Persons Unknown Part 48

"That is all. Loose their bonds."

Firenzi and Pachotto ran to examine the jugs, voting simultaneously for the immunity of the golden scales--what others? So that the first choice would be all important. But the third prisoner had given his last flash.

He dropped his s.h.i.+vering face and hid it in his hands.

"Sit!"

They dropped beside the table.

"Swear obedience to the decree of Fate!"

All three laid a hand on the crossed triangular knives. Mr. Gumama purposed the oath. "Filippi Alieni, your lips shake so that you do not repeat distinctly. Say, I swear!"

"I swear!"

"Rise!"

"Firenzi, make your appeal."

Firenzi started forward on a rush. But after a step or two he halted, glared about him as if just waking up, and then went forward, sagging like a drunkard. Arrived at the table he crossed himself, shook the dice, and, whimpering, fell on his knees. His shaking hand crawled along the table, groping for the dice-box and lifted it. The crowd, straining in upon him, buzzed. For the number was moderate. He had thrown a three and a two. And kneeled there, blubbering. The courage of the Honorable Society does not remain fast in all washes.

"Pachotto, make the appeal."

He, too, started with bravado; he was perhaps half way across when they had to catch and drag him forward. He threw wild and they had to support his wrist. Even so one die fell underneath the edge of the saucer in which the box had stood. That in view was another two-spot. If, however, that under the saucer were even a four he was ahead in the throw. They moved the saucer--the die was a five. Pachotto leaped in the air with triumph--Firenzi, yellow and cursing, tried to fold his arms. Frightful sounds issued from his throat, upon which the cords stood out.

"Alieni, you will make the appeal."

He who had been a gentleman drew himself together and came slowly forward. He was now the darling of the crowd. But he did not guess that; he came of a superst.i.tious tribe and to him, too, it seemed important to win from the start. His soul trembled, but steadily and softly he stole to the table. Now he was arrived, looking down, one concentrated apprehension, on his fate. Lifting the dice-box he once more threw out his bright suspicious glance into the crowding faces. "Whatever G.o.ds there be!"--he threw the dice. Over these he bent with a sort of sweep and then, uttering a sharp hiss, sprang up like a jack-knife. The crowd swayed, yelped and s.h.i.+vered with amus.e.m.e.nt into a triumphing crow. He had thrown two sixes. Pachotto uttered a piercing yell and fell on his stomach in a dead faint.

"Filippi Alieni, of the jugs you have the first choice."

He stood as if nothing had happened. He had suddenly realized that his situation was really more terrible than ever. Watching, watching, he could descry no help. None of those alert, elated faces had a hint in it, not a congratulating hand pointed toward the fateful jug. He moistened his lips and looked mechanically at the dice which had thrown him this choice. But the dice, too, were dumb. Then, at last, he looked at the jugs.

There was the red design, the white and the green. His hand crept up and touched the chord at his throat. Scarlet was her favorite! But did she know? White--there was no luck in white. Green, the color of hope! Of resurrection! Yes, but to be resurrected one must first die! Red, again, was blood-color--but there was blood at every turn! Whose blood did this stand for--whose? Ah, yes, the scales--the scales were different! Gold, silver, and gray! The scales were very little, so it was they that held the secret! Silver, gray and gold! Why gray? Silver--hadn't he heard them whispering about silver? Why, there were some words--He dropped to the ground with the jug, leaning on the table and pressing the scrolled legend to the lantern.--Silver pays! Pays whom? Pays what? Oh, G.o.d, to understand! What was the other--gold? He was panting--his breath smeared the gla.s.s of the lantern. It was dry and cut his lips like gra.s.s-blades!

Yet he reeked with cold sweat, it was running into his mouth! He wiped the gla.s.s clear with one cuff. Steady! Take care! Can't you read, you fool! Gold buys. Oh, heaven, what would it buy here? Life--freedom--what else would anybody buy? What was the sense of it, if it meant anything else? But it might be a lie! "She's a natcherul-born devil." It was a lie she would delight in! One chance! One! Everything on it--everything!

Never to leave here--to die here--here, where no one would ever know!

Without doing what he had secretly meant to do, without ever having lifted a hand--to die in torment, squirming on the floor like a rat with torn bowels--There was one other jug. Gray--what a color!

Ghost-color--was that what she meant? Lead slays! But, once more, slays whom? Lead slays--lead--lead--Lead!

A change pa.s.sed over him. He became very still. Then, shaking with suppressed eagerness, he got slowly to his feet. He put his dense hair back from his eyes. And those eyes, hypnotized by the little jug with its gray scales, never left it; drinking it up before he could raise it to his lips. His mouth gaped for it with hanging jaw. He raised it in hands that gradually steadied and then over its brim, he gave the faces that fawned in upon him, breathless, one last look.--"He has chosen!"

They might be less than human, but he and they were still living creatures; and, in ten minutes, what would he be? Beyond them were dusky walls, built by human hands, chairs, a bureau, lithographs, all the warm furnis.h.i.+ngs of life; windows into the world, into the swarming, chattering streets where the lamps began to glow, while from round the corner came the clang of trolley-cars; whistles, calls, footsteps, were in his ears, laughter above the crash of wheels,

"Give my regards to Broadway--"

That was the hand-organ, tired of opera and getting down to business;

"Remember me to Herald Square--"

It filled the whole room! A lighted train swept by; he could see the faces of people reading evening papers, people who complained at hanging on to straps! The roar of it was familiar and dear as a beloved voice at home but it pa.s.sed and left him quite alone.

"Tell all the boys on Forty-second Street That I will soon be there!"

--"Choose, Alieni, choose! Drink! Drink!"

Everything pa.s.sed from his eyes. He was blind as before he was born.

Then his mouth was in the wine; he drank it to the last drop; the jug, with a clatter that he heard perfectly but no longer understood, rolled at his feet. "e fatto!" said he, in a low, clear voice. "e fatto--it is done!" And his face dropped into his hands.

The meeting came about him but he did not know it. Around one wrist a strap was buckled and the strap's other end nailed to the table so that the death-agonies might not wander too far. A like precaution was taken with the other men when they had drunk. He did not notice it. He looked at the floor. Firenzi, upon whom chance had forced the silver scales, gave a horrible sound of retching and slid from his stool, the strap holding his arm. A quiver pa.s.sed through the body of the first drinker, but he would not look. The meeting picked up its lantern and trooped--rather reluctantly but leaving the hatch open--chattering down the steps. The hands of the Arm dismissed Mrs. Pascoe, fetched some more wine, cut some tobacco and sat down to the business of making bets while they waited. He did not miss them.

He, too, waited.

Twenty minutes later, in the darkness, the loft was quite still. Two bodies, horribly contorted, lay straining on their straps. The rigor of death was already settling upon those convulsive heaps. The faint squares of the windows made a kind of glimmer by which it was possible to discern a pale face, a slight figure; this leaned against the table, which it clutched with hands of steel. He who had trusted to the leaden scales had trusted well.

In that darkness, in that silence, through that horror of squalid death which had not been silent, he had shed the rags of his hysteria and had caught again the concentration, the keenness, the readiness of that moment when Mrs. Pascoe had called on him to be a man. But what did he see in those empty shadows, and for what did he nerve himself? The figure there at the table was desperate, but it was very slight, and at the end of no road--valor nor cowardice nor vengeance--could he see escape. They were all blocked, those roads, the program too close built and every knot too tightly tied. Whatever he might wish, there was but one thing he could do. A knife was to be put into his hand and he had no choice except to strike. After all that had pa.s.sed it was perhaps even with eagerness that silently, alone among those shadows, he embraced his fate.

A stir began to rise from below; the men down in the garage were coming to pack the barrel. He heard the mounting footstep of his guard, ready to convey him to the secret meeting-place of the Arm of Justice; along that road where it should deal with him, when he had dealt with Nancy Cornish.

CHAPTER XV

ONE WITNESS SPEAKS

It was fully dark under the sail-cloth of the table d'hote. A strong smell of rancid wicks disturbed n.o.body and in the charged, suspensive air the cheap lamps burned with a still flame. This may in part have been due to Herrick's tensely strung imagination, which Christina's message of the night before still mercilessly played upon. From that source no drop of further information had fallen through Tantalus on to the parched tongue of Herrick's nor of Wheeler's nor of the Law's desire.

That afternoon Herrick had seen Stanley off from the station where not six weeks ago they had met as strangers. And so little was Fate's veil lifted for him, even now, that he had no forewarning of when next, nor why, he should be there again!--Stanley had, however, told him Ten Euyck's latest news--how it was to the table d'hote the Italians had conveyed their liberated prisoner from the Tombs!

The boy looked at his friend a little suspiciously even while he repeated Ten Euyck's chagrin: "That's a hideously shameful thing to happen to me! It's the annoyance of a blind, stupid, brutal reproof--when I've worked so hard and suffered so much! Here, in my own district--Under my own hand--!" There are no unalloyed elations in this world! Nor did there seem any doubt in Ten Euyck's mind that this was the long-sought-for secret place, where they should find a printing-press. But he forebore to raid it until evening, when all possible birds should have returned to the nest, and contented himself with the sending of his disguised operatives peacefully to fetch from it Will Denny, before whose coming Stanley had fled the police station.

That young gentleman had also gathered from Wheeler's thunderstorm of oaths that Christina's manager considered himself under surveillance.

And this had made Herrick wonder if the same were not true of himself.

On account of his momentarily expected cablegram it was a crus.h.i.+ng suspicion. He spent an afternoon of aloof and goaded wandering, and at last, s.h.i.+elded as he hoped by the darkness and by the company of a whole group of entering diners, yielded to the temptation of the table d'hote.

He could not doubt it was encompa.s.sed by spies; he could not but attend the seizure, the crisis, the outcome. Here, more than anywhere, were the lines converging; here, for to-night, was the center of the web. He said to himself, then, in his ignorance, that nothing mortal should induce him to forsake it.

Under the sail-cloth there was no longer any room; but, within doors, save for a couple of men at a distant table, Herrick was quite alone.

There was no change in the deportment of the place, no disturbance. The Italian proprietress, in her comings and goings, found time to reply that the old lady was still in the country but her prototype, the little gray parrot, which he had not seen for a long time, was climbing in and out of its cage and the angelic children still snuffled about the floor.

It was on these innocents that Herrick began as usual to practise his Italian when the proprietress had gone affably to see about his order, but if he thought one of them would lightly drop Christina's address he was mistaken. Smother-y as the place was, with that same looming sultriness of a week ago, agitated in its daily business, its pulse did not beat so hard as his, its imagination did not quiver, like the figures of a cinematograph, reviewing the movements of a motor-car that until yesterday had sped through mire and dust and blood, through sunrise and midnight, past the spread, astonished wings of the marble Hoover lions, past the smoking-ruins of a post-office, past Riley's where the shadow danced, after a will o' the wisp. There was no suggestion, here, which could lift that phantom light; the customers ordered, the little fat boy, next in age to Maria Rosa, leaned familiarly against his knee, the parrot continued to clamber over its cage, talking steadily, rapidly and monotonously to itself, and then Herrick said in surprise,

"Why, the bird's speaking Englis.h.!.+"

The parrot looked at him coldly, disinterred something which it had buried in its food-cup, gnawed on the treasure, and dropped it. The little fat boy picked it up and smiled at Herrick. Herrick said, "Let's see!" It was a silver ring, holding a bluish-green Egyptian scarab.

It seemed to Herrick that he had heard of such a ring before, and he tried to remember where. One of the men at the further table left and the other was buried in a foreign newspaper. Herrick got up and went over to the desk. That was English the bird was speaking. "No, no, no, no! I don't believe it. I don't beli--"

"Polly," said Herrick, "what are you talking about? And what do I know about this ring?"

The bird burst into a shriek of the unG.o.dly laughter of its kind, pecked the ring out of his hand, backed away with it, dropped it again; and then, out of a perfect stillness, with its little eyes fixed on his face it replied--