The concert was over. If it had been as great a triumph as usual--and
it had--the reasons were perhaps that nothing succeeds like success, and
that the Carpentaria band was so imbued with the spirit of Carpentaria
that it would have played in the Carpentaria manner even had the
shade of Beethoven come down to conduct it. Certainly Carpentaria’s
performances with the baton, though wild and bizarre, lacked that
sincerity and that amazing invention which usually distinguished them.
He had too much to think about. There was the possibility of getting
shot as he stood there. There was the possibility of being poisoned at
his next meal. There was the possibility of some fearful complication
with Juliette and Ilam. There was the positive mystery of Ilam himself.
There was the comparative mystery of Ilam’s mother. And there was the
superlative mystery of Mr. Jetsam. Under these circumstances, with all
these pre-occupations, the plaudits of a hundred thousand people did not
particularly interest Carpentaria that night. His chief desire was to
get back to Mr. Jetsam, and to extract Mr. Jetsam’s secrets out of Mr.
Jetsam either by force, by fraud, or by persuasion. As he was bowing
languidly for the nineteenth time, and the entire orchestra was bowing
behind him, amid a hurricane of clapping, he thought to himself:
“It’s a good thing I’m not in love! It would only need that, in addition
to what I already have on my hands, to drive me crazy!”
As a fact, he had never been in love. Art, particularly as expressed by
brass instruments, was his mistress.
He turned to descend the steps from the bandstand, when he perceived a
tall African standing at attention at the bottom of the steps.
“What do you want?” he asked the African.
The man smiled the placid and infantile smile of his race, and handed a
note to Carpentaria.
“You from the Soudanese village?”
“Yes, sah.”
The inhabitant of the Soudanese village, which was one of the
attractions of the hippodrome, stood about six feet four inches
high, and he was in native costume, which consisted largely, but not
exclusively, of beads and polish. To gaze, dazzled, at the polish on
that man’s face, shoulders, chest, and calves, one would guess that the
whole tribe must sit up at nights bringing his polish to such a unique
pitch of perfection. In his cheek you could see yourself as in a mirror,
and he had the air of being personally well satisfied with the splendour
of his mahogany skin.
Carpentaria opened the note. It read:
“Please come to me at once.--Ilam.”
Should he go? Or should he refuse this strange invitation, and hasten at
once to Mr. Jetsam and the doctor?
“Where is Mr. Ilam?” he demanded of the Soudanese.
The Soudanese merely increased his smile, and pointed vaguely in the
direction of the Amusement Park.
“Over there?”
“Yes, sah.”
“But where, man?”
“Yes, sah!” He lifted an arm and pointed.
The upper part of the illuminated rim of the giant wheel, a hundred feet
higher than any other wheel in the world, could be seen over the roofs
of the lofty white buildings in the Central Way. At this moment a
rushing, roaring noise was heard to the east, and simultaneously the
lights of the giant wheel were extinguished. Carpentaria glanced round.
A rocket burst with a faint reverberation in the sky, a little colony of
crimson stars floated for a few seconds amid the clouds--some stars
had the shape of the letter I and others of the letter C--and then
they expired, and the sky was black again. Cheers greeted the ingenious
signal for the commencement of the first pyrotechnic display of the
City of Pleasure, and a small crowd, which was beginning to form in the
neighbourhood of the Soudanese, frittered itself suddenly away in a rush
towards the Embankment. The fireworks were discharged from a plot of
ground on the other side of the river--a plot specially leased for that
sole purpose.
“I’ll come with you,” said Carpentaria to the Soudanese. He had decided
that an interview with Ilam could not do any harm, and there was always
the chance that it might in some way prove decisive. As for Mr. Jetsam,
he would deal with Mr. Jetsam later. Possibly Ilam might have determined
to make a general confession to him.
And he had his revolver.
The Soudanese walked quickly, and he was several inches taller than
Carpentaria. In something less than five minutes they had arrived at the
entrance to the Amusements Park, which was closing for the night.
“Where is Mr. Ilam?” Carpentaria asked again.
The Soudanese smiled.
They stood at the foot of the giant wheel, all of whose sixty cars were
in darkness save one, and this car was at the bottom, and its door was
open. Near the door stood a single official in the uniform of the City.
Carpentaria began to be puzzled.
“Mr. Ilam at the top?” he asked the official.
“I think so, sir,” said the official, after hesitating.
Carpentaria went into the car. The Soudanese shut the sliding door,
remaining himself outside. The official blew a whistle, and the giant
wheel began slowly to revolve with a terrific vibration and straining
of chains and rods. The car was designed to hold sixty people--when the
giant wheel was in full work it earned a hundred and eighty pounds per
revolution--and Carpentaria felt lonely in it. “Is this some trap?” his
thoughts ran; and he said to himself that he didn’t care whether it was
a trap or not. As the car rose in the sky he had a superb view of the
fireworks, which were now in full career--an immense and glittering
tapestry of changing coloured flame, reflected hue for hue and tint
for tint on the calm surface of the Thames beneath. And high above the
pyrotechnics lightning was beginning to play. The day had been hot, even
close, and it had been a pleasing surprise to the money-takers of the
City that rain had not fallen.
At last the wheel shuddered, shook, and stopped. The car was at the
summit, three hundred and forty feet above the level of the earth. A
figure appeared on the flying platform outside the car. The door was
opened, and Ilam entered.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Carpentaria demanded of him, standing up
suddenly, and instinctively feeling the handle of his revolver with his
right hand.
“It means that I wish to talk to you in private,” answered Ham,
emphasizing the last two words; “and there seems to me to be no place
particularly private down below now,” he added.
“What do you infer?”
“Perhaps I don’t quite know what I infer,” said Ilam. “All I can tell
you is that this City has been getting rather peculiar this last day or
two.”
“It has,” Carpentaria agreed pointedly.
“And as you went to the trouble of taking me up in that thing”--he
indicated overhead, where the captive balloon was darting a searchlight
to and fro across the expanse of the grounds--“I thought I’d go to the
trouble of bringing you up here. It’s safer.”
Carpentaria noticed how pale the man was, how changed his visage, and
how nervous his demeanour.
“I hope it is,” said Carpentaria. “What do you want?”
“Let’s sit down,” replied Ilam, clearing his throat, and they sat down
on opposite sides of the car. “I’ll explain what I want in three words.
How much will you take to clear out? I’m a plain man--how much will you
take to clear out?”
“Clear out of the City? I won’t take anything,” said Carpentaria.
“All the gold of all the Rockefellers won’t clear me out. I’ve got the
largest audience for my band that any bandmaster ever had, and I like
it. It’s worth more than money to----”
“Is it worth more than life to you?” asked the heavy President,
gloomily.
“No; but I reckon I can keep my life and my audience, too,” said
Carpentaria. “At any rate, you’ve tried to have my life twice and
failed, and that hasn’t frightened me. I’m less frightened than you are,
even.”
“I’ve not tried to kill you,” said Ilam.
“You’ve tried to shoot me and to poison me. Why, I cannot imagine.”
“I’ve not,” repeated Ilam.’
And, in spite of himself, Carpentaria was impressed by the apparent
truthfulness of Ilam’s tone.
“Then who has?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Ilam lamely. “I don’t know what you mean, what you
are referring to. But I’ll give you fifty thousand a year for ten years
to go--to go.”
“No,” said Carpentaria. “I’m here. I stay.”
“Then, you’ll take the consequences.”
“I always take the consequences. But what consequences, my friend?”
“Well,” Ilam coughed, “you say there have been attempts on your life.
Suppose they are continued? What then? I should like to save you. And
perhaps I can only save you by persuading you to vanish.”
“Awfully good of you,” Carpentaria sneered. “But I assure you that these
attempts on my life interest me enormously. I wouldn’t miss them for
a fortune. I’m beginning rather to like them. One gets used to an
atmosphere of mystery. No, Mr. President, I shall not go; but Juliette
will go. I shall send Juliette away to-morrow.”
Ilam bit his lip.
“That remains to be seen,” said he. “She likes me. I should make her a
good husband. Why do you object to me?”
“Why do you court her in the dark? Why do you force her to have secrets
from me?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” said Ilam. “I should make her a good
husband.”
“But what sort of a mother-in-law would she have if she married you?”
demanded Carpentaria.
Ilam made no reply.
“And,” continued Carpentaria, “I don’t think it’s a good thing for a
woman to have a husband who is always seeing ghosts.”
“Seeing ghosts?”
“Don’t you see ghosts?” sneered Carpentaria. “N--no.”
“Come down with me, and I’ll show you one, then,” said the bandmaster.
He had conceived the idea of confronting Ilam with Mr. Jetsam.
The shifting searchlight from the balloon fell dazzlingly across the
car, and through the window Carpentaria saw plainly for the fraction of
a second the polished face of the Soudanese. Then it disappeared.
He rushed to the door, flung it open, and gazed downwards into the
weblike tracery of the steel-work which shone dully in the white glare
of the searchlight. A zigzag stairway, incomparably slender, stretched
away towards earth along the face of the colossal wheel, and a dark
figure slipped rapidly from rung to rung of the dizzy ladder. Then the
light moved capriciously away, and all was indistinguishable blackness.