THE AMSTERDAM EDITION OF 1698.
Captain Ducie soon fell into the quiet routine of life at Bon Repos. It
was not distasteful to him. To a younger man it might have seemed to
lack variety, to have impinged too closely on the verge of dulness; but
Captain Ducie had reached that time of life when quiet pleasures please
the most, and when much can be forgiven the man who sets before you a
dinner worth eating. Not that Ducie had anything to forgive. Platzoff
had contracted a great liking for his guest, and his hospitality was of
that cordial quality which makes the object of it feel himself
thoroughly at home. Besides this, the Captain knew when he was well off,
and had no wish to exchange his present pleasant quarters, his rambles
across the hills, and his sailings on the lake, for his dingy bed-room
in town with the harassing, hunted down life of a man upon whom a dozen
writs are waiting to be served, and who can never feel certain that his
next day's dinner may not be eaten behind the locks and bars of a
prison.
Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, sometimes accompanied by his
host, sometimes alone, Ducie explored the lovely country round Bon Repos
to his heart's content. Another source of pleasure and healthful
exercise he found in long solitary pulls up and down the lake in a tiny
skiff which had been set apart for his service. In the evening came
dinner and conversation with his host, with perhaps a game or two of
billiards to finish up the day.
Captain Ducie found no scope for the exercise of his gambling
proclivities at Bon Repos. Platzoff never touched card or dice. He
could handle a cue tolerably well, but beyond a half-crown game, Ducie
giving him ten points out of fifty, he could never be persuaded to
venture. If the Captain, when he went down to Bon Repos, had any
expectation of replenishing his pockets by means of faro and unlimited
loo, he was wretchedly mistaken. But whatever secret annoyance he might
feel, he was too much a man of the world to allow his host even to
suspect its existence.
Of society in the ordinary meaning of that word there was absolutely
none at Bon Repos. None of the neighbouring families by any chance ever
called on Platzoff. By no chance did Platzoff ever call on any of the
neighbouring families.
"They are too good for me, too orthodox, too strait-laced," exclaimed
the Russian one day in his quiet, jeering way. "Or it may be that I am
not good enough for them. Any way, we do not coalesce. Rather are we
like flint and steel, and eliminate a spark whenever we come in contact.
They look upon me as a pagan, and hold me in horror. I look upon
three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and hold them in contempt. Good
people there are among them no doubt; people whom it would be a pleasure
to know, but I have neither time, health, nor inclination for
conventional English visiting--for your ponderous style of hospitality.
I am quite sure that my ideas of men and manners would not coincide with
those of the quiet country ladies and gentlemen of these parts; while
theirs would seem to me terribly wearisome and jejune. Therefore, as I
take it, we are better apart."
By and by Ducie discovered that his host was not so entirely isolated
from the world as at first sight he appeared to be.
Occasional society there was of a certain kind, intermittent, coming and
going like birds of passage. One, or sometimes two visitors, of whose
arrival Ducie had heard no previous mention, would now and again put in
an appearance at the dinner-table, would pass one, or at the most two
nights at Bon Repos, and would then be seen no more, having gone as
mysteriously as they had come.
These visitors were always foreigners, now of one nationality, now of
another: and were always closeted privately with Platzoff for several
hours. In appearance some of them were strangely shabby and unkempt, in
a wild, un-English sort of fashion, while others among them seemed like
men to whom the good things of this world were no strangers. But
whatever their appearance, they were all treated by Platzoff as honoured
guests for whom nothing at his command was too good.
As a matter of course, they were all introduced to Captain Ducie, but
none of their names had been heard by him before--indeed, he had a dim
suspicion, gathered, he could not have told how, that the names by which
they were made known to him were in some cases fictitious ones, and
appropriated for that occasion only. But to the Captain that fact
mattered nothing. They were people whom he should never meet after
leaving Bon Repos, or if he did chance to meet them, whom he should
never recognise.
One other noticeable feature there was about these birds of passage.
They were all men of considerable intelligence--men who could talk
tersely and well on almost any topic that might chance to come uppermost
at table, or during the after-dinner smoke. Literature, art, science,
travel--on any or all of these subjects they had opinions to offer; but
one subject there was that seemed tabooed among them as by common
consent: that subject was politics. Captain Ducie saw and recognised the
fact, but as he himself was a man who cared nothing for politics of any
kind, and would have voted them a bore in general conversation, he was
by no means disposed to resent their extrusion from the table talk at
Bon Repos.
As to whom and what these strangers might be, no direct information was
vouchsafed by the Russian. Captain Ducie was left in a great measure to
draw his own conclusions. A certain conversation which he had one day
with his host seemed to throw some light on the matter. Ducie had been
asking Platzoff whether he did not sometimes regret having secluded
himself so entirely from the world; whether he did not long sometimes to
be in the great centres of humanity, in London or Paris, where alone
life's full flavour can be tasted.
"Whenever Bon Repos becomes Mal Repos," answered Platzoff--"whenever a
longing such as you speak of comes over me--and it does come
sometimes--then I flee away for a few weeks, to London oftener than
anywhere else--certainly not to Paris: that to me is forbidden ground.
By-and-by I come back to my nest among the hills, vowing there is no
place like it in the world's wide round. But even when I am here, I am
not so shut out from the world and its great interests as you seem to
imagine. I see History enacting itself before my eyes, and I cannot sit
by with averted face. I hear the grand chant of Liberty as the beautiful
goddess comes nearer and nearer and smites down one Oppressor after
another with her red right hand; and I cannot shut my ears. I have been
an actor in the great drama of Revolution ever since a lad of twelve. I
saw my father borne off in chains to Siberia, and heard my mother with
her dying breath curse the tyrant who had sent him there. Since that day
Conspiracy has been the very salt of my life. For it I have fought and
bled; for it I have suffered hunger, thirst, imprisonment, and dangers
unnumbered. Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, are all places that I can
never hope to see again. For me to set foot in any one of the three
would be to run the risk of almost certain detection, and in my case
detection would mean hopeless incarceration for the poor remainder of my
days. To the world at large I may seem nothing but a simple country
gentleman, living a dull life in a spot remote from all stirring
interests. But I may tell you, sir (in strictest confidence, mind), that
although I stand a little aside from the noise and heat of the battle,
I work for it with heart and brain as busily, and to better purpose, let
us hope, than when I was a much younger man. I am still a conspirator,
and a conspirator I shall remain till Death taps me on the shoulder and
serves me with his last great writ of _habeas corpus_."
These words recurred to Ducie's memory a day or two later when he found
at the dinner-table two foreigners whom he had never seen before.
"Is it possible that these bearded gentlemen are also conspirators?"
asked the Captain of himself. "If so, their mode of life must be a very
uncomfortable one. It never seems to include the use of a razor, and
very sparingly that of comb and brush. I am glad that I have nothing to
do with what Platzoff calls _The Great Cause_."
But Captain Ducie was not a man to trouble himself with the affairs of
other people unless his own interests were in some way affected thereby.
M. Paul Platzoff might have been mixed up with all the plots in Europe
for anything the Captain cared: it was a mere question of taste, and he
never interfered with another man's tastes when they did not clash with
his own. Besides, in the present case, his attention was claimed by what
to him was a matter of far more serious interest. From day to day he was
anxiously waiting for news from the London bookseller who was making
inquiries on his behalf as to the possibility of obtaining a copy of
_The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic_. Day passed after day till a
fortnight had gone, and still there came no line from the bookseller.
Ducie's impatience could no longer be restrained: he wrote, asking for
news. The third day brought a reply. The bookseller had at last heard of
a copy. It was in the library of a monastery in the Low Countries. The
coffers of the monastery needed replenishing; the abbot was willing to
part with the book, but the price of it would be a sum equivalent to
fifty guineas of English money. Such was the purport of the letter.
To Captain Ducie, just then, fifty guineas were a matter of serious
moment. For a full hour he debated with himself whether or no he should
order the book to be bought.
Supposing it duly purchased; supposing that it really proved to be the
key by which the secret of the Russian's MS. could be mastered; might
not the secret itself prove utterly worthless as far as he, Ducie, was
concerned? Might it not be merely a secret bearing on one of those
confounded political plots in which Platzoff was implicated--a matter of
moment no doubt to the writer, but of no earthly utility to anyone not
inoculated with such March-hare madness?
These were the questions that it behoved him to consider. At the end of
an hour he decided that the game was worth the candle: he would risk his
fifty guineas.
Taking one of Platzoff's horses, he rode without delay to the nearest
telegraph station. His message to the bookseller was as under:
"Buy the book, and send it down to me here by confidential messenger."
The next few day were days of suspense, of burning impatience. The
messenger arrived almost sooner than Ducie expected, bringing the book
with him. Ducie sighed as he signed the cheque for fifty guineas, with
ten pounds for expenses. That shabby calf-bound worm-eaten volume seemed
such a poor exchange for the precious slip of paper that had just left
his fingers. But what was done could not be undone, so he locked the
book away carefully in his desk and locked up his impatience with it
till nightfall.
He could not get away from Platzoff till close upon midnight. When he
got to his own room he bolted the door, and drew the curtains across the
windows, although he knew that it was impossible for anyone to spy on
him from without. Then he opened his desk, spread out the MS. before
him, and took up the volume. A calf-bound volume, with red edges, and
numbering five hundred pages. It was in English, and the title-page
stated it to be "_The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic: A Romance_.
Translated from the Latin. With Annotations, and a Key to Sundrie Dark
Meanings. Imprinted at Amsterdam in the Year of Grace 1698." It was in
excellent condition.
Captain Ducie's eagerness to test his prize would not allow of more than
a very cursory inspection of the general contents of the volume. So far
as he could make out, it seemed to be a political satire veiled under
the transparent garb of an Eastern story. Parthenio was represented as a
holy man--a Spiritualist or Mystic--who had lived for many years in a
cave in one of the Arabian deserts. Commanded at length by what he calls
the "inner voice," he sets out on his travels to visit sundry courts and
kingdoms of the East. He returns after five years, and writes, for the
benefit of his disciples, an account of the chief things he has seen and
learned while on his travels. The courts of England, France and Spain,
under fictitious names, are the chief marks for his ponderous satire,
and some of the greatest men in the three kingdoms are lashed with his
most scurrilous abuse. Under any circumstances the book was not one that
Captain Ducie would have cared to wade through, and in the present case,
after dipping into a page here and there, and finding that it contained
nothing likely to interest him, he proceeded at once to the more serious
business of the evening.
The clocks of Bon Repos were striking midnight as Captain Ducie
proceeded to test the value of the first group of figures on the MS.,
according to the formula laid down for him by his friend Bexell.
The first group of figures was 253.12/4. Turning to page two hundred and
fifty-three of the Confessions, and counting from the top of that page,
he found that the fourth word of the twelfth line gave him _you_. The
second clump of figures was 59.25/1. The first word of the twenty-fifth
line of page fifty-nine gave him _will_. The third clump of figures gave
him _have_, and the fourth _gathered_. These four words, ranged in
order, read: _You will have gathered_. Such a sequence of words could
not arise from mere accident. When he had got thus far Ducie knew that
Platzoff's secret would soon be a secret no longer, that in a very
little while the heart of the mystery would be laid bare.
Encouraged by his success, Ducie went to work with renewed vigour, and
before the clock struck one he had completed the first sentence of the
MS., which ran as under:--
_You will have gathered from the foregoing note, my dear Carlo,
that I have something of importance to relate to you--something
that I am desirous of keeping a secret from everyone but yourself._
As his friend Bexell surmised, Ducie found that the groups of figures
distinguished from the rest by two horizontal lines, one above and one
below, as thus 58.7 14.29 368.1 209.18 43.11, were the _valeurs_ of some
proper name or other word for which there was no equivalent in the book.
Such words had to be spelt out letter by letter in the same way that
complete words were picked out in other cases. Thus the marked figures
as above, when taken letter by letter, made up the word _Carlo_--a name
to which there was nothing similar in the Confessions.
It had been broad daylight for two hours before Captain Ducie grew tired
of his task and went to bed. He went on with it next night, and every
night till it was finished. It was a task that deepened in interest as
he proceeded with it. It grew upon him to such a degree that when near
the close he feigned illness, and kept his room for a whole day, so that
he might the sooner get it done.
If Captain Ducie had ever amused himself with trying to imagine the
nature of the secret which he had now succeeded in unravelling, the
reality must have been very different from his expectations. One
gigantic thought, whose coming made him breathless for a moment, took
possession of him, as a demon might have done, almost before he had
finished his task, dwarfing all other thoughts by its magnitude. It was
a thought that found relief in six words only:
"It must and shall be mine!"