The Gates of Chance Part 25

What an astonis.h.i.+ng repertoire--Chaminade, Schumann, Grieg, Richard Strauss. Finally Schubert, and Schubert only, the last and the best given, as it is meet, to him who is the master of all. The rainbow-tinted orb of the wall mirror continued to hold my eyes; they drooped and fell as the radiance grew fainter and yet fainter.

When I awoke Red-Fez was standing at the bedside, hot-water can in hand. "Morning, sar," he said, with gentle affability. "Will you permit me to shaver you?"

I jumped out of bed and went to the window. It was closed, although a ventilator at the top admitted plenty of the outside air, and the gla.s.s was of the opaque bull's-eye variety through which it is impossible to see. I tried to throw up the sash, but it would not budge.

I submitted in silence to the ministrations of Red-Fez, not choosing to enter into any discussion with a servant. But I was sorely tempted to protest when he proceeded to array me in an extraordinary robe of cardinal silk in lieu of the ordinary masculine habiliments. Certainly I could not leave the house enveloped in this ridiculous garment. My dress clothes would have been bad enough, but there was no trace of them to be seen. Evidently I should have to call Dr. Gonzales to account, and having descended to the now familiar red drawing-room, I sent Red-Fez with a request for an immediate audience. A few minutes later he appeared.

"Am I a prisoner here?" I asked, abruptly.

"You await the Lady Allegra's pleasure," he answered, imperturbably.

"She is still indisposed. Possibly by to-night, but I cannot say definitely."

"I do not wish--"

"Chut!" he interrupted, irritably. "It is a matter not of your wishes but of her will. That is inevitable. Can you not understand?"

I looked at the immovable figures of two footmen at the door and then walked out to breakfast. An excellent meal it was, although I recognized that the food was only an ingenious variation upon the theme of the night before; that mysterious substance resembling isingla.s.s was the basis of everything set before me. It was the same with luncheon and again at dinner. And, as on the previous night, it was an empty chair that confronted me. Well, what did it matter, after all. Can you even imagine what Schubert's "Linden-Tree" might be when perfectly sung?

Is it an hallucination, then, that possesses me--some subtle disturbance of the nerve-centres sapping the sources of will-power, enfeebling even the physical energies? I do not know. Sometimes I am ashamedly conscious that I do not greatly care. It is now a week since I entered this house, and I have made but one attempt to rea.s.sert my personal rights. Yesterday a sudden pa.s.sion of resolution seized me; at all hazards I must break the bonds imposed upon me by this invisible enchantress. As I pa.s.sed the door leading to the red drawing-room I put my fingers in my ears--Ulysses and the sirens. But when I reached the lower hall I walked plump into Dr. Gonzales, who fixed me with a penetrating look. "Go back!" he said, authoritatively. "The Lady Allegra sings--and for you." I listened; it was, "Ah, fors e lui."

I divide my time between the library on the third floor and the red drawing-room, where the strange beauty of the opal-tinted mirror holds me possessed for hours together. Remember that the Lady Allegra still maintains her tantalizing role of inviolable seclusion. It is through her voice alone that she impresses her personality upon my senses. That seems ridiculous, does it not? But then you have not heard her sing "Ah, fors e lui."

Yet, after all, the end came quickly. I shall be equally succinct in my chronicle of the events leading up to it.

As usual I had dined alone, and had afterwards submitted to the customary examination at the hands of Dr. Gonzales. Why he should deem it necessary to take my pulse and temperature and then ascertain my weight and power of grip with such scrupulous exact.i.tude I never troubled to inquire. Indeed, it seemed such a puerile proceeding that I have hitherto refrained from even mentioning it. To-night he seemed ill-pleased with the results of his investigation. "You are losing weight," he said, severely, "and you don't begin to grip within ten pounds of what you registered a week ago."

"What does it matter?" I answered, as indifferently as I felt.

"You ought to eat more. No steam without fuel."

"I am not hungry."

"Bah!" he snorted, indignantly. "It is always the same story. Another failure! But no, I will not suffer it. Sooner than that I will have you penned and stuffed as though you were a Strasburg goose." But I only laughed at his petulance and walked on to the drawing-room.

I laughed, I say, and yet I had begun vaguely to realize that something was wrong. My head felt strangely light. I stumbled over a corner of the rug, and would have fallen out of pure weakness if I had not caught at the table for support. My respiration seemed more rapid than usual and the sweat from the slight exertion beaded my forehead. Then I forgot everything but that the Lady Allegra had begun to sing.

The desire, the impulse, they had crystallized into resolution. I would wait no longer. This very night the walls of the fortress should fall, unveiling the secret of this insolent loveliness, the desire of all the world. Ah, my lady Allegra, was it chance alone that led you to choose Isolde's "Liebestod" for this the supreme enchantment?

The music fell away into nothingness and I stepped forward, my hand on the k.n.o.b of the folding-doors that led to the front room. I knocked twice--firmly, insistently. "Open!" I cried, and immediately the door-k.n.o.b yielded to my touch.

"Stop!"

Dr. Gonzales stood at the hall entrance to the drawing-room. I saw something that gleamed like polished metal in his uplifted hand. Then he fell back and disappeared. It seemed as though some invisible force behind the portiere had taken sudden and irresistible possession of him. What did I care. I went forward and into the room, absolutely empty save for an upright cabinet of mahogany placed on a central pedestal. It was tall enough to conceal a person standing behind it, but it was not the Lady Allegra who came forward to meet me.

"Indiman!" I said, weakly. "Esper Indiman!"

"The carriage is waiting," he said. "Come."

"Never!" I retorted, pa.s.sionately. "You don't understand--the Lady--Allegra--"

Well, I suppose I must have fainted from sheer inanition, and so Indiman explained it himself that next morning.

"You had been half starved for over a week, and no wonder you keeled over. No; you can't have another mouthful of that beef-steak. You'll have to wait for luncheon."

I sank back among the cus.h.i.+ons of the couch rather resentfully. "Well, at least you can go on and tell me," I said.

"Certainly. There are cranks of all degrees, as you know. It was your luck to fall into the hands of one of the king-pins of the confraternity--Dr. Ferdinand Gonzales, alias Moses the Second.

"He wanted a new subject for his experiments upon the physical regeneration of the human race, and he caught you in his drag-net. It was a close call for you, old chap."

"I don't understand."

"You have been starving to death for ten days, and yet eating three meals a day right along. Nothing peculiar about that, eh?"

"It WAS rather curious stuff. It looked like isingla.s.s."

"Perhaps it is. All I care about is the fact that the food you have been eating doesn't contain a particle of nourishment for the human system. But Moses the Second imagined that he had invented, or rather rediscovered, the one perfect nutriment for the race--nothing less than manna."

"Manna!"

"Don't you remember the manna in the wilderness, the children of Israel, and the forty years they fed upon it. Dr. Gonzales, who was really a fine chemist before he went dotty, got the idee fixe that all human ills were due to improper food. He tackled the problem, at first scientifically, but later on he had a vision that he was really the reincarnation of the Prophet Moses. Moses and manna--the connection is obvious and the secret was soon in his possession. He manufactured the stuff in his own laboratory and lived on it himself--at least to the verge of physical extinction. Then he went gunning for subjects, and you know the rest. The rubbish fills you up without nouris.h.i.+ng you, and what you lived on was really stimulants alone--the wine and coffee."

"But will you tell me--how did you chance to find--"

"For the first few days I didn't dream of interfering--it was your own adventure. But on Monday--that's yesterday, you know--I determined to look things up a bit. So I walked into No. 231 and scared Mr. Red-Fez into a few plain truths. His real name is Dawson, you know."

"Yes."

"It was simply an immensely improved sort of phonograph that Gonzales had invented. None of the harshness and squeakiness of tone that you a.s.sociate with the ordinary instrument. Partly a new method of making the records and partly a system of qualifying chambers that refine and purify the tones. It is wonderful enough to deceive anybody, and, of course, he had all his records ready to hand."

"Then the Lady Allegra, the Lady Allegra--"

"'Vox et preterea nihil,'" quoted Indiman. He left the room quietly, and I lay there on the lounge staring up at the ceiling. "'Vox et preterea nihil.'"

Two months have pa.s.sed and I am slowly recuperating in body and mind.

But there are some things not to be forgotten--for instance, "Ah, fors e lui," when sung by the most beautiful voice in all the world.

Indiman proposes that we shall go to the Utinam Club, dine, and spend the night. Well, we don't often indulge in that rather questionable amus.e.m.e.nt, although we are accustomed to use the club freely throughout the daytime. All the more reason, then, that once in a while--I need a distraction and there are some interesting psychological deductions--But hang casuistry; it is enough to say that we did go.

It is undeniably pleasant to be sitting here in the club dining-room sharing a ruddy duck and a bottle of burgundy. Yes, and to feel the cares, the disappointments, the burdens of life dropping off one by one; to be able to dismiss them with a nod as one gives an unfortunate beggar his conge. Ills that one need not bear; evils that it is no longer necessary to endure--they have all been eliminated by the simple process of excluding from the spectrum the ultra blue-and-violet rays.

A palpable evasion, of course. Call it immoral, if you will, and I shall not lift the gauntlet. Why should we quarrel over phrases when it is only required to return thanks to the good Dr. Magnus for his beneficent discovery? That is enough for me at least. Carpe diem, or, more precisely, noctem.

It was Dr. Magnus himself who later on introduced us to Chivers in the common room--Chivers, a little man of Semitic physiognomy, with a hard, k.n.o.bbed face and a screw of black beard. He addressed himself effusively to Indiman, while the doctor and I remained spectators, silent but interested.

"A dealer in adventures, a specialist in the grotesque--ah, I like that, Mr. Indiman. The rest of us"--this with a gesture inexpressibly mean and fawning--"prefer to haggle over the lion's skin after it has been cured and dressed. It's a mere question of temperament, dear sir."

"What have you to say to me?" inquired Indiman, abruptly. I could see that he wanted to kick him.