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(Princeton University)
The Sealed Message
BY
FERGUS HUME
AUTHOR OF
"The Mystery of a Hanson Cab," "The Pagan's Cup,"
"The Mandarin's Fan," "The Red Window."
Copyright, 1907
By G. W. DILLINGHAM CO.
---------------------
The Sealed Message
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A QUEER FISH
II. THE MESSAGE
III. FAIRYLAND
IV. THE FAIRY PRINCESS
V. GOLDEN HOURS
VI. THE PAST OF ADONIS GEARY
VII. LOVE
VIII. LEGAL ADVICE
IX. MRS. CROSBIE
X. THE AMULET
XI. THE OTHER GIRL
XII. A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY
XIII. THE TABLES TURNED
XIV. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
XV. A TRAGEDY
XVI. THE DWARF "SCHAIBAR"
XVII. "AS IN A LOOKING-GLASS"
XVIII. THE FIRST MARRIAGE
XIX. SIGNOR VENOSTA
XX. A DARK MYSTERY
XXI. MAJOR REBB AT BAY
XXII. A CONFESSION
XXIII. TOD'S DISCOVERY
XXIV. THE SECOND MARRIAGE
XXV. GEARY'S ACCUSATION
XXIV. THE GODS ARE JUST
THE SEALED MESSAGE
CHAPTER I.
A QUEER FISH.
It was a sultry July afternoon, and in the azure arch of the firmament
flamed an unclouded sun. The corn was ripening to a rich yellow in
some meadows, and the newly mown hay in others was being piled on
lumbering wains by perspiring laborers. The red earth of the sunken
lanes was caked, and their blossoming hedges were burnt up by the
merciless heat. Under spreading foliage, or knee-deep in rapidly
drying pools, stood weary cattle, switching lazy tails to brush away
the teasing flies. Honey-bees, ostentatiously industrious, buzzed
noisily from flower to flower, and the sleepy birds twittered faintly
midst the grateful shade of leaves. The land was parched for want of
rain, and the languid hours dragged on slowly to the wished-for
evening. On some such day, long ago, must Elijah have sent his servant
up the mount to watch for the growing of the small black cloud.
Only by the trout stream was the weather endurable, for the
overhanging trees made the atmosphere of translucent green deliciously
cool. Yet here and there spears of dazzling light pierced through the
emerald twilight to smite the waters. These moved smoothly in amber
floods between the grassy banks, and in places swirled pearly-white
round moss-grown stones. The stream brawled over pebbles, gushed
through granite rifts, and gloomed mysteriously in deep and silent
pools, gleaming mirror-like under exposed tree trunks. May-flies
dipped to the waters, swallows darted through the warm air, and
kingfishers glanced here and there, each a flash of blue fire. And
ever the river talked to the voiceless woods as it babbled seawards.
From the woods came no reply, for the wind had died away, and the
tongues of multitudinous leaves could no longer speak. Had they been
able even to whisper, they surely would have rebuked the gay spirits
of the two young men who had invaded their sacred solitude.
"This is simply ripping," murmured one, who lay on his back with a
battered Panama over his eyes, "we are doing ourselves up to the top
hole, I don't think. Heavenly, ain't it?"
"It would be, if you did not chatter," retorted the other, fixing a
fly on his line; "why do you desecrate this beauty with slang?"
"Because I'm not a poet like you to spout blank verse."
"There is a medium between mutilation of the language and pedantic
usage thereof."
"Huh!" with scorn, "who's pedantic now?"
"My dear Tod, as a lawyer, you should use better English."
"It is only a barrister who requires a superfine jaw," retorted Tod
elegantly, "and I'm only a solicitor of sorts. Don't worry, Haskins."
Aware of the futility of argument, the other man merely shrugged his
square shoulders and threw a skilful line in a pool wherein lurked a
famous wary trout. The fly fell lightly on the water, and would have
deceived any fish but the trout in question. There was no response to
his dilly-duck-come-and-be-killed invitation, and the angler made
another cast with still less success as the fly hit the stream
heavily, scaring the trout into retreat. Haskins said one word under
his breath, but Tod overheard and giggled. That was exactly like Tod
Macandrew: he had no sense of the fitness of things.
"Silly ass!" commented his friend savagely, spinning up the line, "you
frighten the fish."
"Not on to your hook, anyhow," chuckled Tod into the depths of his
hat, "what a sinfully bad angler you are, Jerry."
"As bad an angler as you are a lover, perhaps," snapped Gerald,
throwing his rod on the grass and squatting to manufacture a
cigarette.
Tod sat up abruptly with a wounded air. "I call that beastly: to taunt
a chap, because a girl won't bite."
"Won't kiss, you mean."
"I'm taking an illustration from your infernal angling," said Tod,
with aggressive dignity. "If you were a lover yourself you would
understand."
"Oh, I understand well enough," replied the other lightly: he paused
to run his tongue along the tissue paper, then added calmly: "I was in
love with Charity Bird myself, before you came along, Tod."
"Well, now that I have come along, perhaps you'll call her Miss Bird."
"Right oh! Miss Bird in the hand is worth two----"
"There are not two," interrupted Macandrew indignantly, "but only one
schoolgirl cousin. As if," cried Tod to the woods, "I would sell
myself."
Gerald Haskins cast a sly look on Tod's ungraceful figure. "I see: you
present yourself to Miss Bird as a desirable gift?"
"Well, she wouldn't have you as a gift, anyhow, for all your _Family
Herald_ good looks, and halfpenny journal fame."
"Notoriety, Tod, notoriety only. A volume of verse, a book of stories
and a dozen of essays do not give me the right to class myself along
with the immortals. I'm a failure at thirty, Tod--in my own eyes, I
mean. Think of that, Tod, a failure at thirty."
"Don't chuck it," advised Macandrew politely, "you may be a success at
forty."
"That won't compensate me for coming grey hairs and inevitable
wrinkles," said the other bitterly, and smoked in dour silence.
Tod crossed his legs and held forth.
"Gerald Wentworth Julian Haskins," he remarked solemnly, "all the
fairies came to your nasty little cradle with gifts save the one who
could have endowed you with gratitude. Consider your beastly good
looks, and abominably healthy constitution, and silly popularity, not
to speak of your undeserved five hundred a year private income, and
take shame to yourself. Why with half your advantages I could marry
Charity to-morrow."
"H'm! The advantages you mention were practically offered to her, but
she didn't seem to desire possession. I expect she prefers the last
representative of an ancient Scots family with an embarrassed estate,
a reputation as a rising solicitor, and a heart of gold enshrined in
an agreeable-looking body."
"Agreeable-looking!" Words failed Tod, and he sprang up to wreath a
strong arm round Gerald's neck. Haskins remonstrated as well as he
could for laughter, but was forced to the very verge of the bank. Here
Tod made him look into the mirror of the still pool below. "Caliban
and Ferdinand: Apollo and Vulcan: Count D'Orsay and John Wilkes,"
growled Macandrew. "Look at this picture and at that, you blighter."
Almost choking, for Tod was powerful and none too gentle in his grip,
Gerald humored his friend sufficiently to stare into the water glass,
thinking meanwhile of a near revenge. He saw his own handsome brown
face with bronze-colored hair and mustache of the same hue, curling
under a straight Greek nose, which divided two hazel eyes. He saw also
Macandrew's round, ruddy countenance, devoid of hair on chin and lips
and cheeks, but haloed with crisp red curls, suggestive of his foxy
nickname. Tod assuredly could not be called good-looking, with
freckles and wide mouth and aquiline nose, proof of high descent. But
so much good humor and genuine honesty gleamed from his sea-blue eyes
that he did himself a gross injustice in undervaluing a most
ingratiating appearance. Tod was Tod, when all was said and done; the
best fellow in the world, and the most unnecessarily modest. But
Haskins was not going to pander to Tod's desire for compliments.
"You footling idiot," he breathed, possessed by a spirit of mischief,
"as if you weren't worth a dozen of me. Talk about ingratitude--you
shall be punished, my friend--thus!" and souse into the pool they
went. When Tod got his breath again, after some spluttering, he used
it to a bad purpose. Gerald, keeping himself afloat, watched the stout
little man climb the bank dripping like an insane river god, and heard
him excel himself in language which he could scarcely have used in
court.
"I'll pay you out for this," swore Tod, hastily stripping off his wet
flannels, and Haskins, fearing his righteous wrath, swam upstream,
clothes and all, with light easy strokes, laughing until the woods
rang.
"What about your confounded fish?" sang out Macandrew, when his
apparel was drying in the hot sun, and he was sitting unashamed amid
the grass. "You won't catch any more."
"I haven't caught any as it is," shouted Gerald, swimming back. "I
want to come ashore. Pax, Toddy, Pax, you--you unclothed biped."
"Wait till I get you here," cried Tod, shaking his fist.
"He is not wise who ventures into the enemy's camp," quoth Haskins,
and crossed to the opposite bank of the stream. Owing to the heat he
had earlier shed all his clothing save a silk shirt and a pair of
flannel trousers, so there was not much left to dry. In a few minutes
he also was sitting in Adamic simplicity on the farther shore,
imploring Tod to throw over a tobacco pouch and a pipe. But Tod
wouldn't: and smoked, chuckling, on his side of the stream, while
Haskins remonstrated. "I'll sleep then," announced Gerald, seeing that
his efforts to soften Macandrew were unavailing.
"No, don't," shouted Tod. "I want to talk about her."
"Not a word, unless I get my smoke."
"Here you are then," and Macandrew threw across the necessary
materials for the pipe of peace. "Now then!" he cried, and the woods
rang with his cry. "What am I to do about Charity?"
"Marry her," cried back Haskins, lighting his briar; and after that
introduction the conversation resolved itself into high-pitched
talking from bank to bank, while the stream rippled between. It was
lucky that no one was within hearing--as the young men well knew--for
Tod shouted out his dearest secrets to the wide world.
"How can I marry her?" bellowed Macandrew, lying on his stomach in the
attitude of Caliban reflecting on Setebos. "She hasn't any money, and
I have very little also; there is the Dowager to be considered."
The Dowager was Lady Euphemia Macandrew, Tod's highly respected
grandmother, who had looked after him since his parents had died. She
wanted Tod to marry an heiress cousin, who was still at school, and
Tod wished for his wife a charming dancer who was absolutely proper
and extremely pretty. Consequently Tod and Lady Euphemia were fighting
with all the ardor of their fiery race, and the domestic peace of the
House of Macandrew was a thing of the past.
"You should consider the Dowager," sang out Haskins, who knew and
approved of the grim old lady, "she's your grandmother."
"No one denies that," yelled Tod crossly, "talk sense!"
"Hear then the sense of Gerald, son of his father," shouted the other
in a high tenor. "Mrs. Pelham Odin, who is--as you know--the clever
old actress who looks after Charity, won't let you marry her, seeing
that you have no money. Lady Euphemia is equally opposed to the match,
because Charity is not born, as the French say. If you marry against
the wishes of these two Mrs. Pelham Odin won't leave Charity her
savings, which must be considerable, and Lady Euphemia won't speak
either to you or to your wife. Isn't this the case?"
"Ancient history--ancient history," roared Macandrew, like an angry
bull, "but your advice, Jerry?"
"Chuck Charity and marry your cousin," said Haskins tersely.
"I won't."
"Then why waste my time in asking for advice which you have no notion
of taking? Go on your own silly way, Tod, and don't blame me if you
tumble into a quagmire of troubles."
"I believe you want to marry Charity yourself," shouted Tod angrily.
"No I don't," cried Haskins, feeling if his garments were dry. "She is
all that one can desire in the way of beauty: but I want something
more than a picture-wife. Marriages are made in heaven, and Charity's
soul does not respond to mine."
Tod rose sulkily and dressed himself. When clothed again he took up
the discarded rod to try his luck. "I love her," he boomed, and cast
his fly with the air of a man who has brought forward an unanswerable
argument. Perhaps he had, for Macandrew was as obstinate as a
battery-mule.
Seeing that Tod's attention was taken up with a peaceful sport which
precluded retaliation for the late ducking, Gerald made his trousers
and shirt into a ball, and flung them deftly across the river. They
hit Tod fairly, and made him stagger and swear. What he would have
said or done, it is impossible to say, for at this moment he
proclaimed with a triumphant yell that he had a bite. And at this
moment Gerald slipped into the water again. "Hang it, don't," screamed
Macandrew, "you'll frighten the fish off the hook. Woosh! Come up!"
and Tod tugged hard while the rod bent to an arc. "Mighty big fish,"
breathed the angler.
"Don't believe it's a fish at all," spluttered Haskins, seeing that
the line remained stationary, "you're making no play. Caught a weed
maybe."
He swam to the line, and dived under, while Macandrew danced and swore
on the bank. "Leave it alone, leave it alone," cried Tod, in high
wrath, "it's a big fish. Oh, beast; oh, animal: oh, jealous reptile,"
he went on as the line slackened, "you've done it."
Even as he spoke Gerald rose to the surface, spitting water from his
mouth. In his right hand he held an object which he flung on to the
bank, and then crawled up himself. "There's your fish, Tod," he said,
rolling on the grass to dry himself, "your hook caught in that
cylinder, which had got wedged between two big stones. Look at it
while I dress."
Tod handled the cylinder gingerly. It was made of tin, and had
apparently been covered with brown paper, for the remains of this
clung loose at either end from under splotches of red sealing-wax.
Oddly enough, there was also a string tied to the cylinder, at the end
of which dangled the remnant of a bladder. Evidently the bladder had
borne up the somewhat heavy cylinder for a certain time, and then had
burst, to drop it toward the big stones amid which it had been wedged
when Tod's hook had caught it. "Look's like a parcel of dynamite,"
said Tod, in a nervous tone; "poachers fishing by night with dynamite,
O Lord!"
Haskins, who was slipping on his socks and shoes, looked up. "It's
been in the water a good time anyhow, judging from the rotten brown
paper and that decayed bladder. There's no chance of an explosion. If
you are afraid to open it chuck it over."
"No." Macandrew dropped on to the grass beside his friend. "We'll go
to Kingdom Come together, if necessary. Lend me your knife!"
Between them, the young men prized off the lid of the cylinder, with
some difficulty, for it fitted tightly. The contents proved to be as
puzzling as the vessel itself, for Gerald drew out a moderately long
roller covered with brown wax, and scored delicately with regular
lines, almost invisible. There was nothing else in the cylinder but
this roller, and Tod eyed it with wonderment. "What the deuce is it?"
he asked, twirling it round.
Haskins pinched his nether lip and reflected. "It's a phonograph
record," he ventured to suggest, "see the marking, Tod, and the wax,
and here," he tilted the cylinder end uppermost, "there's a name
engraved on the butt, plainly, for all the world to see."
"Jekle & Co.," read Tod, fitting in his eye-glass to see clearly.
"H'm! I never heard of the firm."
"That's not improbable: your knowledge of many things being limited."
"Oh, come now. Did you ever hear of the firm your own conceited self?"
"No. But it's a firm that makes phonographs anyhow." Gerald slipped
the treasure trove into his pocket. "We'll take this back to the inn,
and see what it means."
"We shall have to get a phonograph then."
"That goes without the speaking, you bally ass. But when we do slip
this roller into its parent machine these marks will talk."
"But how can we get a parent machine? I suppose you mean a Jekle & Co.
mechanism of sorts."
"There must be a machine of that sort in the district, or this roller
wouldn't be here."
Tod stared at the waters blinking in the sunshine. "I wonder how it
got into the blessed river. By accident or by design?"
"By design assuredly," said Haskins promptly. "It was wrapped in brown
paper and sealed at both ends. The bladder was attached to keep it
afloat. Then the bladder went bang and the cylinder sank until you
fished it out, Toddy."
"Queer fish and queer chance, anyhow."
"There is no such thing as chance," said Haskins slowly; "some cause
we know not of, brought us to the stream to-day to get the cylinder."
"Why, we only came holiday-making," protested Tod; "you are always
talking this infernal psychology."
"Supernal psychology, you mean," retorted the other, "seeing that I
follow white magic and not black. This," he patted his pocket, "has a
meaning. We must learn that meaning."
"And so get into trouble."
"Perhaps." Haskins shrugged his shoulders. "But trouble is the sole
thing which urges us to rise."
Tod groaned. He could not understand his friend's mystical way of
looking at the seen world through the unseen. Keeping the conversation
on an ordinary level he inquired: "Why was the cylinder set afloat?"
"Why does the sun shine? Why does the fire burn? You ask too many
questions, Tod."
"I am not likely to get an answer from you," snapped Macandrew, taking
up the impedimenta which they had brought to the river bank.
"You will in this instance, my son. The record, when it talks through
the Jekle & Co. machine, will tell us why the cylinder was sent
downstream. Shipwrecked people throw bottles overboard with documents
to tell of their danger, as you well know."
"H'm! It's the first time I ever heard of a phonograph record being
used to convey news," grunted Tod crossly.
"The person who floated the cylinder is evidently up-to-date."
"Perhaps it's a blessed joke."
"Maybe. Anyhow, I'll take it to the inn, and learn as much as is
possible. Don't chatter about it though."
"Why not?"
"Because--because----" Haskins hesitated, not being able to express
himself with his usual decision. "I can't say. Anyhow, hold your
tongue until we know what the record has to say."
Macandrew nodded, and the two walked homeward.