AN UNFINISHED LETTER
I have learnt on my way through the world how dangerous a thing is a
conceit of a man’s own cleverness; and among the most striking lessons
of this truth stands one which Mouraki Pasha taught me in Neopalia. My
game was against a past master in the art of intrigue; yet I made sure
I had caught him napping, sure that my wits were quicker than his and
that he missed what was plain to my mind. In vain, they say, is the
net spread in the sight of any bird. Aye, of any bird that has eyes
and knows how to use them. But if the bird has no eyes, or employs
them in admiring its own plumage, there is a chance for the fowler
after all.
These reflections occur to my mind when I recollect the hope and
exultation in my heart as I followed the Governor’s leisurely upward
march through the wood to the cottage. Mouraki, I said to myself,
thought that he was allaying my suspicions and lulling my watchfulness
to sleep by the courtesy with which he arranged an interview between
Phroso and myself. Was that what he was really doing? No, I declared
triumphantly. He was putting in my way the one sovereign chance which
fate hitherto had denied. He was to be away, and most of his men with
him. Phroso, Kortes, and I would be alone together at the house, alone
for an hour, perhaps for two. At the moment I felt that I asked no
more of fortune. Had the Pasha never heard of the secret of the
Stefanopouloi? It almost seemed so; but I myself had told him of it,
and Denny’s information had preceded mine. Yet he was leaving us alone
by the hidden door. Had he remembered it? Had he stopped it? My ardour
was cooled; my face fell. He knew; he could not have forgotten; and if
he knew and remembered, of a surety the passage would be blocked or
watched.
‘By the way,’ said Mouraki, turning to me, ‘I want you to show me that
passage you told me of some time to-morrow. I’ve never found time to
go down there yet, and I have a taste for these mediæval curiosities.’
‘I shall be proud to be your guide, Pasha. You would trust yourself
there with me?’
‘Oh, my dear Wheatley, such things are not done now,’ smiled the
Pasha. ‘You and I will settle our little difference another way. Have
you been down since I came?’
‘No. I’ve had about enough of the passage,’ said I carelessly. ‘I
should be glad never to see it again; but I must strain a point and go
with you.’
‘Yes, you must do that,’ he answered. ‘How steep this hill is! Really
I must be growing old, as Phroso is cruel enough to think!’
This conversation, seeming to fall in so pat with my musings, and
indicating, if it did not state, that Mouraki treated the passage as a
trifle of no moment, brought us to the outskirts of the wood. The
cottage was close in front of us. We had passed only one sentry: the
cordon was gone. This change struck me at once, and I remarked on it
to Mouraki.
‘Yes, I thought it safe to send most of them away; there are one or
two more than you see though. But he won’t venture back now.’
I smiled to myself. I was pleased again at my penetration; and in this
instance, unlike the other at which I have hinted, I do not think I
was wrong. The cordon had been here, then Constantine had; the cordon
was gone, and I made no doubt that Constantine was gone also.
The front of the cottage was dark, and the curtains of the windows
drawn, as they had been when I came before, on the night I killed
Vlacho the innkeeper and fell into the hands of Kortes and Demetri.
The whirligig had turned since then; for then this man Mouraki had
been my far-off much-desired deliverer, Kortes and Demetri open
enemies. Now Mouraki was my peril, Kortes my best friend,
Demetri--well, what and whom had Panayiota meant?
‘Shall we go in?’ asked Mouraki, as we came to the house. ‘Stay,
though, I’ll knock on the door with my stick. Madame Stefanopoulos is,
no doubt, within. I think she will probably not have joined her
husband.’
‘I imagine she’ll have heard of his escape with great regret,’ said I.
The Pasha knocked with the gold-headed cane which he carried. He
waited and then repeated the blow. No answer came.
‘Well,’ he said with a shrug, ‘we have given her fair warning. Let us
enter. She knows you, my dear Wheatley, and will not be alarmed.’
‘But if Constantine’s here?’ I suggested, with a mocking smile. ‘Your
life is a valuable one. Run no risks; he’s a desperate man.’
The Pasha shifted his cane to his left hand, smiled in answer to my
smile, and produced a revolver.
‘You’re wise,’ said I, and I took my revolver out of my pocket.
‘We are ready for--anything--now,’ said Mouraki.
I think ‘anything’ in that sentence was meant to include ‘one
another.’
The Pasha opened the door and passed in. Nothing seemed changed since
my last visit. The door of the room on the right was open, the table
was again spread, for two this time; the left-hand door was shut.
‘You see the fugitive is not in that room,’ observed the Pasha, waving
his hand to the right. ‘Let us try the other,’ and he turned the
door-handle of the room on the left, and preceded me into it.
At this point I am impelled to a little confession. The murderous
impulse is, perhaps, not so uncommon as we assume. I daresay many
respectable men and amiable women have felt it in all its attractive
simplicity once or twice in their lives. It seems at such moments
hardly sinful, merely too dangerous, and to be recognised as
impossible to gratify only by reason of its danger. But I perceive
that I am accusing the rest of the world in the hope of excusing
myself; for at that moment, when the Pasha’s broad solid back was
presented to me, a yard in front, I experienced a momentary but
extremely strong temptation to raise my arm, move my finger
and--transform the situation. I did not do it; but, on the other
hand, I have never counted the desire to do it among the great sins of
my life. Mouraki, I thought then and know now, deserved nothing
better. Unhappily we have our own consciences to consider, and thus
are often prevented from meting out to others the measure their deeds
claim.
[Illustration: “WE ARE READY FOR--ANYTHING--NOW.”]
‘I see nobody,’ said the Pasha. ‘But then the room is dark. Shall I
pull back the curtain?’
‘You’d better be careful,’ said I, laughing. ‘That’s what Vlacho did.’
‘Ah, but you’re on the same side this time,’ he answered, and stepped
across the room towards the curtain.
Suddenly I became, or seemed to become, vaguely, uncomfortably, even
terribly conscious of something there. Yet I could see nothing in the
dark room, and I heard nothing. I can hardly think Mouraki shared my
strange oppressive feeling; yet the curtain was not immediately drawn
back, his figure bulked motionless just in front of me, and he
repeated in tones that betrayed uneasiness:
‘I suppose I’d better draw back the curtain, hadn’t I?’
What was it? It must have been all fancy, born of the strain of
excitement and the nervous tension in which I was living. I have had
something of the feeling in the dark before and since, but never so
strong, distinct and almost overpowering. I knew Constantine was not
there. I had no fear of him if he were. Yet my forehead grew damp with
sweat.
Mouraki’s hand was on the curtain. He drew it back. The dull evening
light spread sluggishly through the room. Mouraki turned and looked at
me. I returned his gaze. A moment passed before either of us looked
round.
‘There’s nobody behind the curtain,’ said he, with a slight sigh which
seemed to express relief. ‘Do you see any one anywhere?’
Then I pulled myself together, and looked round. The chairs near me
were empty, the couch had no occupant. But away in the corner of the
room, in the shadow of a projecting angle of wall, I saw a figure
seated in front of a table. On the table were writing-materials. The
figure was a woman’s. Her arms were spread on the table, and her head
lay between them. I raised my hand and pointed to her. Mouraki’s eyes
obeyed my direction but came quickly back to me in question, and he
arched his brows.
I stepped across the room towards where the woman sat. I heard the
Pasha following with hesitating tread, and I waited till he overtook
me. Then I called her name softly; yet I knew that it was no use to
call her name; it was only the protest my horror made. She would hear
her name no more. Again I pointed with my right hand, catching
Mouraki’s arm with my left at the same moment.
‘There,’ I said, ‘there--between the shoulders! A knife!’
I felt his arm tremble. I must do him justice. I am convinced that he
did not foresee or anticipate this among the results of the letting
loose of Constantine Stefanopoulos. I heard him clear his throat, I
saw him lick his lips; his lids settled low over his cunning eyes. I
turned from him to the motionless figure in the chair.
She was dead, had been dead some little while, and must have died
instantly on that foul stroke. Why had the brute dealt it? Was it mere
revenge and cruelty, persistently nursed wrath at her betrayal of him
on St Tryphon’s day? Or had some new cause evoked passion from him?
‘Let us lay her here on the sofa,’ I said to Mouraki; ‘and you must
send some one to look after her.’
He seemed reluctant to help me. I leant forward alone, and putting my
arm round her, raised her from the table, and set her upright in the
chair. I rejoiced to find no trace of pain or horror on her face. As I
looked at her I gave a sudden short sob. I was unstrung; the thing
was so wantonly cruel and horrible.
‘He has made good use of his liberty,’ I said in a low fierce tone,
turning on Mouraki in a sudden burst of anger against the hand that
had set the villain free. But the Pasha’s composure wrapped him like a
cloak again. He knew what I meant and read the implied taunt in my
words, but he answered calmly:
‘We have no proof yet that it was her husband who killed her.’
‘Who else should?’
He shrugged his shoulders, remarking, ‘No proof, I said. Perhaps he
did, perhaps not. We don’t know.’
‘Help me with her,’ said I brusquely.
Between us we lifted her and laid her on the couch, and spread over
her a fur rug that draped one of the chairs. While this was done we
did not exchange a word with one another. Mouraki uttered a sigh of
relief when the task was finished.
‘I’ll send a couple of women up as soon as we get back. Meanwhile the
place is guarded and nobody can come in. Need we delay longer? It is
not a pleasant place.’
‘I should think we might as well go,’ I answered, casting my eye again
round the little room to the spot where Vlacho had fallen enveloped
in the curtain which he dragged down with him, and to the
writing-table that had supported the dead body of Francesca. Mouraki’s
hand was on the door-handle. He stood there, impatient to be out of
the place, waiting for me to accompany him. But my last glance had
seen something new, and with a sudden low exclamation I darted across
the room to the table. I had perceived a sheet of paper lying just
where Francesca’s head had rested.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mouraki.
I made him no answer. I seized the piece of paper. A pen lay between
it and the inkstand. On the paper was a line or two of writing. The
characters were blurred, as though the dead woman’s hair had smeared
them before the ink was dry. I held it up. Mouraki stepped briskly
across to me.
‘Give it to me,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘It may be something I
ought to see.’
The first hint of action, of new light or a new development, restored
their cool alertness to my faculties.
‘Why not something which I ought to see, my dear Pasha?’ I asked,
holding the paper behind my back and facing him.
‘You forget the position I hold, Lord Wheatley. You have no such
position.’
I did not argue that. I walked to the window, to get the best of the
light. Mouraki followed me closely.
‘I’ll read it to you,’ said I. ‘There isn’t much of it.’
I held it to the light. The Pasha was close by my shoulder, his pale
face leaning forward towards the paper. Straining my eyes on the
blurred characters I read; and I read aloud, according to my promise,
hearing Mouraki’s breathing which accompanied my words.
‘My lord, take care. He is free. Mouraki has set--’
That was all: a blot followed the last word. At that word the pen must
have fallen from her fingers as her husband’s dagger stole her life.
We had read her last words. The writing of that line saw the moment of
her death. Did it also supply the cause? If so, not the old grudge,
but rage at a fresh betrayal of a fresh villainy had impelled
Constantine’s arm to his foul stroke. He had caught her in the act of
writing it, taken his revenge, and secured his safety.
After I had read, there was silence. The Pasha’s face was still by my
shoulder. I gazed, as if fascinated, on the fatal unfinished note. At
last I turned and looked him in the face. His eyes met mine in unmoved
steely composure.
‘I think,’ said I, ‘that I had a right to read the note after all;
for, as I guess, the writer was addressing it to me and not to you.’
For a moment Mouraki hesitated; then he shrugged his shoulders,
saying:
‘My dear lord, I don’t know whom it is addressed to or what it means.
Had the unfortunate lady been allowed to finish it--’
‘We should know more than we do now,’ I interrupted.
‘I was about to say as much. I see she introduced my name; she can,
however, have known nothing of any course I might be pursuing.’
‘Unless some one who knew told her.’
‘Who could?’
‘Well, her husband.’
‘Who was killing her?’ he asked, with a scornful smile.
‘He may have told her before, and she may have been trying to forward
the information to me.’
‘It is all the purest conjecture,’ shrugged the Governor.
I looked him in the face, and I think my eyes told him pretty plainly
my views of the meaning of the note. He answered my glance at first
with a carefully inexpressive gaze; but presently a meaning came into
his eyes. He seemed to confess to me and to challenge me to make what
use I could of the confession. But the next instant the momentary
candour of his regard passed, and blankness spread over his face
again.
Desperately I struggled with myself, clinging to self-control. To this
day I believe that, had my life and my life only been in question, I
should then and there have compelled Mouraki to fight me, man to man,
in the little gloomy room where the dead woman lay on the sofa. We
should not have disturbed her; and I think also that Mouraki, who did
not want for courage, would have caught at my challenge and cried
content to a proposal that we should, there and then, put our quarrel
to an issue, and that one only of us should go alive down the hill. I
read such a mood in his eyes in the moment of their candour. I saw the
courage to act on it in his resolute lips and his tense still
attitude.
Well, we could neither of us afford the luxury. If I killed him, I
should bring grave suspicion on Phroso. She and her islanders would be
held accomplices; and, though this was a secondary matter to hot rage,
I myself should stand in a position of great danger. And he could not
kill me; for all his schemes against me were still controlled and
limited by the necessities of his position. Had I been an islander, or
even an unknown man concerning whom no questions would be asked, his
work would have been simple, and, as I believed, would have been
carried out before now. But it was not so. He would be held
responsible for a satisfactory account of how I met my death. It would
tax his invention to give it if he killed me himself, with his own
hand, and in a secret encounter. In fact, the finding of the note left
us where we were, so far as action was concerned, but it tore away the
last shreds of the veil, the last pretences of good faith and
friendliness which had been kept up between us. In that swift, full,
open glance which we had exchanged, our undisguised quarrel, the great
issue between us, was legibly written and plainly read. Yet not a word
passed our lips concerning it. Mouraki and I began to need words no
more than lovers do. For hate matches love in penetration.
I put the note in my pocket. Mouraki blinked eyes now utterly free
from expression. I gave a final glance at the dead woman. I felt a
touch of shame at having for a moment forgotten her fate for my
quarrel.
‘Shall we go down, Pasha?’ said I.
‘As soon as you please, Lord Wheatley,’ he answered. This formal mode
of address was perhaps an acknowledgment that the time for hypocrisy
and the hollow show of friendship between us was over. The change was
just in his way, slight, subtle, but sufficient.
I followed Mouraki out of the house. He walked in his usual slow
deliberate manner. He beckoned to the sentry as we passed him, told
him that two women, who would shortly come up, were to be admitted,
but nobody else, until an officer came bearing further orders. Having
made these arrangements, he resumed his way down, taking his place in
front of me and maintaining absolute silence. I did not care to talk.
I had enough to think about. But already, now I was out in the fresh
air, the feeling of sick horror with which the little room had
affected me began to pass away. I felt braced up again. I was better
prepared for the great effort which loomed before me now as a present
and urgent necessity. Mouraki had found an instrument. He had set
Constantine free, that Constantine might do against me what Mouraki
himself could not do openly. My friends were away. The hour of the
stroke must even now be upon me. Well, the hour of my counter-stroke
was come also, the counter-stroke for which my interview with Phroso
and Mouraki’s absence opened the way. For he thought the passage no
more than a mediæval curiosity.
We reached the house and entered the hall together. As we passed
through the compound I had seen an alert sentinel. Looking out from
the front door, I perceived two men on guard. A party of ten or a
dozen more was drawn up, an officer at its head; these were the men
who waited to attend Mouraki on his evening expedition. The Pasha
seated himself and wrote a note. He looked up as he finished it,
saying:
‘I am informing the Lady Euphrosyne that you will await her here in
half-an-hour’s time, and that she is at liberty to spend what time she
pleases with you. Is that what you wish?’
‘Precisely, your Excellency. I am much obliged to you.’
His only answer was a dignified bow; but he turned to a sub-officer
who stood by him at attention and said, ‘On no account allow Lord
Wheatley to be interrupted this evening. You will, of course, keep the
sentries on guard behind and in front of the house, but do not let
them intrude here.’
After giving his orders, the Pasha sat silent for some minutes. He had
lighted his cigarette, and smoked it slowly. Then he let it out--a
thing I had never seen him do before--lit another, and resumed his
slow inhalings. I knew that he would speak before long, and after a
few more moments he gave me the result of his meditations. We were now
alone together.
‘It would have been much better,’ said he, ‘if that poor woman--whose
fate I sincerely regret--had been let alone and this girl had died
instead of her,’ and he nodded at me with convinced emphasis.
‘If Phroso had died!’ leapt from my lips in astonishment.
‘Yes, if Phroso had died. We would have hanged Constantine together,
wept together over her grave, and each of us gone home with a sweet
memory--you to your _fiancée_, I to my work. And we should have
forgiven one another any little causes of reproach.’
To this speculation in might-have-beens I made no answer. The feelings
with which I received it shewed me, had I still needed shewing, what
Phroso was to me. I had been shocked and grieved at Francesca’s fate;
but rather that a thousand times than the thing on which Mouraki
coolly mused!
‘It would have been much better, so much better,’ he repeated, with a
curiously regretful intonation.
‘The only thing that would be better, to my thinking,’ I said, ‘is
that you should behave as an honourable man and leave this lady free
to do as she wishes.’
‘And another thing, surely?’ he asked, smiling now. ‘That you should
behave as an honourable man and go back to Miss Hipgrave?’ A low laugh
marked the point he had scored. Then he added, with his usual shrug,
‘We are slaves, we men, slaves all.’
He rose from his chair and completed his preparations for going out,
flinging a long military cloak over his shoulders. His momentary
irresolution, or remorse, or what you will, had passed. His speech
became terse and resolute again.
‘We shall meet early to-morrow, I expect,’ he said, ‘and then we must
settle this matter. Do I understand that you are resolved not to
yield.’
‘I am absolutely resolved,’ said I, and at the sight of his calm
sneering face my temper suddenly got the better of me. ‘Yes, I’m
resolved. You can do what you like. You can bribe ruffians to
assassinate me, as I believe you’ve bribed Constantine.’
He started at that, as a man will at plain speech, even though the
plain speech tells him nothing that he did not know of the speaker’s
mind.
‘The blood of that unhappy woman is on your head,’ I cried vehemently.
‘Through your act she lies dead. If a like fate befalls me, the blame
of that will be on your head also. It is you, and not your tool, who
will be responsible.’
‘Responsible!’ he echoed. His voice was mocking and easy, though his
face was paler even than it was wont to be. ‘Responsible! What does
that mean? Responsible to whom?’
‘To God,’ said I.
He laughed a low derisive laugh.
‘Come, that’s better,’ he said. ‘I expected you to say public opinion.
Your sentiment is more respectable than that clap-trap of public
opinion. So be it. I shall be responsible. Where will you be?’ He
paused, smiling, and ended, ‘And where Phroso?’
My self-restraint was exhausted. I sprang up. In another moment my
hands would have been on his throat; the next, I suppose, I should
have been a prisoner in the hands of his guard. But that was not his
wish. He had shewn me too much now to be content with less than my
life, and he was not to be turned from his scheme either by his own
temper or by mine. He had moved towards the door while he had been
speaking to me; as I sprang at him, a quick dexterous movement of his
hand opened it, a rapid twist of his body removed him from my reach.
He eluded me. The door was shut in my face. The Pasha’s low laugh
reached me as I sank back again in my chair, still raging that I had
not got him by the throat, but in an instant glad also that my
rashness had been foiled.
I heard the tramp of his party on their orderly march along the road
from the house. Their steps died away, and all was very still. I
looked round the hall; there was nobody but myself. I rose and looked
into the kitchen; it was empty. Mouraki had kept his word: we were
alone. In front there were sentries, behind there were sentries, but
the house was mine. Hope rose again, strong and urgent, in my heart,
as my eyes fell on the spot under the staircase, where lay the
entrance to the secret passage. I looked at my watch; it was eleven
o’clock. The wind blew softly, the night was fine, a crescent moon was
just visible through the narrow windows. The time was come, the time
left free by Mouraki’s strange oversight.
It was then, and then only, that a sudden gleam of enlightenment, a
sudden chilling suspicion, fell upon me, transforming my hope to fear,
my triumph to doubt and misgiving. Was Mouraki Pasha the man to be
guilty of an oversight, of so plain an oversight? When an enemy leaves
open an obvious retreat, is it always by oversight? When he seems to
indicate a way of safety, is the way safe? These disturbing thoughts
crowded on me as I sat, and I looked now at the entrance to the secret
passage with new eyes.
The sentries were behind the house, the sentries were in front of the
house; in neither direction was there any chance of escape. One way
was open--the passage--and that one way only. And I asked the question
of myself, framing the words in an inarticulate low whisper, ‘Is this
way a trap?’
‘You fool--you fool--you fool!’ I cried, beating my fist on the wooden
table.
For if that way were a trap, then there was no way of safety, and the
last hope was gone. Had Mouraki indeed thought of the passage only as
a mediæval curiosity? Well, were not _oubliettes_, down which a man
went and was seen no more, also a mediæval curiosity?