by Otto Penzler
I made an impatient gesture.
“But I do not intend to take this title,” I said. “I shall return to America, to my profession, and you shall go with me.”
She cried out in sharp protest:
“Oh, no.… England has desperate need of the sort of man you are, Robin. You are an Englishman; after all, you cannot abandon England. The curse of this land is an aristocracy that thinks only of amusing itself. It needs the energy, the vigor that men like you would bring to it. The law in America is not the narrow profession that it is in England. One goes to the head of affairs in it, in America, as you are going. One becomes there a directing intelligence of great affairs, a guiding factor in all the national events that enable a civilization to advance.”
She paused a moment; then she went on in the same dead, even voice:
“You are going to the head of affairs in America; but you must give it up. You must come back to England. You must take the position which this title will give you, and you must bring your energy and vigor of intellect to the aid of the land that needs you. And—and you must marry some one with a fortune.… Our dreams are ended, Robin.”
She stood up with a whimsical smile.
“Besides, there is the promise of the Blue Image—the promise to you, included with a threat against the dead man.”
And she repeated the strange words vaguely, as one repeats something in a distant memory:
“ ‘His right hand shall be his enemy. And the son of another shall sit in his seat. I will encourage his right hand to destroy him. And I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life. And they shall lean upon me. And I will enrich them, and guide their feet and strengthen their hearts. And they shall laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces.’ ”
She went on, a little quaver in her voice, hard-held, I thought, but with a courage that would not fail:
“You see, Robin, you are to sit in his seat, for you are the son of another. There is no common blood in the two branches of this house, as everybody knows. This line was the pretender, as your grandfather’s suit made clear. But it had the right of possession, and the conservative English law would not put it out.
“And so, Robin,” the hard-held voice went on, “you must get a rich wife, and ‘laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces.’ ”
I came over a step nearer to her.
“Joan,” I said, “this is all the veriest nonsense. I love you. Will you go with me to America?”
Her voice, when she replied, had returned to its vague, even note, to its quality of memory.
“You must sit in his seat,” she said. “It has been foretold in this strange affair.”
“Then,” I cried, “I shall sit in his seat with you.”
I laughed and went on: “I put the thing up to the Blue Image. If he wishes his prophecy carried out, let him see to it. If he enriches us, and guides our feet, and strengthens our hearts, then I will sit in the dead man’s seat, and we shall laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces. If the great God of the Mountain is able to do this, let him do it, and if he is not able to do it, then you will go with me to America. Shall we declare it is a bargain with him?”
I stooped over, took her hands and drew her gently to her feet. But before I got her into my arms, she cried out, and pointed to the beach, where the water was creeping slowly out.
There was something emerging from the sand, like the end of an iron rod. We went down to it. In the clear moonlight I was able at once to see what it was.
It was the heavy barrels of a rifle.
I drew it out of the sand. It was the double express that had disappeared on the afternoon of Bradmoor’s death.
A surge of interest in the mystery returned. One phase of it, at least, was explained; whoever had assassinated Bradmoor had thrown the gun into the sea, and it had washed ashore here. We took it back with us to the lodge in a breathless interest, for we had a clew to this mystery; and incoherent explanations began to present themselves.
We took it into the dining room, and put it down on the great table. We lighted the candles, and sat down to examine it. It was rusted from the sea water. It was difficult to work the mechanism of the rifle in order to throw open the breech; and we searched among the articles brought into the cottage for oil, and implements to clean the barrels, and a screw driver. I had to take the rifle apart in order to find if it was loaded. The double barrels contained two cartridges, I found: one of them had been fired; the other remained loaded.
It was a heavy gun, with a big, hard rubber butt plate like that to be found on the modern shotgun. I made a discovery when I took the weapon apart:
The catch on the triggers had been filed.
Now, as a matter of fact, the pull on these heavy rifles is usually some ten pounds; but the catch on the triggers on this rifle had been filed until they were practically hair-triggers.
This rifle could be fired with the slightest touch on the triggers.
This seemed incomprehensible to me. A rifle like this with a hair-trigger would be an impracticable and dangerous weapon. No big game hunter would have ever thought of so filing the triggers. It must have been done with a deliberate intention—for some particular reason.
It was clear that this was the weapon with which the old Duke had been killed, for one barrel had been discharged. It was, therefore, more than probable—it was, in fact, certain—that the rifle had been made thus to fire at a touch, for the express purpose of this tragedy.
But who could have wished it to fire at a touch?
Who filed it, and for what definite purpose? I put the rifle together again, and we stood beside it where it lay across the table, the butt toward the stone fireplace. We were both aflame with the possibilities of this discovery. I winged out on the first suggestion that came into my mind.
The triggers had been thus filed for a phantom finger, a finger with no power of this world in the crook of it; and the threat of that old forgotten god—on his bench of rose-colored stone—cut in the wedge writing of the Sumerian priests, came up before me.
We could dismiss ancient religion with a gesture. These sinister gods were impotent images. How could they influence events? But after all, when we looked at the matter fairly, how did we know? The sacred books of every religion in the world were crowded with examples—especially the sacred books of the Jews, upon which our modern religions were all basically founded. What sinister power over events had the magicians of Pharaoh, the witch of Endor, the dead prophets of Yahveh!
And I could see this hideous idol of blue ivory moving about the doomed man, invisibly.
But I could not see it as Lord Dunn imagined, stumping heavily down from its seat of rose-colored stone to destroy the man who had outraged its dignity and looted it of its treasure. It seemed a nimble, insidious thing like that Devil’s imp around which the butler’s mother had built up her fantastic theory. I could see an avenging agent, of this sinister image, like that. Taking the doomed man at the moment of his unconcern—with a trigger filed to its phantom finger—and then slipping through that narrow slit in the wall to leap off into the sea, casting away the rifle as it descended!
And then the accident happened that unlocked the mystery of Bradmoor’s death, like a key turned in the lock of a closed door.
So many involved suggestions were moving in my mind, that, I fancy, I failed to remember the change that had been made in the mechanism of the rifle, and I no longer thought about it. The old established knowledge of such weapons must have taken the place of what I had just discovered, for in resting my hand on the table beside the rifle, I touched one of the triggers with my finger.
I had forgotten that the opening of the breech had thrown back the hammers.
There was an explosion. The big lead bullet flattened against the stone of the opposite wall, and the gun leaped back from the table, the butt striking the stone corner of the chimney.
Joan cried out, and I stood for a momen
t astonished.
Then I realized another thing that threw a ray of light into this mystery. The heavy recoil of this gun would carry it backward; and it carried it backward with enough violence to cause it to be thrown entirely off the table.
It was Joan who caught the meaning of this thing.
“Did you see that?” she cried. “How it leaped back of itself, without being touched?”
“Yes,” I said. “These rifles all have a heavy recoil. They are apt to bruise the shoulder unless they are tightly held.”
“But it leaped back,” she cried. “It leaped back of itself!”
Then she came around the table to me.
“If that rifle had been lying in the narrow slit of the window, it would have leaped out into the sea—it would have leaped out of itself!”
She took hold of my arm.
“Think about it! What does it mean? What does it mean that the gun has been made to fire with a touch?”
What did it mean?
I began to think madly along the line her suggestion indicated—the gun in the loophole—in the slit in the window: it would leap out into the sea when it was fired—and it would have leaped out, as she said, without being touched, without the assistance of any human agency!
I caught at the suggestion.
“That is true,” I said; “it would have leaped back out of the window of itself, without being touched by anybody.”
“After it was fired,” she said. “But it had to be fired first.… Now, what did it mean that the mechanism was so filed that a touch would fire it? And what touch fired it? Who was it that wished the rifle to disappear after it was fired?”
She went on, her eyes wide, her face white, the tips of her fingers straining against the edge of the table:
“Not an assassin, for he could have thrown the rifle into the sea; it must have been someone who could not have thrown it in. Who after the shot was fired had to depend on the recoil of the rifle itself to cause it to disappear?”
Again I winged out into fantastic regions.
That old sinister god at his work of vengeance would require a slighter materialization than I had imagined. The heavy double express would itself leap into the sea if it lay in the slit of the wall and the triggers were touched by a phantom finger. But it would require to be placed there and trained on the doomed man seated in his chair, concerned with the preparation of his fishing tackle.
How had the Blue Image managed it?
Granted that it could move invisibly about Bradmoor on that afternoon, could it also move this heavy weapon invisibly about? And if it could also do that, why require that the triggers should be filed for a phantom finger? If it, or its invisible agents, could thus handle the heavy double express, would a ten-pound pull disturb them?
But had they handled it? And a line of that sinister threat cut in the rose-colored stone returned to me:
“I will encourage his right hand to destroy him.”
The threat was not that this old, dread, mysterious, forgotten god would do the deed himself.
“His right hand shall be his enemy. I will encourage his right hand to destroy him.”
It was thus that the threat ran.
It was the doomed man’s own hand that the Blue Image would set about this deadly work. It was his own hand that should carry out all these material preparations.
And then I saw the answer to Joan’s query.
“Bradmoor!” I cried. “But how could he have fired the rifle?”
Joan looked at me a moment, her face tense in its abstraction.
“There was the fishing rod in his hand; he could—he could——”
And then I saw the whole thing as the old Duke had so carefully planned it.
He knew that the recoil of this heavy rifle would carry it out of this window into the sea after it was fired. He had filed the catch on the triggers until a touch would fire it; then he had placed the rifle carefully, adjusting its position so the bullet would strike him in the chest near the heart; and sitting down in the chair in the middle of the room, on that afternoon, he had touched the trigger with the end of the fishing rod. The great lead bullet had plowed its way into his chest; the gun had leaped into the sea; and Bradmoor’s body had crumpled in its chair—some flies in his left hand, and the fishing rod gripped in the fingers of his other hand.
And he had left behind him a mystery that no man could solve!
The splash that the old woman had heard, sitting in her cottage, was caused by the heavy double express descending into the water!
And then I remembered the penciled note that old Sir Godfrey Simon had handed to me, when, after the dinner, he had got into his motor:
“To-morrow,” he had said, “when your head is cool, read it.”
I brought it out of my pocket now, and tore it open. There were a few lines in a clear, fine hand like copperplate.
“Bradmoor killed himself, of course,” the note ran. “I don’t know how he did it, but in some clever way. They have all gone out like that—his grandfather, who left his death on the West Coast to look like an accident, and his father, who pretended to fall from the steeple of the chapel. There has always been a monomania of fear preceding the act. It is a common symptom. I said they were all under a curse. A streak of insanity is a curse. It is the worst form of curse, because it cannot be prayed off in a meeting-house.”
I read the note and put it down on the table before the girl. She moved her head slowly, her eyes wide, her face still in its tense abstraction.
“The Blue Image carried out his threat,” she murmured. “It was the dead man’s right hand that destroyed him; it was his right hand that was his enemy! How awful!”
But the Blue Image, as a directing factor in this tragedy, seemed all at once a remote, fantastic notion, like the devil theory of the old paralytic helpless in her chair.
Sir Godfrey Simon had been right—alone of all the theorists right. The curse on this family had extended itself to Bradmoor. Sir Godfrey had seen it on the way. He had marked the evidential signs of it, the monomania of fear that preceded it, and the care to give the act the distinguishing features of a criminal agent.
Bradmoor’s father and his grandfather had staged their self-directed act for accident, the tragedy of chance. But the old Duke had gone a step beyond them, and with a stroke of genius had put his exit beyond a conjecture of self-direction.
It was the cunning of the unbalanced mind in a moment of inspiration.
And it had sent the keenest intelligence of England to fantastic theories. Henry Marquis and his hard-headed experts had stopped against a wall; the countryside had gone full cry after a devil theory; and men like the Earl of Dunn, accustomed to the somber realities of life, had seen no solution except through the supernatural agency of a Dunsany god on his bench of rose-colored stone.
And yet how snugly the whole thing ran in the grooves of this fantastic theory!
It held, it enveloped the girl, beyond me. And how lovely, how desirable a thing she was! And the bargain with the god, struck in that mood of half humor, on the arc of sand, under the moon, before the sea, returned to me.
If there was any virtue in the legend cut in the wedge characters of the ancient Sumerian priests on the bench of rose-colored stone below that sinister image, let it now appear. If it was the moving factor in this affair, let it go on. If it had, as its threat ran, encouraged Bradmoor’s right hand to destroy him, let it carry out the remainder of that legend. And the words of it returned striding through my memory:
“His right hand shall be his enemy; and the son of another shall sit in his seat. I will encourage his right hand to destroy him. And I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life. And they shall lean upon me. And I will enrich them, and guide their feet and strengthen their hearts. And they shall laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces.”
The thing was like the pronouncement of a fate. And Bradmoor’s death awfully confirmed it.
But was that one fact merely a sinister coincidence—or would the thing go on? If it required faith, here was the faith of Joan, and here was the bargain I had struck.
But the beauty, the charm, the fascination of the girl overwhelmed me. She became in that moment above all things, in any world, desirable, and I said aloud what I had already determined in my heart:
“If the God of the Mountain is so great a god, then let him carry out the remainder of his prophecy, for I shall never give you up.”
For a moment there was utter silence. The girl looked about her vaguely, like one in a dream, like one expecting a visitation; and the beauty and the charm of her seemed to extend itself, to fill the empty places of the room.
Then suddenly something on the stones by the hearth came within the sweep of my eye. It looked like a red bead.
I went over and picked up the heavy double express from the hearth. The hard rubber butt plate, striking against the stone corner of the fireplace, had been broken to pieces, and a stream of rubies poured out.
The explanation was clear.
Slaggerman, when he had robbed Bradmoor in the desert, had unscrewed the butt plate, hollowed out the stock, and concealed the treasure in it.
As in a sort of dream I gathered up the handful of great gleaming rubies, and put them on the table.
Then I turned toward the girl, standing with her arms hanging, her lips parted, her eyes wide with wonder.
She came with a little cry into my arms.
“You shall sit in his seat,” she said. “The God of the Mountain has carried out his prophecy.”
I drew her in against my heart.
“But not all of it,” I said. “I hold him to the letter of that contract. ‘I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life.’ ”
But her face crimson with blushes was bedded into my shoulder, and her hand creeping up, covered my mouth.
THE MAN WHO LIKED TOYS
