CONSTANTINE ENCOUNTERS THE SHARK
Some brass-buttoned official of the railway company or harbor authority
was near enough to pay heed to our strange behavior. He also caught
sufficient of Karl’s excited words to attach some significance to them,
though, of course, they must have sounded in his ears like the broken
gabble of dementia. Quite civilly (seeing that we bore the tip-giving
appearance) the man approached.
“Is the young gentleman ill?” he asked. “Can I git him anythink?”
Karl turned and looked at him. The man’s jaw fell and he stepped back
a pace. Away out in mid-stream of the Mersey I saw the Cunarder stop;
a tug in attendance reversed engines and dropped astern. There was no
need to tell me that Karl was not mistaken. Constantine’s soul was even
then passing, somewhere out there amidst the swirling waters. Within
twenty minutes, at the utmost, the tragedy would be reported ashore,
and there was no knowing what this suspicious policeman might say,
if, as I suspected, he were able to piece together Karl’s disjointed
sentences.
The situation demanded coolness--it was no time for vain regrets. I
advised Grier to take Karl to our hotel without an instant’s delay, and
there await my arrival.
“Make him talk to you,” I insisted. “Keep him occupied incessantly
until I join you.”
The older man was dazed, frightened a little, I think, by the glimpse
he had caught of a strange light in Karl’s eyes, but still incredulous,
as we mortals are apt to be when faced with truth. Indeed we only
yield prompt and unquestioning belief to glib imposture, and the more
outrageous it is the more perfervid dupes do we become.
“For Karl’s sake and your own, Grier,” I whispered, emphatically, “do
not hesitate. You can trust me. I will bring all news. Constantine is
surely dead, but, if we are wrong and he still lives, I will bring him
to you.”
My earnestness had its effect. Grier hurried his son away from the
landing-stage. Then I tackled the policeman.
“You saw that my young friend had a sudden and severe attack of
neurosthenia?” I said.
The bewilderment left the man’s face.
“Is that it, sir?” he said. “By gum! it must be an awful thing. He
fairly scared me.”
“He scares every one connected with him. It is not really serious, but
it is induced by excitement, and he often receives strangely accurate
impressions of events that are taking place at a distance. Just now he
imagined that a friend of his had fallen overboard from the liner.”
“So I heard him say, sir, and, s’elp me, if somethink hasn’t gone
wrong!”
Nothing could be clearer now. The huge vessel was motionless, her rails
were black with passengers gazing aft, and the tug had lowered a boat.
“Well,” I said, “whatever it is there is little to be gained by adding
to the publicity of it, and you know what fiends these newspaper men
are when they get hold of a sensational paragraph.”
My hand went to my pocket, a fine instance of hypnotic suggestion.
“I never did see anythink like his eyes, sir,” said the man, dubiously.
I produced a sovereign.
“Poor fellow!” I murmured in commiseration. “He is a great trial to us.
We really should not have brought him here. But you can quite see that
we do not want any comment on his--er--peculiar--”
“Oh, of course, sir. We chaps often have to keep eyes and ears open
and mouths shut, sir.”
We moved apart. The Cunarder gained her berth after a quarter of an
hour’s delay. A stream of passengers flowed down the broad gangway.
Running through the boisterous greetings of friends and the turmoil of
people anxious to secure their luggage, I heard a crescendo of broken
exclamations which carried their special import to me alone:
“Oh, my dear, it was perfectly shocking. It has quite spoiled my trip.”
“Must have been cracked!”
“A young man like him! Just fancy it!”
“Guess he was tired of bein’ rich. Never had that complaint myself.”
There was no need to ask of whom they spoke. It was an awkward
moment to seek information from the ship’s officers. The triumph of
organization which marks the Atlantic mail service would speedily
empty the crowded decks, and already two cataracts of boxes and
steamer trunks were hurtling over the side into the Customs shed. My
opportunity would soon arrive. So, stifling my horrible imaginings as
best I might, I mixed with the throng, and thus, by chance, encountered
one who had been an eye-witness of Constantine’s last madness.
My most recent acquaintance, the man in uniform, while helping a
passenger with his portmanteau, asked if there had been an accident
before the vessel warped alongside the landing-stage. The answer he
received led him to hail me in passing.
“Here’s a gentleman who can tell you all about it, sir,” he said,
thinking, no doubt, he ought to consolidate the gift of that sovereign.
“Are you a friend of Mr. Constantine’s?” demanded the stranger, a
pleasant-looking, square-faced man, whom I found afterwards to be the
London partner of an important Anglo-American house of discount brokers.
“No. I only happened to accompany some people who came here to meet
him.”
“Are they waiting yet?”
“No. They heard of the affair and have gone. Of course it upset them a
good deal.”
“By Jove, it was ghastly. I knew Constantine--have done business with
him for years, in fact. He was always a quiet, sober sort of fellow. I,
for one, never suspected he was given to drink.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Well, I am not exactly an expert where delirium tremens is concerned,
but surely this could be nothing else?”
“All I have been told is that he threw himself overboard.”
“That was the finish, natural enough when one comes to review things
again. He kept very much to himself on board, rather avoided me and
others, we thought; but we put that down to illness. He had a deck
cabin, and seldom appeared unless the sea was rough. Then he would
find a sheltered place and gaze at the waves for hours. Yet, whenever
I spoke to him, he was quite civil, a trifle reserved, perhaps, but as
sane as I am myself. Like everybody else, he seemed to brighten up when
we entered the Mersey. He was standing on the promenade deck, near the
saloon hatch, within a yard of me, and, like the rest of us, looking at
the shipping in the docks. Suddenly he let out a screech like a wild
Indian. He made me jump, I can assure you. He was a swarthy-skinned
chap, but his color was green when I turned towards him. He seemed to
be gazing at something in the water, and so far as I could understand
his words, gurgled deep in his throat, he thought he saw a shark.”
“A shark!”
“Yes. It was all utter rot, of course. I was so taken aback that
I could only stare at him. Several ladies screamed, they were so
frightened; but Constantine put his hand inside the left breast of his
waistcoat, whipped out a dagger, and began to stab savagely at the air.
I was certain he had gone mad, until, a few minutes later, a steward
told me he had practically lived on champagne all the way from New
York. Like other men in the neighborhood, I was thinking seriously of
grappling with him from behind, when he gave another yell and bounded
across the top of the companionway to the starboard side. That is the
Birkenhead side of the ship, you know, and the deck there was almost
deserted. He knocked three people down who were in his way, and began
to climb the rail. I made after him, but just missed him, though my
hand touched his heel. He struck the water, vanished, and just then the
ship swung round towards the landing-stage.”
“So the screw caught him when he rose,” I blurted out involuntarily.
“Ah! you heard of that? I never saw him again, but his bedroom steward
said that when the tug’s dingey picked him up he was still living,
though a propeller blade had taken a leg clean off.”
“Do you mean to say--”
“Oh, he died while they were lifting him out of the water. Strange
thing he should have had that notion about the shark and then lose a
leg, wasn’t it?”
I managed to find words to thank my informant, whose name and address I
obtained, though I was so agitated that he expressed his regret if he
had harrowed my feelings with his recital. Luckily, he was discovered
by a Liverpool merchant whom he knew, and we parted with a promise to
meet in London.
Though I have seen many distressing sights during the course of
a varied life, I have never felt so near sickness, so physically
overcome, as amidst that cheery, bustling, chatting crowd. I drifted
away aimlessly, filled with an absurd terror, which caused me almost
to cringe when I passed a policeman. Ridiculous as the notion was, I
fancied that Karl, his father, Maggie, and myself were _participes
criminis_, sharers in the awful secret which led to that poor mangled
body being carried to a mortuary. It is all very well now to smile at
the shaken nerves which induced this shrinking, self-condemnatory frame
of mind. It was very real and terrible then, nor was it lessened by the
knowledge that my friends would probably suffer from the same delusion
in their turn.
Slinking, conscience-stricken, through the barrier, I saw a refreshment
buffet. To this day I can recall the surprise of the barmaid when I
grabbed a bottle of French brandy and poured out what she said was
two-shillings’ worth of best cognac, “warranted pure,” which I drank
neat.
“Well, I never!” she gasped.
“Nor I, hardly ever,” I managed to say, for the ardent spirit
reinvigorated me. And let me interpolate here, as a breathing-space
in a thrilling moment, that it is a fine thing never to drink brandy
when in good health; thus it becomes an invaluable tonic in physical
suffering or mental depression.
Well, I hastened to the hotel, refusing a cab, in the belief that
the brandy and the exercise would restore the disturbed poise of my
faculties. The walk was a trifle longer than I had counted on, so a
full hour elapsed between our parting and our meeting. As I expected,
Karl was in a very distressed state, and I was called on to deride in
him the foolish conceit which had shaken my very soul at the docks. His
father’s British phlegm was superb on this trying occasion. To him,
Constantine was an admitted scoundrel, and a “nigger” at that.
“Never heard such nonsense in my life!” he declared, in the true
“Confound it, sir! what d’ye mean?” manner of John Bull, which a
Scotsman quickly makes his own when he comes South. “Of course, I
am sorry this Armenian firebrand has taken his own life, but it is
quite evident that if he did not face an Eternal Judge he would
soon be called on to face an earthly one. You talk about personal
responsibility for the death of a madman, a loony who has visions and
carries a long knife concealed on his person! What next, I wonder?
My firm belief is that his untimely decease was a dispensation of
Providence!”
Having thus called in the big battalion of the British nation, Mr.
Grier preened his chest and was for an immediate return to Oxford,
where he would remain with his son until the end of term. You cannot
argue with a man who describes such a tragedy as Constantine’s as an
“untimely decease.” The phrase lent to our discussion a grim humor, of
which my excellent friend was sublimely unconscious.
And, indeed, looking back in calmness to the tumultuous thoughts of
that day, I have ever been thankful that his stolid good sense came
to our aid. It must not be forgotten that Grier the elder had small
experience of Karl’s sixth sense. He remembered the events of early
years in India, of course, and had heard of Constantine’s rescue at
the time of its occurrence, while Mrs. Grier’s faithful reports told
him that his son remained a prodigy. But was there ever an only son
who, if ordinarily intelligent, had not some wonderful attribute known
only to his parents? “So many single chicks so many prodigies,” the
proverb might run. And since the tea-planter quitted India he had been
exceedingly prosperous in his financial undertakings, mostly connected
with the ever-expanding tea trade. He was one of the wise men who
resisted the temptation to grow the coarse leaf on his plantations,
and now he was reaping the reward, as the “large output” school was
discredited, whereas Grier’s “fine growth” companies were amassing
wealth.
Hence, a mind which was wont to be receptive of esoteric ideas during
the long Calcutta nights of past years was now more occupied with the
affairs of commerce. He was piling up money, and for what? To enable
Karl to enter Parliament, marry well, and earn a peerage. That is one
form of heredity, when the father’s ambitions center wholly in the
son. So Grier senior valued foresight, but, as our cousins say, he had
no use for “far sight” as practised by Karl. I suspected that he was
profoundly annoyed with me for seeming to encourage the exercise of the
telegnomic sense (wherein he was misled by the accident of our coming
together again owing to its revelations), and it was a proud moment for
me when, not long ago, he confessed his error and recanted his opinions.
However, he was a rock to which we clung for salvation during that
storm-tossed afternoon in a Liverpool hotel, for we had barely resolved
to take the next train to Oxford and London respectively, than there
came a telegram addressed to Karl.
He opened and read the message with a strange listlessness.
“I was expecting something of the kind,” he said, handing the slip
of pink paper to his father. “I knew it had ended; I knew it on the
landing-stage.”
The telegram was from Maggie. It ran:
“Sympathize with you in dreadful event. We leave England to-night.
Farewell.”
“What does it mean?” I asked incredulously. “Why is she going so
suddenly? How does she know anything about Constantine? And what has
ended?”
Karl turned aside and pretended to look out of the window. The
soft-hearted fellow was ashamed to let us see the tears in his eyes.
I examined the telegram more closely. It had been a long time on
the way, nearly an hour. It was despatched before any one on the
landing-stage (save three people, none of whom could communicate with
her) had the least inkling of the Armenian’s suicide.
Had Maggie, too, been a spellbound witness of that elfin spring into
the river? Had she seen all? And what was the significance of Karl’s
weary cry: “I knew it had ended?”
I glanced at him again, but his head was bowed, his face hidden by his
hands. Silence was best, just then.