THE UNCOVERING OF GORDON ORME
It is not necessary for me to state that dinner in the Sheraton hall,
with its dull mahogany and its shining silver and glass, was barely
better than a nightmare to me, who should have been most happy. At least
there remained the topic of politics and war; and never was I more glad
to plunge into such matters than upon that evening. In some way the
dinner hour passed. Miss Grace pleaded a headache and left us; my mother
asked leave; and presently our hostess and host departed. Harry and I
remained to stare at each other moodily. I admit I was glad when finally
he announced his intention of retiring.
A servant showed me my own room, and some time before midnight I went
up, hoping that I might sleep. My long life in the open air had made all
rooms and roofs seem confining and distasteful to me, and I slept badly
in the best of beds. Now my restlessness so grew upon me that, some time
past midnight, not having made any attempt to prepare for sleep, I
arose, went quietly down the stair and out at the front door, to see if
I could find more peace in the open air. I sat down on the grass with my
back against one of the big oaks, and so continued brooding moodily over
my affairs, confused as they had now become.
By this time every one of the household had retired. I was surprised,
therefore, when I saw a faint streak of light from one of the windows
flash out across the lawn. Not wishing to intrude, I rose quietly and
changed my position, passing around the tree. Almost at that instant I
saw the figure of a man appear from the shrubbery and walk directly
toward the house, apparently headed for the window from which emerged
the light.
I watched him advance, and when I saw him reach the heavily barred
trellis which ran up to the second gallery, I felt confirmed in my
suspicion that he was a burglar. Approaching carefully in the shadow, I
made a rapid run at him, and as his head was turned at the time, managed
to catch him about the neck by an arm. His face, thus thrown back, was
illuminated by the flare of light. I saw him plainly. It was Gordon
Orme!
The light disappeared. There was no cry from above. The great house,
lying dark and silent, heard no alarm. I did not stop to reason about
this, but tightened my grip upon him in so fell a fashion that all his
arts in wrestling could avail him nothing. I had caught him from behind,
and now I held him with a hand on each of his arms above the elbow. No
man could escape me when I had that hold.
He did not speak, but struggled silently with all his power. At length
he relaxed a trifle. I stood close to him, slipped my left arm under his
left along his back, and caught his right arm in my left hand. Then I
took from his pocket a pistol, which I put into my own. I felt in his
clothing, and finally discovered a knife, hidden in a scabbard at the
back of his neck. I drew it out--a long-bladed, ivory thing I found it
later, with gold let into the hilt and woven into the steel.
He eased himself in my grip as much as he could, waiting; as I knew,
for his chance to twist and grapple with me. I could feel him breathing
deeply and easily, resting, waiting for his time, using his brains to
aid his body with perfect deliberation.
"It's no use, Orme," I said to him, finally. "I can wring your neck, or
break your back, or twist your arms off, and by God! I've a notion to do
them all. If you make any attempt to get away I'm going to kill you. Now
come along."
I shoved him ahead of me, his arms pinioned, until we found a seat far
away in a dark portion of the great front yard. Here I pushed him down
and took the other end of the seat, covering him with his own pistol.
"Now," I demanded, "tell me what you are doing here."
"You have your privilege at guessing," he sneered, in his easy, mocking
way. "Have you never taken a little adventure of this sort yourself?"
"Ah, some servant girl--at your host's house. Excellent adventure. But
this is your last one," I said to him.
"Is it so," he sneered. "Then let me make my prayers!" He mocked at me,
and had no fear of me whatever.
"In Virginia we keep the shotgun for men who prowl around houses at
night. What are you doing here?"
"You have no right to ask. It is not your house."
"There was a light," said I. "For that reason I have a right to ask. I
am a guest, and a guest has duties as well as a host."
A certain change in mood seized him. "If I give you parole," he asked,
"will you believe me, and let us talk freely?"
"Yes," said I at length, slowly. "You are a liar; but I do not think you
will break parole."
"You gauge me with perfect accuracy," he answered. "That is why I wish
to talk."
I threw the pistol on the seat between us. "What is it you want to
know," I asked. "And again I ask you, why are you here, when you are
supposed to be in South Carolina?"
"I have business here. You cost me my chance out there in the West," he
answered, slowly. "In turn I cost you your chance there. I shall cost
you other things here. I said you should pay my debt." He motioned
toward my neck with his slim finger.
"Yes, you saved my life," I said, "and I have hated you for that ever
since."
"Will you make me one promise?" he asked.
"Perhaps, but not in advance."
"And will you keep it?"
"If I make it."
"Will you promise me to do one thing you have already promised to do?"
"Orme, I am in no mood to sit here and gossip like an old woman."
"Oh, don't cut up ugly. You're done out of it all around, in any case.
Belknap, it seems, was to beat both you and me. Then why should not you
and I try to forget? But now as to this little promise. I was only going
to ask you to do as much as Belknap, or less."
"Very well, then."
"I want you to promise to marry Grace Sheraton."
I laughed in his face. "I thought you knew me better than that, Orme.
I'll attend to my own matters for myself. I shall not even ask you why
you want so puerile a promise. I am much of a mind to shoot you. Tell
me, who are you, and what are you, and what are you doing in this
country?"
"Do you really want to know?" he smiled.
"Assuredly I do. I demand it."
"I believe I will tell you, then," he said quietly. He mused for a time
before he raised his head and went on.
"I am Charles Gordon Orme, Marquis of Bute and Rayne. Once I lived in
England. For good reasons I have since lived elsewhere. I am what is
known as a black sheep--a very, very black one."
"Yes, you are a retrograde, a renegade, a blackguard and a murderer," I
said to him, calmly.
"All of those things, and much more," he admitted, cheerfully and
calmly. "I am two persons, or more than two. I can't in the least make
all this plain to you in your grade of intelligence. Perhaps you have
heard of exchangeable personalities?"
"I have heard of double personalities, and double lives," I said, "but I
have never admired them."
"We will waive your admiration. Let me say that I can exchange my
personality. The Jews used to say that men of certain mentality were
possessed of a devil. I only say that I was a student in India. One
phrase is good as another. The Swami Hamadata was my teacher."
"It would have been far better for you had you never known him, and
better for many others," was my answer to his astonishing discourse.
"Perhaps; but I am only explaining as you have requested. I am a Raja
Yogi. I have taken the eight mystic steps. For years, even here in this
country, I have kept up the sacred exercises of breath, of posture, of
thought."
"All that means nothing to me," I admitted simply.
"No, it means nothing for me to tell you that I have learned Yama,
Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dyhana and Samadhi! Yes,
I was something of an adept once. I learned calm, meditation,
contemplation, introspection, super-conscious reasoning--how to cast my
own mind to a distance, how to bring other minds close up to me.
But,"--he smiled with all his old mockery--"mostly I failed on
Pratyahara, which says the senses must be quelled, subdued and set
aside! All religions are alike to me, but they must not intrude on my
own religion. I'd liefer die than not enjoy. My religion, I say, is to
play the great games--to adventure, and above all, to enjoy! That is why
I am in this country, also why I am in these grounds to-night."
"You are playing some deeper game than I know?"
"I always am! How could you be expected to understand what it took me
years to learn? But I suppose in your case you need a few practical and
concrete proofs. Let me show you a few things. Here, put your hand on my
heart."
I obeyed. "You feel it beat?" he said. "Now it stops beating, does it
not?" And as I live, it _had slopped_!
"Feel on the opposite side," he commanded. I did so, and there was his
heart, clear across his body, and beating as before! "Now I shall stop
it again," he remarked, calmly. And I swear it did stop, and resumed
when he liked!
"Put your hand upon my abdomen," he said. I did so. All at once his body
seemed thin and empty, as a spent cocoon.
"I draw all the organs into the thorax," he explained. "When one has
studied under the Swami, as I have, he gains control over all his
different muscles, voluntary and involuntary. He can, to a great extent,
cut off or increase the nerve force in any muscle. Simple tricks in
magic become easy to him. He gains, as you may suppose, a certain
influence over men, and more especially over women, if that be a part of
his religion. It was not with the Swami. It is with me!"
"You are a strange man, Orme," I said, drawing a long breath. "The most
dangerous man, the most singular, the most immoral I ever knew."
"No," he said, reaching for his cigar case, "I was only born without
what you call morals. They are not necessary in abstruse thought. Yet in
some ways I retain the old influences of my own country. For instance, I
lie as readily as I speak the truth, because it is more convenient; but
though I am a liar, I do not break my word of honor. I am a renegade,
but I am still an English officer! You have caught that distinction."
"Yes, I would trust you," I said, "if you gave me your word of honor."
He turned full upon me. "By Jove, old chap," he said, with a queer note
in his voice, "you touch me awfully close. You're like men of my own
family--you stir something in me that I used to know. The word of a
fighting man--that's the same for yours and mine; and that's why I've
always admired you. That's the sort of man that wins with the best sort
of women."
"You were not worth the best sort of woman," I said to him. "You had no
chance with Ellen Meriwether."
"No, but at least every fellow is worth his own fight with himself. I
wanted to be a gentleman once more. Oh, a man may mate with a woman of
any color--he does, all over the world. He may find a mistress in any
nationality of his own color, or a wife in any class similar to his
own--he does, all over the world. But a sweetheart, and a wife, and a
woman--when a fellow even like myself finds himself honestly gone like
that--when he begins to fight inside himself, old India against old
England, renegade against gentleman--say, that's awfully bitter--when he
sees the other fellow win. You won--"
"No," said I, "I did not win. You know that perfectly well. There is no
way in the world that I can win. All I can do is to keep parole--well,
with myself, I suppose."
"You touch me awfully close," he mused again. "You play big and fair.
You're a fighting man and a gentleman and--excuse me, but it's true--an
awful ass all in one. You're such an ass I almost hesitate to play the
game with you."
"Thank you," said I. "But now take a very stupid fellow's advice. Leave
this country, and don't be seen about here again, for if so, you will be
killed."
"Precisely," he admitted. "In fact, I was just intending to arrange a
permanent departure. That was why I was asking you to promise me to--in
short, to keep your own promise. There's going to be war next spring.
The dreams of this strange new man Lincoln, out in the West, are going
to come true--there will be catastrophies here. That is why I am here.
War, one of the great games, is something that one must sometimes cross
the globe to play. I will be here to have a hand in this one."
"You have had much of a hand in it already," I hazarded. He smiled
frankly.
"Yes," he said, "one must live. I admit I have been what you call a
secret agent. There is much money behind me, big politics, big
commercial interests. I love the big games, and my game and my task--my
duty to my masters, has been to split this country along a clean line
from east to west, from ocean to ocean--to make two countries of it! You
will see that happen, my friend."
"No one will ever see it happen," I said to him, soberly.
"Under which flag, then, for you?" he asked quickly.
"The flag you saw on the frontier, Orme," I answered him. "That is the
flag of America, and will be. The frontier is free. It will make America
free forever."
"Oh, well," he said, "the argument will be obvious enough by next
spring--in April, I should guess. And whatever you or I may think, the
game will be big, very big--the biggest until you have your real war
between black and white, and your yet bigger one between yellow and
white. I imagine old England will be in that with you, or with one of
you, if you make two countries here. But I may be a wandering Jew on
some other planet before that time."
He sat for a time, his chin dropped on his breast. Finally he reached me
his hand.
"Let me go," he said. "I promise you to leave."
"To leave the State?"
"No, I will not promise that."
"To leave the County?"
"Yes, unless war should bring me here in the course of my duty. But I
will promise to leave this town, this residence--this girl--in short, I
must do that. And you are such an ass that I was going to ask you to
promise to keep your promise--up there." He motioned toward the window
where the light lately had been.
"You do not ask that now?" I queried.
"You are a fighting man," he said, suddenly. "Let all these questions
answer themselves when their time comes. After all, I suppose a woman is
a woman in the greatest of the Barnes, and one takes one's chances.
Suppose we leave the debt unsettled until we meet some time? You know,
you may be claiming debt of me."
"Will you be ready?" I asked him.
"Always. You know that. Now, may I go? Is my parole ended?"
"It ends at the gate," I said to him, and handed him his pistol. The
knife I retained, forgetfully; but when I turned to offer it to him he
was gone.