DRASHKIL-SMOKING.
"It must and shall be mine!"
So spoke Captain Ducie on the spur of the moment as he wrote the last
word of his translation of M. Platzoff's MS. And yet there was a keen
sense of disappointment working within him. His blood had been at
fever heat during the latter part of his task. Each fresh sentence of
the cryptogram as he began to decipher it would, he hoped, before he
reached the end of it reveal to him the hiding-place of the great
Diamond. Up to the very last sentence he had thus fondly deluded
himself, only to find that the abrupt ending of the MS. left him still
on the brink of the secret, and left him there without any clue by
which he could advance a single step beyond that point. He was
terribly disappointed, and the longer he brooded over the case the
more entirely hopeless was the aspect it put on.
But there was an elasticity of mind about Captain Ducie that would not
allow him to despair utterly for any length of time. In the course of
a few days, as he began to recover from his first chagrin, he at the
same time began to turn the affair of the Diamond over and over in his
mind, now in one way, now in another, looking at it in this light and
in that; trying to find the first faint indications of a clue which,
judiciously followed up, might conduct him step by step to the heart
of the mystery. Two questions naturally offered themselves for
solution. First: Did Platzoff habitually carry the Diamond about his
person? Second: Was it kept in some skilfully-devised hiding-place
about the house? These were questions that could be answered only by
time and observation.
So Captain Ducie went about Bon Repos like a man with half a dozen
pairs of eyes, seeing, and not only seeing but noting, a hundred
little things such as would never have been observed by him under
ordinary circumstances. But when, at the end of a week, he came to sum
up and classify his observations, and to consider what bearing they
had upon the great mystery of the hiding-place of the Diamond, he
found that they had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything
seen or heard by him the world might hold no such precious gem, and
the Russian's letter to Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an
elaborate hoax.
When the access of chagrin caused by the recognition of this fact had
in some degree subsided, Ducie was ready enough to ridicule his own
foolish expectations. "Platzoff has had the Diamond in his possession
for years. For him there is nothing of novelty in such a fact. Yet
here have I been foolish enough to expect that in the course of one
short week I should, discover by some sign or token the spot where it
is hidden, and that too after I knew from his own confession that the
secret was one which he guarded most jealously. I might be here for
five years and be not one whit wiser at the end of that time as
regards the hiding-place of the Diamond than I am now. From this day I
give up the affair as a bad job."
Nevertheless, he did not quite do that. He kept up his habit of seeing
and noting little things, but without any definite views as to any
ulterior benefit that might accrue to him therefrom. Perhaps there was
some vague idea floating in his mind that Fortune, who had served him
so many kind turns in years gone by, might befriend him once again in
this matter--might point out to him the wished-for clue, and indicate
by what means he could secure the Diamond for his own.
The magnitude of the temptation dazzled him. Captain Ducie would not
have picked your pocket, or have stolen your watch, or your horse, or
the title-deeds of your property. He had never put another man's name
to a bill instead of his own. You might have made him trustee for your
widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have
been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this--strange
contradiction as it may seem--if he could have laid surreptitious
fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never
have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his
hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit it at my
bankers," the commission would have been faithfully fulfilled. It
seemed as if the element of mystery, of deliberate concealment, made
all the difference in Captain Ducie's unspoken estimate of the case.
Besides, would there not be something princely in such a theft? You
cannot put a man who steals a diamond worth a hundred and fifty
thousand pounds in the category of common thieves. Such an act verges
on the sublime.
One of the things seen and noticed by Captain Ducie was the absence,
through illness, of the mulatto, Cleon, from his duties, and the
substitution in his place of a man whom Ducie had never seen before.
This stranger was both clever and obliging, and Platzoff himself
confessed that the fellow made such a good substitute that he missed
Cleon less than he at first feared he should have done. He was indeed
very assiduous, and found time to do many odd jobs for Captain Ducie,
who contracted quite a liking for him.
Between Ducie and Cleon there existed one of those blind unreasoning
hatreds which spring up full-armed and murderous at first sight. Such
enmities are not the less deadly because they sometimes find no relief
in words. Cleon treated Ducie with as much outward respect and
courtesy as he did any other of his master's guests; no private
communication ever passed between the two, and yet each understood the
other's feelings towards him, and both of them were wise enough to
keep as far apart as possible. Neither of them dreamed at that time of
the strange fruit which their mutual enmity was to bear in time to
come. Meanwhile, Cleon lay sick in his own room, and Captain Ducie was
rather gladdened thereby.
M. Platzoff rarely touched cigar or pipe till after dinner; but,
whatever company he might have, when that meal was over, it was his
invariable custom to retire for an hour or two to the room consecrated
to the uses of the Great Herb, and his guests seldom or never declined
to accompany him. To Captain Ducie, as an inveterate smoker, these
_séances_ were very pleasant.
On the very first evening of the captain's arrival at Bon Repos, M.
Platzoff had intimated that he was an opium smoker, and that at no
very distant date he would enlighten Ducie as to the practice in
question. About a week later, as they sat down to their pipes and
coffee, said Platzoff, "This is one of my big smoke-nights. To-night I
go on a journey of discovery into Dreamland--a country that no
explorations can exhaust, where beggars are the equals of kings, and
where the Fates that control our actions are touched with a fine
eccentricity that in a more commonplace world would be termed madness.
But there nothing is commonplace."
"You are going to smoke opium?" said Ducie, interrogatively.
"I am going to smoke drashkil. Let me, for this once, persuade you to
follow my example."
"For this once I would rather be excused," said Ducie, laughingly.
Platzoff shrugged his shoulders. "I offer to open for you the golden
gates of a land full of more strange and wondrous things than were
ever dreamed of by any early voyager as being in that new world on
whose discovery he was bent; I offer to open up for you a set of
experiences so utterly fresh and startling that your matter-of-fact
English intellect cannot even conceive of such things. I offer you all
this, and you laugh me down with an air of superiority, as though I
were about to present you with something which, however precious it
might be in my eyes, in yours was utterly without value."
"If I sin at all," said Ducie, "it is through ignorance. The
subject is one respecting which I know next to nothing. But I must
confess that about experiences such as you speak of there is an
intangibility--a want of substance--that to me would make them seem
singularly valueless."
"And is not the thing we call life one tissue of intangibilities?"
asked the Russian. "You can touch neither the beginning nor the end
of it. Do not its most cherished pleasures fly you even as you are in
the very net of trying to grasp them? Do you know for certain that
you--you yourself--are really here?--that you do not merely dream that
you are here? What do you know?"
"Your theories are too far-fetched for me," said Ducie. "A dream can
be nothing more than itself--nothing can give it backbone or
substance. To me such things are of no more value than the shadow I
cast behind me when I walk in the sun."
"And yet without substance there could be no shadow," snarled the
Russian.
"Do your experiences in any way resemble those recorded by De
Quincey?"
"They do and they do not," answered Platzoff. "I can often trace, or
fancy that I can, a slight connecting likeness, arising probably from
the fact that in the case of both of us a similar, or nearly similar
agent was employed for a similar purpose. But, as a rule, the
intellectual difference between any two men is sufficient to render
their experiences in this respect utterly dissimilar."
"It does not follow, I presume, that all the visions induced by the
imbibition of opium, or what you term drashkil, are pleasant ones?"
"By no means. You cannot have forgotten what De Quincey has to say on
that score. But whether they are pleasant or the contrary, I accept
them as so much experience, and in so far I am satisfied. You look
incredulous, but I tell you, sir, that what I see, and what I undergo
subjectively--while under the influence of drashkil, make up for me an
experience as real, that dwells as vividly in my memory and that can
be brought to mind like any other set of recollections, as if it were
built up brick by brick, fact by fact, out of the incidents of
everyday life. And all such experiences are valuable in this wise:
that whatever I see while under the influence of drashkil, I see, as
it were, with the eyes of genius. I breathe a keener atmosphere; I
have finer intuitions; the brain is no longer clogged with that part
of me which is mortal; in whatever imaginary scenes I assist, whether
as actor or spectator matters not, I seem to discern the underlying
meaning of things--I hear the low faint beating of the hidden pules of
the world. To come back from this enchanted realm to the dull
realities of everyday life is like depriving some hero of fairyland of
his magic gifts and reducing him to the level of common humanity."
"At which pleasant level I pray ever to be kept," said Ducie; "I have
no desire to soar into those regions of romance where you seem so
thoroughly at home."
"So be it," said Platzoff, drily. "The intellects of you English have
been nourished on beef and beer for so many generations, that there is
no such thing as spiritual insight left among you. We must not expect
too much." This was said not ill-naturedly, but in that quiet jeering
tone which was almost habitual with Platzoff.
Ducie maintained a judicious silence and went on puffing gravely at
his meerschaum. Platzoff touched the gong and Cleon entered, for this
conversation took place before the illness of the latter. The Russian
held up two fingers, and Cleon bowed. Then Cleon opened a mahogany box
in one corner of the room, and took out of it a pipe-bowl of red clay,
into which he fitted a flexible tube five or six yards in length and
tipped with amber. The bowl was then fixed into a stand of black oak
about a foot high, and there held securely, and the mouthpiece handed
to Platzoff. Cleon next opened an inlaid box, and by means of a tiny
silver spatula he cut out a small block of some black greasy-looking
mixture, which he proceeded to fit into the bowl of the pipe. On the
top of this he sprinkled a little aromatic Turkish tobacco, and then
applied an allumette. When he saw that the pipe was fairly alight, he
bowed and withdrew.
While these preparations were going on Platzoff had not been silent.
"I have spoken to you of what I am about to smoke, both as opium and
as drashkil," he said. "It is not by any means pure opium. With that
great drug are mixed two or three others that modify and influence the
chief ingredient materially. I had the secret of the preparation from
a Hindoo gentleman while I was in India. It was imparted to me as an
immense favour, it being a secret even there. The enthusiastic terms
in which he spoke of it have been fully justified by the result, as
you would discover for yourself if you could only be persuaded to try
it. You shake your head. Eh bien! mon ami; the loss is yours not
mine."
"Some of what you have termed your 'experiences' are no doubt very
singular ones?" said Ducie, interrogatively.
"They are, very singular," answered Platzoff. "In my last
drashkil-dream, for instance, I believed myself to be an Indian fakir,
and I seemed to realize to the full the strange life of one of those
strange beings. I was stationed in the shade of a large tree just
without the gate Of some great city where all who came and went could
see me. On the ground, a little way in front of me, was a wooden bowl
for the reception of the offerings of the charitable. I had kept both
my hands close shut for so many years that the nails had grown into
the flesh, and the muscles had hardened so that I could no longer open
them; and I was looked upon as a very holy man. The words of the
passers-by were sweet in my ears, but I never spoke to them in return.
Silent and immovable, I stood there through the livelong day,--and in
my vision it was always day. I had the power of looking back, and I
knew that, in the first instance, I had been led by religious
enthusiasm to adopt that mode of life. I should be in the world but
not of it, I should have more time for that introspective
contemplation the aim and end of which is mental absorption in the
divine Brahma; besides which, people would praise me, and all the
world would know that I was a holy man. But the strangest part of the
affair remains to be told. In the eyes of the people I had grown in
sanctity from year to year; but in my own heart I knew that instead of
approaching nearer to Brahma, I was becoming more depraved, more
wicked, with a great inward wickedness, as time went on. I struggled
desperately against the slough of sin that was slowly creeping over
me, but in vain. It seemed to me as if the choice were given me either
to renounce my life of outward-seeming sanctity, and becoming as other
men were, to feel again that inward peace which had been mine long
years before; or else, while remaining holy in the eyes of the
multitude, to feel myself sinking into a bottomless pit of wickedness
from which I could never more hope to emerge. My mental tortures while
this struggle was going on, I can never forget: they are as much a
real experience to me as if they had made up a part of my genuine
waking life. And still I stood with closed hands in the shade of the
tree; and the people cried out that I was holy, and placed their
offerings in my bowl; and I could not make up my mind to abnegate the
title they gave me and become as they were. And still I grew in inward
wickedness, till I loathed myself as if I were some vile reptile; and
so the struggle went on, and was still going on, when I opened my eyes
and found myself again at Bon Repos."
As Platzoff ceased speaking, Cleon applied the light, and Ducie in his
eagerness drew a little nearer. Platzoff was dressed _à la Turk_, and
sat with crossed legs on the low divan that ran round the room. Slowly
and deliberately he inhaled the smoke from his pipe, expelling it a
moment later, in part through his nostrils and in part through his
lips. The layer of tobacco at the top of the bowl was quickly burnt to
ashes. By this time the drug below was fairly alight, and before long
a thick white sickly smoke began to ascend in rings and graceful
spirals towards the roof of the room. Cleon was gone, and a solemn
silence was maintained by both the men. Platzoff's eyes, black and
piercing, were fixed on vacancy; they seemed to be gazing on some
picture visible to himself alone. Ducie was careful not to disturb
him. His inhalations were slow, gentle, and regular. After a time, a
thin film or glaze began to gather over his wide-open eyes, dimming
their brightness, and making them seem like the eyes of some one dead.
His complexion became livid, his face more cadaverous than it
naturally was. Then his eyes closed slowly and gently, like those of
an infant dropping to sleep. For a little time longer he kept on
inhaling the smoke, but every minute the inhalations became fainter
and fewer in number. At length the hand that held the pipe dropped
nervelessly by his side, the amber mouthpiece slipped from between his
lips, his jaw dropped, and, with an almost imperceptible sigh, his
head sank softly back on to the cushions behind, and M. Paul Platzoff
was in the opium-eater's paradise.
Ducie, who had never seen any one similarly affected, was frightened
by his host's death-like appearance. He was doubtful whether Platzoff
had not been seized with a fit. In order to satisfy himself he touched
the gong and summoned Cleon. That incomparable domestic glided in,
noiseless as a shadow.
"Does your master always look as he does now after he has been smoking
opium?" asked the captain.
"Always, sir."
"And how long does it take him to come round?"
"That depends, sir, on the strength of the dose he has been smoking.
The preparation is made of different strengths to suit him at
different times; but always when he has been smoking drashkil I leave
him undisturbed till midnight. If by that time he has not come round
naturally and of his own accord, I carry him to bed and then
administer to him a certain draught, which has the effect of sending
him into a natural and healthy sleep, from which he awakes next
morning thoroughly refreshed."
"Then you will come to-night at twelve, and see how your master is by
that time?" said Ducie.
"It is part of my duty to do so," answered Cleon.
"Then I will wait here till that time," said the captain. Cleon bowed
and disappeared.
So Ducie kept watch and ward for four hours, during the whole of which
time Platzoff lay, except for his breathing, like one dead. As the
last stroke of midnight struck, Cleon reappeared. His master showed
not the slightest symptom of returning consciousness. Having examined
him narrowly for a moment or two, he turned to Ducie.
"You must pardon me, sir, for leaving you alone," he said, "but I must
now take my master off to bed. He will scarcely wake up for
conversation to-night."
"Proceed as though I were not here," said Ducie. "I will just finish
this weed, and then I too will turn in."
Platzoff's private rooms, forming a suite four in number, were on the
ground floor of Bon Repos. From the main corridor the first that you
entered was the smoking-room already described. Next to that was the
dressing-room, from which you passed into the bedroom. The last of the
four was a small square room, fitted up with book-shelves, and used as
a private library and study.
Cleon, who was a strong, muscular fellow, lifted Platzoff's shrivelled
body as easily as he might have done that of a child, and so carried
him out of the room.
Ducie met his host at the breakfast-table next morning. The latter
seemed as well as usual, and was much amused when Ducie told him of
his alarm, and how he had summoned Cleon under the impression that
Platzoff had been taken dangerously ill.
Platzoff rarely indulged in the luxury of drashkil-smoking oftener
than once a week. His constitution was delicate, and a too frequent
use of so dangerous a drug would have tended to shatter still further
his already enfeebled health. Besides, as he said, he wished to keep
it as a luxury, and not, by a too frequent indulgence in it, to take
off the fine edge of enjoyment and render it commonplace. Ducie
had several subsequent opportunities of witnessing the process of
drashkil-smoking and its effects, but one description will serve for
all. On every occasion the same formula was gone through, precisely as
first seen by Ducie. The pipe was charged and lighted by Cleon (after
he became ill, by the new servant Jasmin). Precisely at midnight Cleon
returned, and either conducted or carried his master to bed, as the
necessities of the case might require. It was his knowledge of the
latter fact that stood Ducie in such good stead later on, when he came
to elaborate the details of his scheme for stealing the Great Mogul
Diamond.
But as yet his scheme was in embryo. His visit was drawing to a close,
and he was still without the slightest clue to the hiding-place of the
Diamond.