Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
with another stone similar in size and shape--these being well known to
him--to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
chalice was not often _opened_ by the baronet, and this would therefore
have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
appears all the trouble he took to _engrave_ the false stone in an
exactly similar manner to the other. _That_ could not help him in
producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
being _seen_, but only _heard_ in the cup, is proved by the fact that
he selected a stone of a different _colour_. This colour, as I shall
afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
last stone, the white one--I shall prove that it was white--which
Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided _two_
substitutes, and that he had engraved these _two_, without object, in
the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
_having_ done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
conclusion.
'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not _prepared_ any substitute; and
it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
probable that he could _by chance_ have possessed two old gems exactly
similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
the word "Hasn-us-Sabah." I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.
'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. "Now," he cries in
triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room--"_now_ you have
delivered all into my hands." "All" what, Sir Jocelin wonders. "All,"
of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that _he_ has
done--hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
accordingly hastens into his chamber, and "locks the door," in order,
by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
deposited it in a place of perfect safety--such as, with or without
lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
afforded--his more reasonable _rôle_ would have been that of
unconscious _nonchalance_, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
that Ul-Jabal "holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
down": can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of _search_?
Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
able to suspect that both are seekers.
'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
the stone by the Persian than all this--and that is the murder of the
baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder--the clear means of
gaining the stone--presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
moment--indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
admitting of the designation "gown," have usually only outer
pockets--large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
robe. But a stone of that size _must_ have made such a pocket bulge
outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
ultimate detection, pursuit--and this is a land of Law, swift and
fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus--thus surely, and thus
secretly--can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
very next day he leaves the house--no more shall the mistrustful
baronet, who is "hiding something from him," see his face. He carries
with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his "brown gowns," and a
snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
_house_, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
_far and wide_ "with uncovered head." Can you not picture the
distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
to _hide_ the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to _seek_ it, for
he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
"the old days of love"; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is "brown as the leaves of autumn."
That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour--it was the
yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
neurotic condition; I thought of those "fibrillary twitchings,"
indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
sudden, the terrific shock of seeing _himself_ sitting in the chair
before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been _placed_ there by
Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death--if he _be_
dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
plague, and, I hope, straightway go and--hang himself.'
It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
which Zaleski had been detailing to me.
'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
that if "this stone be stolen," or if it "chaunges dre," the House of
Saul and its head "anoon" (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. "Dre," I may
remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
with the Saxon "_dreogan_," meaning to "suffer." So that the writer at
least contemplated that the stone might "suffer changes." But what kind
of changes--external or internal? External change--change of
environment--is already provided for when he says, "shulde this Ston
stalen bee"; "chaunges," therefore, in _his_ mind, meant internal
changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
immediately discoverable. For it was a "sky-blue" stone; a sky-blue,
sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
its name--it was a _turquoise_. But can the turquoise, to the certain
knowledge of a mediaeval writer, "chaunges dre"? Let us turn for light
to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
bronze Hera.'
I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
follows:
'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
which lose it.'[1]
[Footnote 1: 'Assurément la turquoise a une âme plus intelligente que
l'âme de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, à fin que l'on ne
recoure pas à Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
precieuse; ainsi, peut-être, il deçoit nos esprits par la turquoise:
car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' _Anselm de Boot_, Book II.]
'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
have the property of changing its colour--a change which was
universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'
For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:
'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in _all_ lands, and at
_all_ times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
Already you have a semi-comic "gold-cure" for alcoholism, and you have
heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'
_Note_.--As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.
THE S.S.
'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....
'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Geschöpf,
das falsch lebt, wird früh zerstört. Unfruchtbarkeit, kümmerliches
Dasein, frühzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Flüche, die Kennzeichen
ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
much into the world along with them....
'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
displeasure.']
[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
depleted of Men (i.e. _after the battle with Cleomenes_) that the
slaves usurped everything--ruling and disposing--until such time as the
sons of the slain were grown up.']
To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
sensational case of _felo de se_ published in the newspapers is sure to
be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
out of all proportion with the _extent_ of each particular outbreak.
Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
perished by the scourge; while that at the _Hôtel des Invalides_ in
Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
dear sick stress of her desire--with just such faintings, wanton fires,
does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.
'When she sees a bank
Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
Her servants, what a pretty place it were
To bury lovers in; and make her maids
Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'
[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: _The Maid's Tragedy_.]
The _mode_ spreads--then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes _comme il faut_, this cerecloth
acquiring all the attractiveness and _éclat_ of a wedding-garment. The
coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.
It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
woe at Bethany:
'Come and see.'
To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'
I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
derision and censure--for it will be remembered that to many minds the
mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
doubt, the haunting _fear_. None felt himself quite safe; men
recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
affright, and to know not why--that is the transcendentalism of terror.
The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
walketh _by night_ that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris _Bourse_, business
decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.
It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
eyes. I avow that that lonesome room--gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
perfumed light--shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
narcotic-breathing draperies--pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
brooding occupant--grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
friend.