RESURRECTIONS.
David Arden entered this door, and found himself under a vaulted roof of
brick. These were the chambers, for there was at least two, which the
baron termed his catacombs. Along both walls of the narrow apartment
were iron doors, in deep recesses, that looked like the huge ovens of an
ogre, sunk deep in the wall, and the baron looked himself not an
unworthy proprietor. The baron had the General's faculty of remembering
faces and names.
"Monsieur Yelland Mace? Yes, I will show you him; he is among ze dead."
"Dead?"
"Ay, zis right side is _dead_--all zese."
"Do you mean," says David Arden, "_literally_ that Yelland Mace is no
longer living?"
"A, B, C, D, E, F, G," mutters the baron, slowly pointing his finger
along the right wall.
"I beg your pardon, Baron, but I don't think you heard me," said David
Arden.
"_Perfectly_, excuse me: H, I, J, K, L, M--M. I will show you _now_, if
you desire it, Yelland Mace; you shall see him now, and never behold him
more. Do you wish very much?"
"Intensely--_most_ intensely!" said Uncle David earnestly.
The baron turned full upon him, and leaned his shoulders against the
iron door of the recess. He had taken from his pocket a bunch of heavy
keys, which he dangled from his clenched fingers, and they made a faint
jingle in the silence that followed, for a few seconds.
"Permit me to ask," said the baron, "are your inquiries directed to a
legal object?"
"I have no difficulty in saying yes," answered he; "a legal object,
strictly."
"A legal object, by which you gain considerably?" he asked slowly.
"By which I gain the satisfaction of seeing justice done upon a
villain."
"That is fine, Monsieur. Eternal justice! I have thought and said that
very often: _Vive la justice eternelle!_ especially when her sword
shears off the head of my enemy, and her scale is laden with napoleons
for my purse."
"Monsieur le Baron mistakes, in my case; I have absolutely nothing to
gain by the procedure I propose; it is strictly criminal," said David
Arden drily.
"Not an estate? not a slice of an estate? Come, come! _Thorheit!_ That
is foolish talk."
"I have told you already, nothing," repeated David Arden.
"Then you don't care, in truth, a single napoleon, whether you win or
lose. We have been wasting our time, Sir. I have no time to bestow for
nothing; my minutes count by the crown, while I remain in Paris. I shall
soon depart, and practise no more; and my time will become my own--still
my own, by no means _yours_. I am candid, Sir, and I think you cannot
misunderstand me; I must be paid for my time and opportunities."
"I never meant anything else," said Mr. Arden sturdily; "I shall pay you
liberally for any service you render me."
"That, Sir, is equally frank; we understand now the principle on which I
assist you. You wish to see Yelland Mace, so you shall."
He turned about, and struck the key sharply on the iron door.
"There he waits," said the baron, "and--did you ever see him?"
"No."
"Bah! what a wise man. Then I may show you whom I please, and you know
nothing. Have you heard him described?"
"Accurately."
"Well, there is some little sense in it, after all. You shall see."
He unlocked the safe, opened the door, and displayed shelves, laden with
rudely-made deal boxes, each of a little more than a foot square. On
these were marks and characters in red, some, and some in black, and
others in blue.
"Hé! you see," said the baron, pointing with his key, "my mummies are
cased in hieroglyphics. Come! _Here_ is the number, the date, and the
man."
And lifting them carefully one off the other, he took out a deal box
that had stood in the lowest stratum. The cover was loose, except for a
string tied about it. He laid it upon the floor, and took out a plaster
mask, and brushing and blowing off the saw-dust, held it up.
David Arden saw a face with large eyes closed, a very high and thin
nose, a good forehead, a delicately chiselled mouth; the upper lip,
though well formed after the Greek model, projected a little, and gave
to the chin the effect of receding in proportion. This slight defect
showed itself in profile; but the face, looked at full front, was on the
whole handsome, and in some degree even interesting.
"You are quite sure of the identity of this?" asked Uncle David
earnestly.
There was a square bit of parchment, with two or three short lines, in a
character which he did not know, glued to the concave reverse of the
mask. The baron took it, and holding the light near, read, "Yelland
Mace, suspect for his politics, May 2nd, 1844."
"Yes," said Mr. Arden, having renewed his examination, "it very exactly
tallies with the description; the nose aquiline, but very delicately
formed. Is that writing in cypher?"
"Yes, in cypher."
"And in what language?"
"German."
David Arden looked at it.
"You will make nothing of it. In these inscriptions, I have employed
eight languages--five European, and three Asiatic--I am, you see,
something of a linguist--and four distinct cyphers; so having that
skill, I gave the benefit of it to my _friends_; this being secret."
"Secret?--oh!" said Uncle David.
"Yes, secret; and you will please to say nothing of it to any living
creature until the twenty-first of October next, when I retire. You
understand commerce, Mr. Arden. My practice is confidential, and I
should lose perhaps eighty thousand francs in the short space that
intervenes, if I were thought to have played a patient such a trick. It
is but twenty days of reserve, and then I go and laugh at them, every
one. Piff, puff, paff! ha! ha!"
"Yes, I promise that also," said Uncle David dryly, and to himself he
thought, "What a consummate old scoundrel!"
"Very good, Sir; we shall want this of Yelland Mace again, just now; his
face and coffin, ha! ha! can rest there for the present." He had
replaced the mask in its box, and that lay on the floor. The door of the
iron press he shut and locked. "Next, I will show you Mr. Longcluse:
those are dead."
He waved his short hand toward the row of iron doors which he had just
visited.
"Please, Sir, walk with me into this room. Ay, so. Here are the
_resurrections_. Will you be good enough--L, Longcluse, M, one, two,
three, four; _three_, yes, to hold this candlestick for a moment?"
The baron unlocked this door, and, after some rummaging, he took forth a
box similar to that he had taken out before.
"Yes, right, Walter Longcluse. I tell you how you will see it best:
there is brilliant moonlight, stand there."
Through a circular hole in the wall there streamed a beam of moonlight,
that fell upon the plaster-wall opposite with the distinctness of the
circle of a magic-lantern.
"You see it--you know it! Ha! ha! His pretty face!"
He held the mask up in the moonlight, and the lineaments, sinister
enough, of Mr. Longcluse stood, sharply defined in every line and
feature, in intense white and black, against the vacant shadow behind.
There was the flat nose, the projecting underjaw, the oblique, sarcastic
eyebrow, even the line of the slight but long scar, than ran nearly from
his eye to his nostril. The same, but younger.
"There is no doubt about _that_. But when was it taken? Will you read
what is written upon it?"
Uncle David had taken out the candle, and he held it beside the mask.
The baron turned it round, and read, "Walter Longcluse, 15th October,
1844."
"The same year in which Mace's was taken?"
"So it is, 1844."
"But there is a great deal more than you have read, written upon the
parchment in this one."
"It looks more."
"And _is_ more. Why, count the words, one, two, four, six, eight. There
must be thirty, or upwards."
"Well, suppose there are, Sir: I have read, nevertheless, all I mean to
read for the present. Suppose we bring these three masks together. We
can talk a little then, and I will perhaps tell you more, and disclose
to you some secrets of nature and art, of which perhaps you suspect
nothing. Come, come, Monsieur! kindly take the candle."
The baron shut the iron door with a clang, and locked it, and, taking up
the box, marched into the next room, and placing the boxes one on top of
the other, carried them in silence out upon the gallery, accompanied by
David Arden.
How desolate seemed the silence of the vast house, in all which, by this
time, perhaps, there did not burn another light!
They now re-entered the large and strangely-littered chamber in which he
had talked with the baron; they stop among the chips and sawdust with
which his work has strewn the floor.
"Set the candle on this table," says he. "I'll light another for a time.
See all the trouble and time you cost me!"
He placed the two boxes on the table.
"I am extremely sorry----"
"Not on my account, you needn't. You'll pay me well for it."
"So I will, Baron."
"Sit you down on that, Monsieur."
He placed a clumsy old chair, with a balloon-back, for his visitor, and,
seating himself upon another, he struck his hand on the table, and said,
arresting for a moment the restless movement of his eyes, and fixing on
him a savage stare--
"You shall see wonders and hear marvels, if only you are willing to pay
what they are worth." The baron laughed when he had said this.