THE LAST MEETING
If Herriard had had for the moment any doubts as to Gastineau’s
identity, the sneering smile, quiet and purposeful, would have set them
at rest.
“At last, Mr. Geoffrey Herriard, we meet again; and finally,” the
cold, incisive voice said; and Herriard knew that the crisis of his
fate, possibly his last minute of life, had come. For as he spoke
Gastineau drew his hand from the pocket of his ragged peasant’s
coat, and the polished barrel of a revolver glinted in the sweep of
sunlight that poured up the glade and struck the tower. The action
was characteristic of the man, business-like, yet no more than just
necessarily demonstrative. But it contained a significant suggestion
that resistance was futile; it said plainly, no quarter.
“I am sorry,” Gastineau proceeded, as coolly as though he had come to
discuss a professional matter, “to be obliged to interrupt your repose;
but you will understand that when a man is more or less fighting for
his life he cannot afford to be punctilious. I think, Herriard, you
have a revolver in your pocket. Covered as you are by mine, its use is
not apparent. Do me the favour to take it out and throw it over the
parapet. It will obviate any preoccupation in our talk.”
He came to within a few feet of Herriard with his own revolver covering
the other’s heart. Herriard, realizing his helplessness, took out his
weapon and threw it over the embrasured wall. It fell noiselessly on
the soft turf below.
“What do you want with me, Gastineau?” he said, in the dull voice of a
man who sees no escape from his fate.
Gastineau drew back a few steps, and seated himself on the low parapet
that protected the stairway. “A little conversation first of all,”
he answered; banteringly it would have been but for the suggestion
of a dark purpose behind the easy manner; “a few minutes’ talk, and
then”--he made a deprecating gesture--“silence.”
The word was ominous and struck chill to Herriard’s heart. He had
busied his mind in looking for a way of escape, but none presented
itself. In the sickening sense of despair he could thank Heaven for the
short-lived joy and love that had been his.
There was nothing he could say to any purpose: he felt that, and waited
for Gastineau to continue.
“I dare say you were weak enough to imagine you had given me the
slip,” the chilling, hateful voice resumed. “Certainly it is a far
cry from Mayfair to the Schloss Rohnburg, but then the necessity of
self-preservation cannot stop to take heed of time and space. It may
astonish you that I have seen proper to take so much trouble.”
Looking at the evil, resolute face, Herriard could only wonder how he
could have been fool enough to imagine that his enemy had abandoned
the set purpose of his vindictiveness and self-interest to which every
fibre of his proved character surely held him. The affair of the
nocturnal intruder was no mystery now, if ever doubt on the matter
should have been allowed to dwell with his knowledge of this man.
“You talk of self-preservation,” he said, with a dulled effort at
reasoning, for the word seemed to mock him; “as though you were
convinced I had some design against you. I have none; you might know
it.”
Gastineau’s laugh showed him that the protest carried no weight with
him. “My good fellow,” he returned patronizingly, “you scarcely
comprehend my position. It is, perhaps, a trifle beyond your grasp.
Putting aside for the moment the fact that you have done me the
ill-turn which no man forgives, and which was in your case, I suppose,
as glaring an instance of ingratitude as any on record, let me put the
situation before you from my point of view.”
“Yes; let me hear it.”
Herriard felt his only chance lay in prolonging the preliminaries of
the act that was surely meditated.
Gastineau was lighting a cigarette. “The immense successes the world
has wondered at have been gained through foresight,” he said, almost
meditatively; “the great failures have been courted by want of it. The
man who cannot see beyond his nose, who takes things as they are, and
not as they will be, can never have a great career in front of him.
Consequently, my good Herriard,” he blew out a long streak of smoke,
“I am obliged, unpleasant as it may be, to deal with you not as you
are to-day, a comparatively harmless turtle-dove, but as my prescience
tells me you will be in the future, an active, threatening danger.”
There was death, Herriard saw, in the eyes that had marked, in the mind
that had tracked him down; no suggestion of relenting, no room for
pity, only the steely look of doom.
“No; never now a danger to you, Gastineau,” he said with dry lips.
The other smiled. “I can read your future better than you,” he returned
equivocally. “And your character. My four years’ study of that has
scarcely gone for nothing. You are, perhaps, not exactly, an absorbing
danger at the present moment, in the present year, if you like. I would
not care to say as much with respect to a few years hence.”
The man was clearly, grimly settled in his purpose; it was with him
manifestly an affair of calculation rather than of passion. Despite
the deep purple glory of the flaming sunset, the night seemed already
enveloping Herriard, as he stood there facing his doom. To him
the warm, scented air was chill and heavy; the gorgeous flood of
sunlight that bathed the tower was lurid and murky as a torch of the
Inquisition. But he kept down the betrayal of the sickening despair at
his heart, answering his master quietly.
“If you really read my character, Gastineau, you must know that it is
far from being restless and aggressive like your own. With me it is
live and let live.”
“Ah!” Gastineau’s lips were contorted sarcastically. “A very apt
motto at the present juncture. Nevertheless, one requires something
more convincing than a trite copy-book text to persuade one of the
desirability of living the rest of one’s life under a sword of
Damocles. You know the fable of the wise fool who neglected to keep
his pet lion cub’s claws pared. History, my good fellow, is full of
such crass omissions and their consequences. So far as I am concerned,
history shall not repeat itself.”
There was hateful, sneering determination in the man’s face as he
spoke. Herriard knew well that he never relented, and wondered why
his enemy did not make an end of the business without more parley.
Gastineau’s hand, grasping the revolver, was kept well in front of
him, the wrist forming a pivot on his crossed knee. A struggle was
clearly out of the question; the alert eyes never left him, for all
their owner’s mannered nonchalance. A sudden spring would mean a bullet
through the heart before it came to a grapple.
“I can only repeat, Gastineau, that you can have nothing to fear from
me.” Herriard spoke mechanically; the suspense was numbing his mind;
suspense that was a mere question of time, not deliverance.
Gastineau smiled. “If I am far from believing it, it does not follow
that I doubt your sincerity in making the declaration. Only, as I
have said, fortunately or unfortunately, I know more of the world in
general and of Mr. Geoffrey Herriard in particular than does that
person himself. No, my dear fellow,”--there was a revolting irony in
the term--“when I am a great man, a very great man, as, bar accidents,
I mean to be, it would be a quite irresistible temptation to one
like yourself to shake the ladder just as I had reached the topmost
rung. Don’t protest; I know human nature. The temptation would be
overpowering--I don’t mean to blackmail; I put you above that--but to
stand, virtuously, public-spiritedly, of course, in my way. And it
might not be as easy to put you to silence on that day as it is now. A
man is a fool who starts to climb the highest ladder, leaving at the
foot a fellow who has the power, and, maybe, the inclination, to twist
it over.”
Herriard kept wondering why he did not make an end of his talk.
“So you know, or think you know,” Gastineau went on coolly, “that
Martindale owed his death to me?”
“I know nothing,” Herriard protested, with the vision of Alexia before
his eyes.
“You have at least a strong suspicion, which is sufficient for my
purpose. A suspicion shared by that astute and able officer, Detective
Inspector Quickjohn. Ah! I am sorry for you both, but you will
recognize that it would be sheer folly on my part to enter the race
handicapped by the extra and unnecessary weight of a suspicion of
murder.”
His tone was so blandly reflective that Herriard regarded him in
surprise; half wondering whether he was in his right senses. Nothing
but the dangling revolver suggested a dread intent.
“Gastineau,” he said, steadying his voice, dry and strange from the
desperate fear that was in him, “you are hideously wrong in thinking
me likely to communicate my suspicions to any living creature. And you
must be out of your mind to imagine that taking my life, if that is
your meaning, will clear the way to the goal you aim at. Do you, clever
man that you are, suppose that you can kill me with impunity? That my
murder will not turn suspicion into a certainty leading to the gallows.”
Gastineau listened with an indulgent smile. “I imagine nothing of the
kind, my good Herriard,” he returned. “In the first place I am not
exactly going to kill you.”
“Ah!”
“No. You are going within the next few minutes to take your own life,
being burdened by the idea of a false position, at a moment when I
shall be able to prove if necessary that Paul Gastineau was many
hundred miles away.”
There was murder in the face now, and Herriard set his own as he saw it.
“You think so?”
With the recklessness of desperation, now that the passing hope had
vanished, he could almost chaff the man who announced his doom.
“I am sure of it.”
“You have a mighty confidence in yourself as a layer of plans, but you
have overlooked one circumstance which will surely bring you to the
scaffold.”
“Indeed? What is that?”
“Think.”
“I am in the habit of thinking, as you should be aware. And know that I
have overlooked nothing.”
“Do you mean to murder the Countess Alexia as well?” Herriard’s voice
half broke as he pronounced the name, and he knew that his enemy
noticed it.
“Scarcely,” Gastineau answered, with his air of superior wisdom. “If
you call the circumstance of her being alive a danger, it is one that I
mean to turn into a means of safety. You were good enough just now to
tell me to think. Let deep thought in turn point out to shallow surmise
that the very factor you have alluded to in the case is in reality one
which makes your death imperative. If one may take your look for one of
incredulity, I will explain.”
“If you please.” Was there no chance? Herriard was searching
desperately for one as he spoke mechanically, his life passing before
him in a swift panorama while he temporized with the inevitable.
Gastineau proceeded, speaking as casually as though he were telling
a story in a club smoking-room. “The only person, besides myself,
who knows the real truth of the _affaire_ Martindale is the Countess
Alexia. She knows it because, as you may be aware, I have told her what
happened. Apart from shrewd suspicion and fairy tales, conjectures,
which, as we know, go for nothing in the Law Courts, what the Countess
knows is the only tangible piece of evidence which could condemn
me for, say, manslaughter. There are two ways of securing myself
against the appearance of the Countess in the box against me; the
more agreeable of the two is to marry her. But that is at the moment
impossible owing to a slight obstacle, the fact that the lady is, I
believe, at present your wife. Now, perhaps you begin to take in the
situation?”
Herriard’s brain was busy with futile searching for a way out of it. He
at least took in his adversary’s fixity of purpose. He nodded gloomily
in reply. Argument was now clearly out of the question. The resolve of
a man who glories aggressively in his intellect is merely clenched by
opposition.
“Then, apart from the Countess’s widowhood being a _sine quâ non_,”
Gastineau continued, in the same cold, level tone, “there is the
account of our rivalship to be settled. That has been held throughout
the ages to be a more than sufficient reason for bloodshed, for a fight
_â outrance_. There has never been room in the world, even when it was
less crowded, for two lovers of the same lady. The angle of love is now
acute, now obtuse; it is never a triangle.”
“It has,” Herriard retorted, “always been the world’s code in such
cases for rivals to meet and settle the matter on fair and equal
terms.”
Gastineau smiled.
“Not always, by any means, my dear Herriard. Your history is at fault.
In fact it has almost invariably and proverbially been the custom
for a rival to take any advantage that chance might offer him. Duels
on so-called equal terms, for there really never was such a thing,
have been resorted to only where other means of elimination were not
practicable, or where one of the parties was smart and skilful, the
other a chivalrous, incompetent fool. I don’t take my history from the
story-books.”
“The fool,” Herriard urged hopelessly, “had at least a chance, if a
poor one. He was not butchered in cold blood.”
Gastineau shrugged.
“The fool had the satisfaction of dying with a weapon in his hand,
against which advantage must be set the fact that he left behind him
the reputation of not knowing how to use it. But, my good fellow, when
you talk of advantage, surely you, who, when I was crippled, had such a
pull over me, are not going to complain now that the tables are turned
and the balance properly adjusted in the proportion of our respective
intellects.”
“If,” Herriard returned, touched to justify himself, “I took advantage
of your condition, it was, as you know, unwittingly.”
“I grant you that,” Gastineau assented readily. “But when the position
was readjusted--for I would not have played the dog-in-the-manger--and
your mistake was pointed out, you refused to correct it. You cannot
deny you were warned; but it was to no purpose. It were idle to argue
that the lady prefers you; that is merely an additional reason for your
removal.”
He rose with an action as though to throw the end of his cigarette over
the parapet, but checked it cunningly, to drop the stub of tobacco on
the floor, and stamp it to atoms. Herriard understood the astuteness
that meant to leave no incriminating evidence of its presence. Then
Gastineau, with a passing scrutiny of the revolver, raised his eyes to
Herriard’s face.
“Time is up,” he said incisively, with an ominous squaring of the jaw.
“I have given you, as between man and man--I was going to say, old
friends--my reasons, more sufficient, perhaps, than agreeable. After
all, under the veneer of civilization, the rough, barbaric sense of
self-preservation is to-day as firmly existent as ever. You have played
a risky game, Herriard, and have lost it.”
He paused, looking at Herriard as though he expected him to make some
reply. For a few moments the two men stood gazing into each other’s
eyes; and there was death in both. The sun had sunk below the level of
the massed pine-trees, and now flooded the long avenue with blood-red
light. To Herriard, in that supreme moment, in the exaltation of his
senses, the sounds of the forest came with abnormal distinctness. The
whole affair seemed a dream, even to his, its victim’s, tantalizing
helplessness. Gastineau, with all his set malignity of purpose indexed
in his hateful face, seemed unreal. Herriard made a desperate effort to
tell himself of his danger, of his mad folly in submitting tamely to
his death like a decrepit hound. At least it was better to die in an
attacking rush than passively standing still. He would accept his fate
no more than its justice.
As he gathered his nerves for a spring which he knew must be into
eternity, since the deadly barrel covered him steadily, pitilessly,
he was surprised, so far as anything could touch him then, to see
Gastineau turn half away with a curiously apprehensive change of
countenance. Now or never was his chance. He gave a great leap forward
to throw himself upon his enemy. Gastineau, turning quickly from what
had drawn off his attention, sprang aside with a devilish gleam of
combat in his eyes, and raised the revolver. He fired; but Herriard,
at close quarters now, had clutched his arm, and the bullet went wide.
Next moment, with a sharp jerk, Gastineau had torn himself free from
the grasp, and, with a great backward spring, reached a practicable
firing distance. As the revolver was swiftly brought down to the aim,
and Herriard was madly throwing himself upon his death, there came,
though neither of the men more than vaguely noticed it, a sound as of
a leaping rush; then the angry, attacking snarl of a dog; and next
instant Gastineau was flung staggering against the parapet, with the
wolf-hound, Fritz’s fangs gripping his throat. Then, in a moment,
he rallied from the shock and surprise, and, bringing the muzzle of
his revolver to the dog’s breast, he fired. With a savage howl and
a convulsive effort the animal, who had for the instant relaxed his
hold, darted his head forward in a renewed attack. With his left hand
trying to thrust back the dog, and his face working with rage and pain,
Gastineau raised the revolver to cover Herriard who was trying for an
opening to seize his enemy. As he did so, the half-ruinous masonry of
the parapet, against which man and dog were pressing, yielded to their
weight. It gave way; and, with a cry, Gastineau and Fritz went over,
falling with the crushing masonry sheer forty feet on to the flagstones
which were set round the tower.
[Illustration: “Gastineau, with a great backward spring, reached a
practical firing distance.”]
With a swift sense of relief at his deliverance, Herriard, trembling
from the horror of the business, looked over the edge of the tower.
Below, where they had fallen, layman and dog in their blood, and
without sign of life. Gastineau’s grey face, with eyes that, through
the mean disguise, seemed to glare up at him with a vindictiveness
that death could not kill, was the face of a dead man. Herriard
instinctively knew that. He drew back, and went softly down the winding
stairs of the tower. On a table in the lower room lay his gun. The
cartridges had been extracted. He slipped others in, and went outside.
The first thing he saw was his revolver which Gastineau had made him
throw away. He took it up, and went on round the tower towards the
place he dreaded. There they lay; his enemy and his preserver; still,
as only they lie who will never move again. A glance now sufficed to
tell Herriard that his fears were at an end.
Nerving himself with the remembrance of his late danger, he stooped and
raised Gastineau’s head, the head that had plotted such evil against
him, and which now lay twisted unnaturally away from his shoulders;
then he gently let it rest on the stones again. The dead man’s neck was
broken. Bar accidents, he had said; and already, by a swift, dramatic
stroke, the accident had come. Fate had, in an instant, brushed away
the carefully spun web of the ambitious, relentless schemer. With a
sigh, and with a caressing touch for poor Fritz, Herriard turned from
the shattered abode of that master-spirit who had been so strangely
both friend and enemy such as few men have owned; and took his way
towards home and Alexia, a free man.
_A New Romance of Old Quebec_
IN
TREATY WITH HONOR
_By_ MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY
_Author of “A Daughter of New France,” “The Heroine of the Strait,”
etc._
Illustrated by Clyde O. De Land. 12mo. Decorated Cloth. $1.50.
This romance of old Quebec is full of human interest. Its events have
to do with a stirring and intensely dramatic episode never before
touched upon by any novelist, the Patriot War, or Struggle of French
Canada for Independence in 1837-38.
The story tells with dash and _verve_ the fortunes and loves of an
ardent young volunteer, born under the British flag, but educated
in Paris, and by adoption a citizen of the United States, and of
his comrade, a European aristocrat who had also joined the French
Canadians. Two of the best characters in the book are a noble English
officer and his sweetheart who rivals the heroine in the affections of
the reader.
The novel deals with mirth, adventure, and tragedy, holding one’s
interest by the author’s power of graphic description. The pathos is
lightened by humor, and the love scenes are as charming as those of “A
Daughter of New France,” the first book which gave Miss Crowley a high
place among American novelists.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
“_By far the best he has yet written_”
A
MAKER OF HISTORY
_By_ E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
Illustrated by Fred Pegram. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50.
A thoroughly exciting and skilfully written romance.--_Brooklyn Eagle._
Thoroughly readable and exciting. Carries the reader along
breathlessly.--_New York Sun._
So entertaining that we read through at a sitting.--_New York Tribune._
Not since the days of “The Prisoner of Zenda” has a more enjoyable
novel come out of the romantic semi-humorous mazes of European border
intrigue. The story proceeds with cumulative interest to the end.--_New
York Times._
The most fascinating novel yet written by this master of the art of
story telling.--Rochester (N. Y.) _Democrat and Chronicle_.
Really remarkable in the ingenuity and consistency with which the
complications are managed.--_Outlook_, New York.
The most daring and the most consistently sustained of his many
stories, and is heartily recommended to seekers for exciting
reading.--_Life_, New York.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
_By The Author of “The Master Spirit”_
A
PRINCE OF LOVERS
_By_ SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY
Author of “The Red Chancellor,” “The Master Spirit,” etc.
Illustrated by Cyrus Cuneo. 12mo.
Cloth. $1.50.
A remarkable story of love, adventure, intrigue, and outlawry; a
network of romance, at once thrilling and absorbing. This must be
regarded as one of the romances of the day--vigorous, skilful in plot,
and delightfully entertaining.--_Boston Transcript._
The plot of this novel is surprising, the scenes of adventure and
conflict vivid, the love story charming and attractive.--_Philadelphia
Ledger._
A powerful tale, full of human passion and human interest. There is
life and movement on every page.--_Boston Herald._
A spirited story of intrigue and adventure in two independent
States of old Germany. A glowing and charming picture of true love.
The plot is developed with rare inventive skill and cumulative
interest.--_Philadelphia North American._
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
_“Sidney McCall’s” New Japanese Romance_
THE DRAGON PAINTER
_By_ MARY McNEIL FENOLLOSA
_Author of “Truth Dexter,” “The Breath of the Gods,” etc._
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50.
Written with unusual power by one of the few authors capable of
interpreting the inner life of the people of Japan, “The Dragon
Painter” holds the reader spellbound.
Kano Indara, the last of his race and the last of a mighty line of
artists, despairs of finding a true artist--a Dragon Painter--to
inherit his name and the traditions of his race. An untamed mountain
artist, Tatsu, a painter of dragons, is sent to him. Kano shows him
his daughter, Umè-ko, and the youth looks upon her as the Dragon Maid,
for whom he has long been searching. The story of their betrothal and
the subsequent dramatic events are all depicted with the same care
of workmanship and brilliant background that have characterized this
author’s previous books.
“The Dragon Painter” is a fresh, original, absorbing story, wholly
oriental in coloring, displaying a remarkable acquaintance with
Japanese life and character which made “The Breath of the Gods” one of
the notable novels in current literature.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.