If Paul Harley had counted upon the word “Fire-Tongue” to have a
dramatic effect upon Nicol Brinn, he was not disappointed. It was a word
which must have conveyed little or nothing to the multitude and which
might have been pronounced without perceptible effect at any public
meeting in the land. But Mr. Brinn, impassive though his expression
remained, could not conceal the emotion which he experienced at the
sound of it. His gaunt face seemed to grow more angular and his eyes to
become even less lustrous.
“Fire-Tongue!” he said, tensely, following a short silence. “For God’s
sake, when did you hear that word?”
“I heard it,” replied Harley, slowly, “to-night.” He fixed his gaze
intently upon the sallow face of the American. “It was spoken by Sir
Charles Abingdon.”
Closely as he watched Nicol Brinn while pronouncing this name he could
not detect the slightest change of expression in the stoic features.
“Sir Charles Abingdon,” echoed Brinn; “and in what way is it connected
with your case?”
“In this way,” answered Harley. “It was spoken by Sir Charles a few
moments before he died.”
Nicol Brinn’s drooping lids flickered rapidly. “Before he died! Then Sir
Charles Abingdon is dead! When did he die?”
“He died to-night and the last words that he uttered were
‘Fire-Tongue’--” He paused, never for a moment removing that fixed gaze
from the other’s face.
“Go on,” prompted Mr. Brinn.
“And ‘Nicol Brinn.’”
Nicol Brinn stood still as a carven man. Indeed, only by an added
rigidity in his pose did he reward Paul Harley’s intense scrutiny. A
silence charged with drama was finally broken by the American. “Mr.
Harley,” he said, “you told me that you were up against the big
proposition of your career. You are right.”
With that he sat down in an armchair and, resting his chin in his hand,
gazed fixedly into the empty grate. His pose was that of a man who is
suddenly called upon to review the course of his life and upon whose
decision respecting the future that life may depend. Paul Harley watched
him in silence.
“Give me the whole story,” said Mr. Brinn, “right from the beginning.”
He looked up. “Do you know what you have done to-night, Mr. Harley?”
Paul Harley shook his head. Swiftly, like the touch of an icy finger,
that warning note of danger had reached him again.
“I’ll tell you,” continued Brinn. “You have opened the gates of hell!”
Not another word did he speak while Paul Harley, pacing slowly up and
down before the hearth, gave him a plain account of the case, omitting
all reference to his personal suspicions and to the measures which he
had taken to confirm them.
He laid his cards upon the table deliberately. Whether Sir Charles
Abingdon had uttered the name of Nicol Brinn as that of one whose aid
should be sought or as a warning, he had yet to learn. And by this
apparent frankness he hoped to achieve his object. That the celebrated
American was in any way concerned in the menace which had overhung Sir
Charles he was not prepared to believe. But he awaited with curiosity
that explanation which Nicol Brinn must feel called upon to offer.
“You think he was murdered?” said Brinn in his high, toneless voice.
“I have formed no definite opinion. What is your own?”
“I may not look it,” replied Brinn, “but at this present moment I am the
most hopelessly puzzled and badly frightened man in London.”
“Frightened?” asked Harley, curiously.
“I said frightened, I also said puzzled; and I am far too puzzled to
be able to express any opinion respecting the death of Sir Charles
Abingdon. When I tell you all I know of him you will wonder as much as I
do, Mr. Harley, why my name should have been the last to pass his lips.”
He half turned in the big chair to face his visitor, who now was
standing before the fireplace staring down at him.
“One day last month,” he resumed, “I got out of my car in a big hurry at
the top of the Haymarket. A fool on a motorcycle passed between the
car and the sidewalk just as I stepped down, and I knew nothing further
until I woke up in a drug store close by, feeling very dazed and with
my coat in tatters and my left arm numbed from the elbow. A man was
standing watching me, and presently when I had pulled round he gave me
his card.
“He was Sir Charles Abingdon, who had been passing at the time of the
accident. That was how I met him, and as there was nothing seriously
wrong with me I saw him no more professionally. But he dined with me a
week later and I had lunch at his club about a fortnight ago.”
He looked up at Harley. “On my solemn word of honour,” he said, “that’s
all I know about Sir Charles Abingdon.”
Paul Harley returned the other’s fixed stare. “I don’t doubt your
assurance on the point, Mr. Brinn,” he acknowledged. “I can well
understand that you must be badly puzzled; but I would remind you of
your statement that you were also frightened. Why?”
Nicol Brinn glanced rapidly about his own luxurious room in an oddly
apprehensive manner. “I said that,” he declared, “and I meant it.”
“Then I can only suppose,” resumed Harley, deliberately, “that the cause
of your fear lies in the term, ‘Fire-Tongue’?”
Brinn again rested his chin in his hand, staring fixedly into the grate.
“And possibly,” went on the remorseless voice, “you can explain the
significance of that term?”
Nicol Brinn remained silent--but with one foot he was slowly tapping the
edge of the fender.
“Mr. Harley,” he began, abruptly, “you have been perfectly frank with me
and in return I wish to be as frank with you as I can be. I am face to
face with a thing that has haunted me for seven years, and every step I
take from now onward has to be considered carefully, for any step might
be my last. And that’s not the worst of the matter. I will risk one
of those steps here and now. You ask me to explain the significance of
Fire-Tongue” (there was a perceptible pause before he pronounced the
word, which Harley duly noticed). “I am going to tell you that Sir
Charles Abingdon, when I lunched with him at his club, asked me
precisely the same thing.”
“What! He asked you that so long as two weeks ago?”
“He did.”
“And what reason did he give for his inquiry?”
Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. “Let me think,”
he replied. “I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar,
Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am
that man.”
Silence fell again, and Paul Harley, staring down at Nicol Brinn,
realized that this indeed was the most hopelessly mystifying case which
fate had ever thrown in his way. This millionaire scholar and traveller,
whose figure was as familiar in remote cities of the world as it was
familiar in New York, in Paris, and in London, could not conceivably be
associated with any criminal organization. Yet his hesitancy was indeed
difficult to explain, and because it seemed to Harley that the cloud
which had stolen out across the house of Sir Charles Abingdon now hung
threateningly over those very chambers, he merely waited and wondered.
“He referred to an experience which had befallen him in India,” came
Nicol Brinn’s belated reply.
“In India? May I ask you to recount that experience?”
“Mr. Harley,” replied Brinn, suddenly standing up, “I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“I have said so. But I’d give a lot more than you might believe to know
that Abingdon had told you the story which he told me.”
“You are not helping, Mr. Brinn,” said Harley, sternly. “I believe and
I think that you share my belief that Sir Charles Abingdon did not die
from natural causes. You are repressing valuable evidence. Allow me
to remind you that if anything should come to light necessitating a
post-mortem examination of the body, you will be forced to divulge in a
court of justice the facts which you refuse to divulge to me.”
“I know it,” said Brinn, shortly.
He shot out one long arm and grasped Harley’s shoulder as in a vice.
“I’m counted a wealthy man,” he continued, “but I’d give every cent I
possess to see ‘paid’ put to the bill of a certain person. Listen.
You don’t think I was in any way concerned in the death of Sir Charles
Abingdon? It isn’t thinkable. But you do think I’m in possession of
facts which would help you find out who is. You’re right.”
“Good God!” cried Harley. “Yet you remain silent!”
“Not so loud--not so loud!” implored Brinn, repeating that odd, almost
furtive glance around. “Mr. Harley--you know me. You’ve heard of me and
now you’ve met me. You know my place in the world. Do you believe me
when I say that from this moment onward I don’t trust my own servants?
Nor my own friends?” He removed his grip from Harley’s shoulder.
“Inanimate things look like enemies. That mummy over yonder may have
ears!”
“I’m afraid I don’t altogether understand you.”
“See here!”
Nicol Brinn crossed to a bureau, unlocked it, and while Harley watched
him curiously, sought among a number of press cuttings. Presently
he found the cutting for which he was looking. “This was said,” he
explained, handing the slip to Harley, “at the Players’ Club in New
York, after a big dinner in pre-dry days. It was said in confidence.
But some disguised reporter had got in and it came out in print next
morning. Read it.”
Paul Harley accepted the cutting and read the following:
NICOL BRINN’S SECRET AMBITIONS
MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN WHO WANTS TO SHOOT
NIAGARA!
Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati, who is at present in New York, opened his
heart to members of the Players’ Club last night. Our prominent citizen,
responding to a toast, “the distinguished visitor,” said:
“I’d like to live through months of midnight frozen in among the polar
ice; I’d like to cross Africa from east to west and get lost in the
middle. I’d like to have a Montana sheriff’s posse on my heels for horse
stealing, and I’ve prayed to be wrecked on a desert island like Robinson
Crusoe to see if I am man enough to live it out. I want to stand my
trial for murder and defend my own case, and I want to be found by the
eunuchs in the harem of the Shah. I want to dive for pearls and scale
the Matterhorn. I want to know where the tunnel leads to--the tunnel
down under the Great Pyramid of Gizeh--and I’d love to shoot Niagara
Falls in a barrel.”
“It sounds characteristic,” murmured Harley, laying the slip on the
coffee table.
“It’s true!” declared Brinn. “I said it and I meant it. I’m a glutton
for danger, Mr. Harley, and I’m going to tell you why. Something
happened to me seven years ago--”
“In India?”
“In India. Correct. Something happened to me, sir, which just took
the sunshine out of life. At the time I didn’t know all it meant. I’ve
learned since. For seven years I have been flirting with death and
hoping to fall!”
Harley stared at him uncomprehendingly. “More than ever I fail to
understand.”
“I can only ask you to be patient, Mr. Harley. Time is a wonderful
doctor, and I don’t say that in seven years the old wound hasn’t healed
a bit. But to-night you have, unknowingly, undone all that time had
done. I’m a man that has been down into hell. I bought myself out. I
thought I knew where the pit was located. I thought I was well away from
it, Mr. Harley, and you have told me something tonight which makes me
think that it isn’t where I supposed at all, but hidden down here right
under our feet in London. And we’re both standing on the edge!”
That Nicol Brinn was deeply moved no student of humanity could have
doubted. From beneath the stoic’s cloak another than the dare-devil
millionaire whose crazy exploits were notorious had looked out.
Persistently the note of danger came to Paul Harley. Those luxurious
Piccadilly chambers were a focus upon which some malignant will was
concentrated. He became conscious of anger. It was the anger of a just
man who finds himself impotent--the rage of Prometheus bound.
“Mr. Brinn!” he cried, “I accept unreservedly all that you have told me.
Its real significance I do not and cannot grasp. But my theory that Sir
Charles Abingdon was done to death has become a conviction. That a like
fate threatens yourself and possibly myself I begin to believe.” He
looked almost fiercely into the other’s dull eyes. “My reputation
east and west is that of a white man. Mr. Brinn--I ask you for your
confidence.”
Nicol Brinn dropped his chin into his hand and resumed that unseeing
stare into the open grate. Paul Harley watched him intently.
“There isn’t any one I would rather confide in,” confessed the American.
“We are linked by a common danger. But”--he looked up--“I must ask you
again to be patient. Give me time to think--to make plans. For your own
part--be cautious. You witnessed the death of Sir Charles Abingdon. You
don’t think and perhaps I don’t think that it was natural; but whatever
steps you may have taken to confirm your theories, I dare not hope that
you will ever discover even a ghost of a clue. I simply warn you, Mr.
Harley. You may go the same way. So may I. Others have travelled that
road before poor Abingdon.”
He suddenly stood up, all at once exhibiting to his watchful visitor
that tremendous nervous energy which underlay his impassive manner.
“Good God!” he said, in a cold, even voice. “To think that it is here in
London. What does it mean?”
He ceased speaking abruptly, and stood with his elbow resting on a
corner of the mantelpiece.
“You speak of it being here,” prompted Harley. “Is it consistent with
your mysterious difficulties to inform me to what you refer?”
Nicol Brinn glanced aside at him. “If I informed you of that,” he
answered, “you would know all you want to know. But neither you nor I
would live to use the knowledge. Give me time. Let me think.”
Silence fell in the big room, Nicol Brinn staring down vacantly into the
empty fireplace, Paul Harley standing watching him in a state of almost
stupefied mystification. Muffled to a soothing murmur the sounds of
Piccadilly penetrated to that curtained chamber which held so many
records of the troubled past and which seemed to be charged with shadowy
portents of the future.
Something struck with a dull thud upon a windowpane--once--twice. There
followed a faint, sibilant sound.
Paul Harley started and the stoical Nicol Brinn turned rapidly and
glanced across the room.
“What was that?” asked Harley.
“I expect--it was an owl,” answered Brinn. “We sometimes get them over
from the Green Park.”
His high voice sounded unemotional as ever. But it seemed to Paul Harley
that his face, dimly illuminated by the upcast light from the lamp upon
the coffee table, had paled, had become gaunt.