by Sax Rohmer
“Good heavens! Then you mean —— —”
“I mean, Knox, that the man who occupied the supper room on the night before the tragedy — the dark man, tanned and bearded, with slightly oblique eyes — spent his time in filing through that bar — in short, in preparing a death trap!”
I was almost dumbfounded.
“But, Harley,” I said, “assuming that he knew his victim would be the next occupant of the room, how could he know —— — ?”
I stopped. Suddenly, as if a curtain had been raised, the details of what I now perceived to be a fiendishly cunning murder were revealed to me.
“According to his own account, Knox,” resumed Harley, “Major Ragstaff regularly passed along that street with military punctuality at the same hour every night. You may take it for granted that the murderer was well aware of this. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that he was. We must also take it for granted that the murderer knew of these little dinners for two which took place in the private room above the Cafe Dame every Wednesday — and sometimes on Friday. Around the figure of the methodical major — with his conspicuous white hat as a sort of focus — was built up one of the most ingenious schemes of murder with which I have ever come in contact. The victim literally killed himself.”
“But, Harley, the victim might have ignored the disturbance.”
“That is where I first detected the touch of genius, Knox. He recognized the voice of one of the combatants — or his companion did. Here we are.”
The cab drew up before the house in Hamilton Place. We alighted, and Harley pressed the bell. The same footman whom I had seen admit the woman opened the door.
“Is Lady Ireton at home?” asked Harley.
As he uttered the name I literally held my breath. We had come to the house of Major Ragstaff’s daughter, the Marchioness of Ireton, one of society’s most celebrated and beautiful hostesses! — the wife of a peer famed alike as sportsman, soldier, and scholar.
“I believe she is dining at home, sir,” said the man. “Shall I inquire?”
“Be good enough to do so,” replied Harley, and gave him a card. “Inform her that I wish to return to her a handbag which she lost a few days ago.”
The man ushered us into an anteroom opening off the lofty and rather gloomy hall, and as the door closed:
“Harley,” I said in a stage whisper, “am I to believe —— —”
“Can you doubt it?” returned Harley with a grim smile.
A few moments later we were shown into a charmingly intimate little boudoir in which Lady Ireton was waiting to receive us. She was a strikingly handsome brunette, but to-night her face, which normally, I think, possessed rich colouring, was almost pallid, and there was a hunted look in her dark eyes which made me wish to be anywhere rather than where I found myself. Without preamble she rose and addressed Harley:
“I fail to understand your message, sir,” she said, and I admired the imperious courage with which she faced him. “You say you have recovered a handbag which I had lost?”
Harley bowed, and from the pocket of his greatcoat took out a silken-tasselled bag.
“The one which you left in the Cafe Dame, Lady Ireton,” he replied. “Here also I have” — from another pocket he drew out a diamond ring— “something which was extorted from you by the fellow Meyer.”
Without touching her recovered property, Lady Ireton sank slowly down into the chair from which she had arisen, her gaze fixed as if hypnotically upon the speaker.
“My friend, Mr. Knox, is aware of all the circumstances,” continued the latter, “but he is as anxious as I am to terminate this painful interview. I surmise that what occurred on Wednesday night was this — (correct me if I am wrong): While dining with Mr. De Lana you heard sounds of altercation in the street below. May I suggest that you recognized one of the voices?”
Lady Ireton, still staring straight before her at Harley, inclined her head in assent.
“I heard my father’s voice,” she said hoarsely.
“Quite so,” he continued. “I am aware that Major Ragstaff is your father.” He turned to me: “Do you recognize the touch of genius at last?” Then, again addressing Lady Ireton: “You naturally suggested to your companion that he should look out of the window in order to learn what was taking place. The next thing you knew was that he had fallen into the street below?”
Lady Ireton shuddered and raised her hands to her face.
“It is retribution,” she whispered. “I have brought this ruin upon myself. But he does not deserve —— —”
Her voice faded into silence, and:
“You refer to your husband, Lord Ireton?” said Harley.
Lady Ireton nodded, and again recovering power of speech:
“It was to have been our last meeting,” she said, looking up at Harley.
She shuddered, and her eyes blazed into sudden fierceness. Then, clenching her hands, she looked aside.
“Oh, God, the shame of this hour!” she whispered.
And I would have given much to have been spared the spectacle of this proud, erring woman’s humiliation. But Paul Harley was scientifically remorseless. I could detect no pity in his glance.
“I would give my life willingly to spare my husband the knowledge of what has been,” said Lady Ireton in a low, monotonous voice. “Three times I sent my maid to Meyer to recover my bag, but he demanded a price which even I could not pay. Now it is all discovered, and Harry will know.”
“That, I fear, is unavoidable, Lady Ireton,” declared Harley. “May I ask where Lord Ireton is at present?”
“He is in Africa after big game.”
“H’m,” said Harley, “in Africa, and after big game? I can offer you one consolation, Lady Ireton. In his own interests Meyer will stick to his first assertion that Mr. De Lana was dining alone.”
A strange, horribly pathetic look came into the woman’s haunted eyes.
“You — you — are not acting for —— — ?” she began.
“I am acting for no one,” replied Harley tersely. “Upon my friend’s discretion you may rely as upon my own.”
“Then why should he ever know?” she whispered.
“Why, indeed,” murmured Harley, “since he is in Africa?”
As we descended the stair to the hall my friend paused and pointed to a life-sized oil painting by London’s most fashionable portrait painter. It was that of a man in the uniform of a Guards officer, a dark man, slightly gray at the temples, his face very tanned as if by exposure to the sun.
“Having had no occasion for disguise when the portrait was painted,” said Harley, “Lord Ireton appears here without the beard; and as he is not represented smiling one cannot see the gold tooth. But the painter, if anything, has accentuated the slanting eyes. You see, the fourth marquis — the present Lord Ireton’s father — married one of the world-famous Yen Sun girls, daughters of the mandarin of that name by an Irish wife. Hence, the eyes. And hence —— —”
“But, Harley — it was murder!”
“Not within the meaning of the law, Knox. It was a recrudescence of Chinese humour! Lord Ireton is officially in Africa (and he went actually after ‘big game’). The counsel is not born who could secure a conviction. We are somewhat late, but shall therefore have less difficulty in finding a table at Prince’s.”
TCHERIAPIN
I
THE ROSE
“Examine it closely,” said the man in the unusual caped overcoat. “It will repay examination.”
I held the little object in the palm of my hand, bending forward over the marble-topped table and looking down at it with deep curiosity. The babel of tongues so characteristic of Malay Jack’s, and that mingled odour of stale spirits, greasy humanity, tobacco, cheap perfume, and opium, which distinguish the establishment faded from my ken. A sense of loneliness came to me.
Perhaps I should say that it became complete. I had grown conscious of its approach at the very moment that the cadaverous white-hai
red man had addressed me. There was a quality in his steadfast gaze and in his oddly pitched deep voice which from the first had wrapped me about — as though he were cloaking me in his queer personality and withdrawing me from the common plane.
Having stared for some moments at the object in my palm, I touched it gingerly; whereupon my acquaintance laughed — a short bass laugh.
“It looks fragile,” he said. “But have no fear. It is nearly as hard as a diamond.”
Thus encouraged, I took the thing up between finger and thumb, and held it before my eyes. For long enough I looked at it, and looking, my wonder grew. I thought that here was the most wonderful example of the lapidary’s art which I had ever met with, east or west.
It was a tiny pink rose, no larger than the nail of my little finger. Stalk and leaves were there, and golden pollen lay in its delicate heart. Each fairy-petal blushed with June fire; the frail leaves were exquisitely green. Withal it was as hard and unbendable as a thing of steel.
“Allow me,” said the masterful voice.
A powerful lens was passed by my acquaintance. I regarded the rose through the glass, and thereupon I knew, beyond doubt, that there was something phenomenal about the gem — if gem it were. I could plainly trace the veins and texture of every petal.
I suppose I looked somewhat startled. Although, baldly stated, the fact may not seem calculated to affright, in reality there was something so weird about this unnatural bloom that I dropped it on the table. As I did so I uttered an exclamation; for in spite of the stranger’s assurances on the point, I had by no means overcome my idea of the thing’s fragility.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, meeting my startled gaze. “It would need a steam-hammer to do any serious damage.”
He replaced the jewel in his pocket, and when I returned the lens to him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by the same means as the notorious Indian rope trick.
Then, looking around me at the cosmopolitan groups surrounding the many tables, and catching snatches of conversations dealing with subjects so diverse as the quality of whisky in Singapore, the frail beauty of Chinese maidens, and the ways of “bloody greasers,” common sense reasserted itself.
I looked into the gray face of my acquaintance.
“I cannot believe,” I said slowly, “that human ingenuity could so closely duplicate the handiwork of nature. Surely the gem is unique? — possibly one of those magical talismans of which we read in Eastern stories?”
My companion smiled.
“It is not a gem,” he replied, “and while in a sense it is a product of human ingenuity, it is also the handiwork of nature.”
I was badly puzzled, and doubtless revealed the fact, for the stranger laughed in his short fashion, and:
“I am not trying to mystify you,” he assured me. “But the truth is so hard to believe sometimes that in the present case I hesitate to divulge it. Did you ever meet Tcheriapin?”
This abrupt change of topic somewhat startled me, but nevertheless:
“I once heard him play,” I replied. “Why do you ask the question?”
“For this reason: Tcheriapin possessed the only other example of this art which so far as I am aware ever left the laboratory of the inventor. He occasionally wore it in his buttonhole.”
“It is then a manufactured product of some sort?”
“As I have said, in a sense it is; but” — he drew the tiny exquisite ornament from his pocket again and held it up before me— “it is a natural bloom.”
“What!”
“It is a natural bloom,” replied my acquaintance, fixing his penetrating gaze upon me. “By a perfectly simple process invented by the cleverest chemist of his age it had been reduced to this gem-like state while retaining unimpaired every one of its natural beauties, every shade of its natural colour. You are incredulous?”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “having examined it through a magnifying glass I had already assured myself that no human hand had fashioned it. You arouse my curiosity intensely. Such a process, with its endless possibilities, should be worth a fortune to the inventor.”
The stranger nodded grimly and again concealed the rose in his pocket.
“You are right,” he said; “and the secret died with the man who discovered it — in the great explosion at the Vortex Works in 1917. You recall it? The T.N.T. factory? It shook all London, and fragments were cast into three counties.”
“I recall it perfectly well.”
“You remember also the death of Dr. Kreener, the chief chemist? He died in an endeavour to save some of the workpeople.”
“I remember.”
“He was the inventor of the process, but it was never put upon the market. He was a singular man, sir; as was once said of him— ‘A Don Juan of science.’ Dame Nature gave him her heart unwooed. He trifled with science as some men trifle with love, tossing aside with a smile discoveries which would have made another famous. This” — tapping his breast pocket— “was one of them.”
“You astound me. Do I understand you to mean that Dr. Kreener had invented a process for reducing any form of plant life to this condition?”
“Almost any form,” was the guarded reply. “And some forms of animal life.”
“What!”
“If you like” — the stranger leaned forward and grasped my arm— “I will tell you the story of Dr. Kreener’s last experiment.”
I was now intensely interested. I had not forgotten the heroic death of the man concerning whose work this chance acquaintance of mine seemed to know so much. And in the cadaverous face of the stranger as he sat there regarding me fixedly there was a promise and an allurement. I stood on the verge of strange things; so that, looking into the deep-set eyes, once again I felt the cloak being drawn about me, and I resigned myself willingly to the illusion.
From the moment when he began to speak again until that when I rose and followed him from Malay Jack’s, as I shall presently relate, I became oblivious of my surroundings. I lived and moved through those last fevered hours in the lives of Dr. Kreener, Tcheriapin, the violinist, and that other tragic figure around whom the story centred. I append:
THE STRANGER’S STORY
I asked you (said the man in the caped coat) if you had ever seen Tcheriapin, and you replied that you had once heard him play. Having once heard him play you will not have forgotten him. At that time, although war still raged, all musical London was asking where he had come from and to what nation he belonged. Then when he disappeared it was variously reported, you will recall, that he had been shot as a spy and that he had escaped from England and was serving with the Austrian army. As to his parentage I can enlighten you in a measure. He was a Eurasian. His father was an aristocratic Chinaman, and his mother a Polish ballet-dancer — that was his parentage; but I would scarcely hesitate to affirm that he came from Hell; and I shall presently show you that he has certainly returned there.
You remember the strange stories current about him. The cunning ones said that he had a clever press agent. This was true enough. One of the most prominent agents in London discovered him playing in a Paris cabaret. Two months later he was playing at the Queen’s Hall, and musical London lay at his feet.
He had something of the personality of Paganini, as you remember, except that he was a smaller man; long, gaunt, yellowish hands and the face of a haggard Mephistopheles. The critics quarrelled about him, as critics only quarrel about real genius, and while one school proclaimed that Tcheriapin had discovered an entirely new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another school was equally positive in declaring that he could not play at all, that he was a mountebank, a trickster, whose proper place was in a variety theatre.
There were stories, too, that were never published — not only about Tcheriapin, but concerning the Strad, upon which he played. If all this atmosphere of mystery which surrounded the man had truly been the work of a press agent, then the agent must have been as great a genius as his client. But I can assure you that the stories concerning Tcheriapin, true and absurd alike, were not inspired for business purposes; they grew up around him like fungi.
I can see him now, a lean, almost emaciated figure with slow, sinuous movements and a trick of glancing sideways with those dark, unfathomable, slightly oblique eyes. He could take up his bow in such a way as to create an atmosphere of electrical suspense.
He was loathsome, yet fascinating. One’s mental attitude toward him was one of defence, of being tensely on guard. Then he would play.
You have heard him play, and it is therefore unnecessary for me to attempt to describe the effect of that music. The only composition which ever bore his name — I refer to “The Black Mass” — affected me on every occasion when I heard it, as no other composition has ever done.
Perhaps it was Tcheriapin’s playing rather than the music itself which reached down into hitherto un-plumbed depths within me and awakened dark things which, unsuspected, lay there sleeping. I never heard “The Black Mass” played by anyone else; indeed, I am not aware that it was ever published. But had it been we should rarely hear it. Like Locke’s music to “Macbeth” it bears an unpleasant reputation; to include it in any concert programme would be to court disaster. An idle superstition, perhaps, but there is much naivete in the artistic temperament.
Men detested Tcheriapin, yet when he chose he could win over his bitterest enemies. Women followed him as children followed the Pied Piper; he courted none, but was courted by all. He would glance aside with those black, slanting eyes, shrug in his insolent fashion, and turn away. And they would follow. God knows how many of them followed — whether through the dens of Limehouse or the more fashionable salons of vice in the West End — they followed — perhaps down to Hell. So much for Tcheriapin.
