of course.' No, he wouldn't have spoken at all like that if he
had not had Dees' present captivity in his consciousness; he wouldn't
have been stung to retort: 'surely one may _ask_,' but would have
answered at once with a careless 'Oh no.' And all his manner and other
words were in the same sense."
"You are no doubt quite right," said I.
"I am even sure of it," said he: "when I asked him as to the pieta,
whether it was ancient, how off-hand was his answer, 'fifteenth-century,
sir,' though he had previously called me a connoisseur, and might have
known, if he had troubled to think, that I should see his statement to
be untrue. The pieta is not at all in any of the moods of old Northern
work, and it bears the initials of Max Dees, who most likely made it.
But Herr Tschudi did not wish Dees to be a topic, and shunned his name
even at the cost of an untruth; nor would he have acted at all like
that, Arthur, if Dees had gone out of his life and care five 'long'
years ago--unless, indeed, there were unseen ears listening somewhere to
which Dees' name is ever a word forbidden in the castle."
"Well," said I, "let it be taken as settled that Dees is still there in
prison; but how can you know that he is in the north-west tower?"
"You didn't read the words in raised letters on the base of the pieta?"
he asked.
"No, I didn't read them."
"In what language do you imagine that they are?"
"In Greek," said I.
"No, in Hebrew," said he, "Hebrew words in Greek letters, and so put
there by a most knowing mind, I gather, the same mind and hand which
captured the wren, and sent her out with her message; and if you add to
these proofs of wit the craftsmanship in the pieta, and Herr Tschudi's
admission of Dees' oratory, you get an intelligence of many gifts, as
'brilliant' perhaps as 'Savonarola.' Dees apparently made the pieta some
time shortly before his imprisonment, when he was not without bodings of
his doom; and the Hebrew words in Greek letters were meant to baffle a
half-classic like the baron, in case it should ever occur to the baron
to read what he would assume to be some pious motto in such a place."
"But what are the words?" I asked.
"These, Arthur," said he: "'If I am killed, it will be the lord's doing;
if imprisoned, at the bottom of the north-west tower.'"
"But that is nearly everything!" I cried: "what luck! I wonder what was
Dees' hope.... But do you mean to say, Aubrey, that you would betray to
Herr Tschudi that we are in possession of this wonderful piece of
knowledge?"
"It has seemed to me that we have dallied and been mild more than
enough, Arthur."
At this, I must confess, there rose in my mind the old rhyme: "he never
said a foolish thing, he never did a wise one." "But, Aubrey," said I,
"is it not clear that the last thing which we must do is to threaten and
challenge these people? We should only provoke a smile; even our
liberty, our lives, are in their hands. Pray listen to me in this for
Emily's sake, for all our sakes. We can effect nothing by impulse and
spasmodic high-handedness when our power is just nil. And if we betray
our knowledge of Dees' dungeon in this fashion, what is to prevent them
removing him to another?"
"Well, your judgment is always good," said he, with a smile: "there
stands the letter, written, at any rate, but it need not be actually
sent; all life is the same tangle, I suppose, in which not only the why
but even the how of conduct remains enigmatic, and the maze is without
clue, save at its end," and he threw himself on our old sofa, with his
hands behind his head, while I at our window-garden of fuchsias and
oleanders tore up the note, looking down an avenue of the wood, till
presently I said: "I wonder if Dees' dungeon has a window?"
"Castles of that date," answered Langler, "have not usually
dungeon-windows; but Dees' dungeon has one, of course."
"How do you know?"
"But didn't he send a bird from it?"
"Well, of course. Well, then, since there is an opening of some sort,
the thing for us now to do is to get at Dees, and _he_ will tell us how
to work out his release. I believe that it can be done, if he is really
in the north-west tower, for the north wall of the castle rises sheer
from the river-cliffs, which are only some thirty feet high."
Langler sat up at my words, and for the rest of that evening we were
discussing this thing on every side.
The next (Monday) morning I rode five miles towards Speisendorf, where
I got a boy to buy for me forty metres of rope, and on coming home spent
the remainder of the day in my room making a rope-ladder; on the Tuesday
I purloined two hooks from a shanty in the cow-yard to fasten to my
ladder; and at midnight of that same day I was face to face with Max
Dees.
I shall never forget that night, that experience, it was so tenebrous
and windy, all was like a scene in Erebus--the castle, the cliffs, the
forests, not a light anywhere on the earth or in the heaven, and my
heart, like the midnight thief's, was in my mouth. We left the
guest-court by stealth, hurried down the forest, and at the river
launched the fishing-boat which I had previously fixed upon--a nasty
piece of work, for that small river falls some five feet, and by ill
luck the tide was at ebb, so we had to push down the boat through slush,
and when we had got under the castle I had to climb through more slush
to the cliff. Langler remained in the boat, for there was nothing to
make her fast to. Above some ivy grew on the cliff, but none below.
At a cranny where the cliff-surface was more broken I now began to cast
the ladder; but I had cruel luck at first, every cast making a racket of
which all the jackdaws on the rock and the very soul of the night seemed
to be conscious, and I regretted keenly that we had not tried our luck
with the wooden ladder of the guest-court, much too short though it was.
However, after a few throws, the grapples caught fifteen feet up, and
in the end, by three stages, I stepped over a crucifix at the top at a
point where a yew and an ash grew out of the bush at the cliff-edge; and
now not two feet from the edge was the north wall of the north-west
tower, and in it a window almost level with the ground.
At that window I lay on my right side, I called upon Max Dees: and at
once, startling me, a hungry breath was with me; "yes," it whispered, "I
am here, you are come to deliver me--tell me!"
"Yes, Dees," I whispered, "we are two----"
"Gott!" he whispered, "speak low."
I told him that his message sent out by the wren had come to us, and
asked what we were to do for him.
"Yes, to deliver me," he whispered, "a good file, bring it to-morrow
night, in three nights I shall be ready to fly with you, go now, tread
softly, one good file...."
"I shall bring the file," I whispered, "but our object in coming was to
be able to swear that you are actually a prisoner, and so move the
authorities----"
"_Speak low_," he whispered horridly: "no, the file, the authorities
would not act against him--not for months, years, and he means to
crucify me.... Has the Church fallen?"
"No; why?"
"He vowed to keep me to see the downfall of the Church, which I loved,
and then crucify me, bring the file...."
"He shall fail, I promise you, don't be so frightened, take comfort,
trust in God, trust in us, we mean to stick to you to our last
breath----"
"Thanks, the file, go, go, one good file."
"We sha'n't fail," I said, and I was now about to rise when, to my
dismay, I heard a noise in the bush, and, peering that way, my eyes made
out the form of a man. I was very unnerved. It came toward me along the
cliff-edge, and I had a thought of shooting, for a weapon was in my
trousers pocket, when I became aware of Langler!--a surprising thing,
seeing that he had arranged not to climb. He stooped to my ear, panting,
"is he there?" "Yes," I whispered, "but to what have you made fast the
boat?" "Gott, speak low," came in agony from the window-bars. "I made
her fast to the ladder," whispered Langler, "have you _seen_ him?" "One
can't now, go back," I whispered. "We should _see_ him," he whispered,
"so as to be able----" "It is all right; go back," I whispered, "no! no!
don't strike--" for I heard him about to strike a match; but the match
was struck, and in its shine we had a vision of a face all eyes in a
bush of black beard and hair; it seemed horrified at the striking of the
light! which, however, was hardly burning before it was puffed out by
the wind.
It was at that moment that I became aware of a grating sound ten yards
along the cliff-edge where the ladder was, and immediately I heard a
splash in the river; whereupon, picking myself up, I pelted to the spot,
only to find the ladder gone. I understood at once that the boat, tied
by Langler to the ladder-foot, had dragged upstream (the tide was
rising), dragging the grapples aside from the arm of the crucifix at the
cliff-edge, and taking the ladder with her; and I felt hopelessness, for
how we were ever to get away it was hard to see, since I was aware that
some parts of the bailey-wall went up sheer from the cliff-edge.
"Is the ladder gone?" whispered Langler.
"Yes," I whispered, and I could not help adding: "pity you came up!"
"I thought that I had better _see_ him, in order to be able to say that
I had," he whispered.
"You might have said it without actually seeing, you know, Aubrey."
"Hardly, I think, Arthur," said he.
I would not answer, for at the moment, I confess, I was a little
impatient of Oxford and the academic stiff mind of the schoolmen. The
ladder was gone! that was the point: and with it all seemed lost.
However, we presently started out eastward on hands and knees, until we
entered some narrows beyond which there was no venturing; then, having
turned, we once more went by Dees' window, who sent out to us some
momentous hist, which we were in too much misery of mind to heed; and
in the end, after somehow managing two danger-spots, we came out into
forest at the castle-back. From that point we saw for the first time a
light in the night, a light in a tiny window of the donjon--as to which
Langler made the reckoning that it was burning either in or near the
baron's laboratory.
We then walked up through the forest, got by stealth into the
guest-court about two o'clock, and crept to our beds. I, however, could
not sleep, but lay living over again all our night-bewitched adventure:
the winds, the tremors and chances, seeing again the eyes and hearing
the gasps of that poor, darksome prisoner, and thinking of the loss of
the boat and of what that meant: for I knew that with the next ebb of
the tide the boat would very likely be recovered by her owner, with our
ladder tied to her, and with my jacket, waistcoat, and cap, and
Langler's hat, in her! so that what we had been about would too probably
soon be known in the castle and throughout the alp.