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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10709 ***
+
+PRINCE ZALESKI
+
+M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel
+
+_Come now, and let us reason together._
+  ISAIAH
+
+_Of the strange things that befell the valiant Knight in the Sable
+Mountain;  and how he imitated the penance of Beltenebros._
+  CERVANTES
+
+[Greek: All'est'ekeino panta lekta, panta de tolmaeta;]
+  SOPHOCLES
+
+1895
+
+TO
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Race of Orven
+
+The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks
+
+The S.S.
+
+
+
+THE RACE OF ORVEN
+
+Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
+Zaleski--victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
+fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
+native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
+the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
+passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
+more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
+been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.
+
+But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
+exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
+repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
+attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
+mistrust of the _dénoûment_ of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
+hermitage.
+
+I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
+palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
+approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
+the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
+deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
+finally put up my _calèche_ in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
+chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
+behind the domain.
+
+As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
+not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
+select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
+regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
+much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
+the manner of a Roman _atrium_, and from the oblong pool of turgid
+water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
+squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
+corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
+through a mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length
+of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
+uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
+_ricochets_ to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
+emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
+vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.
+
+After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
+near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
+of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
+lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
+silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
+One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
+Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
+the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
+visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
+to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.
+
+The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
+the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
+_lampas_ of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
+certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
+me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
+light, and the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the
+_bhang_ of the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be the habit of my
+friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
+heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
+Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound amateur--as
+well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
+the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
+the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
+Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
+The general effect was a _bizarrerie_ of half-weird sheen and gloom.
+Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
+miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
+leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
+gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
+in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
+epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
+vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
+invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
+draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
+stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
+trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
+which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
+hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.
+
+Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
+Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
+time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
+my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
+adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
+delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
+Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
+pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling _hashish_,
+prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
+breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
+partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
+Turkish _beneesh_, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
+first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
+and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
+features.
+
+'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.
+
+'I have met him in "the world." His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
+at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
+I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
+peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour--a
+strong likeness between father and son.'
+
+I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
+as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.
+
+'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
+Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
+also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
+author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
+eminence in the _corps diplomatique_, and lately (though, strictly
+speaking, _unebenbürtig_) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
+Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-üppigen, a lady with a strain of
+indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
+a very old and distinguished one, though--especially in modern
+days--far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
+become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
+immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
+reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
+simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
+_en bloc_. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
+that you have not already read it in the papers.'
+
+'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
+thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'
+
+'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
+of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
+years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
+with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
+exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
+father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
+India. Considered as the first step in the _rapprochement_ of this
+proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
+message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
+official; it ran:
+
+'"_Return. The beginning of the end is come._" Whereupon Randolph did
+return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
+Lord Pharanx was dead.'
+
+'_Murdered_?'
+
+A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
+Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
+an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
+this feeling, for he said at once:
+
+'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
+might even have foretold it, years ago.'
+
+'Foretold--what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'
+
+'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed--tell
+me all the facts you know.'
+
+Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
+I continued the narrative.
+
+'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
+without cordiality, without affection--a shaking of hands across a
+barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
+metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
+interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
+observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
+father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
+an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
+sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
+the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
+of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
+low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
+It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
+of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
+migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
+part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
+of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
+fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
+boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
+noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
+master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
+kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
+occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
+doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
+them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
+and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
+and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
+to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
+that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now--possibly
+owing to the sedentary life he led--became fastidious, insisting on
+_recherché_ bits. I mention all these details to you--as I shall
+mention others--not because they have the least connection with the
+tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
+and you have requested me to state all I know.'
+
+'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of _ennui_, 'you are right. I may
+as well hear the whole--if I must hear a part.'
+
+'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
+day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
+still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
+he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
+are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
+most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
+past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
+this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
+himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
+candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
+is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings--reported in
+local papers--at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
+laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
+Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
+condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
+class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
+round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
+proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'
+
+'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
+to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
+elementary botany? _Why_ mechanics?'
+
+This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
+was pleased, but answered:
+
+'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
+vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
+young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
+come to a new character in the drama--the chief character of all. One
+day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
+owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
+approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
+eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
+showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
+manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
+distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
+Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
+past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
+the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
+the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
+vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
+that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
+called Lee.
+
+'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
+the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
+admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
+of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
+returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
+private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
+one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
+seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
+word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
+jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
+opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
+again.
+
+'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
+asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
+persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
+bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
+The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
+meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
+Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
+unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
+that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
+in the new political convert. The _rendezvous_--always held under cover
+of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
+Hester--sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
+would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
+ceased.'
+
+'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
+this unearthed letter of Randolph's--what was in it?'
+
+I read as follows:
+
+'"Dear Mdlle. Cibras,--I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
+my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
+only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
+unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
+your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
+precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
+will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point--within, say, three or
+four days--of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
+appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
+_centime_ under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
+something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
+implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
+bounds of reason.
+
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"RANDOLPH."'
+
+'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
+candour. But the _facts_--were they true? _Did_ the earl make a new
+will in the time specified?'
+
+'No,--but that may have been because his death intervened.'
+
+'And in the old will, _was_ Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'
+
+'Yes,--that at least was correct.'
+
+A shadow of pain passed over his face.
+
+'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
+England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
+letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
+The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
+room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
+introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
+by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
+his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
+arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
+protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
+recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
+man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
+evidence being heard. On the next day--the 7th--Hester, entering the
+room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
+(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
+fire), that Lord Pharanx has been "drinking heavily."
+
+'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
+see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
+hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
+note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
+follows:
+
+'"Maude Cibras.--You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
+south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
+through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
+nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
+from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
+false. Destroy this note. PHARANX."'
+
+As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
+countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
+fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
+expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal _inquisitiveness_
+--an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
+His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central _puncta_
+of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
+gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
+Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics--his fingers
+livid with the fixity of his grip--he bent on it that strenuous
+inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
+mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
+other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
+victory.
+
+When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
+my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.
+
+'Tell me--the end,' he said.
+
+'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
+failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
+she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
+for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
+too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
+returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
+Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
+Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
+gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
+informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
+leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
+this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
+scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
+brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph--who was
+present at the time--further drew her attention to these by telling her
+that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
+the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
+this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
+about the estate.
+
+'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
+except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
+his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
+giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
+document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
+servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
+Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
+found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
+account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
+view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
+the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
+by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
+clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
+collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
+o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.
+
+'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
+The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
+ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
+of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett--for Hester has
+somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
+takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
+Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
+over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
+hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
+gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
+casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
+frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
+in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
+flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
+forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
+moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
+on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
+Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
+consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
+of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
+nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
+strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
+good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
+ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
+sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
+reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
+rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
+prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
+she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
+is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.
+
+'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
+woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
+shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
+his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
+his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
+gasp: "Did you hear something--from below?" They answer "yes" in
+chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
+troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
+news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
+for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
+light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
+obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
+Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
+Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
+nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
+woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
+out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
+a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
+first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
+labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
+how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
+as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
+their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
+now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
+to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
+this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
+hears him murmur the words, "My God, what can have happened now?" His
+horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
+trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
+phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
+agonised moan, "My God!" and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
+the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
+wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
+does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
+window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
+but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
+large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
+missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
+lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
+a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
+trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
+means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
+placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
+secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
+horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
+sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
+out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
+so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.
+
+'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
+death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
+returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
+pronounce their verdict of "guilty." But she denied shooting Lord
+Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
+no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
+points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
+tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
+of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
+The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
+propounded. But no theory explained _all_ the points. The ferment,
+however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
+on the gallows.'
+
+Thus I ended my narrative.
+
+Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
+Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
+proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the _Lakmé_ of
+Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
+his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
+and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
+up to an ivory _escritoire_, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
+and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
+with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.
+
+'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
+word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
+the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
+confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
+yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you--you do
+not get a clean _coup d'oeil_ of the whole regiment of facts, and their
+causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
+that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
+is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
+making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
+punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
+occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
+does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
+this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
+mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
+be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
+merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
+world at large--shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
+not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
+attainment in general, as _mood_ in particular. Whether or when such
+mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
+often think that when the era of civilisation begins--as assuredly it
+shall some day begin--when the races of the world cease to be
+credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
+the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a _clairvoyant_ culture.
+But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
+man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
+presence. In individuals, yes--in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
+English Milton and Bishop Berkeley--but in humanity, never; and hardly
+in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
+not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
+concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
+conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
+requisite to a _régime_ of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
+of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
+person--he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if
+that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
+novelty--once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
+on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
+civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
+certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
+his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
+hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
+general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
+Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
+of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
+part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
+it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
+profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
+anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
+together--to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
+triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
+defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,"
+should surely at this hour be _too_ primitive--_too_ Opic--to bring
+anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
+very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
+in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: _idéa_]
+which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed--far,
+perhaps, by ages and aeons--from becoming part of the general
+conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
+ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
+intricate one of living _together: à propos_ of which your body
+corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
+fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
+really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile _you_ and _I_ are handicapped.
+The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
+air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
+can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
+invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
+the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
+shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
+with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the
+alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
+into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
+ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present--_a
+horrid strain_! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
+may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
+know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
+gravity, gravity--chiefest curse of Eden's sin!--is hostile. When
+indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
+orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
+Icarian "organa" in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
+which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
+not Goethe who assures us that "further reacheth no man, make he what
+stretching he will"? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
+absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
+Paris is _far_ from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
+Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
+ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
+if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
+many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
+we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
+root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
+the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not _quite_ right--as,
+indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I _know_
+whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know--as clearly, as
+precisely, as a man can know--that Beatrice Cenci was not "guilty" as
+certain recently-discovered documents "prove" her, but that the Shelley
+version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It _is_
+possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit--or say a hand, or a
+dactyl--to your stature; you may develop powers slightly--very
+slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree--in advance of those
+of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
+live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
+mass--when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
+Cultured Mood has at length arrived--that their exercise will become
+easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
+presciences, prisms, _séances_, what introspective craft, Genie
+apocalypses, shall not _then_ become possible to the few who stand
+spiritually in the van of men.
+
+'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
+myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
+the very little puzzle you have placed before me--one which we
+certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
+at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
+the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
+Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
+enemies; he is the _fiancé_ of a princess whose husband he is probably
+too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
+father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
+hand, we--you and I--know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
+moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
+world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
+assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
+that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
+could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
+murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
+motives--strong, adequate, irresistible--and by "irresistible" I mean a
+motive which must be _far_ stronger than even the love of life
+itself--we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.
+
+'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
+contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
+not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
+her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
+guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of _Théâtre des
+Variétés_ type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
+some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
+However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras--a violent woman, a woman of
+lawless passions--assuring her that in four or five days she will be
+excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
+plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
+sequence--though, of course, the _intention_ to produce by his words
+the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
+of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
+produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
+opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
+Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
+tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
+favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
+intention on the part of the earl, we _may_ make the same presumption
+in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
+letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
+double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
+impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
+exact _locale_ of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
+mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
+the district. Can it be possible that Randolph _had told her_? And here
+again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
+told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
+absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
+further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
+actions are in themselves _outré_, suspicious, they are rendered, not
+less _outré_, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
+himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
+that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
+himself: "Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
+father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
+order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
+attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
+being discovered _en flagrant délit_, will escape every shadow of
+suspicion." But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
+made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative--for he
+leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
+with the letter to Cibras on the 8th--Randolph despatches it, but the
+earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
+the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
+suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
+Randolph--finding now that Cibras has "left the country," that, in
+fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him--could
+he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
+of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
+abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
+lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
+burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
+of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
+our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who "_chose_" to gather the
+jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
+attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
+little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
+surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
+the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
+elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the _class_.
+Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of _that_ seem natural.
+But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
+the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
+quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
+that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
+a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
+clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
+of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
+uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
+have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
+mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
+but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
+the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
+room just overhead, caused by his preparation for "a journey to
+London." But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
+master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
+Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
+significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?
+
+'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
+Randolph was guilty of something--some evil intention--though of
+precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
+would pause: he would reflect that _as_ the father was implicated in
+those acts, and _as_ he was innocent of any such intention, so might
+possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
+of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
+imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
+by evil intention on the part of Randolph--one act in which his father
+certainly did _not_ participate--what follows next? Why, that we revert
+at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that _all_ the
+other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
+and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
+conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share _might_
+have sprung from a like motive in _his_ mind also; nor should the mere
+obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
+least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
+against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
+pass on.
+
+'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
+deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
+sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
+murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
+ceased--how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
+becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
+round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
+track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
+and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
+and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were _half
+obliterated by the snow_. Two things then are clear: that the persons
+who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
+different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
+your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
+"burglars." But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
+tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
+first--the woman's--the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
+second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
+points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
+examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
+when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
+"My God! what has happened _now_?" But why "now"? The word cannot refer
+to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
+heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
+destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have _expected_ to find the
+window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
+who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
+therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
+to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
+hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
+glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
+That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
+the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
+Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit--if there
+was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; _they_ did
+not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
+after the snow has ceased to fall,--that is, after, long after, they
+have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
+their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
+then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
+of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
+night.'
+
+'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow--the
+neckerchief!'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
+the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
+mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
+refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
+a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
+inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
+Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
+should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
+the improbable. The jewels had been _put_ there with the object of
+throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
+catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
+open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
+this was deliberately done by some one--would it be rash to say at once
+by whom?
+
+'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
+begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
+statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
+that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
+at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
+humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
+woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
+believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
+deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
+reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
+being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
+intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
+satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
+fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
+their curiosity of what _is_. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
+whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
+is to _peep_. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
+their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
+history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
+this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
+true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
+one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
+surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
+white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
+taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
+How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
+be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic condition) the
+result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
+nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
+accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
+acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
+have been light in the room--a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
+to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
+proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
+alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
+the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
+from the room above--from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
+one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
+room. It _must_ be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
+driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
+that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
+"driven" upward disappears. We at once ask, why not _drawn_ upward
+through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
+visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
+established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
+is it unreasonable--even without further evidence--to suspect another
+in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
+rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
+her leg. Had she fallen _over_ some object, as you supposed, the result
+might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
+being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
+inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
+But this gives us an approximate idea of the _size_ of the lower hole;
+it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
+therefore to admit that "good-sized ball of cotton" of which the woman
+speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
+upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
+evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
+must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
+seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
+which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
+replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
+removal of which had caused so much commotion in Randolph's room on the
+fatal day. Hester Dyett would have been able to notice and bring at
+least one of the apertures forward in evidence, but she fainted before
+she had time to find out the cause of her fall, and an hour later it
+was, you remember, Randolph himself who bore her from the room. But
+should not the aperture in the top floor have been observed by the
+class? Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open space in the middle
+of the room. But it was not observed, and therefore its position was
+not there, but in the only other place left--behind the apparatus used
+in demonstration. That then was _one_ useful object which the
+apparatus--and with it the elaborate hypocrisy of class, and speeches,
+and candidature--served: it was made to act as a curtain, a screen. But
+had it no other purpose? That question we may answer when we know its
+name and its nature. And it is not beyond our powers to conjecture this
+with something like certainty. For the only "machines" possible to use
+in illustration of simple mechanics are the screw, the wedge, the
+scale, the lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's machine. The
+mathematical principles which any of these exemplify would, of course,
+be incomprehensible to such a class, but the first five most of all,
+and as there would naturally be some slight pretence of trying to make
+the learners understand, I therefore select the last; and this
+selection is justified when we remember that on the shot being heard,
+Randolph leans for support on the "machine," and stands in its shadow;
+but any of the others would be too small to throw any appreciable
+shadow, except one--the wheel, and-axle--and that one would hardly
+afford support to a tall man in the erect position. The Atwood's
+machine is therefore forced on us; as to its construction, it is, as
+you are aware, composed of two upright posts, with a cross-bar fitted
+with pulleys and strings, and is intended to show the motion of bodies
+acting under a constant force--the force of gravity, to wit. But now
+consider all the really glorious uses to which those same pulleys may
+be turned in lowering and lifting unobserved that "ball of cotton"
+through the two apertures, while the other strings with the weights
+attached are dangling before the dull eyes of the peasants. I need only
+point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
+was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
+why.
+
+'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
+shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
+for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
+have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
+expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
+also discover the _means_ by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
+that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
+Cibras--for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
+neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
+the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
+establish a substantial, an irrefutable _alibi_ for himself by going to
+Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
+the deed--that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
+fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
+_alibi_ is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
+witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
+so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been. Why
+then, expecting the death, did he not take some such journey? Obviously
+because on _this_ occasion his personal presence was necessary. When,
+_in conjunction_ with this, we recall the fact that during the
+intrigues with Cibras the lectures were discontinued, and again resumed
+immediately on her unlooked-for departure, we arrive at the conclusion
+that the means by which Lord Pharanx's death was expected to occur was
+the personal presence of Randolph _in conjunction_ with the political
+speeches, the candidature, the class, the apparatus.
+
+'But though he stands condemned of foreknowing, and being in some sort
+connected with, his father's death, I can nowhere find any indication
+of his having personally accomplished it, or even of his ever having
+had any such intention. The evidence is evidence of complicity--and
+nothing more. And yet--and yet--even of _this_ we began by acquitting
+him unless we could discover, as I said, some strong, adequate,
+altogether irresistible motive for such complicity. Failing this, we
+ought to admit that at some point our argument has played us false, and
+led us into conclusions wholly at variance with our certain knowledge
+of the principles underlying human conduct in general. Let us therefore
+seek for such a motive--something deeper than personal enmity, stronger
+than personal ambition, _than the love of life itself!_ And now, tell
+me, at the time of the occurrence of this mystery, was the whole past
+history of the House of Orven fully investigated?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge,' I answered; 'in the papers there were, of
+course, sketches of the earl's career, but that I think was all.'
+
+'Yet it cannot be that their past was unknown, but only that it was
+ignored. Long, I tell you, long and often, have I pondered on that
+history, and sought to trace with what ghastly secret has been pregnant
+the destiny, gloomful as Erebus and the murk of black-peplosed Nux,
+which for centuries has hung its pall over the men of this ill-fated
+house. Now at last I know. Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror is
+that history; down the silent corridors of the ages have these
+blood-soaked sons of Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing talons
+of the dread Eumenides. The first earl received his patent in 1535 from
+the eighth Henry. Two years later, though noted as a rabid "king's
+man," he joined the Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and was
+soon after executed, with Darcy and some other lords. His age was then
+fifty. His son, meantime, had served in the king's army under Norfolk.
+It is remarkable, by the way, that females have all along been rare in
+the family, and that in no instance has there been more than one son.
+The second earl, under the sixth Edward, suddenly threw up a civil
+post, hastened to the army, and fell at the age of forty at the battle
+of Pinkie in 1547. He was accompanied by his son. The third in 1557,
+under Mary, renounced the Catholic faith, to which, both before and
+since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
+forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
+in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
+_of the same day_ he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
+later on, in 1591, seen by _his_ son to fall from a lofty balcony at
+Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
+time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
+the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
+window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
+but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
+soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by _radix
+aconiti indica_, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
+except to _savants_, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
+An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
+House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
+now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
+suspicion, of course, fell on _him_.'
+
+As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
+with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
+this intimate knowledge of _all_ the great families of Europe! It was
+as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
+history of the Orvens.
+
+'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
+family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
+marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
+show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
+large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
+seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not
+design that the last Lord of Orven should any more hide from the world
+the guilty secret of his race. It was the will of the gods--and he
+betrayed himself. "Return," he writes, "the beginning of the end is
+come." What end?
+
+_The_ end--perfectly well known to Randolph, needing no explanation for
+_him_. The old, old end, which in the ancient dim time led the first
+lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king; and another, still
+devout, to renounce his cherished faith, and yet another to set fire to
+the home of his ancestors. You have called the two last scions of the
+family "a proud and selfish pair of beings"; proud they were, and
+selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
+personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
+in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
+selfishness of _race_. What consideration, think you, other than the
+weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
+shame--for as such he certainly regards it--of a conversion to
+radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have _died_ rather than make this
+pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it--and the reason? It
+is because he has received that awful summons from home; because "the
+end" is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
+meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming _too_ acute;
+because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
+house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
+endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
+able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
+intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
+malady which physicians call "_General Paralysis of the Insane_." You
+remember I took from your hands the newspaper containing the earl's
+letter to Cibras, in order to read it with my own eyes. I had my
+reasons, and I was justified. That letter contains three mistakes in
+spelling: "here" is printed "hear," "pass" appears as "pas," and "room"
+as "rume." Printers' errors, you say? But not so--one might be, two in
+that short paragraph could hardly be, three would be impossible. Search
+the whole paper through, and I think you will not find another. Let us
+reverence the theory of probabilities: the errors were the writer's,
+not the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have
+this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of
+middle age--the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died
+mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his
+race--the heritage of madness--is falling or fallen on him, he summons
+his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the
+tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down
+through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it
+is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without
+detection--and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is
+suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
+life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
+be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
+blossoms into a popular candidate.
+
+'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
+of Maude Cibras; he hopes that _she_ may be made to destroy the earl;
+but when she fails him, he recurs to it--recurs to it all suddenly, for
+Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
+eyes, could any eye see him--so much so that on the last day none of
+the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
+Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
+not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
+she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
+bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
+The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
+pistol, such as this'--here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
+weapon from a drawer near him--'that appeared in the gloom to the
+excited Hester as a "ball of cotton," while it was being drawn upward
+by the Atwood's machine. But if the earl shot himself he could not have
+done so after being stabbed to the heart. Maude Cibras, therefore,
+stabbed a dead man. She would, of course, have ample time for stealing
+into the room and doing so after the shot was fired, and before the
+party reached the balcony window, on account of the delay on the stairs
+in procuring a second light; in going to the earl's door; in examining
+the tracks, and so on. But having stabbed a dead man, she is not guilty
+of murder. The message I just now sent by Ham was one addressed to the
+Home Secretary, telling him on no account to let Cibras die to-morrow.
+He well knows my name, and will hardly be silly enough to suppose me
+capable of using words without meaning. It will be perfectly easy to
+prove my conclusions, for the pieces removed from, and replaced in, the
+floorings can still be detected, if looked for; the pistol is still, no
+doubt, in Randolph's room, and its bore can be compared with the bullet
+found in Lord Pharanx's brain; above all, the jewels stolen by the
+"burglars" are still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, and may
+readily be discovered I therefore expect that the dénoûment will now
+take a somewhat different turn.'
+
+That the dénoûment did take a different turn, and pretty strictly in
+accordance with Zaleski's forecast, is now matter of history, and the
+incidents, therefore, need no further comment from me in this place.
+
+
+
+
+THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS
+
+
+'Russia,' said Prince Zaleski to me one day, when I happened to be on a
+visit to him in his darksome sanctuary--'Russia may be regarded as land
+surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way,
+it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of _Britain_ as an island,
+unless indeed the word be understood as a mere _modus loquendi_ arising
+out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a
+small continent. Near her--a little to the south-east--is situated the
+large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing
+to these shores should commune within himself: "I now cross to the
+Mainland"; and retracing his steps: "I now return to the fragment rent
+by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country." And this I say not in
+the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in
+my mind merely the relative depth and extent--the _non-insularity_, in
+fact--of the impressions made by the several nations on the world. But
+this island of Europe has herself an island of her own: the name of it,
+Russia. She, of all lands, is the _terra incognita_, the unknown land;
+till quite lately she was more--she was the undiscovered, the
+unsuspected land. She _has_ a literature, you know, and a history, and
+a language, and a purpose--but of all this the world has hardly so much
+as heard. Indeed, she, and not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real
+Ultima Thule of modern times, the true Island of Mystery.'
+
+I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski here, not so much on account of
+the splendid tribute to my country contained in them, as because it
+ever seemed to me--and especially in connection with the incident I am
+about to recall--that in this respect at least he was a genuine son of
+Russia; if she is the Land, so truly was he the Man, of Mystery. I who
+knew him best alone knew that it was impossible to know him. He was a
+being little of the present: with one arm he embraced the whole past;
+the fingers of the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of the future. He
+seemed to me--I say it deliberately and with forethought--to possess
+the unparalleled power not merely of disentangling in retrospect, but
+of unravelling in prospect, and I have known him to relate _coming_
+events with unimaginable minuteness of precision. He was nothing if not
+superlative: his diatribes, now culminating in a very _extravaganza_ of
+hyperbole--now sailing with loose wing through the downy, witched,
+Dutch cloud-heaps of some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia of
+thought--now laying down law of the Medes for the actual world of
+to-day--had oft-times the strange effect of bringing back to my mind
+the very singular old-epic epithet, [Greek: aenemoen]--_airy_--as
+applied to human thought. The mere grip of his memory was not simply
+extraordinary, it had in it a token, a hint, of the strange, the
+pythic--nay, the sibylline. And as his reflecting intellect, moreover,
+had all the lightness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you could
+contrive to follow each dazzlingly swift successive step, by the sum of
+which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
+astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.
+
+I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
+and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
+from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
+agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
+distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
+had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
+a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
+incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
+condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
+book to the agent.
+
+A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
+prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
+absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
+profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
+was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
+assenting, I proceeded to do so.
+
+The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
+oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
+in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
+within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
+Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
+equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
+space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
+was lineally connected with--though, of course, not descendant
+from--that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
+convent, who wrote the now so celebrated _Jocelini Chronica_: and the
+chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
+time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
+inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:
+
+  'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,
+  Or shuld it chaunges dre,
+  The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'
+
+The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
+figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
+letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
+the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
+another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
+inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
+size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.
+
+Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
+remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
+Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
+in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
+research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
+their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
+years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
+Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
+acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give _verbatim_
+the extracts from his diary:
+
+'_June 11_.--This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
+the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
+it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
+Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly--seemed to have been looking forward to
+it--and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
+factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
+Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
+this was also my father's birthday; and _his_ father's; and repeated
+the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
+walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of _himself_
+sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
+pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.
+
+'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
+successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
+show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
+declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
+and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription "Has" meant. I
+informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.
+
+'_June l5_.--Some new element has entered into our existence here.
+Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
+and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
+hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain--a
+drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
+fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
+chosen child!
+
+'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_
+
+'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
+poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
+Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
+to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
+wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
+_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?
+
+'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
+with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
+had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
+shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
+else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
+crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
+viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
+has stolen my life. The stone is gone--gone, my precious gem. A
+weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
+marble floor.
+
+'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
+shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?
+
+'_June 20_.--Ah, Ul-Jabal--my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
+God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
+yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
+not--not--the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
+semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
+went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
+after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
+might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
+clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!--he has taken
+the _other_ stone from the _other_ cup--a thing of little value to any
+man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?
+
+'_June 21_.--Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has _not_ replaced it--not
+_it_--but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
+and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
+engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value--a stone I
+have never seen before. How has he obtained it--whence? I must brace
+myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
+this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
+in the balance.
+
+'_June 22_.--Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
+to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
+flinched: and drank--drank.
+
+'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
+make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
+in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
+Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
+me that browse of hell--to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.
+
+'_June 23_.--The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
+I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
+as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
+which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
+into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
+The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
+and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which _he himself_
+put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
+shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!
+
+'_June 24_.--No more--no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
+Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
+of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
+twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
+attention.
+
+'_June 25_.--He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
+him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
+door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
+should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
+treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
+right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
+book--the more the pity for the world, not for me.
+
+'_June 26_.--Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
+_another_ stone in the Edmundsbury chalice--also identical in nearly
+every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
+entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
+stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
+replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
+from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
+a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!
+
+'_June 28_.--I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
+It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life--and which is the
+best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
+murder--I, with this withered hand--so that I get back the heritage
+which is mine.
+
+'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
+room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
+that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
+his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
+a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
+out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
+the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
+its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
+When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he
+said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my
+hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
+upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?
+
+'_July 1_.--Life against life--and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
+than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not _yet_ am I ready
+to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
+paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let _him_ die. Many and
+many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
+averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
+times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
+chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
+lost--a mere fiction _at first_, an idler's dream _then_, but
+now--now--that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
+things, and a fact among facts--no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
+as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
+surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
+hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
+insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
+saw a Syrian's head cleft open--a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
+have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.
+
+'_July 2_.--I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
+and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
+thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
+Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
+all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.
+
+'_July 7_.--The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
+grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
+for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
+to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
+lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
+greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
+slay my enemy, and make an end?
+
+'_July_ 8.--Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
+through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
+could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
+First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
+the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
+lie my few garments--and opened it. Ah, I have the stone--safe--safe!
+He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
+where I would be least likely to seek it--_in my own trunk_! And yet I
+dread, most intensely I dread, to look.
+
+'_July_ 9.--The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
+have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
+have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?
+
+'_July 10_.--In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
+past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
+cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
+the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
+him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
+unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
+the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
+gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
+pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
+the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
+that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
+and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
+vaults,--the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,--how had I
+forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
+had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
+might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
+the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?--but he held the
+key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
+his head bent down. The thought came to me _then_, that, had I but the
+courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
+Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
+his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
+me--thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
+my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
+headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
+caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
+chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
+dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.
+
+'_July 11_.--I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
+remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
+tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.
+
+'_July 12_.--I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
+He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
+Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
+taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
+pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
+and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
+failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
+love.
+
+'July l3.--I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
+soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
+late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
+a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
+It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.
+
+'July l4.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
+man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
+him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
+no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
+would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,--and is gone!
+
+'July l5.--Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
+far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
+with him--the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
+ebbing in my heart.'
+
+Here the manuscript abruptly ended.
+
+Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
+couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
+he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
+as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
+apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
+round on me, and said:
+
+'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'
+
+'_Has_ it a meaning?'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
+note, the _nuance_ of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
+_enough_, inductive and deductive cunning _enough_, not only a meaning,
+but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
+human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
+that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
+not read the diary to me before.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
+life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
+day is this?'
+
+'This is the 20th.'
+
+'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
+still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
+seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
+business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
+with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
+you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
+Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
+Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
+matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'
+
+As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:
+
+'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected--from the
+Indian?'
+
+'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian--Persian.'
+
+Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
+which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
+telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
+the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
+and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
+Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.
+
+'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
+has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
+really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
+Jocelin was found by his servant--I imagine he had a servant, though no
+mention is made of any--lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
+Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem--an oval stone,
+white in colour--the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
+Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence--no trace of
+poison--the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
+this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
+I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three--and in one island
+in the South Seas, forty-four--different methods of doing murder, any
+one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
+agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.
+
+'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
+first, _who_ is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
+this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
+name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
+afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
+man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
+his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
+manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
+lived. "What," he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
+long-desired gem, "what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'"--the
+meaning which _he_ so well knew. "One of the lost secrets of the
+world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
+Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
+circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
+the solution of the riddle, or else--what is more likely, in spite of
+his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"--that his mind, and
+the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
+than the Edmundsbury Monks. But _they_ did not make the stone, nor did
+they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk--they got it from
+some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
+stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
+someone from whom _he_ received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
+of time. And consider the character of the engraving--it consists of _a
+mythological animal_, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only
+are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
+Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
+Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
+glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
+that the figure of the _scarabaeus_ on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
+infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
+grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
+that evidence alone--though there is more--that this gem was certainly
+Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of "Has" vanishes:
+for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
+Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
+precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
+childishly calls "the lost secrets of the world": for every successive
+inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
+led astray in his investigation. "Has" is, in fact, part of the word
+"Hasn-us-Sabah," and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
+obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
+shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
+of graving in precious stones than the Persians,--by a rude, mediaeval
+Englishman, in short,--the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
+of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman--who
+either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
+him--do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
+fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
+red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
+I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
+that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
+his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
+of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
+believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
+incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
+Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
+politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
+--the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
+him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
+well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
+of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, _and
+plundered_, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
+or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
+this time there was a cordial _rapprochement_ between Saladin and
+Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
+generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
+deep mystic importance, took place--remember "The Talisman," and the
+"Lee Penny"; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
+then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
+(as we are informed by the _Jocelini Chronica_) was _opened by the
+Abbot_ at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
+occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
+it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
+this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
+whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
+presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
+surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
+bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, "al
+Hasani" or "Ismaili"--"that accursed _Ishmaelite_," the baronet
+exclaims in one place--still live, are still a flourishing sect
+impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
+chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
+"Lebanon" on which Sir Jocelin "picked up" his too doubtful scribe and
+literary helper?
+
+'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the
+Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
+his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
+England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
+breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
+over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
+stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
+secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
+to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
+that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
+with another stone similar in size and shape--these being well known to
+him--to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
+so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
+chalice was not often _opened_ by the baronet, and this would therefore
+have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
+assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
+appears all the trouble he took to _engrave_ the false stone in an
+exactly similar manner to the other. _That_ could not help him in
+producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
+being _seen_, but only _heard_ in the cup, is proved by the fact that
+he selected a stone of a different _colour_. This colour, as I shall
+afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
+are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
+last stone, the white one--I shall prove that it was white--which
+Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided _two_
+substitutes, and that he had engraved these _two_, without object, in
+the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
+_having_ done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
+prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
+conclusion.
+
+'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not _prepared_ any substitute; and
+it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
+probable that he could _by chance_ have possessed two old gems exactly
+similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
+the word "Hasn-us-Sabah." I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
+not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
+Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
+never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
+point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
+motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
+for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
+order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
+making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
+real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.
+
+'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
+evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
+positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
+that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
+the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
+exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
+its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
+certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
+equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
+his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
+believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. "Now," he cries in
+triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room--"_now_ you have
+delivered all into my hands." "All" what, Sir Jocelin wonders. "All,"
+of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
+precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that _he_ has
+done--hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
+own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
+accordingly hastens into his chamber, and "locks the door," in order,
+by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
+examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
+is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
+the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
+like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
+deposited it in a place of perfect safety--such as, with or without
+lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
+afforded--his more reasonable _rôle_ would have been that of
+unconscious _nonchalance_, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
+fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
+hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
+secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
+that Ul-Jabal "holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
+down": can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of _search_?
+Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
+able to suspect that both are seekers.
+
+'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
+the stone by the Persian than all this--and that is the murder of the
+baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
+a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
+murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
+power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
+semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
+him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder--the clear means of
+gaining the stone--presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
+moment--indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
+very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
+It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
+gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
+of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
+admitting of the designation "gown," have usually only outer
+pockets--large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
+robe. But a stone of that size _must_ have made such a pocket bulge
+outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
+perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
+his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
+there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
+the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
+narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
+there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
+ultimate detection, pursuit--and this is a land of Law, swift and
+fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus--thus surely, and thus
+secretly--can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
+very next day he leaves the house--no more shall the mistrustful
+baronet, who is "hiding something from him," see his face. He carries
+with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
+contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his "brown gowns," and a
+snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
+that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
+_house_, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
+during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
+_far and wide_ "with uncovered head." Can you not picture the
+distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
+long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
+may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
+Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
+to _hide_ the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to _seek_ it, for
+he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
+in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
+previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
+has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
+"the old days of love"; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
+sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is "brown as the leaves of autumn."
+That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
+hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour--it was the
+yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
+has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
+tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
+he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
+the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
+no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
+outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
+two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
+neurotic condition; I thought of those "fibrillary twitchings,"
+indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
+sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
+stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
+urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
+dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
+the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
+sudden, the terrific shock of seeing _himself_ sitting in the chair
+before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been _placed_ there by
+Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
+to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death--if he _be_
+dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
+Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
+snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
+all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
+plague, and, I hope, straightway go and--hang himself.'
+
+It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
+the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
+now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
+'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
+which Zaleski had been detailing to me.
+
+'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
+with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
+discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
+exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
+above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
+these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
+turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
+inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
+that if "this stone be stolen," or if it "chaunges dre," the House of
+Saul and its head "anoon" (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. "Dre," I may
+remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
+with the Saxon "_dreogan_," meaning to "suffer." So that the writer at
+least contemplated that the stone might "suffer changes." But what kind
+of changes--external or internal? External change--change of
+environment--is already provided for when he says, "shulde this Ston
+stalen bee"; "chaunges," therefore, in _his_ mind, meant internal
+changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
+this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
+name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
+immediately discoverable. For it was a "sky-blue" stone; a sky-blue,
+sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
+its name--it was a _turquoise_. But can the turquoise, to the certain
+knowledge of a mediaeval writer, "chaunges dre"? Let us turn for light
+to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
+bronze Hera.'
+
+I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
+follows:
+
+'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
+of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
+precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
+his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
+end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
+thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
+turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
+which lose it.'[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Assurément la turquoise a une âme plus intelligente que
+l'âme de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
+touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
+jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
+Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, à fin que l'on ne
+recoure pas à Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
+precieuse; ainsi, peut-être, il deçoit nos esprits par la turquoise:
+car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
+couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' _Anselm de Boot_, Book II.]
+
+'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
+have the property of changing its colour--a change which was
+universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
+owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
+many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
+thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
+well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
+specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
+may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
+in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
+that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
+stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
+lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
+that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
+that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
+the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
+infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
+chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
+baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
+the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
+final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
+stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
+All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
+And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
+somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'
+
+For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
+the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:
+
+'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
+immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
+history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
+centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
+the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
+Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
+ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
+right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in _all_ lands, and at
+_all_ times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
+virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
+garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
+Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
+in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
+Already you have a semi-comic "gold-cure" for alcoholism, and you have
+heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
+scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
+it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
+fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
+what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
+inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'
+
+_Note_.--As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
+Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
+may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
+have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
+of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
+skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
+found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.
+
+
+
+
+THE S.S.
+
+'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....
+
+'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Geschöpf,
+das falsch lebt, wird früh zerstört. Unfruchtbarkeit, kümmerliches
+Dasein, frühzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Flüche, die Kennzeichen
+ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
+much into the world along with them....
+
+'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
+a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
+early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
+displeasure.']
+
+[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
+panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
+ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
+depleted of Men (i.e. _after the battle with Cleomenes_) that the
+slaves usurped everything--ruling and disposing--until such time as the
+sons of the slain were grown up.']
+
+To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
+what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
+being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
+sensational case of _felo de se_ published in the newspapers is sure to
+be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
+out of all proportion with the _extent_ of each particular outbreak.
+Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
+wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
+fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
+Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
+perished by the scourge; while that at the _Hôtel des Invalides_ in
+Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
+present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
+throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
+black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
+brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
+dear sick stress of her desire--with just such faintings, wanton fires,
+does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
+to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.
+
+   'When she sees a bank
+   Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
+   Her servants, what a pretty place it were
+   To bury lovers in; and make her maids
+   Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'
+
+[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: _The Maid's Tragedy_.]
+
+The _mode_ spreads--then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
+obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes _comme il faut_, this cerecloth
+acquiring all the attractiveness and _éclat_ of a wedding-garment. The
+coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
+of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
+There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
+pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
+explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
+sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.
+
+It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
+year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
+in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
+I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
+answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
+woe at Bethany:
+
+'Come and see.'
+
+To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'
+
+I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
+cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
+know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
+referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
+thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
+even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
+the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
+note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
+Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
+derision and censure--for it will be remembered that to many minds the
+mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
+conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
+self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
+and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
+wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
+police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
+under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
+panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
+people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
+agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
+The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
+doubt, the haunting _fear_. None felt himself quite safe; men
+recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
+affright, and to know not why--that is the transcendentalism of terror.
+The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
+in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
+walketh _by night_ that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
+being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
+And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
+but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
+that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris _Bourse_, business
+decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
+practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
+answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
+motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.
+
+It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
+Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
+because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
+invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
+time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
+had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
+flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
+excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
+eyes. I avow that that lonesome room--gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
+perfumed light--shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
+narcotic-breathing draperies--pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
+brooding occupant--grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
+remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
+midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
+cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
+all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
+friend.
+
+Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
+into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
+words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
+laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
+properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
+gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
+all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
+of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
+must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
+the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
+an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
+suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
+and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
+for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
+the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
+firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
+he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with which he was
+always tormented by any mystery which momentarily baffled him, I was,
+of course, forced to hold my peace. On the third day, however, of his
+own accord he asked me to what epidemic I had referred. I then detailed
+to him some of the strange events which were agitating the mind of the
+outside world. From the very first he was interested: later on that
+interest grew into a passion, a greedy soul-consuming quest after the
+truth, the intensity of which was such at last as to move me even to
+pity.
+
+I may as well here restate the facts as I communicated them to Zaleski.
+The concatenation of incidents, it will be remembered, started with the
+extraordinary death of that eminent man of science, Professor
+Schleschinger, consulting laryngologist to the Charité Hospital in
+Berlin. The professor, a man of great age, was on the point of
+contracting his third marriage with the beautiful and accomplished
+daughter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von Friedrich. The contemplated
+union, which was entirely one of those _mariages de convenance_ so
+common in good society, sprang out of the professor's ardent desire to
+leave behind him a direct heir to his very considerable wealth. By his
+first two marriages, indeed, he had had large families, and was at this
+very time surrounded by quite an army of little grandchildren, from
+whom (all his direct descendants being dead) he might have been content
+to select his heir; but the old German prejudices in these matters are
+strong, and he still hoped to be represented on his decease by a son of
+his own. To this whim the charming Ottilie was marked by her parents as
+the victim. The wedding, however, had been postponed owing to a slight
+illness of the veteran scientist, and just as he was on the point of
+final recovery from it, death intervened to prevent altogether the
+execution of his design. Never did death of man create a profounder
+sensation; _never was death of man followed by consequences more
+terrible_. The _Residenz_ of the scientist was a stately mansion near
+the University in the _Unter den Linden_ boulevard, that is to say, in
+the most fashionable _Quartier_ of Berlin. His bedroom from a
+considerable height looked out on a small back garden, and in this room
+he had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical
+attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all
+this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various
+topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of
+what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain
+grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had
+found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the
+horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion
+to make a _post-mortem_ examination. The woman had suffered from
+partial paralysis. She had a small young family, none of whom, however,
+could give any account of the slip, except one little girl, who
+declared that she had taken it 'from her mother's mouth' after death.
+The slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, as though it had been
+smeared with honey. The professor added that all through his illness he
+had been employing himself by examining these figures. He was
+convinced, he said, that they contained some archaeological
+significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a
+slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,--on the bed of a dead
+Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the
+_mouth_ of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident
+seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the
+instinct--so strong in him--to investigate, to probe. For days, he
+declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the
+figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe
+that the figures--rude and uncouth as they were--were only such as
+might be drawn by any school-boy in an idle moment. They consisted
+merely of a man and a woman seated on a bench, with what looked like an
+ornamental border running round them. After a pleasant evening's
+scientific gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after midnight, took his
+departure from the bed-side. An hour later the servants were roused
+from sleep by one deep, raucous cry proceeding from the professor's
+room. They hastened to his door; it was locked on the inside; all was
+still within. No answer coming to their calls, the door was broken in.
+They found their master lying calm and dead on his bed. A window of the
+room was open, but there was nothing to show that any one had entered
+it. Dr. Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on the scene. After
+examining the body, he failed to find anything to account for the
+sudden demise of his old friend and chief. One observation, however,
+had the effect of causing him to tingle with horror. On his entrance he
+had noticed, lying on the side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with
+which the professor had been toying in the earlier part of the day, and
+had removed it. But, as he was on the point of leaving the room, he
+happened to approach the corpse once more, and bending over it, noticed
+that the lips and teeth were slightly parted. Drawing open the now
+stiffened jaws, he found--to his amazement, to his stupefaction--that,
+neatly folded beneath the dead tongue, lay just such another piece of
+papyrus as that which he had removed from the bed. He drew it out--it
+was clammy. He put it to his nose,--it exhaled the fragrance of honey.
+He opened it,--it was covered by figures. He compared them with the
+figures on the other slip,--they were just so similar as two
+draughtsmen hastily copying from a common model would make them. The
+doctor was unnerved: he hurried homeward, and immediately submitted the
+honey on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical analysis: he suspected
+poison--a subtle poison--as the means of a suicide, grotesquely,
+insanely accomplished. He found the fluid to be perfectly
+innocuous,--pure honey, and nothing more.
+
+The next day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor
+Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the
+papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of
+actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own
+hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical
+profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen,
+Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance;
+within three weeks from the night on which Professor Schleschinger met
+his unaccountable end, eight thousand persons in Germany, France, and
+Great Britain, died in that startlingly sudden and secret manner which
+we call 'tragic', many of them obviously by their own hands, many, in
+what seemed the servility of a fatal imitativeness, with figured,
+honey-smeared slips of papyrus beneath their tongues. Even now--now,
+after years--I thrill intensely to recall the dread remembrance; but to
+live through it, to breathe daily the mawkish, miasmatic atmosphere,
+all vapid with the suffocating death--ah, it was terror too deep,
+nausea too foul, for mortal bearing. Novalis has somewhere hinted at
+the possibility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous suicide and
+voluntary return by the whole human family into the sweet bosom of our
+ancient Father--I half expected it was coming, had come, _then_. It was
+as if the old, good-easy, meek-eyed man of science, dying, had left his
+effectual curse on all the world, and had thereby converted
+civilisation into one omnivorous grave, one universal charnel-house. I
+spent several days in reading out to Zaleski accounts of particular
+deaths as they had occurred. He seemed never to tire of listening,
+lying back for the most part on the silver-cushioned couch, and wearing
+an inscrutable mask. Sometimes he rose and paced the carpet with
+noiseless foot-fall, his steps increasing to the swaying, uneven
+velocity of an animal in confinement as a passage here or there
+attracted him, and then subsiding into their slow regularity again. At
+any interruption in the reading, he would instantly turn to me with a
+certain impatience, and implore me to proceed; and when our stock of
+matter failed, he broke out into actual anger that I had not brought
+more with me. Henceforth the negro, Ham, using my trap, daily took a
+double journey--one before sunrise, and one at dusk--to the nearest
+townlet, from which he would return loaded with newspapers. With
+unimaginable eagerness did both Zaleski and I seize, morning after
+morning, and evening after evening, on these budgets, to gloat for long
+hours over the ever-lengthening tale of death. As for him, sleep
+forsook him. He was a man of small reasonableness, scorning the
+limitations of human capacity; his palate brooked no meat when his
+brain was headlong in the chase; even the mild narcotics which were now
+his food and drink seemed to lose something of their power to mollify,
+to curb him. Often rising from slumber in what I took to be the dead of
+night--though of day or night there could be small certainty in that
+dim dwelling--I would peep into the domed chamber, and see him there
+under the livid-green light of the censer, the leaden smoke issuing
+from his lips, his eyes fixed unweariedly on a square piece of ebony
+which rested on the coffin of the mummy near him. On this ebony he had
+pasted side by side several woodcuts--snipped from the newspapers--of
+the figures traced on the pieces of papyrus found in the mouths of the
+dead. I could see, as time passed, that he was concentrating all his
+powers on these figures; for the details of the deaths themselves were
+all of a dreary sameness, offering few salient points for
+investigation. In those cases where the suicide had left behind him
+clear evidence of the means by which he had committed the act, there
+was nothing to investigate; the others--rich and poor alike, peer and
+peasant--trooped out by thousands on the far journey, without leaving
+the faintest footprint to mark the road by which they had gone.
+
+This was perhaps the reason that, after a time, Zaleski discarded the
+newspapers, leaving their perusal to me, and turned his attention
+exclusively to the ebon tablet. Knowing as I full well did the daring
+and success of his past spiritual adventures,--the subtlety, the
+imagination, the imperial grip of his intellect,--I did not at all
+doubt that his choice was wise, and would in the end be justified.
+These woodcuts--now so notorious--were all exactly similar in design,
+though minutely differing here and there in drawing. The following is a
+facsimile of one of them taken by me at random:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The time passed. It now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid
+pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of
+Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in
+his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I
+decided at last--if mystery there were--was too deep, too dark, for
+him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more
+from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat
+reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard a loud cry from
+the vaulted chamber. I rushed to the door and beheld him standing,
+gazing with wild eyes at the ebon tablet held straight out in front of
+him.
+
+'By Heaven!' he cried, stamping savagely with his foot. 'By Heaven!
+Then I certainly _am_ a fool! _It is the staff of Phaebus in the hand
+of Hermes!'_
+
+I hastened to him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'have you discovered anything?'
+
+'It is possible.'
+
+'And has there really been foul play--murder--in any of these deaths?'
+
+'Of that, at least, I was certain from the first.'
+
+'Great God!' I exclaimed, 'could any son of man so convert himself into
+a fiend, a beast of the wilderness....'
+
+'You judge precisely in the manner of the multitude,' he answered
+somewhat petulantly. 'Illegal murder is always a mistake, but not
+necessarily a crime. Remember Corday. But in cases where the murder of
+one is really fiendish, why is it qualitatively less fiendish than the
+murder of many? On the other hand, had Brutus slain a thousand
+Caesars--each act involving an additional exhibition of the sublimest
+self-suppression--he might well have taken rank as a saint in heaven.'
+
+Failing for the moment to see the drift or the connection of the
+argument, I contented myself with waiting events. For the rest of that
+day and the next Zaleski seemed to have dismissed the matter of the
+tragedies from his mind, and entered calmly on his former studies. He
+no longer consulted the news, or examined the figures on the tablet.
+The papers, however, still arrived daily, and of these he soon
+afterwards laid several before me, pointing, with a curious smile, to a
+small paragraph in each. These all appeared in the advertisement
+columns, were worded alike, and read as follows:
+
+'A true son of Lycurgus, _having news_, desires to know the _time_ and
+_place_ of the next meeting of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R----
+Abbey, in the county of M----.'
+
+I gazed in mute alternation at the advertisement and at him. I may here
+stop to make mention of a very remarkable sensation which my
+association with him occasionally produced in me. I felt it with
+intense, with unpleasant, with irritating keenness at this moment. It
+was the sensation of being borne aloft--aloft--by a force external to
+myself--such a sensation as might possibly tingle through an earthworm
+when lifted into illimitable airy heights by the strongly-daring
+pinions of an eagle. It was the feeling of being hurried out beyond
+one's depth--caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of
+some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have
+experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me--winged, rocking,
+ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!--round a too narrow curve. It was a
+sensation very far from agreeable.
+
+'To that,' he said, pointing to the paragraph, 'we may, I think,
+shortly expect an answer. Let us only hope that when it comes it may be
+immediately intelligible.'
+
+We waited throughout the whole of that day and night, hiding our
+eagerness under the pretence of absorption in our books. If by chance I
+fell into an uneasy doze, I found him on waking ever watchful, and
+poring over the great tome before him. About the time, however, when,
+could we have seen it, the first grey of dawn must have been peeping
+over the land, his impatience again became painful to witness; he rose
+and paced the room, muttering occasionally to himself. This only
+ceased, when, hours later, Ham entered the room with an envelope in his
+hand. Zaleski seized it--tore it open--ran his eye over the
+contents--and dashed it to the ground with an oath.
+
+'Curse it!' he groaned. 'Ah, curse it! unintelligible--every syllable
+of it!'
+
+I picked up the missive and examined it. It was a slip of papyrus
+covered with the design now so hideously familiar, except only that the
+two central figures were wanting. At the bottom was written the date of
+the 15th of November--it was then the morning of the 12th--and the name
+'Morris.' The whole, therefore, presented the following appearance:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+My eyes were now heavy with sleep, every sense half-drunken with the
+vapourlike atmosphere of the room, so that, having abandoned something
+of hope, I tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into a profound
+slumber, which lasted till what must have been the time of the
+gathering in of the shades of night. I then rose. Missing Zaleski, I
+sought through all the chambers for him. He was nowhere to be seen. The
+negro informed me with an affectionate and anxious tremor in the voice
+that his master had left the rooms some hours before, but had said
+nothing to him. I ordered the man to descend and look into the sacristy
+of the small chapel wherein I had deposited my _calèche_, and in the
+field behind, where my horse should be. He returned with the news that
+both had disappeared. Zaleski, I then concluded, had undoubtedly
+departed on a journey.
+
+I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by. He
+wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being. It was like
+matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski had never
+before withdrawn himself from the _surveillance_ of this sturdy
+watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their
+little cosmos. Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some
+light on the meaning of this catastrophe. But I too was in the dark.
+The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken,
+childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of
+some great danger to the person of his master. So a day passed away,
+and then another. On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a
+letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski. It was hastily
+scribbled in pencil, dated 'London, Nov. 14th,' and ran thus:
+
+'For my body--should I not return by Friday night--you will, no doubt,
+be good enough to make search. _Descend_ the river, keeping constantly
+to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the _Descensus Aesopi._
+Seek diligently, and you will find. For the rest, you know my fancy for
+cremation: take me, if you will, to the crematorium of _Père-Lachaise._
+My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.'
+
+Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to
+communicate a word of it. I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed,
+I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night! It was then
+Thursday morning. And I was expected to wait through the dreary
+interval uncertain, agonised, inactive! I was offended with my friend;
+his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction. The leaden
+hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of
+my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep. On the next morning,
+however, another letter--a rather massive one--reached me. The covering
+was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the
+words: 'This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before
+Saturday.' I therefore laid the packet aside unread.
+
+I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o'clock, if nothing
+happened, I should make some sort of effort. But from six I remained,
+with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten. I was so utterly at
+a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I
+could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear
+absurd. But at midnight I sprang up--no longer would I endure the
+carking suspense. I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way. I
+had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished. Then I
+remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole
+vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but
+hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the
+labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted
+vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with
+something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out
+before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an
+hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what
+felt like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank back, unnerved as I
+already was, with a murmur of affright.
+
+'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.
+
+Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
+my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.
+
+Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
+With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.
+
+It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
+of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
+breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
+to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
+want sleep--only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
+by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
+infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
+garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
+dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
+reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
+girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed _ceinture_. With all
+the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
+the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
+unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
+the sleeper woke, in his eye,--full of divine instinct,--flitted the
+wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
+austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
+pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
+fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
+by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said:
+
+'We have, Shiel, had before us a very remarkable series of murders, and
+a very remarkable series of suicides. Were they in any way connected?
+To this extent, I think--that the mysterious, the unparalleled nature
+of the murders gave rise to a morbid condition in the public mind,
+which in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. But though such an
+epidemic has its origin in the instinct of imitation so common in men,
+you must not suppose that the mental process is a _conscious_ one. A
+person feels an impulse to go and do, and is not aware that at bottom
+it is only an impulse to go and do _likewise_. He would indeed
+repudiate such an assumption. Thus one man destroys himself, and
+another imitates him--but whereas the former uses a pistol, the latter
+uses a rope. It is rather absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of
+those cases in which the slip of papyrus has been found in the mouth
+after death, the cause of death has been the slavish imitativeness of
+the suicidal mania,--for this, as I say, is never _slavish._ The
+papyrus then--quite apart from the unmistakable evidences of suicide
+invariably left by each self-destroyer--affords us definite and certain
+means by which we can distinguish the two classes of deaths; and we are
+thus able to divide the total number into two nearly equal halves.
+
+'But you start--you are troubled--you never heard or read of murder
+such as this, the simultaneous murder of thousands over wide areas of
+the face of the globe; here you feel is something outside your
+experience, deeper than your profoundest imaginings. To the question
+"by whom committed?" and "with what motive?" your mind can conceive no
+possible answer. And yet the answer must be, "by man, and for human
+motives,"--for the Angel of Death with flashing eye and flaming sword
+is himself long dead; and again we can say at once, by no _one_ man,
+but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no _common_ men,
+but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
+and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
+society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
+integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.
+
+'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
+immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
+of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,--but to
+motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
+engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
+hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
+exact knowledge of the mystery.
+
+'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
+_reading_ of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
+behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
+this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
+that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
+lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
+and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
+another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
+myself, were these drawings meant to represent,--letters, numbers,
+things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
+because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
+wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
+part of its inventor to make a picture of the _serpent;_ S being the
+sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
+view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
+of course you know that all letters were originally _pictures of
+things,_ and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I
+therefore assumed, by way of trial, that the snakes in the diagram
+stood for a sibilant letter, that is, either C or S. And thence,
+supposing this to be the case, I deduced: firstly, that all the other
+figures stood for letters; and secondly, that they all appeared in the
+form of pictures of the things of which those letters were originally
+meant to be pictures. Thus the letter "m," one of the four "_liquid_"
+consonants, is, as we now write it, only a shortened form of a waved
+line; and as a waved line it was originally written, and was the
+character by which _a stream of running water_ was represented in
+writing; indeed it only owes its name to the fact that when the lips
+are pressed together, and "m" uttered by a continuous effort, a certain
+resemblance to the murmur of running water is produced. The longer
+waved line in the diagram I therefore took to represent "m"; and it at
+once followed that the shorter meant "n," for no two letters of the
+commoner European alphabets differ only in length (as distinct from
+shape) except "m" and "n", and "w" and "v"; indeed, just as the French
+call "w" "double-ve," so very properly might "m" be called "double-en."
+But, in this case, the longer not being "w," the shorter could not be
+"v": it was therefore "n." And now there only remained the heart and
+the triangle. I was unable to think of any letter that could ever have
+been intended for the picture of a heart, but the triangle I knew to be
+the letter #A.# This was originally written without the cross-bar from
+prop to prop, and the two feet at the bottom of the props were not
+separated as now, but joined; so that the letter formed a true
+triangle. It was meant by the primitive man to be a picture of his
+primitive house, this house being, of course, hut-shaped, and
+consisting of a conical roof without walls. I had thus, with the
+exception of the heart, disentangled the whole, which then (leaving a
+space for the heart) read as follows:
+
+     { ss
+ 'mn {    anan ... san.'
+     { cc
+
+But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
+'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
+also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'--except 'mnemonics' and
+its fellows--I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
+letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
+as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
+was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
+the first 's.' Thus I got
+
+'m ns sanan... san,'
+
+or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,
+
+'mens sana in... sano.'
+
+The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
+'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot--showing that the word as it stood was
+an abbreviation--conclusively proved every one of my deductions.
+
+'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
+central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
+heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
+light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
+as to the _general_ significance of these figures, for I saw at once
+their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
+you are not minutely acquainted with the _technique_ of these stones, I
+may as well show you one, which I myself removed from an old grave in
+Tarentum.'
+
+He took from a niche a small piece of close-grained marble, about a
+foot square, and laid it before me. On one side it was exquisitely
+sculptured in relief.
+
+'This,' he continued, 'is a typical example of the Greek grave-stone,
+and having seen one specimen you may be said to have seen almost all,
+for there is surprisingly little variety in the class. You will observe
+that the scene represents a man reclining on a couch; in his hand he
+holds a _patera,_ or dish, filled with grapes and pomegranates, and
+beside him is a tripod bearing the viands from which he is banqueting.
+At his feet sits a woman--for the Greek lady never reclined at table.
+In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent
+may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable
+pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from
+which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I
+considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the
+papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim.
+I said to myself: it can only be that the assassins have bound
+themselves to the observance of a strict and narrow ritual from which
+no departure is under any circumstances permitted--perhaps for the sake
+of signalling the course of events to others at a distance. But what
+ritual? That question I was able to answer when I knew the answer to
+these others,--why _under the tongue,_ and why _smeared with honey?_
+For no reason, except that the Greeks (not the Romans till very late in
+their history) always placed an _obolos,_ or penny, beneath the tongue
+of the dead to pay his passage across the Stygian river of ghosts; for
+no reason, except that to these same Greeks honey was a sacred fluid,
+intimately associated in their minds with the mournful subject of
+Death; a fluid with which the bodies of the deceased were anointed, and
+sometimes--especially in Sparta and the Pelasgic South--embalmed; with
+which libations were poured to Hermes Psuchopompos, conductor of the
+dead to the regions of shade; with which offerings were made to all the
+chthonic deities, and the souls of the departed in general. You
+remember, for instance, the melancholy words of Helen addressed to
+Hermione in _Orestes:_
+
+ [Greek: _Kai labe choas tasd'en cheroin komas t'emas
+ elthousa d'amphi ton Klutaimnaestras taphon
+ melikrat'aphes galaktos oinopon t'achnaen._]
+
+And so everywhere. The ritual then of the murderers was a _Greek_
+ritual, their cult a Greek cult--preferably, perhaps, a South Greek
+one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative
+peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this
+semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more
+certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were
+drawn from a Greek model.
+
+'Here, however, I came to a standstill. I was infinitely puzzled by the
+rod in the man's hand. In none of the Greek grave-reliefs does any such
+thing as a rod make an appearance, except in one well-known example
+where the god Hermes--generally represented as carrying the _caduceus_,
+or staff, given him by Phoebus--appears leading a dead maiden to the
+land of night. But in every other example of which I am aware the
+sculpture represents a man _living_, not dead, banqueting _on earth_,
+not in Hades, by the side of his living companion. What then could be
+the significance of the staff in the hand of this living man? It was
+only after days of the hardest struggle, the cruellest suspense, that
+the thought flashed on me that the idea of Hermes leading away the dead
+female might, in this case, have been carried one step farther; that
+the male figure might be no living man, no man at all, but _Hermes
+himself_ actually banqueting in Hades with the soul of his disembodied
+_protégée_! The thought filled me with a rapture I cannot describe, and
+you witnessed my excitement. But, at all events, I saw that this was a
+truly tremendous departure from Greek art and thought, to which in
+general the copyists seemed to cling so religiously. There must
+therefore be a reason, a strong reason, for vandalism such as this. And
+that, at any rate, it was no longer difficult to discover; for now I
+knew that the male figure was no mortal, but a god, a spirit, a DAEMON
+(in the Greek sense of the word); and the female figure I saw by the
+marked shortness of her drapery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan; no
+matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a LASSIE; and now I had forced on
+me lassie daemon, _Lacedaemon._
+
+'This then was the badge, the so carefully-buried badge, of this
+society of men. The only thing which still puzzled and confounded me at
+this stage was the startling circumstance that a _Greek_ society should
+make use of a _Latin_ motto. It was clear that either all my
+conclusions were totally wrong, or else the motto _mens sana in corpore
+sano_ contained wrapped up in itself some acroamatic meaning which I
+found myself unable to penetrate, and which the authors had found no
+Greek motto capable of conveying. But at any rate, having found this
+much, my knowledge led me of itself one step further; for I perceived
+that, widely extended as were their operations, the society was
+necessarily in the main an _English,_ or at least an English-speaking
+one--for of this the word "lassie" was plainly indicative: it was easy
+now to conjecture London, the monster-city in which all things lose
+themselves, as their head-quarters; and at this point in my
+investigations I despatched to the papers the advertisement you have
+seen.'
+
+'But,' I exclaimed, 'even now I utterly fail to see by what mysterious
+processes of thought you arrived at the wording of the advertisement;
+even now it conveys no meaning to my mind.'
+
+'That,' he replied,' will grow clear when we come to a right
+understanding of the baleful _motive_ which inspired these men. I have
+already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one
+possible method of doing so--and that was, by all means, by any means,
+to find out some condition or other common to every one of the victims
+before death. It is true that I was unable to do this in some few
+cases, but where I failed, I was convinced that my failure was due to
+the insufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, rather than to the
+actual absence of the condition. Now, let us take almost any two cases
+you will, and seek for this common condition: let us take, for example,
+the first two that attracted the attention of the world--the poor woman
+of the slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by
+as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely,
+in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated
+_striae_ of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she
+has a "small young" family, which, had she lived, might have been
+increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia,
+"partial paralysis." The professor, too, has had not one, but two,
+large families, and an "army of grand-children": but note well the
+startling, the hideous fact, that _every one of his children is dead!_
+The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in _every one_ of
+those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism,
+lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean--but not before they have had time
+to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army
+of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his
+old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race
+still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance,
+the point of resemblance,--you see it? And, O heaven, is it not too
+sad? For me, I tell you, the whole business has a tragic pitifulness
+too deep for words. But this brings me to the discussion of a large
+matter. It would, for instance, be interesting to me to hear what you,
+a modern European, saturated with all the notions of your little day,
+what _you_ consider the supreme, the all-important question for the
+nations of Europe at this moment. Am I far wrong in assuming that you
+would rattle off half a dozen of the moot points agitating rival
+factions in your own land, select one of them, and call that "the
+question of the hour"? I wish I could see as you see; I wish to God I
+did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask
+you, what _precisely_ was it that ruined the old nations--that brought,
+say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy
+imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom,
+believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things--it was simply
+War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain
+myself: this is a novel view to you, and you are perhaps unable to
+conceive how or why war was so fatal to the old world, because you see
+how little harmful it is to the new. If you collected in a promiscuous
+way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all
+simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of
+view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small,
+wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna
+in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and
+uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many,
+would flow on, and the void would soon be filled. But the effect would
+only be thus insignificant, if, as I said, your millions were taken
+promiscuously (as in the modern army), not if they were _picked_
+men----in _that_ case the loss (or gain) would be excessive, and
+permanent for all time. Now, the war-hosts of the ancient
+commonwealths--not dependent on the mechanical contrivances of the
+modern army--were necessarily composed of the very best men: the
+strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound in wind and limb. Under these
+conditions the State shuddered through all her frame, thrilled adown
+every filament, at the death of a single one of her sons in the field.
+As only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, their number after each
+battle became larger _in proportion to the whole_ than before. Thus the
+nation, more and more, with ever-increasing rapidity, declined in
+bodily, and of course spiritual, quality, until the _end_ was reached,
+and Nature swallowed up the weaklings whole; and thus war, which to the
+modern state is at worst the blockhead and indecent _affaires
+d'honneur_ of persons in office--and which, surely, before you and I
+die will cease altogether--was to the ancient a genuine and
+remorselessly fatal scourge.
+
+'And now let me apply these facts to the Europe of our own time. We no
+longer have world-serious war--but in its place we have a scourge, the
+effect of which on the modern state is _precisely the same_ as the
+effect of war on the ancient, only,--in the end,--far more destructive,
+far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
+pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
+--shudder--as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
+bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
+medical, and especially surgical, science--that, if you like, for us
+all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what
+surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions"
+whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
+State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
+the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
+deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
+The net result is in each case the same--the altered ratio of the total
+amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
+disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
+worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
+must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
+becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
+him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
+slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
+saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian _he_, but
+a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
+Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and
+Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
+quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
+antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
+such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
+time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
+man to laugh at disease--laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
+natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
+destroying its ever-expanding _existence_. Do you know that at this
+moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
+suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
+whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
+hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like
+missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
+mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
+vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
+are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
+consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
+sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
+thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
+course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
+Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
+people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
+men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand--with a
+thrill of intensest joy, I say it!--is to be seen, if not yet
+commencing civilisation, then progress, progress--wide as the
+world--toward it: only here--at the heart--is there decadence, fatty
+degeneration. Brain-evolution--and favouring airs--and the ripening
+time--and the silent Will of God, of God--all these in conspiracy seem
+to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
+luxury of glory--when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
+more disease--that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
+especially--so sensitive to the physician's art--living on by hundreds
+of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
+who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
+proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
+curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
+may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
+question: _why?_ Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
+cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
+that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
+_therefore_ be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
+to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
+tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
+just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
+for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
+sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
+unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
+leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
+answer that question--I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
+the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
+humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
+it, coerced into sympathy with it. "Beautiful" I say: for if anywhere
+in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
+hospital _savants_ bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
+pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
+wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
+parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
+Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
+_lachesis mutus_; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
+_in_human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
+me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
+dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
+of the inner verities of this our earthly being--the dogma, that by the
+shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
+man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
+the necessity that one man die, "so that the whole people perish not"?
+Can it be true that by nothing less than the "three days of pestilence"
+shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
+alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
+inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
+anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
+foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
+is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
+future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
+glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism--the
+immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
+part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
+bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
+not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the _accoucheur,_ of
+the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
+breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
+function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
+are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
+Sparta--the "man-taming Sparta" Simonides calls her--answered them.
+Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
+of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
+under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
+parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
+commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
+he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
+place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
+that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
+stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
+Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
+all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
+express the idea "ugly," meant also "hateful," "vile," "disgraceful"
+--and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
+fact alone; for they considered--and rightly--that there is no
+sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
+perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful--if only very moderate pains
+be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
+Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
+Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
+barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
+Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
+"lament" on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
+the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
+thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
+the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
+one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
+remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
+understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
+papers.'
+
+Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular _tirade_, paused:
+replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
+cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
+and then continued:
+
+'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
+what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
+I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
+and an address, too--but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
+course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
+to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
+circumstance that the Latin proverb _mens sana etc._ should be adopted
+as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
+motto _contained an address_--the address of their meeting-place, or at
+least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
+of solving--and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour--this
+enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
+extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
+that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
+difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
+cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
+secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
+there was any _consistency_ in the system of cyphers at all, for it
+belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
+others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
+therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
+actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
+form _mens sana in ... pore sano._ I wrote this down, and what
+instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
+_liquids_ in the motto--six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
+of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
+_mnnnnr_, and you can see that the very appearance of the "m's" and
+"n's" (especially when _written_) running into one another, of itself
+suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
+of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
+inference of _the Thames_; there, or near there, would I find those
+whom I sought. The letters "mnnnnr," then, meant the Thames: what did
+the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
+placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
+these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
+occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
+inevitably get the word _Aesopi._ And now I was fairly startled by this
+symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
+respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
+_"Aesopi."_ For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
+wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
+wise--their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
+also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
+wisdom with wealth--true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
+all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
+he is typical, therefore, of death--the shedding of blood--as a result
+of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
+"in much wisdom is much sorrow." But how accurately all this fitted in
+with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
+was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
+immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.
+
+'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
+The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
+I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
+light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
+manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
+sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
+betoken any sort of connection with the word "Aesopi." In this way I
+passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
+fast my craft, and in a spirit of _diablerie_ spent the night in a
+common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
+beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
+_bonne camaraderie_ which the prevailing fear of death could not
+altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again--on,
+and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
+had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
+should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
+men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
+meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
+proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
+and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
+on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
+came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
+into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
+the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
+of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
+was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
+at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway--a winding
+road--leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
+its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
+the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
+was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
+And then--and then--tingling now with a thousand raptures--I beheld a
+pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
+counterpart of the first--and then, still leading on in the same
+direction, another pool--and then a great rock, heart-shaped--and then
+another winding road--and then another pool of water. All was a
+model--_exact to the minutest particular_--of the device on the
+papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
+short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
+three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
+representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
+heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
+and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
+rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
+at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
+black letters, was marked the words, "DESCENSUS AESOPI." It was
+necessary, therefore, to go _down_: the meeting-place was subterranean.
+It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
+ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
+series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
+descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
+confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
+_ziphos_ and _peltè_. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
+long with an earnest scrutiny.
+
+'"You are a Spartan?" he asked at length.
+
+'"Yes," I answered promptly.
+
+'"Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?"
+
+'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.
+
+'"You _are_ a Spartan?" he repeated.
+
+'I nodded with emphasis.
+
+'"Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?"
+
+'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
+that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
+of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency--to stretch
+itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
+_no_ combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
+alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
+lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
+by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
+always placed under the _tongue_ of the dead; I remembered, too, that
+among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to "turn
+up the _thumb_" (_pollicem vertere_) was a symbol significant of death.
+I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
+aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.
+
+'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
+supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
+the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
+walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
+reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
+chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
+stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
+gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
+From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.
+
+'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
+fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
+not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
+means by which my body might be traced.  'But on the next day a new
+thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: "these men are not common
+assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
+against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
+immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
+They will not therefore take mine, _unless_ they suppose me to be the
+only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
+think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
+designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
+such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
+whole secret, and--if the necessity should arise--_letting them know_
+that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
+life will be assured." I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
+account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
+the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
+time.
+
+'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
+day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
+at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
+sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
+hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the
+wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the
+mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I
+repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
+you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the "Morris," whose name
+appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _littérateur_ of that
+name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.
+
+'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
+undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
+wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
+with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
+methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too
+harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
+earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
+on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
+this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
+was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
+was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
+A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their
+murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated
+with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
+Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
+How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
+language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
+floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
+perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied
+lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
+rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that
+moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_
+utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some
+coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
+the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
+placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
+clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength
+remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _calèche_, and
+started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
+for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
+after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
+in this condition you found me.
+
+'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
+this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
+others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not
+unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10709 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10709 ***</div>
+
+<table align="center" width="80%"><tr><td>
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" alt="title" /><br />
+M. P. Shiel = Matthew Phipps Shiel
+</td>
+    <td>
+      <h3 align="center">TO</h3>
+      <h3 align="center">MY DEAR MOTHER</h3>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+      <h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+      <p><strong><a href="#race">The Race of Orven</a></strong></p>
+      <p><strong><a href="#stone">The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks</a></strong></p>
+      <p><strong><a href="#thess">The S.S.</a></strong></p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="race"></a><h2>THE RACE OF ORVEN</h2>
+
+<p>Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
+Zaleski&mdash;victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
+fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
+native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
+the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
+passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
+more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
+been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.</p>
+
+<p>But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
+exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
+repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
+attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
+mistrust of the <i>d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment</i> of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
+hermitage.</p>
+
+<p>I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
+palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
+approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
+the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
+deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
+finally put up my <i>cal&egrave;che</i> in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
+chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
+behind the domain.</p>
+
+<p>As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
+not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
+select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
+regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
+much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
+the manner of a Roman <i>atrium</i>, and from the oblong pool of turgid
+water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
+squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
+corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
+through a mazeland of apartments&mdash;suite upon suite&mdash;along many a length
+of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
+uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
+<i>ricochets</i> to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
+emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
+vestige of furniture&mdash;nowhere a trace of human life.</p>
+
+<p>After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
+near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
+of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
+lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
+silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
+One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
+Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
+the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
+visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
+to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.</p>
+
+<p>The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
+the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
+<i>lampas</i> of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
+certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
+me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
+light, and the fumes of the narcotic <i>cannabis sativa</i>&mdash;the base of the
+<i>bhang</i> of the Mohammedans&mdash;in which I knew it to be the habit of my
+friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
+heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
+Prince Zaleski to be a consummate <i>cognoscente</i>&mdash;a profound amateur&mdash;as
+well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
+the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
+the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
+Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
+The general effect was a <i>bizarrerie</i> of half-weird sheen and gloom.
+Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
+miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
+leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
+gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
+in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
+epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
+vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
+invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
+draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
+stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
+trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
+which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
+hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.</p>
+
+<p>Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
+Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
+time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
+my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
+adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
+delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
+Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
+pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling <i>hashish</i>,
+prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
+breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
+partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
+Turkish <i>beneesh</i>, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
+first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
+and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
+features.</p>
+
+<p>'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I have met him in &quot;the world.&quot; His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
+at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
+I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
+peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour&mdash;a
+strong likeness between father and son.'</p>
+
+<p>I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
+as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.</p>
+
+<p>'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
+Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
+also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
+author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
+eminence in the <i>corps diplomatique</i>, and lately (though, strictly
+speaking, <i>unebenb&uuml;rtig</i>) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
+Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-&uuml;ppigen, a lady with a strain of
+indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
+a very old and distinguished one, though&mdash;especially in modern
+days&mdash;far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
+become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
+immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
+reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
+simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
+<i>en bloc</i>. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
+that you have not already read it in the papers.'</p>
+
+<p>'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
+thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
+of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
+years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
+with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
+exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
+father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
+India. Considered as the first step in the <i>rapprochement</i> of this
+proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
+message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
+official; it ran:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;<i>Return. The beginning of the end is come.</i>&quot; Whereupon Randolph did
+return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
+Lord Pharanx was dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Murdered</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
+Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
+an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
+this feeling, for he said at once:</p>
+
+<p>'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
+might even have foretold it, years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Foretold&mdash;what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'</p>
+
+<p>'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed&mdash;tell
+me all the facts you know.'</p>
+
+<p>Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
+I continued the narrative.</p>
+
+<p>'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
+without cordiality, without affection&mdash;a shaking of hands across a
+barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
+metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
+interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
+observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
+father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
+an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
+sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
+the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
+of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
+low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
+It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
+of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
+migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
+part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
+of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
+fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
+boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
+noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
+master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
+kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
+occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
+doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
+them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
+and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
+and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
+to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
+that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now&mdash;possibly
+owing to the sedentary life he led&mdash;became fastidious, insisting on
+<i>recherch&eacute;</i> bits. I mention all these details to you&mdash;as I shall
+mention others&mdash;not because they have the least connection with the
+tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
+and you have requested me to state all I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of <i>ennui</i>, 'you are right. I may
+as well hear the whole&mdash;if I must hear a part.'</p>
+
+<p>'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
+day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
+still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
+he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
+are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
+most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
+past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
+this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
+himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
+candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
+is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings&mdash;reported in
+local papers&mdash;at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
+laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
+Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
+condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
+class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
+round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
+proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
+to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
+elementary botany? <i>Why</i> mechanics?'</p>
+
+<p>This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
+was pleased, but answered:</p>
+
+<p>'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
+vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
+young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
+come to a new character in the drama&mdash;the chief character of all. One
+day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
+owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
+approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
+eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
+showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
+manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
+distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
+Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
+past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
+the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
+the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
+vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
+that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
+called Lee.</p>
+
+<p>'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
+the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
+admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
+of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
+returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
+private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
+one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
+seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
+word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
+jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
+opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
+again.</p>
+
+<p>'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
+asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
+persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
+bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
+The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
+meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
+Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
+unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
+that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
+in the new political convert. The <i>rendezvous</i>&mdash;always held under cover
+of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
+Hester&mdash;sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
+would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
+ceased.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
+this unearthed letter of Randolph's&mdash;what was in it?'</p>
+
+<p>I read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Dear Mdlle. Cibras,&mdash;I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
+my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
+only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
+unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
+your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
+precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
+will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point&mdash;within, say, three or
+four days&mdash;of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
+appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
+<i>centime</i> under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
+something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
+implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
+bounds of reason.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sincerely yours,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;RANDOLPH.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
+candour. But the <i>facts</i>&mdash;were they true? <i>Did</i> the earl make a new
+will in the time specified?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,&mdash;but that may have been because his death intervened.'</p>
+
+<p>'And in the old will, <i>was</i> Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,&mdash;that at least was correct.'</p>
+
+<p>A shadow of pain passed over his face.</p>
+
+<p>'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
+England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
+letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
+The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
+room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
+introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
+by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
+his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
+arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
+protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
+recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
+man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
+evidence being heard. On the next day&mdash;the 7th&mdash;Hester, entering the
+room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
+(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
+fire), that Lord Pharanx has been &quot;drinking heavily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
+see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
+hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
+note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Maude Cibras.&mdash;You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
+south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
+through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
+nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
+from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
+false. Destroy this note. PHARANX.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
+countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
+fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
+expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal <i>inquisitiveness</i>
+&mdash;an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
+His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central <i>puncta</i>
+of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
+gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
+Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics&mdash;his fingers
+livid with the fixity of his grip&mdash;he bent on it that strenuous
+inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
+mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
+other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
+my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me&mdash;the end,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
+failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
+she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
+for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
+too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
+returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
+Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
+Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
+gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
+informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
+leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
+this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
+scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
+brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph&mdash;who was
+present at the time&mdash;further drew her attention to these by telling her
+that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
+the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
+this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
+about the estate.</p>
+
+<p>'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
+except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
+his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
+giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
+document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
+servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
+Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
+found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
+account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
+view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
+the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
+by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
+clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
+collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
+o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.</p>
+
+<p>'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
+The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
+ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
+of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett&mdash;for Hester has
+somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
+takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
+Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
+over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
+hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
+gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
+casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
+frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
+in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
+flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
+forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
+moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
+on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
+Then on her dazed senses there supervenes&mdash;so she swore&mdash;the
+consciousness that some object is moving in the room&mdash;moving apparently
+of its own accord&mdash;moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
+nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm&mdash;a
+strange something&mdash;globular-white&mdash;looking, as she says, &quot;like a
+good-sized ball of cotton&quot;&mdash;rise directly from the floor before her,
+ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
+sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
+reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
+rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
+prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
+she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
+is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.</p>
+
+<p>'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
+woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
+shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
+his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
+his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
+gasp: &quot;Did you hear something&mdash;from below?&quot; They answer &quot;yes&quot; in
+chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
+troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
+news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
+for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
+light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
+obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
+Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
+Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
+nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
+woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
+out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
+a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
+first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
+labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
+how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
+as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
+their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
+now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
+to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
+this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
+hears him murmur the words, &quot;My God, what can have happened now?&quot; His
+horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
+trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
+phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
+agonised moan, &quot;My God!&quot; and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
+the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
+wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
+does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
+window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
+but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
+large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
+missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
+lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
+a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
+trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
+means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
+placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
+secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
+horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
+sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
+out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
+so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
+death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
+returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
+pronounce their verdict of &quot;guilty.&quot; But she denied shooting Lord
+Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
+no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
+points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
+tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
+of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
+The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
+propounded. But no theory explained <i>all</i> the points. The ferment,
+however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
+on the gallows.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus I ended my narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
+Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
+proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the <i>Lakm&eacute;</i> of
+Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
+his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
+and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
+up to an ivory <i>escritoire</i>, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
+and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
+with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.</p>
+
+<p>'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
+word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
+the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
+confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
+yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you&mdash;you do
+not get a clean <i>coup d'oeil</i> of the whole regiment of facts, and their
+causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
+that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
+is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
+making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
+punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
+occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
+does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
+this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
+mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
+be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
+merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
+world at large&mdash;shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
+not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
+attainment in general, as <i>mood</i> in particular. Whether or when such
+mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
+often think that when the era of civilisation begins&mdash;as assuredly it
+shall some day begin&mdash;when the races of the world cease to be
+credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
+the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a <i>clairvoyant</i> culture.
+But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
+man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
+presence. In individuals, yes&mdash;in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
+English Milton and Bishop Berkeley&mdash;but in humanity, never; and hardly
+in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
+not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
+concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
+conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
+requisite to a <i>r&eacute;gime</i> of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
+of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
+person&mdash;he is one of your cherished &quot;novel&quot;-writers, by the way, if
+that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
+novelty&mdash;once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
+on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
+civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
+certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
+his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
+hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
+general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
+Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
+of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
+part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
+it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
+profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
+anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
+together&mdash;to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
+triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
+defining it as &quot;the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,&quot;
+should surely at this hour be <i>too</i> primitive&mdash;<i>too</i> Opic&mdash;to bring
+anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
+very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
+in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: <i>id&eacute;a</i>]
+which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed&mdash;far,
+perhaps, by ages and aeons&mdash;from becoming part of the general
+conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
+ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
+intricate one of living <i>together: &agrave; propos</i> of which your body
+corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
+fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
+really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile <i>you</i> and <i>I</i> are handicapped.
+The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
+air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
+can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
+invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
+the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
+shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
+with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being &quot;the
+alone complete.&quot; To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
+into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
+ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present&mdash;<i>a
+horrid strain</i>! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
+may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
+know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
+gravity, gravity&mdash;chiefest curse of Eden's sin!&mdash;is hostile. When
+indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
+orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
+Icarian &quot;organa&quot; in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
+which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
+not Goethe who assures us that &quot;further reacheth no man, make he what
+stretching he will&quot;? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
+absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
+Paris is <i>far</i> from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
+Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
+ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
+if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
+many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
+we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
+root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
+the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not <i>quite</i> right&mdash;as,
+indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I <i>know</i>
+whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know&mdash;as clearly, as
+precisely, as a man can know&mdash;that Beatrice Cenci was not &quot;guilty&quot; as
+certain recently-discovered documents &quot;prove&quot; her, but that the Shelley
+version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It <i>is</i>
+possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit&mdash;or say a hand, or a
+dactyl&mdash;to your stature; you may develop powers slightly&mdash;very
+slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree&mdash;in advance of those
+of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
+live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
+mass&mdash;when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
+Cultured Mood has at length arrived&mdash;that their exercise will become
+easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
+presciences, prisms, <i>s&eacute;ances</i>, what introspective craft, Genie
+apocalypses, shall not <i>then</i> become possible to the few who stand
+spiritually in the van of men.</p>
+
+<p>'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
+myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
+the very little puzzle you have placed before me&mdash;one which we
+certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
+at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
+the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
+Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
+enemies; he is the <i>fianc&eacute;</i> of a princess whose husband he is probably
+too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
+father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
+hand, we&mdash;you and I&mdash;know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
+moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
+world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
+assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
+that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
+could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
+murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
+motives&mdash;strong, adequate, irresistible&mdash;and by &quot;irresistible&quot; I mean a
+motive which must be <i>far</i> stronger than even the love of life
+itself&mdash;we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.</p>
+
+<p>'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
+contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
+not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
+her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
+guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of <i>Th&eacute;&acirc;tre des
+Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s</i> type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
+some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
+However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras&mdash;a violent woman, a woman of
+lawless passions&mdash;assuring her that in four or five days she will be
+excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
+plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
+sequence&mdash;though, of course, the <i>intention</i> to produce by his words
+the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
+of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
+produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
+opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
+Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
+tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
+favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
+intention on the part of the earl, we <i>may</i> make the same presumption
+in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
+letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
+double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
+impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
+exact <i>locale</i> of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
+mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
+the district. Can it be possible that Randolph <i>had told her</i>? And here
+again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
+told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
+absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
+further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
+actions are in themselves <i>outr&eacute;</i>, suspicious, they are rendered, not
+less <i>outr&eacute;</i>, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
+himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
+that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
+himself: &quot;Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
+father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
+order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
+attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
+being discovered <i>en flagrant d&eacute;lit</i>, will escape every shadow of
+suspicion.&quot; But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
+made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative&mdash;for he
+leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
+with the letter to Cibras on the 8th&mdash;Randolph despatches it, but the
+earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
+the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
+suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
+Randolph&mdash;finding now that Cibras has &quot;left the country,&quot; that, in
+fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him&mdash;could
+he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
+of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
+abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
+lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
+burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
+of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
+our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who &quot;<i>chose</i>&quot; to gather the
+jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
+attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
+little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
+surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
+the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
+elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the <i>class</i>.
+Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of <i>that</i> seem natural.
+But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
+the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
+quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
+that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
+a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
+clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
+of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
+uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
+have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
+mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
+but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
+the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
+room just overhead, caused by his preparation for &quot;a journey to
+London.&quot; But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
+master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
+Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
+significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?</p>
+
+<p>'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
+Randolph was guilty of something&mdash;some evil intention&mdash;though of
+precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
+would pause: he would reflect that <i>as</i> the father was implicated in
+those acts, and <i>as</i> he was innocent of any such intention, so might
+possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
+of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
+imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
+by evil intention on the part of Randolph&mdash;one act in which his father
+certainly did <i>not</i> participate&mdash;what follows next? Why, that we revert
+at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that <i>all</i> the
+other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
+and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
+conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share <i>might</i>
+have sprung from a like motive in <i>his</i> mind also; nor should the mere
+obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
+least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
+against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
+pass on.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
+deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
+sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
+murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
+ceased&mdash;how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
+becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
+round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
+track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
+and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
+and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were <i>half
+obliterated by the snow</i>. Two things then are clear: that the persons
+who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
+different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
+your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
+&quot;burglars.&quot; But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
+tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
+first&mdash;the woman's&mdash;the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
+second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
+points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
+examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
+when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
+&quot;My God! what has happened <i>now</i>?&quot; But why &quot;now&quot;? The word cannot refer
+to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
+heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
+destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have <i>expected</i> to find the
+window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
+who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
+therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
+to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
+hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
+glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
+That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
+the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
+Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit&mdash;if there
+was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; <i>they</i> did
+not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
+after the snow has ceased to fall,&mdash;that is, after, long after, they
+have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
+their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
+then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
+of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
+night.'</p>
+
+<p>'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow&mdash;the
+neckerchief!'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
+the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
+mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
+refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
+a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
+inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
+Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
+should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
+the improbable. The jewels had been <i>put</i> there with the object of
+throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
+catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
+open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
+this was deliberately done by some one&mdash;would it be rash to say at once
+by whom?</p>
+
+<p>'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
+begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
+statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
+that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
+at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
+humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
+woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
+believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
+deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
+reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
+being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
+intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
+satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
+fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
+their curiosity of what <i>is</i>. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
+whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
+is to <i>peep</i>. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
+their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
+history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
+this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
+true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
+one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
+surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
+white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
+taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
+How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
+be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic condition) the
+result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
+nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
+accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
+acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
+have been light in the room&mdash;a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
+to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
+proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
+alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
+the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
+from the room above&mdash;from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
+one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
+room. It <i>must</i> be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
+driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
+that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
+&quot;driven&quot; upward disappears. We at once ask, why not <i>drawn</i> upward
+through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
+visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
+established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
+is it unreasonable&mdash;even without further evidence&mdash;to suspect another
+in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
+rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
+her leg. Had she fallen <i>over</i> some object, as you supposed, the result
+might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
+being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
+inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
+But this gives us an approximate idea of the <i>size</i> of the lower hole;
+it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
+therefore to admit that &quot;good-sized ball of cotton&quot; of which the woman
+speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
+upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
+evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
+must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
+seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
+which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
+replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
+removal of which had caused so much commotion in Randolph's room on the
+fatal day. Hester Dyett would have been able to notice and bring at
+least one of the apertures forward in evidence, but she fainted before
+she had time to find out the cause of her fall, and an hour later it
+was, you remember, Randolph himself who bore her from the room. But
+should not the aperture in the top floor have been observed by the
+class? Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open space in the middle
+of the room. But it was not observed, and therefore its position was
+not there, but in the only other place left&mdash;behind the apparatus used
+in demonstration. That then was <i>one</i> useful object which the
+apparatus&mdash;and with it the elaborate hypocrisy of class, and speeches,
+and candidature&mdash;served: it was made to act as a curtain, a screen. But
+had it no other purpose? That question we may answer when we know its
+name and its nature. And it is not beyond our powers to conjecture this
+with something like certainty. For the only &quot;machines&quot; possible to use
+in illustration of simple mechanics are the screw, the wedge, the
+scale, the lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's machine. The
+mathematical principles which any of these exemplify would, of course,
+be incomprehensible to such a class, but the first five most of all,
+and as there would naturally be some slight pretence of trying to make
+the learners understand, I therefore select the last; and this
+selection is justified when we remember that on the shot being heard,
+Randolph leans for support on the &quot;machine,&quot; and stands in its shadow;
+but any of the others would be too small to throw any appreciable
+shadow, except one&mdash;the wheel, and-axle&mdash;and that one would hardly
+afford support to a tall man in the erect position. The Atwood's
+machine is therefore forced on us; as to its construction, it is, as
+you are aware, composed of two upright posts, with a cross-bar fitted
+with pulleys and strings, and is intended to show the motion of bodies
+acting under a constant force&mdash;the force of gravity, to wit. But now
+consider all the really glorious uses to which those same pulleys may
+be turned in lowering and lifting unobserved that &quot;ball of cotton&quot;
+through the two apertures, while the other strings with the weights
+attached are dangling before the dull eyes of the peasants. I need only
+point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
+was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
+why.</p>
+
+<p>'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
+shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
+for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
+have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
+expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
+also discover the <i>means</i> by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
+that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
+Cibras&mdash;for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
+neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
+the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
+establish a substantial, an irrefutable <i>alibi</i> for himself by going to
+Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
+the deed&mdash;that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
+fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
+<i>alibi</i> is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
+witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
+so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been. Why
+then, expecting the death, did he not take some such journey? Obviously
+because on <i>this</i> occasion his personal presence was necessary. When,
+<i>in conjunction</i> with this, we recall the fact that during the
+intrigues with Cibras the lectures were discontinued, and again resumed
+immediately on her unlooked-for departure, we arrive at the conclusion
+that the means by which Lord Pharanx's death was expected to occur was
+the personal presence of Randolph <i>in conjunction</i> with the political
+speeches, the candidature, the class, the apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>'But though he stands condemned of foreknowing, and being in some sort
+connected with, his father's death, I can nowhere find any indication
+of his having personally accomplished it, or even of his ever having
+had any such intention. The evidence is evidence of complicity&mdash;and
+nothing more. And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;even of <i>this</i> we began by acquitting
+him unless we could discover, as I said, some strong, adequate,
+altogether irresistible motive for such complicity. Failing this, we
+ought to admit that at some point our argument has played us false, and
+led us into conclusions wholly at variance with our certain knowledge
+of the principles underlying human conduct in general. Let us therefore
+seek for such a motive&mdash;something deeper than personal enmity, stronger
+than personal ambition, <i>than the love of life itself!</i> And now, tell
+me, at the time of the occurrence of this mystery, was the whole past
+history of the House of Orven fully investigated?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not to my knowledge,' I answered; 'in the papers there were, of
+course, sketches of the earl's career, but that I think was all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yet it cannot be that their past was unknown, but only that it was
+ignored. Long, I tell you, long and often, have I pondered on that
+history, and sought to trace with what ghastly secret has been pregnant
+the destiny, gloomful as Erebus and the murk of black-peplosed Nux,
+which for centuries has hung its pall over the men of this ill-fated
+house. Now at last I know. Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror is
+that history; down the silent corridors of the ages have these
+blood-soaked sons of Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing talons
+of the dread Eumenides. The first earl received his patent in 1535 from
+the eighth Henry. Two years later, though noted as a rabid &quot;king's
+man,&quot; he joined the Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and was
+soon after executed, with Darcy and some other lords. His age was then
+fifty. His son, meantime, had served in the king's army under Norfolk.
+It is remarkable, by the way, that females have all along been rare in
+the family, and that in no instance has there been more than one son.
+The second earl, under the sixth Edward, suddenly threw up a civil
+post, hastened to the army, and fell at the age of forty at the battle
+of Pinkie in 1547. He was accompanied by his son. The third in 1557,
+under Mary, renounced the Catholic faith, to which, both before and
+since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
+forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
+in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
+<i>of the same day</i> he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
+later on, in 1591, seen by <i>his</i> son to fall from a lofty balcony at
+Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
+time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
+the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
+window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
+but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
+soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by <i>radix
+aconiti indica</i>, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
+except to <i>savants</i>, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
+An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
+House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
+now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
+suspicion, of course, fell on <i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
+with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
+this intimate knowledge of <i>all</i> the great families of Europe! It was
+as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
+history of the Orvens.</p>
+
+<p>'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
+family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
+marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
+show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
+large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
+seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not
+design that the last Lord of Orven should any more hide from the world
+the guilty secret of his race. It was the will of the gods&mdash;and he
+betrayed himself. &quot;Return,&quot; he writes, &quot;the beginning of the end is
+come.&quot; What end?</p>
+
+<p><i>The</i> end&mdash;perfectly well known to Randolph, needing no explanation for
+<i>him</i>. The old, old end, which in the ancient dim time led the first
+lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king; and another, still
+devout, to renounce his cherished faith, and yet another to set fire to
+the home of his ancestors. You have called the two last scions of the
+family &quot;a proud and selfish pair of beings&quot;; proud they were, and
+selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
+personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
+in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
+selfishness of <i>race</i>. What consideration, think you, other than the
+weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
+shame&mdash;for as such he certainly regards it&mdash;of a conversion to
+radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have <i>died</i> rather than make this
+pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it&mdash;and the reason? It
+is because he has received that awful summons from home; because &quot;the
+end&quot; is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
+meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming <i>too</i> acute;
+because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
+house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
+endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
+able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
+intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
+malady which physicians call &quot;<i>General Paralysis of the Insane</i>.&quot; You
+remember I took from your hands the newspaper containing the earl's
+letter to Cibras, in order to read it with my own eyes. I had my
+reasons, and I was justified. That letter contains three mistakes in
+spelling: &quot;here&quot; is printed &quot;hear,&quot; &quot;pass&quot; appears as &quot;pas,&quot; and &quot;room&quot;
+as &quot;rume.&quot; Printers' errors, you say? But not so&mdash;one might be, two in
+that short paragraph could hardly be, three would be impossible. Search
+the whole paper through, and I think you will not find another. Let us
+reverence the theory of probabilities: the errors were the writer's,
+not the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have
+this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of
+middle age&mdash;the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died
+mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his
+race&mdash;the heritage of madness&mdash;is falling or fallen on him, he summons
+his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the
+tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down
+through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it
+is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without
+detection&mdash;and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is
+suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
+life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
+be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
+blossoms into a popular candidate.</p>
+
+<p>'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
+of Maude Cibras; he hopes that <i>she</i> may be made to destroy the earl;
+but when she fails him, he recurs to it&mdash;recurs to it all suddenly, for
+Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
+eyes, could any eye see him&mdash;so much so that on the last day none of
+the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
+Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
+not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
+she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
+bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
+The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
+pistol, such as this'&mdash;here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
+weapon from a drawer near him&mdash;'that appeared in the gloom to the
+excited Hester as a &quot;ball of cotton,&quot; while it was being drawn upward
+by the Atwood's machine. But if the earl shot himself he could not have
+done so after being stabbed to the heart. Maude Cibras, therefore,
+stabbed a dead man. She would, of course, have ample time for stealing
+into the room and doing so after the shot was fired, and before the
+party reached the balcony window, on account of the delay on the stairs
+in procuring a second light; in going to the earl's door; in examining
+the tracks, and so on. But having stabbed a dead man, she is not guilty
+of murder. The message I just now sent by Ham was one addressed to the
+Home Secretary, telling him on no account to let Cibras die to-morrow.
+He well knows my name, and will hardly be silly enough to suppose me
+capable of using words without meaning. It will be perfectly easy to
+prove my conclusions, for the pieces removed from, and replaced in, the
+floorings can still be detected, if looked for; the pistol is still, no
+doubt, in Randolph's room, and its bore can be compared with the bullet
+found in Lord Pharanx's brain; above all, the jewels stolen by the
+&quot;burglars&quot; are still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, and may
+readily be discovered I therefore expect that the d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment will now
+take a somewhat different turn.'</p>
+
+<p>That the d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment did take a different turn, and pretty strictly in
+accordance with Zaleski's forecast, is now matter of history, and the
+incidents, therefore, need no further comment from me in this place.</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="stone"></a><h2>THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Russia,' said Prince Zaleski to me one day, when I happened to be on a
+visit to him in his darksome sanctuary&mdash;'Russia may be regarded as land
+surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way,
+it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of <i>Britain</i> as an island,
+unless indeed the word be understood as a mere <i>modus loquendi</i> arising
+out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a
+small continent. Near her&mdash;a little to the south-east&mdash;is situated the
+large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing
+to these shores should commune within himself: &quot;I now cross to the
+Mainland&quot;; and retracing his steps: &quot;I now return to the fragment rent
+by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country.&quot; And this I say not in
+the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in
+my mind merely the relative depth and extent&mdash;the <i>non-insularity</i>, in
+fact&mdash;of the impressions made by the several nations on the world. But
+this island of Europe has herself an island of her own: the name of it,
+Russia. She, of all lands, is the <i>terra incognita</i>, the unknown land;
+till quite lately she was more&mdash;she was the undiscovered, the
+unsuspected land. She <i>has</i> a literature, you know, and a history, and
+a language, and a purpose&mdash;but of all this the world has hardly so much
+as heard. Indeed, she, and not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real
+Ultima Thule of modern times, the true Island of Mystery.'</p>
+
+<p>I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski here, not so much on account of
+the splendid tribute to my country contained in them, as because it
+ever seemed to me&mdash;and especially in connection with the incident I am
+about to recall&mdash;that in this respect at least he was a genuine son of
+Russia; if she is the Land, so truly was he the Man, of Mystery. I who
+knew him best alone knew that it was impossible to know him. He was a
+being little of the present: with one arm he embraced the whole past;
+the fingers of the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of the future. He
+seemed to me&mdash;I say it deliberately and with forethought&mdash;to possess
+the unparalleled power not merely of disentangling in retrospect, but
+of unravelling in prospect, and I have known him to relate <i>coming</i>
+events with unimaginable minuteness of precision. He was nothing if not
+superlative: his diatribes, now culminating in a very <i>extravaganza</i> of
+hyperbole&mdash;now sailing with loose wing through the downy, witched,
+Dutch cloud-heaps of some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia of
+thought&mdash;now laying down law of the Medes for the actual world of
+to-day&mdash;had oft-times the strange effect of bringing back to my mind
+the very singular old-epic epithet, [Greek: aenemoen]&mdash;<i>airy</i>&mdash;as
+applied to human thought. The mere grip of his memory was not simply
+extraordinary, it had in it a token, a hint, of the strange, the
+pythic&mdash;nay, the sibylline. And as his reflecting intellect, moreover,
+had all the lightness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you could
+contrive to follow each dazzlingly swift successive step, by the sum of
+which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
+astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.</p>
+
+<p>I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
+and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
+from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
+agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
+distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
+had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
+a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
+incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
+condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
+book to the agent.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
+prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
+absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
+profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
+was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
+assenting, I proceeded to do so.</p>
+
+<p>The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
+oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
+in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
+within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
+Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
+equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
+space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
+was lineally connected with&mdash;though, of course, not descendant
+from&mdash;that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
+convent, who wrote the now so celebrated <i>Jocelini Chronica</i>: and the
+chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
+time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
+inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Or shuld it chaunges dre,</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'</span><br />
+
+<p>The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
+figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
+letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
+the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
+another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
+inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
+size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
+remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
+Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
+in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
+research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
+their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
+years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
+Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
+acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give <i>verbatim</i>
+the extracts from his diary:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 11</i>.&mdash;This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
+the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
+it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
+Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly&mdash;seemed to have been looking forward to
+it&mdash;and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
+factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
+Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
+this was also my father's birthday; and <i>his</i> father's; and repeated
+the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
+walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of <i>himself</i>
+sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
+pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.</p>
+
+<p>'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
+successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
+show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
+declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
+and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription &quot;Has&quot; meant. I
+informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June l5</i>.&mdash;Some new element has entered into our existence here.
+Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
+and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
+hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain&mdash;a
+drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
+fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
+chosen child!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 18</i>.&mdash;Ul-Jabal?&mdash;that man is <i>the very Devil incarnate!</i></p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 19</i>.&mdash;So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
+poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
+Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
+to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
+wealth&mdash;the debt I owe him&mdash;has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
+<i>I</i> instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?</p>
+
+<p>'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
+with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
+had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
+shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball&mdash;I saw <i>them</i>, and nothing
+else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
+crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
+viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
+has stolen my life. The stone is gone&mdash;gone, my precious gem. A
+weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
+marble floor.</p>
+
+<p>'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
+shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 20</i>.&mdash;Ah, Ul-Jabal&mdash;my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
+God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
+yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
+not&mdash;not&mdash;the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
+semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
+went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
+after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
+might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
+clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!&mdash;he has taken
+the <i>other</i> stone from the <i>other</i> cup&mdash;a thing of little value to any
+man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 21</i>.&mdash;Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has <i>not</i> replaced it&mdash;not
+<i>it</i>&mdash;but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
+and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
+engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value&mdash;a stone I
+have never seen before. How has he obtained it&mdash;whence? I must brace
+myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
+this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
+in the balance.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 22</i>.&mdash;Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
+to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
+flinched: and drank&mdash;drank.</p>
+
+<p>'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
+make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
+in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
+Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
+me that browse of hell&mdash;to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 23</i>.&mdash;The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
+I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
+as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
+which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
+into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
+The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
+and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which <i>he himself</i>
+put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
+shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 24</i>.&mdash;No more&mdash;no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
+Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
+of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
+twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 25</i>.&mdash;He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
+him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
+door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
+should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
+treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
+right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
+book&mdash;the more the pity for the world, not for me.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 26</i>.&mdash;Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
+<i>another</i> stone in the Edmundsbury chalice&mdash;also identical in nearly
+every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
+entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
+stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
+replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
+from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
+a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 28</i>.&mdash;I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
+It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life&mdash;and which is the
+best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
+murder&mdash;I, with this withered hand&mdash;so that I get back the heritage
+which is mine.</p>
+
+<p>'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
+room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
+that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
+his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
+a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
+out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
+the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
+its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
+When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. &quot;Now,&quot; he
+said, grinning down at me, &quot;now you have at last delivered all into my
+hands.&quot; He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
+upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 1</i>.&mdash;Life against life&mdash;and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
+than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not <i>yet</i> am I ready
+to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
+paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let <i>him</i> die. Many and
+many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
+averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
+times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
+chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
+lost&mdash;a mere fiction <i>at first</i>, an idler's dream <i>then</i>, but
+now&mdash;now&mdash;that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
+things, and a fact among facts&mdash;no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
+as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
+surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
+hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
+insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
+saw a Syrian's head cleft open&mdash;a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
+have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 2</i>.&mdash;I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
+and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
+thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
+Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
+all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 7</i>.&mdash;The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
+grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
+for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
+to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
+lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
+greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
+slay my enemy, and make an end?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July</i> 8.&mdash;Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
+through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
+could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
+First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
+the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
+lie my few garments&mdash;and opened it. Ah, I have the stone&mdash;safe&mdash;safe!
+He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
+where I would be least likely to seek it&mdash;<i>in my own trunk</i>! And yet I
+dread, most intensely I dread, to look.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July</i> 9.&mdash;The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
+have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
+have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 10</i>.&mdash;In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
+past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
+cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
+the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
+him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
+unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
+the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
+gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
+pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
+the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
+that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
+and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
+vaults,&mdash;the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,&mdash;how had I
+forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
+had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
+might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
+the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?&mdash;but he held the
+key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
+his head bent down. The thought came to me <i>then</i>, that, had I but the
+courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
+Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
+his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
+me&mdash;thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
+my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
+headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
+caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
+chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
+dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 11</i>.&mdash;I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
+remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
+tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 12</i>.&mdash;I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
+He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
+Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
+taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
+pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
+and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
+failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>'July l3.&mdash;I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
+soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
+late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
+a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
+It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>'July l4.&mdash;Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
+man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
+him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
+no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
+would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,&mdash;and is gone!</p>
+
+<p>'July l5.&mdash;Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
+far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
+with him&mdash;the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
+ebbing in my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>Here the manuscript abruptly ended.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
+couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
+he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
+as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
+apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
+round on me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Has</i> it a meaning?'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
+note, the <i>nuance</i> of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
+<i>enough</i>, inductive and deductive cunning <i>enough</i>, not only a meaning,
+but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
+human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
+that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
+not read the diary to me before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
+life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
+day is this?'</p>
+
+<p>'This is the 20th.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
+still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
+seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
+business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
+with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
+you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
+Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
+Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
+matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'</p>
+
+<p>As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:</p>
+
+<p>'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected&mdash;from the
+Indian?'</p>
+
+<p>'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian&mdash;Persian.'</p>
+
+<p>Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
+which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
+telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
+the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
+and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
+Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.</p>
+
+<p>'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
+has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
+really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
+Jocelin was found by his servant&mdash;I imagine he had a servant, though no
+mention is made of any&mdash;lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
+Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem&mdash;an oval stone,
+white in colour&mdash;the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
+Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence&mdash;no trace of
+poison&mdash;the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
+this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
+I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three&mdash;and in one island
+in the South Seas, forty-four&mdash;different methods of doing murder, any
+one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
+agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.</p>
+
+<p>'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
+first, <i>who</i> is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
+this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
+name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
+afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
+man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
+his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
+manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
+lived. &quot;What,&quot; he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
+long-desired gem, &quot;what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'&quot;&mdash;the
+meaning which <i>he</i> so well knew. &quot;One of the lost secrets of the
+world,&quot; replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
+Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
+circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
+the solution of the riddle, or else&mdash;what is more likely, in spite of
+his rather high-flown estimate of his own &quot;Reason&quot;&mdash;that his mind, and
+the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
+than the Edmundsbury Monks. But <i>they</i> did not make the stone, nor did
+they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk&mdash;they got it from
+some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
+stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
+someone from whom <i>he</i> received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
+of time. And consider the character of the engraving&mdash;it consists of <i>a
+mythological animal</i>, and some words, of which the letters &quot;Has&quot; only
+are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
+Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
+Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
+glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
+that the figure of the <i>scarabaeus</i> on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
+infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
+grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
+that evidence alone&mdash;though there is more&mdash;that this gem was certainly
+Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of &quot;Has&quot; vanishes:
+for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
+Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
+precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
+childishly calls &quot;the lost secrets of the world&quot;: for every successive
+inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
+led astray in his investigation. &quot;Has&quot; is, in fact, part of the word
+&quot;Hasn-us-Sabah,&quot; and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
+obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
+shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
+of graving in precious stones than the Persians,&mdash;by a rude, mediaeval
+Englishman, in short,&mdash;the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
+of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman&mdash;who
+either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
+him&mdash;do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
+fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
+red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
+I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
+that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
+his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
+of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
+believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
+incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
+Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
+politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
+&mdash;the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
+him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
+well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
+of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, <i>and
+plundered</i>, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
+or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
+this time there was a cordial <i>rapprochement</i> between Saladin and
+Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
+generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
+deep mystic importance, took place&mdash;remember &quot;The Talisman,&quot; and the
+&quot;Lee Penny&quot;; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
+then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
+(as we are informed by the <i>Jocelini Chronica</i>) was <i>opened by the
+Abbot</i> at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
+occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
+it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
+this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
+whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
+presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
+surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
+bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, &quot;al
+Hasani&quot; or &quot;Ismaili&quot;&mdash;&quot;that accursed <i>Ishmaelite</i>,&quot; the baronet
+exclaims in one place&mdash;still live, are still a flourishing sect
+impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
+chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
+&quot;Lebanon&quot; on which Sir Jocelin &quot;picked up&quot; his too doubtful scribe and
+literary helper?</p>
+
+<p>'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the
+Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
+his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
+England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
+breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
+over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
+stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
+secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
+to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
+that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
+with another stone similar in size and shape&mdash;these being well known to
+him&mdash;to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
+so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
+chalice was not often <i>opened</i> by the baronet, and this would therefore
+have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
+assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
+appears all the trouble he took to <i>engrave</i> the false stone in an
+exactly similar manner to the other. <i>That</i> could not help him in
+producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
+being <i>seen</i>, but only <i>heard</i> in the cup, is proved by the fact that
+he selected a stone of a different <i>colour</i>. This colour, as I shall
+afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
+are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
+last stone, the white one&mdash;I shall prove that it was white&mdash;which
+Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided <i>two</i>
+substitutes, and that he had engraved these <i>two</i>, without object, in
+the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
+<i>having</i> done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
+prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not <i>prepared</i> any substitute; and
+it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
+probable that he could <i>by chance</i> have possessed two old gems exactly
+similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
+the word &quot;Hasn-us-Sabah.&quot; I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
+not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
+Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
+never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
+point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
+motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
+for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
+order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
+making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
+real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.</p>
+
+<p>'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
+evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
+positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
+that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
+the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
+exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
+its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
+certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
+equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
+his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
+believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. &quot;Now,&quot; he cries in
+triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room&mdash;&quot;<i>now</i> you have
+delivered all into my hands.&quot; &quot;All&quot; what, Sir Jocelin wonders. &quot;All,&quot;
+of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
+precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that <i>he</i> has
+done&mdash;hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
+own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
+accordingly hastens into his chamber, and &quot;locks the door,&quot; in order,
+by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
+examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
+is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
+the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
+like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
+deposited it in a place of perfect safety&mdash;such as, with or without
+lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
+afforded&mdash;his more reasonable <i>r&ocirc;le</i> would have been that of
+unconscious <i>nonchalance</i>, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
+fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
+hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
+secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
+that Ul-Jabal &quot;holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
+down&quot;: can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of <i>search</i>?
+Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
+able to suspect that both are seekers.</p>
+
+<p>'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
+the stone by the Persian than all this&mdash;and that is the murder of the
+baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
+a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
+murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
+power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
+semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
+him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder&mdash;the clear means of
+gaining the stone&mdash;presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
+moment&mdash;indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
+very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
+It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
+gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
+of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
+admitting of the designation &quot;gown,&quot; have usually only outer
+pockets&mdash;large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
+robe. But a stone of that size <i>must</i> have made such a pocket bulge
+outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
+perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
+his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
+there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
+the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
+narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
+there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
+ultimate detection, pursuit&mdash;and this is a land of Law, swift and
+fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus&mdash;thus surely, and thus
+secretly&mdash;can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
+very next day he leaves the house&mdash;no more shall the mistrustful
+baronet, who is &quot;hiding something from him,&quot; see his face. He carries
+with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
+contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his &quot;brown gowns,&quot; and a
+snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
+that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
+<i>house</i>, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
+during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
+<i>far and wide</i> &quot;with uncovered head.&quot; Can you not picture the
+distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
+long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
+may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
+Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
+to <i>hide</i> the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to <i>seek</i> it, for
+he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
+in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
+previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
+has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
+&quot;the old days of love&quot;; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
+sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is &quot;brown as the leaves of autumn.&quot;
+That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
+hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour&mdash;it was the
+yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
+has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
+tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
+he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
+the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
+no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
+outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
+two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
+neurotic condition; I thought of those &quot;fibrillary twitchings,&quot;
+indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
+sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
+stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
+urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
+dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
+the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
+sudden, the terrific shock of seeing <i>himself</i> sitting in the chair
+before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been <i>placed</i> there by
+Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
+to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death&mdash;if he <i>be</i>
+dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
+Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
+snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
+all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
+plague, and, I hope, straightway go and&mdash;hang himself.'</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
+the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
+now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
+'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
+which Zaleski had been detailing to me.</p>
+
+<p>'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
+with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
+discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
+exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
+above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
+these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
+turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
+inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
+that if &quot;this stone be stolen,&quot; or if it &quot;chaunges dre,&quot; the House of
+Saul and its head &quot;anoon&quot; (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. &quot;Dre,&quot; I may
+remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
+with the Saxon &quot;<i>dreogan</i>,&quot; meaning to &quot;suffer.&quot; So that the writer at
+least contemplated that the stone might &quot;suffer changes.&quot; But what kind
+of changes&mdash;external or internal? External change&mdash;change of
+environment&mdash;is already provided for when he says, &quot;shulde this Ston
+stalen bee&quot;; &quot;chaunges,&quot; therefore, in <i>his</i> mind, meant internal
+changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
+this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
+name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
+immediately discoverable. For it was a &quot;sky-blue&quot; stone; a sky-blue,
+sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
+its name&mdash;it was a <i>turquoise</i>. But can the turquoise, to the certain
+knowledge of a mediaeval writer, &quot;chaunges dre&quot;? Let us turn for light
+to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
+bronze Hera.'</p>
+
+<p>I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
+of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
+precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
+his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
+end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
+thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
+turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
+which lose it.'<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<blockquote> <p><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>'Assur&eacute;ment la turquoise a une &acirc;me plus intelligente que
+l'&acirc;me de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
+touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
+jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
+Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, &agrave; fin que l'on ne
+recoure pas &agrave; Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
+precieuse; ainsi, peut-&ecirc;tre, il de&ccedil;oit nos esprits par la turquoise:
+car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
+couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' <i>Anselm de Boot</i>, Book II.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
+have the property of changing its colour&mdash;a change which was
+universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
+owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
+many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
+thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
+well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
+specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
+may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
+in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
+that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
+stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
+lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
+that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
+that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
+the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
+infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
+chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
+baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
+the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
+final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
+stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
+All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
+And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
+somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
+the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
+immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
+history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
+centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
+the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
+Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
+ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
+right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in <i>all</i> lands, and at
+<i>all</i> times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
+virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
+garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
+Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
+in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
+Already you have a semi-comic &quot;gold-cure&quot; for alcoholism, and you have
+heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
+scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
+it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
+fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
+what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
+inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Note</i>.&mdash;As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
+Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
+may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
+have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
+of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
+skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
+found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="thess"></a><h2>THE S.S.</h2>
+
+<p>'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....</p>
+
+<p>'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Gesch&ouml;pf,
+das falsch lebt, wird fr&uuml;h zerst&ouml;rt. Unfruchtbarkeit, k&uuml;mmerliches
+Dasein, fr&uuml;hzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Fl&uuml;che, die Kennzeichen
+ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
+much into the world along with them....</p>
+
+<p>'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
+a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
+early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
+displeasure.']</p>
+
+<p>[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
+panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
+ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
+depleted of Men (i.e. <i>after the battle with Cleomenes</i>) that the
+slaves usurped everything&mdash;ruling and disposing&mdash;until such time as the
+sons of the slain were grown up.']</p>
+
+<p>To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
+what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
+being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
+sensational case of <i>felo de se</i> published in the newspapers is sure to
+be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
+out of all proportion with the <i>extent</i> of each particular outbreak.
+Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
+wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
+fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
+Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
+perished by the scourge; while that at the <i>H&ocirc;tel des Invalides</i> in
+Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
+present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
+throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
+black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
+brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
+dear sick stress of her desire&mdash;with just such faintings, wanton fires,
+does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
+to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">'When she sees a bank</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Her servants, what a pretty place it were</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">To bury lovers in; and make her maids</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'</span><br />
+
+<p>[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>The <i>mode</i> spreads&mdash;then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
+obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes <i>comme il faut</i>, this cerecloth
+acquiring all the attractiveness and <i>&eacute;clat</i> of a wedding-garment. The
+coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
+of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
+There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
+pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
+explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
+sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
+year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
+in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
+I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
+answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
+woe at Bethany:</p>
+
+<p>'Come and see.'</p>
+
+<p>To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'</p>
+
+<p>I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
+cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
+know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
+referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
+thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
+even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
+the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
+note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
+Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
+derision and censure&mdash;for it will be remembered that to many minds the
+mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
+conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
+self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
+and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
+wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
+police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
+under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
+panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
+people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
+agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
+The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
+doubt, the haunting <i>fear</i>. None felt himself quite safe; men
+recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
+affright, and to know not why&mdash;that is the transcendentalism of terror.
+The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
+in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
+walketh <i>by night</i> that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
+being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
+And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
+but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
+that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris <i>Bourse</i>, business
+decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
+practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
+answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
+motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
+Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
+because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
+invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
+time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
+had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
+flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
+excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
+eyes. I avow that that lonesome room&mdash;gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
+perfumed light&mdash;shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
+narcotic-breathing draperies&mdash;pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
+brooding occupant&mdash;grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
+remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
+midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
+cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
+all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
+into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
+words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
+laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
+properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
+gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
+all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
+of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
+must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
+the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
+an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
+suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
+and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
+for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
+the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
+firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
+he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with which he was
+always tormented by any mystery which momentarily baffled him, I was,
+of course, forced to hold my peace. On the third day, however, of his
+own accord he asked me to what epidemic I had referred. I then detailed
+to him some of the strange events which were agitating the mind of the
+outside world. From the very first he was interested: later on that
+interest grew into a passion, a greedy soul-consuming quest after the
+truth, the intensity of which was such at last as to move me even to
+pity.</p>
+
+<p>I may as well here restate the facts as I communicated them to Zaleski.
+The concatenation of incidents, it will be remembered, started with the
+extraordinary death of that eminent man of science, Professor
+Schleschinger, consulting laryngologist to the Charit&eacute; Hospital in
+Berlin. The professor, a man of great age, was on the point of
+contracting his third marriage with the beautiful and accomplished
+daughter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von Friedrich. The contemplated
+union, which was entirely one of those <i>mariages de convenance</i> so
+common in good society, sprang out of the professor's ardent desire to
+leave behind him a direct heir to his very considerable wealth. By his
+first two marriages, indeed, he had had large families, and was at this
+very time surrounded by quite an army of little grandchildren, from
+whom (all his direct descendants being dead) he might have been content
+to select his heir; but the old German prejudices in these matters are
+strong, and he still hoped to be represented on his decease by a son of
+his own. To this whim the charming Ottilie was marked by her parents as
+the victim. The wedding, however, had been postponed owing to a slight
+illness of the veteran scientist, and just as he was on the point of
+final recovery from it, death intervened to prevent altogether the
+execution of his design. Never did death of man create a profounder
+sensation; <i>never was death of man followed by consequences more
+terrible</i>. The <i>Residenz</i> of the scientist was a stately mansion near
+the University in the <i>Unter den Linden</i> boulevard, that is to say, in
+the most fashionable <i>Quartier</i> of Berlin. His bedroom from a
+considerable height looked out on a small back garden, and in this room
+he had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical
+attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all
+this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various
+topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of
+what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain
+grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had
+found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the
+horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion
+to make a <i>post-mortem</i> examination. The woman had suffered from
+partial paralysis. She had a small young family, none of whom, however,
+could give any account of the slip, except one little girl, who
+declared that she had taken it 'from her mother's mouth' after death.
+The slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, as though it had been
+smeared with honey. The professor added that all through his illness he
+had been employing himself by examining these figures. He was
+convinced, he said, that they contained some archaeological
+significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a
+slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,&mdash;on the bed of a dead
+Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the
+<i>mouth</i> of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident
+seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the
+instinct&mdash;so strong in him&mdash;to investigate, to probe. For days, he
+declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the
+figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe
+that the figures&mdash;rude and uncouth as they were&mdash;were only such as
+might be drawn by any school-boy in an idle moment. They consisted
+merely of a man and a woman seated on a bench, with what looked like an
+ornamental border running round them. After a pleasant evening's
+scientific gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after midnight, took his
+departure from the bed-side. An hour later the servants were roused
+from sleep by one deep, raucous cry proceeding from the professor's
+room. They hastened to his door; it was locked on the inside; all was
+still within. No answer coming to their calls, the door was broken in.
+They found their master lying calm and dead on his bed. A window of the
+room was open, but there was nothing to show that any one had entered
+it. Dr. Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on the scene. After
+examining the body, he failed to find anything to account for the
+sudden demise of his old friend and chief. One observation, however,
+had the effect of causing him to tingle with horror. On his entrance he
+had noticed, lying on the side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with
+which the professor had been toying in the earlier part of the day, and
+had removed it. But, as he was on the point of leaving the room, he
+happened to approach the corpse once more, and bending over it, noticed
+that the lips and teeth were slightly parted. Drawing open the now
+stiffened jaws, he found&mdash;to his amazement, to his stupefaction&mdash;that,
+neatly folded beneath the dead tongue, lay just such another piece of
+papyrus as that which he had removed from the bed. He drew it out&mdash;it
+was clammy. He put it to his nose,&mdash;it exhaled the fragrance of honey.
+He opened it,&mdash;it was covered by figures. He compared them with the
+figures on the other slip,&mdash;they were just so similar as two
+draughtsmen hastily copying from a common model would make them. The
+doctor was unnerved: he hurried homeward, and immediately submitted the
+honey on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical analysis: he suspected
+poison&mdash;a subtle poison&mdash;as the means of a suicide, grotesquely,
+insanely accomplished. He found the fluid to be perfectly
+innocuous,&mdash;pure honey, and nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor
+Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the
+papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of
+actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own
+hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical
+profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen,
+Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance;
+within three weeks from the night on which Professor Schleschinger met
+his unaccountable end, eight thousand persons in Germany, France, and
+Great Britain, died in that startlingly sudden and secret manner which
+we call 'tragic', many of them obviously by their own hands, many, in
+what seemed the servility of a fatal imitativeness, with figured,
+honey-smeared slips of papyrus beneath their tongues. Even now&mdash;now,
+after years&mdash;I thrill intensely to recall the dread remembrance; but to
+live through it, to breathe daily the mawkish, miasmatic atmosphere,
+all vapid with the suffocating death&mdash;ah, it was terror too deep,
+nausea too foul, for mortal bearing. Novalis has somewhere hinted at
+the possibility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous suicide and
+voluntary return by the whole human family into the sweet bosom of our
+ancient Father&mdash;I half expected it was coming, had come, <i>then</i>. It was
+as if the old, good-easy, meek-eyed man of science, dying, had left his
+effectual curse on all the world, and had thereby converted
+civilisation into one omnivorous grave, one universal charnel-house. I
+spent several days in reading out to Zaleski accounts of particular
+deaths as they had occurred. He seemed never to tire of listening,
+lying back for the most part on the silver-cushioned couch, and wearing
+an inscrutable mask. Sometimes he rose and paced the carpet with
+noiseless foot-fall, his steps increasing to the swaying, uneven
+velocity of an animal in confinement as a passage here or there
+attracted him, and then subsiding into their slow regularity again. At
+any interruption in the reading, he would instantly turn to me with a
+certain impatience, and implore me to proceed; and when our stock of
+matter failed, he broke out into actual anger that I had not brought
+more with me. Henceforth the negro, Ham, using my trap, daily took a
+double journey&mdash;one before sunrise, and one at dusk&mdash;to the nearest
+townlet, from which he would return loaded with newspapers. With
+unimaginable eagerness did both Zaleski and I seize, morning after
+morning, and evening after evening, on these budgets, to gloat for long
+hours over the ever-lengthening tale of death. As for him, sleep
+forsook him. He was a man of small reasonableness, scorning the
+limitations of human capacity; his palate brooked no meat when his
+brain was headlong in the chase; even the mild narcotics which were now
+his food and drink seemed to lose something of their power to mollify,
+to curb him. Often rising from slumber in what I took to be the dead of
+night&mdash;though of day or night there could be small certainty in that
+dim dwelling&mdash;I would peep into the domed chamber, and see him there
+under the livid-green light of the censer, the leaden smoke issuing
+from his lips, his eyes fixed unweariedly on a square piece of ebony
+which rested on the coffin of the mummy near him. On this ebony he had
+pasted side by side several woodcuts&mdash;snipped from the newspapers&mdash;of
+the figures traced on the pieces of papyrus found in the mouths of the
+dead. I could see, as time passed, that he was concentrating all his
+powers on these figures; for the details of the deaths themselves were
+all of a dreary sameness, offering few salient points for
+investigation. In those cases where the suicide had left behind him
+clear evidence of the means by which he had committed the act, there
+was nothing to investigate; the others&mdash;rich and poor alike, peer and
+peasant&mdash;trooped out by thousands on the far journey, without leaving
+the faintest footprint to mark the road by which they had gone.</p>
+
+<p>This was perhaps the reason that, after a time, Zaleski discarded the
+newspapers, leaving their perusal to me, and turned his attention
+exclusively to the ebon tablet. Knowing as I full well did the daring
+and success of his past spiritual adventures,&mdash;the subtlety, the
+imagination, the imperial grip of his intellect,&mdash;I did not at all
+doubt that his choice was wise, and would in the end be justified.
+These woodcuts&mdash;now so notorious&mdash;were all exactly similar in design,
+though minutely differing here and there in drawing. The following is a
+facsimile of one of them taken by me at random:</p>
+
+<div align="center"><img src="images/ill.jpg" alt="woodcut" /> </div>
+<p>The time passed. It now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid
+pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of
+Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in
+his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I
+decided at last&mdash;if mystery there were&mdash;was too deep, too dark, for
+him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more
+from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat
+reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard a loud cry from
+the vaulted chamber. I rushed to the door and beheld him standing,
+gazing with wild eyes at the ebon tablet held straight out in front of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'By Heaven!' he cried, stamping savagely with his foot. 'By Heaven!
+Then I certainly <i>am</i> a fool! <i>It is the staff of Phaebus in the hand
+of Hermes!'</i></p>
+
+<p>I hastened to him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'have you discovered anything?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is possible.'</p>
+
+<p>'And has there really been foul play&mdash;murder&mdash;in any of these deaths?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of that, at least, I was certain from the first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Great God!' I exclaimed, 'could any son of man so convert himself into
+a fiend, a beast of the wilderness....'</p>
+
+<p>'You judge precisely in the manner of the multitude,' he answered
+somewhat petulantly. 'Illegal murder is always a mistake, but not
+necessarily a crime. Remember Corday. But in cases where the murder of
+one is really fiendish, why is it qualitatively less fiendish than the
+murder of many? On the other hand, had Brutus slain a thousand
+Caesars&mdash;each act involving an additional exhibition of the sublimest
+self-suppression&mdash;he might well have taken rank as a saint in heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>Failing for the moment to see the drift or the connection of the
+argument, I contented myself with waiting events. For the rest of that
+day and the next Zaleski seemed to have dismissed the matter of the
+tragedies from his mind, and entered calmly on his former studies. He
+no longer consulted the news, or examined the figures on the tablet.
+The papers, however, still arrived daily, and of these he soon
+afterwards laid several before me, pointing, with a curious smile, to a
+small paragraph in each. These all appeared in the advertisement
+columns, were worded alike, and read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'A true son of Lycurgus, <i>having news</i>, desires to know the <i>time</i> and
+<i>place</i> of the next meeting of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R----
+Abbey, in the county of M----.'</p>
+
+<p>I gazed in mute alternation at the advertisement and at him. I may here
+stop to make mention of a very remarkable sensation which my
+association with him occasionally produced in me. I felt it with
+intense, with unpleasant, with irritating keenness at this moment. It
+was the sensation of being borne aloft&mdash;aloft&mdash;by a force external to
+myself&mdash;such a sensation as might possibly tingle through an earthworm
+when lifted into illimitable airy heights by the strongly-daring
+pinions of an eagle. It was the feeling of being hurried out beyond
+one's depth&mdash;caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of
+some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have
+experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me&mdash;winged, rocking,
+ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!&mdash;round a too narrow curve. It was a
+sensation very far from agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>'To that,' he said, pointing to the paragraph, 'we may, I think,
+shortly expect an answer. Let us only hope that when it comes it may be
+immediately intelligible.'</p>
+
+<p>We waited throughout the whole of that day and night, hiding our
+eagerness under the pretence of absorption in our books. If by chance I
+fell into an uneasy doze, I found him on waking ever watchful, and
+poring over the great tome before him. About the time, however, when,
+could we have seen it, the first grey of dawn must have been peeping
+over the land, his impatience again became painful to witness; he rose
+and paced the room, muttering occasionally to himself. This only
+ceased, when, hours later, Ham entered the room with an envelope in his
+hand. Zaleski seized it&mdash;tore it open&mdash;ran his eye over the
+contents&mdash;and dashed it to the ground with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>'Curse it!' he groaned. 'Ah, curse it! unintelligible&mdash;every syllable
+of it!'</p>
+
+<p>I picked up the missive and examined it. It was a slip of papyrus
+covered with the design now so hideously familiar, except only that the
+two central figures were wanting. At the bottom was written the date of
+the 15th of November&mdash;it was then the morning of the 12th&mdash;and the name
+'Morris.' The whole, therefore, presented the following appearance:</p>
+
+<div align="center"><img src="images/ill.jpg" alt="woodcut" />
+ </div>
+
+<p>My eyes were now heavy with sleep, every sense half-drunken with the
+vapourlike atmosphere of the room, so that, having abandoned something
+of hope, I tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into a profound
+slumber, which lasted till what must have been the time of the
+gathering in of the shades of night. I then rose. Missing Zaleski, I
+sought through all the chambers for him. He was nowhere to be seen. The
+negro informed me with an affectionate and anxious tremor in the voice
+that his master had left the rooms some hours before, but had said
+nothing to him. I ordered the man to descend and look into the sacristy
+of the small chapel wherein I had deposited my <i>cal&egrave;che</i>, and in the
+field behind, where my horse should be. He returned with the news that
+both had disappeared. Zaleski, I then concluded, had undoubtedly
+departed on a journey.</p>
+
+<p>I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by. He
+wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being. It was like
+matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski had never
+before withdrawn himself from the <i>surveillance</i> of this sturdy
+watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their
+little cosmos. Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some
+light on the meaning of this catastrophe. But I too was in the dark.
+The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken,
+childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of
+some great danger to the person of his master. So a day passed away,
+and then another. On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a
+letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski. It was hastily
+scribbled in pencil, dated 'London, Nov. 14th,' and ran thus:</p>
+
+<p>'For my body&mdash;should I not return by Friday night&mdash;you will, no doubt,
+be good enough to make search. <i>Descend</i> the river, keeping constantly
+to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the <i>Descensus Aesopi.</i>
+Seek diligently, and you will find. For the rest, you know my fancy for
+cremation: take me, if you will, to the crematorium of <i>P&egrave;re-Lachaise.</i>
+My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.'</p>
+
+<p>Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to
+communicate a word of it. I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed,
+I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night! It was then
+Thursday morning. And I was expected to wait through the dreary
+interval uncertain, agonised, inactive! I was offended with my friend;
+his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction. The leaden
+hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of
+my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep. On the next morning,
+however, another letter&mdash;a rather massive one&mdash;reached me. The covering
+was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the
+words: 'This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before
+Saturday.' I therefore laid the packet aside unread.</p>
+
+<p>I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o'clock, if nothing
+happened, I should make some sort of effort. But from six I remained,
+with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten. I was so utterly at
+a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I
+could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear
+absurd. But at midnight I sprang up&mdash;no longer would I endure the
+carking suspense. I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way. I
+had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished. Then I
+remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole
+vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but
+hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the
+labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted
+vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with
+something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out
+before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an
+hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what
+felt like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank back, unnerved as I
+already was, with a murmur of affright.</p>
+
+<p>'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.</p>
+
+<p>Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
+my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
+With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
+of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
+breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
+to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
+want sleep&mdash;only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
+by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
+infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
+garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
+dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
+reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
+girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed <i>ceinture</i>. With all
+the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
+the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
+unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
+the sleeper woke, in his eye,&mdash;full of divine instinct,&mdash;flitted the
+wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
+austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
+pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
+fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
+by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said:</p>
+
+<p>'We have, Shiel, had before us a very remarkable series of murders, and
+a very remarkable series of suicides. Were they in any way connected?
+To this extent, I think&mdash;that the mysterious, the unparalleled nature
+of the murders gave rise to a morbid condition in the public mind,
+which in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. But though such an
+epidemic has its origin in the instinct of imitation so common in men,
+you must not suppose that the mental process is a <i>conscious</i> one. A
+person feels an impulse to go and do, and is not aware that at bottom
+it is only an impulse to go and do <i>likewise</i>. He would indeed
+repudiate such an assumption. Thus one man destroys himself, and
+another imitates him&mdash;but whereas the former uses a pistol, the latter
+uses a rope. It is rather absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of
+those cases in which the slip of papyrus has been found in the mouth
+after death, the cause of death has been the slavish imitativeness of
+the suicidal mania,&mdash;for this, as I say, is never <i>slavish.</i> The
+papyrus then&mdash;quite apart from the unmistakable evidences of suicide
+invariably left by each self-destroyer&mdash;affords us definite and certain
+means by which we can distinguish the two classes of deaths; and we are
+thus able to divide the total number into two nearly equal halves.</p>
+
+<p>'But you start&mdash;you are troubled&mdash;you never heard or read of murder
+such as this, the simultaneous murder of thousands over wide areas of
+the face of the globe; here you feel is something outside your
+experience, deeper than your profoundest imaginings. To the question
+&quot;by whom committed?&quot; and &quot;with what motive?&quot; your mind can conceive no
+possible answer. And yet the answer must be, &quot;by man, and for human
+motives,&quot;&mdash;for the Angel of Death with flashing eye and flaming sword
+is himself long dead; and again we can say at once, by no <i>one</i> man,
+but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no <i>common</i> men,
+but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
+and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
+society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
+integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.</p>
+
+<p>'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
+immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
+of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,&mdash;but to
+motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
+engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
+hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
+exact knowledge of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
+<i>reading</i> of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
+behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
+this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
+that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
+lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
+and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
+another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
+myself, were these drawings meant to represent,&mdash;letters, numbers,
+things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
+because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
+wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
+part of its inventor to make a picture of the <i>serpent;</i> S being the
+sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
+view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
+of course you know that all letters were originally <i>pictures of
+things,</i> and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I
+therefore assumed, by way of trial, that the snakes in the diagram
+stood for a sibilant letter, that is, either C or S. And thence,
+supposing this to be the case, I deduced: firstly, that all the other
+figures stood for letters; and secondly, that they all appeared in the
+form of pictures of the things of which those letters were originally
+meant to be pictures. Thus the letter &quot;m,&quot; one of the four &quot;<i>liquid</i>&quot;
+consonants, is, as we now write it, only a shortened form of a waved
+line; and as a waved line it was originally written, and was the
+character by which <i>a stream of running water</i> was represented in
+writing; indeed it only owes its name to the fact that when the lips
+are pressed together, and &quot;m&quot; uttered by a continuous effort, a certain
+resemblance to the murmur of running water is produced. The longer
+waved line in the diagram I therefore took to represent &quot;m&quot;; and it at
+once followed that the shorter meant &quot;n,&quot; for no two letters of the
+commoner European alphabets differ only in length (as distinct from
+shape) except &quot;m&quot; and &quot;n&quot;, and &quot;w&quot; and &quot;v&quot;; indeed, just as the French
+call &quot;w&quot; &quot;double-ve,&quot; so very properly might &quot;m&quot; be called &quot;double-en.&quot;
+But, in this case, the longer not being &quot;w,&quot; the shorter could not be
+&quot;v&quot;: it was therefore &quot;n.&quot; And now there only remained the heart and
+the triangle. I was unable to think of any letter that could ever have
+been intended for the picture of a heart, but the triangle I knew to be
+the letter #A.# This was originally written without the cross-bar from
+prop to prop, and the two feet at the bottom of the props were not
+separated as now, but joined; so that the letter formed a true
+triangle. It was meant by the primitive man to be a picture of his
+primitive house, this house being, of course, hut-shaped, and
+consisting of a conical roof without walls. I had thus, with the
+exception of the heart, disentangled the whole, which then (leaving a
+space for the heart) read as follows:</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.25em;">{ ss</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">'mn {&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;anan ... san.'</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.25em;">{ cc</span><br />
+
+<p>But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
+'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
+also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'&mdash;except 'mnemonics' and
+its fellows&mdash;I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
+letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
+as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
+was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
+the first 's.' Thus I got</p>
+
+<p>'m ns sanan... san,'</p>
+
+<p>or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,</p>
+
+<p>'mens sana in... sano.'</p>
+
+<p>The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
+'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot&mdash;showing that the word as it stood was
+an abbreviation&mdash;conclusively proved every one of my deductions.</p>
+
+<p>'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
+central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
+heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
+light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
+as to the <i>general</i> significance of these figures, for I saw at once
+their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
+you are not minutely acquainted with the <i>technique</i> of these stones, I
+may as well show you one, which I myself removed from an old grave in
+Tarentum.'</p>
+
+<p>He took from a niche a small piece of close-grained marble, about a
+foot square, and laid it before me. On one side it was exquisitely
+sculptured in relief.</p>
+
+<p>'This,' he continued, 'is a typical example of the Greek grave-stone,
+and having seen one specimen you may be said to have seen almost all,
+for there is surprisingly little variety in the class. You will observe
+that the scene represents a man reclining on a couch; in his hand he
+holds a <i>patera,</i> or dish, filled with grapes and pomegranates, and
+beside him is a tripod bearing the viands from which he is banqueting.
+At his feet sits a woman&mdash;for the Greek lady never reclined at table.
+In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent
+may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable
+pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from
+which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I
+considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the
+papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim.
+I said to myself: it can only be that the assassins have bound
+themselves to the observance of a strict and narrow ritual from which
+no departure is under any circumstances permitted&mdash;perhaps for the sake
+of signalling the course of events to others at a distance. But what
+ritual? That question I was able to answer when I knew the answer to
+these others,&mdash;why <i>under the tongue,</i> and why <i>smeared with honey?</i>
+For no reason, except that the Greeks (not the Romans till very late in
+their history) always placed an <i>obolos,</i> or penny, beneath the tongue
+of the dead to pay his passage across the Stygian river of ghosts; for
+no reason, except that to these same Greeks honey was a sacred fluid,
+intimately associated in their minds with the mournful subject of
+Death; a fluid with which the bodies of the deceased were anointed, and
+sometimes&mdash;especially in Sparta and the Pelasgic South&mdash;embalmed; with
+which libations were poured to Hermes Psuchopompos, conductor of the
+dead to the regions of shade; with which offerings were made to all the
+chthonic deities, and the souls of the departed in general. You
+remember, for instance, the melancholy words of Helen addressed to
+Hermione in <i>Orestes:</i></p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">[Greek: <i>Kai labe choas tasd'en cheroin komas t'emas</i></span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;"><i>elthousa d'amphi ton Klutaimnaestras taphon</i></span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;"><i>melikrat'aphes galaktos oinopon t'achnaen.</i>]</span><br />
+
+<p>And so everywhere. The ritual then of the murderers was a <i>Greek</i>
+ritual, their cult a Greek cult&mdash;preferably, perhaps, a South Greek
+one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative
+peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this
+semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more
+certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were
+drawn from a Greek model.</p>
+
+<p>'Here, however, I came to a standstill. I was infinitely puzzled by the
+rod in the man's hand. In none of the Greek grave-reliefs does any such
+thing as a rod make an appearance, except in one well-known example
+where the god Hermes&mdash;generally represented as carrying the <i>caduceus</i>,
+or staff, given him by Phoebus&mdash;appears leading a dead maiden to the
+land of night. But in every other example of which I am aware the
+sculpture represents a man <i>living</i>, not dead, banqueting <i>on earth</i>,
+not in Hades, by the side of his living companion. What then could be
+the significance of the staff in the hand of this living man? It was
+only after days of the hardest struggle, the cruellest suspense, that
+the thought flashed on me that the idea of Hermes leading away the dead
+female might, in this case, have been carried one step farther; that
+the male figure might be no living man, no man at all, but <i>Hermes
+himself</i> actually banqueting in Hades with the soul of his disembodied
+<i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>! The thought filled me with a rapture I cannot describe, and
+you witnessed my excitement. But, at all events, I saw that this was a
+truly tremendous departure from Greek art and thought, to which in
+general the copyists seemed to cling so religiously. There must
+therefore be a reason, a strong reason, for vandalism such as this. And
+that, at any rate, it was no longer difficult to discover; for now I
+knew that the male figure was no mortal, but a god, a spirit, a DAEMON
+(in the Greek sense of the word); and the female figure I saw by the
+marked shortness of her drapery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan; no
+matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a LASSIE; and now I had forced on
+me lassie daemon, <i>Lacedaemon.</i></p>
+
+<p>'This then was the badge, the so carefully-buried badge, of this
+society of men. The only thing which still puzzled and confounded me at
+this stage was the startling circumstance that a <i>Greek</i> society should
+make use of a <i>Latin</i> motto. It was clear that either all my
+conclusions were totally wrong, or else the motto <i>mens sana in corpore
+sano</i> contained wrapped up in itself some acroamatic meaning which I
+found myself unable to penetrate, and which the authors had found no
+Greek motto capable of conveying. But at any rate, having found this
+much, my knowledge led me of itself one step further; for I perceived
+that, widely extended as were their operations, the society was
+necessarily in the main an <i>English,</i> or at least an English-speaking
+one&mdash;for of this the word &quot;lassie&quot; was plainly indicative: it was easy
+now to conjecture London, the monster-city in which all things lose
+themselves, as their head-quarters; and at this point in my
+investigations I despatched to the papers the advertisement you have
+seen.'</p>
+
+<p>'But,' I exclaimed, 'even now I utterly fail to see by what mysterious
+processes of thought you arrived at the wording of the advertisement;
+even now it conveys no meaning to my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'That,' he replied,' will grow clear when we come to a right
+understanding of the baleful <i>motive</i> which inspired these men. I have
+already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one
+possible method of doing so&mdash;and that was, by all means, by any means,
+to find out some condition or other common to every one of the victims
+before death. It is true that I was unable to do this in some few
+cases, but where I failed, I was convinced that my failure was due to
+the insufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, rather than to the
+actual absence of the condition. Now, let us take almost any two cases
+you will, and seek for this common condition: let us take, for example,
+the first two that attracted the attention of the world&mdash;the poor woman
+of the slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by
+as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely,
+in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated
+<i>striae</i> of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she
+has a &quot;small young&quot; family, which, had she lived, might have been
+increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia,
+&quot;partial paralysis.&quot; The professor, too, has had not one, but two,
+large families, and an &quot;army of grand-children&quot;: but note well the
+startling, the hideous fact, that <i>every one of his children is dead!</i>
+The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in <i>every one</i> of
+those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism,
+lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean&mdash;but not before they have had time
+to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched &quot;army
+of grand-children.&quot; And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his
+old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race
+still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance,
+the point of resemblance,&mdash;you see it? And, O heaven, is it not too
+sad? For me, I tell you, the whole business has a tragic pitifulness
+too deep for words. But this brings me to the discussion of a large
+matter. It would, for instance, be interesting to me to hear what you,
+a modern European, saturated with all the notions of your little day,
+what <i>you</i> consider the supreme, the all-important question for the
+nations of Europe at this moment. Am I far wrong in assuming that you
+would rattle off half a dozen of the moot points agitating rival
+factions in your own land, select one of them, and call that &quot;the
+question of the hour&quot;? I wish I could see as you see; I wish to God I
+did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask
+you, what <i>precisely</i> was it that ruined the old nations&mdash;that brought,
+say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy
+imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom,
+believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things&mdash;it was simply
+War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain
+myself: this is a novel view to you, and you are perhaps unable to
+conceive how or why war was so fatal to the old world, because you see
+how little harmful it is to the new. If you collected in a promiscuous
+way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all
+simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of
+view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small,
+wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna
+in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and
+uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many,
+would flow on, and the void would soon be filled. But the effect would
+only be thus insignificant, if, as I said, your millions were taken
+promiscuously (as in the modern army), not if they were <i>picked</i>
+men----in <i>that</i> case the loss (or gain) would be excessive, and
+permanent for all time. Now, the war-hosts of the ancient
+commonwealths&mdash;not dependent on the mechanical contrivances of the
+modern army&mdash;were necessarily composed of the very best men: the
+strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound in wind and limb. Under these
+conditions the State shuddered through all her frame, thrilled adown
+every filament, at the death of a single one of her sons in the field.
+As only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, their number after each
+battle became larger <i>in proportion to the whole</i> than before. Thus the
+nation, more and more, with ever-increasing rapidity, declined in
+bodily, and of course spiritual, quality, until the <i>end</i> was reached,
+and Nature swallowed up the weaklings whole; and thus war, which to the
+modern state is at worst the blockhead and indecent <i>affaires
+d'honneur</i> of persons in office&mdash;and which, surely, before you and I
+die will cease altogether&mdash;was to the ancient a genuine and
+remorselessly fatal scourge.</p>
+
+<p>'And now let me apply these facts to the Europe of our own time. We no
+longer have world-serious war&mdash;but in its place we have a scourge, the
+effect of which on the modern state is <i>precisely the same</i> as the
+effect of war on the ancient, only,&mdash;in the end,&mdash;far more destructive,
+far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
+pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
+&mdash;shudder&mdash;as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
+bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
+medical, and especially surgical, science&mdash;that, if you like, for us
+all, is &quot;the question of the hour!&quot; And what a question! of what
+surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other &quot;questions&quot;
+whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
+State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
+the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
+deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
+The net result is in each case the same&mdash;the altered ratio of the total
+amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
+disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
+worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
+must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
+becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
+him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
+slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
+saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian <i>he</i>, but
+a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
+Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of &quot;Gorgon and Hydra and
+Chimaeras dire&quot;; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
+quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
+antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
+such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
+time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
+man to laugh at disease&mdash;laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
+natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
+destroying its ever-expanding <i>existence</i>. Do you know that at this
+moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
+suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
+whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
+hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth &quot;cured,&quot; like
+missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
+mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
+vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
+are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
+consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
+sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
+thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
+course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
+Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
+people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
+men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand&mdash;with a
+thrill of intensest joy, I say it!&mdash;is to be seen, if not yet
+commencing civilisation, then progress, progress&mdash;wide as the
+world&mdash;toward it: only here&mdash;at the heart&mdash;is there decadence, fatty
+degeneration. Brain-evolution&mdash;and favouring airs&mdash;and the ripening
+time&mdash;and the silent Will of God, of God&mdash;all these in conspiracy seem
+to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
+luxury of glory&mdash;when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
+more disease&mdash;that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
+especially&mdash;so sensitive to the physician's art&mdash;living on by hundreds
+of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
+who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
+proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
+curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
+may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
+question: <i>why?</i> Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
+cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
+that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
+<i>therefore</i> be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
+to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
+tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
+just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
+for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
+sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
+unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
+leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
+answer that question&mdash;I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
+the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
+humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
+it, coerced into sympathy with it. &quot;Beautiful&quot; I say: for if anywhere
+in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
+hospital <i>savants</i> bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
+pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
+wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
+parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
+Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
+<i>lachesis mutus</i>; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
+<i>in</i>human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
+me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
+dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
+of the inner verities of this our earthly being&mdash;the dogma, that by the
+shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
+man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
+the necessity that one man die, &quot;so that the whole people perish not&quot;?
+Can it be true that by nothing less than the &quot;three days of pestilence&quot;
+shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
+alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
+inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
+anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
+foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
+is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
+future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
+glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism&mdash;the
+immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
+part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
+bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
+not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the <i>accoucheur,</i> of
+the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
+breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
+function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
+are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
+Sparta&mdash;the &quot;man-taming Sparta&quot; Simonides calls her&mdash;answered them.
+Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
+of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
+under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
+parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
+commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
+he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
+place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
+that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
+stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
+Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
+all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
+express the idea &quot;ugly,&quot; meant also &quot;hateful,&quot; &quot;vile,&quot; &quot;disgraceful&quot;
+&mdash;and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
+fact alone; for they considered&mdash;and rightly&mdash;that there is no
+sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
+perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful&mdash;if only very moderate pains
+be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
+Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
+Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
+barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
+Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
+&quot;lament&quot; on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
+the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
+thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
+the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
+one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
+remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
+understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
+papers.'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular <i>tirade</i>, paused:
+replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
+cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
+and then continued:</p>
+
+<p>'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
+what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
+I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
+and an address, too&mdash;but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
+course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
+to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
+circumstance that the Latin proverb <i>mens sana etc.</i> should be adopted
+as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
+motto <i>contained an address</i>&mdash;the address of their meeting-place, or at
+least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
+of solving&mdash;and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour&mdash;this
+enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
+extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
+that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
+difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
+cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
+secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
+there was any <i>consistency</i> in the system of cyphers at all, for it
+belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
+others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
+therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
+actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
+form <i>mens sana in ... pore sano.</i> I wrote this down, and what
+instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
+<i>liquids</i> in the motto&mdash;six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
+of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
+<i>mnnnnr</i>, and you can see that the very appearance of the &quot;m's&quot; and
+&quot;n's&quot; (especially when <i>written</i>) running into one another, of itself
+suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
+of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
+inference of <i>the Thames</i>; there, or near there, would I find those
+whom I sought. The letters &quot;mnnnnr,&quot; then, meant the Thames: what did
+the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
+placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
+these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
+occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
+inevitably get the word <i>Aesopi.</i> And now I was fairly startled by this
+symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
+respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
+<i>&quot;Aesopi.&quot;</i> For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
+wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
+wise&mdash;their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
+also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
+wisdom with wealth&mdash;true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
+all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
+he is typical, therefore, of death&mdash;the shedding of blood&mdash;as a result
+of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
+&quot;in much wisdom is much sorrow.&quot; But how accurately all this fitted in
+with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
+was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
+immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.</p>
+
+<p>'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
+The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
+I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
+light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
+manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
+sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
+betoken any sort of connection with the word &quot;Aesopi.&quot; In this way I
+passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
+fast my craft, and in a spirit of <i>diablerie</i> spent the night in a
+common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
+beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
+<i>bonne camaraderie</i> which the prevailing fear of death could not
+altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again&mdash;on,
+and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
+had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
+should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
+men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
+meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
+proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
+and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
+on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
+came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
+into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
+the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
+of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
+was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
+at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway&mdash;a winding
+road&mdash;leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
+its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
+the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
+was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
+And then&mdash;and then&mdash;tingling now with a thousand raptures&mdash;I beheld a
+pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
+counterpart of the first&mdash;and then, still leading on in the same
+direction, another pool&mdash;and then a great rock, heart-shaped&mdash;and then
+another winding road&mdash;and then another pool of water. All was a
+model&mdash;<i>exact to the minutest particular</i>&mdash;of the device on the
+papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
+short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
+three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
+representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
+heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
+and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
+rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
+at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
+black letters, was marked the words, &quot;DESCENSUS AESOPI.&quot; It was
+necessary, therefore, to go <i>down</i>: the meeting-place was subterranean.
+It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
+ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
+series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
+descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
+confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
+<i>ziphos</i> and <i>pelt&egrave;</i>. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
+long with an earnest scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;You are a Spartan?&quot; he asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered promptly.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;You <i>are</i> a Spartan?&quot; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'I nodded with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
+that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
+of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency&mdash;to stretch
+itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
+<i>no</i> combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
+alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
+lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
+by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
+always placed under the <i>tongue</i> of the dead; I remembered, too, that
+among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to &quot;turn
+up the <i>thumb</i>&quot; (<i>pollicem vertere</i>) was a symbol significant of death.
+I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
+aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.</p>
+
+<p>'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
+supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
+the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
+walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
+reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
+chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
+stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
+gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
+From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
+fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
+not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
+means by which my body might be traced.  'But on the next day a new
+thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: &quot;these men are not common
+assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
+against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
+immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
+They will not therefore take mine, <i>unless</i> they suppose me to be the
+only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
+think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
+designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
+such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
+whole secret, and&mdash;if the necessity should arise&mdash;<i>letting them know</i>
+that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
+life will be assured.&quot; I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
+account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
+the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
+time.</p>
+
+<p>'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
+day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
+at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
+sacred&mdash;solemn&mdash;full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
+hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms&mdash;of the
+wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice&mdash;of the
+mingling of all the tongues of Europe&mdash;I shall not speak; nor shall I
+repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
+you&mdash;though I may, perhaps, mention that the &quot;Morris,&quot; whose name
+appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known <i>litt&eacute;rateur</i> of that
+name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
+undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
+wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
+with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
+methods with approval&mdash;these I could not but consider too rash, too
+harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
+earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
+on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
+this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
+was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
+was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
+A powerful and little-known anaesthetic&mdash;the means by which all their
+murders have been accomplished&mdash;was now produced. A cloth, saturated
+with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
+Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
+How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
+language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
+floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
+perhaps&mdash;now&mdash;there was silence around me; that <i>now,</i> could my palsied
+lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
+rose focussed to the effort&mdash;my body jerked itself upwards. At that
+moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I <i>did</i>
+utter something&mdash;my dead and shuddering tongue <i>did</i> babble forth some
+coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
+the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
+placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
+clear&mdash;I <i>had</i> uttered something&mdash;I was saved. With what of strength
+remained to me I reached the place where I had left your <i>cal&egrave;che</i>, and
+started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
+for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
+after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
+in this condition you found me.</p>
+
+<p>'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
+this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
+others&mdash;to how many others <i>they</i> cannot guess&mdash;I think it is not
+unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'</p>
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10709 ***</div>
+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10709 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10709)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Prince Zaleski
+
+Author: M.P. Shiel
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE ZALESKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Wilelmina Malli re, Sjaani and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE ZALESKI
+
+M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel
+
+_Come now, and let us reason together._
+  ISAIAH
+
+_Of the strange things that befell the valiant Knight in the Sable
+Mountain;  and how he imitated the penance of Beltenebros._
+  CERVANTES
+
+[Greek: All'est'ekeino panta lekta, panta de tolmaeta;]
+  SOPHOCLES
+
+1895
+
+TO
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Race of Orven
+
+The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks
+
+The S.S.
+
+
+
+THE RACE OF ORVEN
+
+Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
+Zaleski--victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
+fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
+native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
+the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
+passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
+more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
+been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.
+
+But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
+exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
+repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
+attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
+mistrust of the _dénoûment_ of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
+hermitage.
+
+I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
+palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
+approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
+the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
+deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
+finally put up my _calèche_ in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
+chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
+behind the domain.
+
+As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
+not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
+select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
+regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
+much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
+the manner of a Roman _atrium_, and from the oblong pool of turgid
+water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
+squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
+corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
+through a mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length
+of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
+uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
+_ricochets_ to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
+emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
+vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.
+
+After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
+near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
+of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
+lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
+silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
+One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
+Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
+the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
+visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
+to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.
+
+The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
+the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
+_lampas_ of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
+certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
+me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
+light, and the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the
+_bhang_ of the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be the habit of my
+friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
+heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
+Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound amateur--as
+well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
+the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
+the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
+Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
+The general effect was a _bizarrerie_ of half-weird sheen and gloom.
+Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
+miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
+leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
+gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
+in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
+epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
+vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
+invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
+draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
+stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
+trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
+which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
+hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.
+
+Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
+Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
+time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
+my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
+adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
+delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
+Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
+pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling _hashish_,
+prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
+breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
+partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
+Turkish _beneesh_, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
+first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
+and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
+features.
+
+'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.
+
+'I have met him in "the world." His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
+at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
+I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
+peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour--a
+strong likeness between father and son.'
+
+I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
+as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.
+
+'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
+Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
+also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
+author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
+eminence in the _corps diplomatique_, and lately (though, strictly
+speaking, _unebenbürtig_) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
+Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-üppigen, a lady with a strain of
+indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
+a very old and distinguished one, though--especially in modern
+days--far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
+become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
+immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
+reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
+simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
+_en bloc_. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
+that you have not already read it in the papers.'
+
+'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
+thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'
+
+'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
+of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
+years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
+with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
+exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
+father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
+India. Considered as the first step in the _rapprochement_ of this
+proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
+message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
+official; it ran:
+
+'"_Return. The beginning of the end is come._" Whereupon Randolph did
+return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
+Lord Pharanx was dead.'
+
+'_Murdered_?'
+
+A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
+Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
+an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
+this feeling, for he said at once:
+
+'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
+might even have foretold it, years ago.'
+
+'Foretold--what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'
+
+'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed--tell
+me all the facts you know.'
+
+Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
+I continued the narrative.
+
+'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
+without cordiality, without affection--a shaking of hands across a
+barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
+metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
+interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
+observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
+father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
+an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
+sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
+the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
+of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
+low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
+It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
+of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
+migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
+part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
+of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
+fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
+boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
+noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
+master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
+kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
+occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
+doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
+them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
+and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
+and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
+to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
+that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now--possibly
+owing to the sedentary life he led--became fastidious, insisting on
+_recherché_ bits. I mention all these details to you--as I shall
+mention others--not because they have the least connection with the
+tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
+and you have requested me to state all I know.'
+
+'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of _ennui_, 'you are right. I may
+as well hear the whole--if I must hear a part.'
+
+'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
+day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
+still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
+he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
+are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
+most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
+past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
+this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
+himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
+candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
+is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings--reported in
+local papers--at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
+laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
+Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
+condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
+class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
+round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
+proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'
+
+'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
+to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
+elementary botany? _Why_ mechanics?'
+
+This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
+was pleased, but answered:
+
+'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
+vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
+young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
+come to a new character in the drama--the chief character of all. One
+day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
+owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
+approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
+eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
+showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
+manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
+distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
+Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
+past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
+the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
+the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
+vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
+that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
+called Lee.
+
+'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
+the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
+admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
+of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
+returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
+private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
+one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
+seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
+word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
+jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
+opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
+again.
+
+'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
+asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
+persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
+bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
+The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
+meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
+Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
+unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
+that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
+in the new political convert. The _rendezvous_--always held under cover
+of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
+Hester--sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
+would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
+ceased.'
+
+'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
+this unearthed letter of Randolph's--what was in it?'
+
+I read as follows:
+
+'"Dear Mdlle. Cibras,--I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
+my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
+only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
+unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
+your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
+precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
+will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point--within, say, three or
+four days--of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
+appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
+_centime_ under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
+something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
+implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
+bounds of reason.
+
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"RANDOLPH."'
+
+'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
+candour. But the _facts_--were they true? _Did_ the earl make a new
+will in the time specified?'
+
+'No,--but that may have been because his death intervened.'
+
+'And in the old will, _was_ Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'
+
+'Yes,--that at least was correct.'
+
+A shadow of pain passed over his face.
+
+'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
+England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
+letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
+The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
+room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
+introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
+by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
+his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
+arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
+protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
+recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
+man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
+evidence being heard. On the next day--the 7th--Hester, entering the
+room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
+(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
+fire), that Lord Pharanx has been "drinking heavily."
+
+'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
+see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
+hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
+note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
+follows:
+
+'"Maude Cibras.--You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
+south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
+through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
+nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
+from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
+false. Destroy this note. PHARANX."'
+
+As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
+countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
+fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
+expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal _inquisitiveness_
+--an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
+His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central _puncta_
+of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
+gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
+Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics--his fingers
+livid with the fixity of his grip--he bent on it that strenuous
+inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
+mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
+other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
+victory.
+
+When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
+my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.
+
+'Tell me--the end,' he said.
+
+'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
+failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
+she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
+for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
+too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
+returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
+Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
+Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
+gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
+informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
+leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
+this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
+scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
+brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph--who was
+present at the time--further drew her attention to these by telling her
+that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
+the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
+this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
+about the estate.
+
+'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
+except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
+his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
+giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
+document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
+servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
+Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
+found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
+account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
+view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
+the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
+by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
+clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
+collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
+o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.
+
+'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
+The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
+ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
+of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett--for Hester has
+somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
+takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
+Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
+over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
+hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
+gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
+casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
+frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
+in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
+flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
+forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
+moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
+on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
+Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
+consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
+of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
+nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
+strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
+good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
+ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
+sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
+reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
+rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
+prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
+she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
+is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.
+
+'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
+woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
+shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
+his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
+his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
+gasp: "Did you hear something--from below?" They answer "yes" in
+chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
+troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
+news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
+for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
+light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
+obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
+Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
+Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
+nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
+woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
+out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
+a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
+first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
+labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
+how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
+as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
+their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
+now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
+to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
+this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
+hears him murmur the words, "My God, what can have happened now?" His
+horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
+trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
+phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
+agonised moan, "My God!" and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
+the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
+wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
+does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
+window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
+but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
+large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
+missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
+lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
+a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
+trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
+means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
+placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
+secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
+horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
+sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
+out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
+so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.
+
+'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
+death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
+returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
+pronounce their verdict of "guilty." But she denied shooting Lord
+Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
+no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
+points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
+tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
+of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
+The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
+propounded. But no theory explained _all_ the points. The ferment,
+however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
+on the gallows.'
+
+Thus I ended my narrative.
+
+Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
+Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
+proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the _Lakmé_ of
+Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
+his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
+and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
+up to an ivory _escritoire_, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
+and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
+with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.
+
+'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
+word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
+the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
+confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
+yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you--you do
+not get a clean _coup d'oeil_ of the whole regiment of facts, and their
+causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
+that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
+is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
+making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
+punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
+occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
+does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
+this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
+mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
+be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
+merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
+world at large--shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
+not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
+attainment in general, as _mood_ in particular. Whether or when such
+mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
+often think that when the era of civilisation begins--as assuredly it
+shall some day begin--when the races of the world cease to be
+credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
+the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a _clairvoyant_ culture.
+But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
+man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
+presence. In individuals, yes--in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
+English Milton and Bishop Berkeley--but in humanity, never; and hardly
+in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
+not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
+concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
+conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
+requisite to a _régime_ of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
+of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
+person--he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if
+that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
+novelty--once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
+on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
+civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
+certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
+his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
+hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
+general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
+Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
+of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
+part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
+it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
+profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
+anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
+together--to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
+triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
+defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,"
+should surely at this hour be _too_ primitive--_too_ Opic--to bring
+anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
+very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
+in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: _idéa_]
+which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed--far,
+perhaps, by ages and aeons--from becoming part of the general
+conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
+ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
+intricate one of living _together: à propos_ of which your body
+corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
+fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
+really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile _you_ and _I_ are handicapped.
+The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
+air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
+can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
+invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
+the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
+shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
+with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the
+alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
+into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
+ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present--_a
+horrid strain_! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
+may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
+know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
+gravity, gravity--chiefest curse of Eden's sin!--is hostile. When
+indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
+orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
+Icarian "organa" in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
+which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
+not Goethe who assures us that "further reacheth no man, make he what
+stretching he will"? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
+absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
+Paris is _far_ from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
+Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
+ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
+if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
+many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
+we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
+root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
+the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not _quite_ right--as,
+indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I _know_
+whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know--as clearly, as
+precisely, as a man can know--that Beatrice Cenci was not "guilty" as
+certain recently-discovered documents "prove" her, but that the Shelley
+version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It _is_
+possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit--or say a hand, or a
+dactyl--to your stature; you may develop powers slightly--very
+slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree--in advance of those
+of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
+live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
+mass--when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
+Cultured Mood has at length arrived--that their exercise will become
+easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
+presciences, prisms, _séances_, what introspective craft, Genie
+apocalypses, shall not _then_ become possible to the few who stand
+spiritually in the van of men.
+
+'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
+myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
+the very little puzzle you have placed before me--one which we
+certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
+at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
+the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
+Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
+enemies; he is the _fiancé_ of a princess whose husband he is probably
+too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
+father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
+hand, we--you and I--know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
+moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
+world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
+assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
+that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
+could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
+murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
+motives--strong, adequate, irresistible--and by "irresistible" I mean a
+motive which must be _far_ stronger than even the love of life
+itself--we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.
+
+'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
+contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
+not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
+her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
+guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of _Théâtre des
+Variétés_ type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
+some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
+However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras--a violent woman, a woman of
+lawless passions--assuring her that in four or five days she will be
+excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
+plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
+sequence--though, of course, the _intention_ to produce by his words
+the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
+of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
+produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
+opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
+Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
+tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
+favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
+intention on the part of the earl, we _may_ make the same presumption
+in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
+letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
+double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
+impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
+exact _locale_ of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
+mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
+the district. Can it be possible that Randolph _had told her_? And here
+again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
+told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
+absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
+further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
+actions are in themselves _outré_, suspicious, they are rendered, not
+less _outré_, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
+himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
+that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
+himself: "Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
+father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
+order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
+attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
+being discovered _en flagrant délit_, will escape every shadow of
+suspicion." But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
+made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative--for he
+leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
+with the letter to Cibras on the 8th--Randolph despatches it, but the
+earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
+the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
+suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
+Randolph--finding now that Cibras has "left the country," that, in
+fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him--could
+he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
+of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
+abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
+lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
+burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
+of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
+our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who "_chose_" to gather the
+jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
+attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
+little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
+surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
+the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
+elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the _class_.
+Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of _that_ seem natural.
+But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
+the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
+quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
+that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
+a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
+clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
+of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
+uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
+have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
+mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
+but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
+the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
+room just overhead, caused by his preparation for "a journey to
+London." But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
+master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
+Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
+significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?
+
+'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
+Randolph was guilty of something--some evil intention--though of
+precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
+would pause: he would reflect that _as_ the father was implicated in
+those acts, and _as_ he was innocent of any such intention, so might
+possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
+of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
+imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
+by evil intention on the part of Randolph--one act in which his father
+certainly did _not_ participate--what follows next? Why, that we revert
+at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that _all_ the
+other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
+and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
+conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share _might_
+have sprung from a like motive in _his_ mind also; nor should the mere
+obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
+least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
+against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
+pass on.
+
+'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
+deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
+sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
+murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
+ceased--how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
+becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
+round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
+track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
+and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
+and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were _half
+obliterated by the snow_. Two things then are clear: that the persons
+who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
+different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
+your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
+"burglars." But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
+tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
+first--the woman's--the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
+second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
+points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
+examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
+when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
+"My God! what has happened _now_?" But why "now"? The word cannot refer
+to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
+heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
+destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have _expected_ to find the
+window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
+who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
+therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
+to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
+hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
+glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
+That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
+the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
+Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit--if there
+was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; _they_ did
+not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
+after the snow has ceased to fall,--that is, after, long after, they
+have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
+their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
+then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
+of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
+night.'
+
+'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow--the
+neckerchief!'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
+the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
+mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
+refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
+a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
+inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
+Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
+should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
+the improbable. The jewels had been _put_ there with the object of
+throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
+catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
+open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
+this was deliberately done by some one--would it be rash to say at once
+by whom?
+
+'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
+begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
+statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
+that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
+at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
+humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
+woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
+believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
+deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
+reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
+being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
+intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
+satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
+fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
+their curiosity of what _is_. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
+whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
+is to _peep_. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
+their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
+history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
+this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
+true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
+one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
+surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
+white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
+taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
+How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
+be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic condition) the
+result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
+nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
+accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
+acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
+have been light in the room--a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
+to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
+proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
+alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
+the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
+from the room above--from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
+one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
+room. It _must_ be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
+driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
+that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
+"driven" upward disappears. We at once ask, why not _drawn_ upward
+through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
+visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
+established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
+is it unreasonable--even without further evidence--to suspect another
+in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
+rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
+her leg. Had she fallen _over_ some object, as you supposed, the result
+might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
+being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
+inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
+But this gives us an approximate idea of the _size_ of the lower hole;
+it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
+therefore to admit that "good-sized ball of cotton" of which the woman
+speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
+upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
+evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
+must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
+seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
+which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
+replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
+removal of which had caused so much commotion in Randolph's room on the
+fatal day. Hester Dyett would have been able to notice and bring at
+least one of the apertures forward in evidence, but she fainted before
+she had time to find out the cause of her fall, and an hour later it
+was, you remember, Randolph himself who bore her from the room. But
+should not the aperture in the top floor have been observed by the
+class? Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open space in the middle
+of the room. But it was not observed, and therefore its position was
+not there, but in the only other place left--behind the apparatus used
+in demonstration. That then was _one_ useful object which the
+apparatus--and with it the elaborate hypocrisy of class, and speeches,
+and candidature--served: it was made to act as a curtain, a screen. But
+had it no other purpose? That question we may answer when we know its
+name and its nature. And it is not beyond our powers to conjecture this
+with something like certainty. For the only "machines" possible to use
+in illustration of simple mechanics are the screw, the wedge, the
+scale, the lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's machine. The
+mathematical principles which any of these exemplify would, of course,
+be incomprehensible to such a class, but the first five most of all,
+and as there would naturally be some slight pretence of trying to make
+the learners understand, I therefore select the last; and this
+selection is justified when we remember that on the shot being heard,
+Randolph leans for support on the "machine," and stands in its shadow;
+but any of the others would be too small to throw any appreciable
+shadow, except one--the wheel, and-axle--and that one would hardly
+afford support to a tall man in the erect position. The Atwood's
+machine is therefore forced on us; as to its construction, it is, as
+you are aware, composed of two upright posts, with a cross-bar fitted
+with pulleys and strings, and is intended to show the motion of bodies
+acting under a constant force--the force of gravity, to wit. But now
+consider all the really glorious uses to which those same pulleys may
+be turned in lowering and lifting unobserved that "ball of cotton"
+through the two apertures, while the other strings with the weights
+attached are dangling before the dull eyes of the peasants. I need only
+point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
+was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
+why.
+
+'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
+shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
+for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
+have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
+expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
+also discover the _means_ by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
+that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
+Cibras--for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
+neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
+the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
+establish a substantial, an irrefutable _alibi_ for himself by going to
+Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
+the deed--that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
+fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
+_alibi_ is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
+witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
+so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been. Why
+then, expecting the death, did he not take some such journey? Obviously
+because on _this_ occasion his personal presence was necessary. When,
+_in conjunction_ with this, we recall the fact that during the
+intrigues with Cibras the lectures were discontinued, and again resumed
+immediately on her unlooked-for departure, we arrive at the conclusion
+that the means by which Lord Pharanx's death was expected to occur was
+the personal presence of Randolph _in conjunction_ with the political
+speeches, the candidature, the class, the apparatus.
+
+'But though he stands condemned of foreknowing, and being in some sort
+connected with, his father's death, I can nowhere find any indication
+of his having personally accomplished it, or even of his ever having
+had any such intention. The evidence is evidence of complicity--and
+nothing more. And yet--and yet--even of _this_ we began by acquitting
+him unless we could discover, as I said, some strong, adequate,
+altogether irresistible motive for such complicity. Failing this, we
+ought to admit that at some point our argument has played us false, and
+led us into conclusions wholly at variance with our certain knowledge
+of the principles underlying human conduct in general. Let us therefore
+seek for such a motive--something deeper than personal enmity, stronger
+than personal ambition, _than the love of life itself!_ And now, tell
+me, at the time of the occurrence of this mystery, was the whole past
+history of the House of Orven fully investigated?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge,' I answered; 'in the papers there were, of
+course, sketches of the earl's career, but that I think was all.'
+
+'Yet it cannot be that their past was unknown, but only that it was
+ignored. Long, I tell you, long and often, have I pondered on that
+history, and sought to trace with what ghastly secret has been pregnant
+the destiny, gloomful as Erebus and the murk of black-peplosed Nux,
+which for centuries has hung its pall over the men of this ill-fated
+house. Now at last I know. Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror is
+that history; down the silent corridors of the ages have these
+blood-soaked sons of Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing talons
+of the dread Eumenides. The first earl received his patent in 1535 from
+the eighth Henry. Two years later, though noted as a rabid "king's
+man," he joined the Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and was
+soon after executed, with Darcy and some other lords. His age was then
+fifty. His son, meantime, had served in the king's army under Norfolk.
+It is remarkable, by the way, that females have all along been rare in
+the family, and that in no instance has there been more than one son.
+The second earl, under the sixth Edward, suddenly threw up a civil
+post, hastened to the army, and fell at the age of forty at the battle
+of Pinkie in 1547. He was accompanied by his son. The third in 1557,
+under Mary, renounced the Catholic faith, to which, both before and
+since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
+forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
+in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
+_of the same day_ he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
+later on, in 1591, seen by _his_ son to fall from a lofty balcony at
+Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
+time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
+the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
+window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
+but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
+soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by _radix
+aconiti indica_, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
+except to _savants_, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
+An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
+House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
+now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
+suspicion, of course, fell on _him_.'
+
+As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
+with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
+this intimate knowledge of _all_ the great families of Europe! It was
+as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
+history of the Orvens.
+
+'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
+family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
+marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
+show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
+large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
+seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not
+design that the last Lord of Orven should any more hide from the world
+the guilty secret of his race. It was the will of the gods--and he
+betrayed himself. "Return," he writes, "the beginning of the end is
+come." What end?
+
+_The_ end--perfectly well known to Randolph, needing no explanation for
+_him_. The old, old end, which in the ancient dim time led the first
+lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king; and another, still
+devout, to renounce his cherished faith, and yet another to set fire to
+the home of his ancestors. You have called the two last scions of the
+family "a proud and selfish pair of beings"; proud they were, and
+selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
+personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
+in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
+selfishness of _race_. What consideration, think you, other than the
+weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
+shame--for as such he certainly regards it--of a conversion to
+radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have _died_ rather than make this
+pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it--and the reason? It
+is because he has received that awful summons from home; because "the
+end" is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
+meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming _too_ acute;
+because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
+house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
+endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
+able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
+intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
+malady which physicians call "_General Paralysis of the Insane_." You
+remember I took from your hands the newspaper containing the earl's
+letter to Cibras, in order to read it with my own eyes. I had my
+reasons, and I was justified. That letter contains three mistakes in
+spelling: "here" is printed "hear," "pass" appears as "pas," and "room"
+as "rume." Printers' errors, you say? But not so--one might be, two in
+that short paragraph could hardly be, three would be impossible. Search
+the whole paper through, and I think you will not find another. Let us
+reverence the theory of probabilities: the errors were the writer's,
+not the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have
+this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of
+middle age--the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died
+mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his
+race--the heritage of madness--is falling or fallen on him, he summons
+his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the
+tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down
+through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it
+is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without
+detection--and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is
+suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
+life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
+be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
+blossoms into a popular candidate.
+
+'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
+of Maude Cibras; he hopes that _she_ may be made to destroy the earl;
+but when she fails him, he recurs to it--recurs to it all suddenly, for
+Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
+eyes, could any eye see him--so much so that on the last day none of
+the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
+Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
+not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
+she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
+bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
+The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
+pistol, such as this'--here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
+weapon from a drawer near him--'that appeared in the gloom to the
+excited Hester as a "ball of cotton," while it was being drawn upward
+by the Atwood's machine. But if the earl shot himself he could not have
+done so after being stabbed to the heart. Maude Cibras, therefore,
+stabbed a dead man. She would, of course, have ample time for stealing
+into the room and doing so after the shot was fired, and before the
+party reached the balcony window, on account of the delay on the stairs
+in procuring a second light; in going to the earl's door; in examining
+the tracks, and so on. But having stabbed a dead man, she is not guilty
+of murder. The message I just now sent by Ham was one addressed to the
+Home Secretary, telling him on no account to let Cibras die to-morrow.
+He well knows my name, and will hardly be silly enough to suppose me
+capable of using words without meaning. It will be perfectly easy to
+prove my conclusions, for the pieces removed from, and replaced in, the
+floorings can still be detected, if looked for; the pistol is still, no
+doubt, in Randolph's room, and its bore can be compared with the bullet
+found in Lord Pharanx's brain; above all, the jewels stolen by the
+"burglars" are still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, and may
+readily be discovered I therefore expect that the dénoûment will now
+take a somewhat different turn.'
+
+That the dénoûment did take a different turn, and pretty strictly in
+accordance with Zaleski's forecast, is now matter of history, and the
+incidents, therefore, need no further comment from me in this place.
+
+
+
+
+THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS
+
+
+'Russia,' said Prince Zaleski to me one day, when I happened to be on a
+visit to him in his darksome sanctuary--'Russia may be regarded as land
+surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way,
+it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of _Britain_ as an island,
+unless indeed the word be understood as a mere _modus loquendi_ arising
+out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a
+small continent. Near her--a little to the south-east--is situated the
+large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing
+to these shores should commune within himself: "I now cross to the
+Mainland"; and retracing his steps: "I now return to the fragment rent
+by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country." And this I say not in
+the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in
+my mind merely the relative depth and extent--the _non-insularity_, in
+fact--of the impressions made by the several nations on the world. But
+this island of Europe has herself an island of her own: the name of it,
+Russia. She, of all lands, is the _terra incognita_, the unknown land;
+till quite lately she was more--she was the undiscovered, the
+unsuspected land. She _has_ a literature, you know, and a history, and
+a language, and a purpose--but of all this the world has hardly so much
+as heard. Indeed, she, and not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real
+Ultima Thule of modern times, the true Island of Mystery.'
+
+I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski here, not so much on account of
+the splendid tribute to my country contained in them, as because it
+ever seemed to me--and especially in connection with the incident I am
+about to recall--that in this respect at least he was a genuine son of
+Russia; if she is the Land, so truly was he the Man, of Mystery. I who
+knew him best alone knew that it was impossible to know him. He was a
+being little of the present: with one arm he embraced the whole past;
+the fingers of the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of the future. He
+seemed to me--I say it deliberately and with forethought--to possess
+the unparalleled power not merely of disentangling in retrospect, but
+of unravelling in prospect, and I have known him to relate _coming_
+events with unimaginable minuteness of precision. He was nothing if not
+superlative: his diatribes, now culminating in a very _extravaganza_ of
+hyperbole--now sailing with loose wing through the downy, witched,
+Dutch cloud-heaps of some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia of
+thought--now laying down law of the Medes for the actual world of
+to-day--had oft-times the strange effect of bringing back to my mind
+the very singular old-epic epithet, [Greek: aenemoen]--_airy_--as
+applied to human thought. The mere grip of his memory was not simply
+extraordinary, it had in it a token, a hint, of the strange, the
+pythic--nay, the sibylline. And as his reflecting intellect, moreover,
+had all the lightness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you could
+contrive to follow each dazzlingly swift successive step, by the sum of
+which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
+astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.
+
+I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
+and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
+from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
+agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
+distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
+had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
+a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
+incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
+condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
+book to the agent.
+
+A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
+prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
+absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
+profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
+was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
+assenting, I proceeded to do so.
+
+The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
+oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
+in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
+within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
+Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
+equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
+space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
+was lineally connected with--though, of course, not descendant
+from--that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
+convent, who wrote the now so celebrated _Jocelini Chronica_: and the
+chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
+time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
+inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:
+
+  'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,
+  Or shuld it chaunges dre,
+  The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'
+
+The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
+figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
+letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
+the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
+another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
+inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
+size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.
+
+Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
+remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
+Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
+in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
+research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
+their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
+years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
+Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
+acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give _verbatim_
+the extracts from his diary:
+
+'_June 11_.--This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
+the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
+it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
+Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly--seemed to have been looking forward to
+it--and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
+factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
+Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
+this was also my father's birthday; and _his_ father's; and repeated
+the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
+walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of _himself_
+sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
+pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.
+
+'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
+successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
+show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
+declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
+and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription "Has" meant. I
+informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.
+
+'_June l5_.--Some new element has entered into our existence here.
+Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
+and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
+hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain--a
+drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
+fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
+chosen child!
+
+'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_
+
+'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
+poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
+Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
+to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
+wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
+_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?
+
+'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
+with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
+had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
+shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
+else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
+crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
+viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
+has stolen my life. The stone is gone--gone, my precious gem. A
+weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
+marble floor.
+
+'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
+shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?
+
+'_June 20_.--Ah, Ul-Jabal--my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
+God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
+yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
+not--not--the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
+semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
+went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
+after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
+might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
+clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!--he has taken
+the _other_ stone from the _other_ cup--a thing of little value to any
+man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?
+
+'_June 21_.--Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has _not_ replaced it--not
+_it_--but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
+and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
+engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value--a stone I
+have never seen before. How has he obtained it--whence? I must brace
+myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
+this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
+in the balance.
+
+'_June 22_.--Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
+to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
+flinched: and drank--drank.
+
+'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
+make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
+in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
+Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
+me that browse of hell--to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.
+
+'_June 23_.--The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
+I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
+as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
+which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
+into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
+The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
+and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which _he himself_
+put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
+shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!
+
+'_June 24_.--No more--no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
+Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
+of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
+twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
+attention.
+
+'_June 25_.--He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
+him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
+door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
+should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
+treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
+right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
+book--the more the pity for the world, not for me.
+
+'_June 26_.--Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
+_another_ stone in the Edmundsbury chalice--also identical in nearly
+every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
+entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
+stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
+replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
+from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
+a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!
+
+'_June 28_.--I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
+It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life--and which is the
+best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
+murder--I, with this withered hand--so that I get back the heritage
+which is mine.
+
+'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
+room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
+that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
+his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
+a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
+out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
+the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
+its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
+When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he
+said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my
+hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
+upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?
+
+'_July 1_.--Life against life--and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
+than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not _yet_ am I ready
+to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
+paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let _him_ die. Many and
+many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
+averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
+times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
+chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
+lost--a mere fiction _at first_, an idler's dream _then_, but
+now--now--that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
+things, and a fact among facts--no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
+as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
+surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
+hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
+insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
+saw a Syrian's head cleft open--a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
+have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.
+
+'_July 2_.--I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
+and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
+thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
+Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
+all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.
+
+'_July 7_.--The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
+grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
+for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
+to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
+lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
+greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
+slay my enemy, and make an end?
+
+'_July_ 8.--Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
+through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
+could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
+First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
+the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
+lie my few garments--and opened it. Ah, I have the stone--safe--safe!
+He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
+where I would be least likely to seek it--_in my own trunk_! And yet I
+dread, most intensely I dread, to look.
+
+'_July_ 9.--The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
+have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
+have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?
+
+'_July 10_.--In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
+past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
+cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
+the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
+him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
+unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
+the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
+gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
+pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
+the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
+that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
+and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
+vaults,--the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,--how had I
+forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
+had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
+might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
+the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?--but he held the
+key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
+his head bent down. The thought came to me _then_, that, had I but the
+courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
+Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
+his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
+me--thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
+my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
+headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
+caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
+chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
+dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.
+
+'_July 11_.--I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
+remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
+tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.
+
+'_July 12_.--I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
+He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
+Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
+taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
+pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
+and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
+failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
+love.
+
+'July l3.--I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
+soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
+late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
+a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
+It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.
+
+'July l4.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
+man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
+him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
+no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
+would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,--and is gone!
+
+'July l5.--Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
+far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
+with him--the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
+ebbing in my heart.'
+
+Here the manuscript abruptly ended.
+
+Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
+couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
+he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
+as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
+apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
+round on me, and said:
+
+'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'
+
+'_Has_ it a meaning?'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
+note, the _nuance_ of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
+_enough_, inductive and deductive cunning _enough_, not only a meaning,
+but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
+human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
+that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
+not read the diary to me before.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
+life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
+day is this?'
+
+'This is the 20th.'
+
+'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
+still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
+seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
+business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
+with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
+you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
+Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
+Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
+matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'
+
+As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:
+
+'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected--from the
+Indian?'
+
+'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian--Persian.'
+
+Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
+which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
+telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
+the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
+and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
+Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.
+
+'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
+has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
+really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
+Jocelin was found by his servant--I imagine he had a servant, though no
+mention is made of any--lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
+Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem--an oval stone,
+white in colour--the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
+Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence--no trace of
+poison--the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
+this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
+I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three--and in one island
+in the South Seas, forty-four--different methods of doing murder, any
+one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
+agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.
+
+'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
+first, _who_ is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
+this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
+name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
+afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
+man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
+his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
+manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
+lived. "What," he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
+long-desired gem, "what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'"--the
+meaning which _he_ so well knew. "One of the lost secrets of the
+world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
+Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
+circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
+the solution of the riddle, or else--what is more likely, in spite of
+his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"--that his mind, and
+the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
+than the Edmundsbury Monks. But _they_ did not make the stone, nor did
+they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk--they got it from
+some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
+stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
+someone from whom _he_ received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
+of time. And consider the character of the engraving--it consists of _a
+mythological animal_, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only
+are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
+Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
+Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
+glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
+that the figure of the _scarabaeus_ on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
+infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
+grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
+that evidence alone--though there is more--that this gem was certainly
+Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of "Has" vanishes:
+for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
+Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
+precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
+childishly calls "the lost secrets of the world": for every successive
+inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
+led astray in his investigation. "Has" is, in fact, part of the word
+"Hasn-us-Sabah," and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
+obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
+shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
+of graving in precious stones than the Persians,--by a rude, mediaeval
+Englishman, in short,--the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
+of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman--who
+either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
+him--do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
+fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
+red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
+I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
+that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
+his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
+of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
+believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
+incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
+Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
+politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
+--the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
+him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
+well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
+of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, _and
+plundered_, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
+or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
+this time there was a cordial _rapprochement_ between Saladin and
+Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
+generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
+deep mystic importance, took place--remember "The Talisman," and the
+"Lee Penny"; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
+then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
+(as we are informed by the _Jocelini Chronica_) was _opened by the
+Abbot_ at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
+occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
+it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
+this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
+whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
+presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
+surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
+bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, "al
+Hasani" or "Ismaili"--"that accursed _Ishmaelite_," the baronet
+exclaims in one place--still live, are still a flourishing sect
+impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
+chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
+"Lebanon" on which Sir Jocelin "picked up" his too doubtful scribe and
+literary helper?
+
+'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the
+Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
+his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
+England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
+breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
+over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
+stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
+secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
+to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
+that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
+with another stone similar in size and shape--these being well known to
+him--to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
+so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
+chalice was not often _opened_ by the baronet, and this would therefore
+have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
+assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
+appears all the trouble he took to _engrave_ the false stone in an
+exactly similar manner to the other. _That_ could not help him in
+producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
+being _seen_, but only _heard_ in the cup, is proved by the fact that
+he selected a stone of a different _colour_. This colour, as I shall
+afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
+are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
+last stone, the white one--I shall prove that it was white--which
+Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided _two_
+substitutes, and that he had engraved these _two_, without object, in
+the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
+_having_ done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
+prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
+conclusion.
+
+'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not _prepared_ any substitute; and
+it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
+probable that he could _by chance_ have possessed two old gems exactly
+similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
+the word "Hasn-us-Sabah." I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
+not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
+Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
+never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
+point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
+motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
+for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
+order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
+making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
+real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.
+
+'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
+evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
+positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
+that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
+the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
+exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
+its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
+certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
+equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
+his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
+believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. "Now," he cries in
+triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room--"_now_ you have
+delivered all into my hands." "All" what, Sir Jocelin wonders. "All,"
+of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
+precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that _he_ has
+done--hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
+own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
+accordingly hastens into his chamber, and "locks the door," in order,
+by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
+examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
+is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
+the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
+like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
+deposited it in a place of perfect safety--such as, with or without
+lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
+afforded--his more reasonable _rôle_ would have been that of
+unconscious _nonchalance_, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
+fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
+hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
+secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
+that Ul-Jabal "holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
+down": can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of _search_?
+Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
+able to suspect that both are seekers.
+
+'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
+the stone by the Persian than all this--and that is the murder of the
+baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
+a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
+murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
+power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
+semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
+him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder--the clear means of
+gaining the stone--presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
+moment--indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
+very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
+It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
+gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
+of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
+admitting of the designation "gown," have usually only outer
+pockets--large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
+robe. But a stone of that size _must_ have made such a pocket bulge
+outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
+perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
+his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
+there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
+the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
+narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
+there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
+ultimate detection, pursuit--and this is a land of Law, swift and
+fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus--thus surely, and thus
+secretly--can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
+very next day he leaves the house--no more shall the mistrustful
+baronet, who is "hiding something from him," see his face. He carries
+with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
+contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his "brown gowns," and a
+snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
+that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
+_house_, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
+during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
+_far and wide_ "with uncovered head." Can you not picture the
+distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
+long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
+may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
+Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
+to _hide_ the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to _seek_ it, for
+he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
+in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
+previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
+has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
+"the old days of love"; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
+sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is "brown as the leaves of autumn."
+That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
+hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour--it was the
+yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
+has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
+tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
+he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
+the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
+no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
+outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
+two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
+neurotic condition; I thought of those "fibrillary twitchings,"
+indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
+sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
+stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
+urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
+dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
+the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
+sudden, the terrific shock of seeing _himself_ sitting in the chair
+before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been _placed_ there by
+Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
+to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death--if he _be_
+dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
+Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
+snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
+all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
+plague, and, I hope, straightway go and--hang himself.'
+
+It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
+the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
+now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
+'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
+which Zaleski had been detailing to me.
+
+'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
+with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
+discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
+exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
+above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
+these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
+turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
+inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
+that if "this stone be stolen," or if it "chaunges dre," the House of
+Saul and its head "anoon" (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. "Dre," I may
+remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
+with the Saxon "_dreogan_," meaning to "suffer." So that the writer at
+least contemplated that the stone might "suffer changes." But what kind
+of changes--external or internal? External change--change of
+environment--is already provided for when he says, "shulde this Ston
+stalen bee"; "chaunges," therefore, in _his_ mind, meant internal
+changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
+this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
+name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
+immediately discoverable. For it was a "sky-blue" stone; a sky-blue,
+sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
+its name--it was a _turquoise_. But can the turquoise, to the certain
+knowledge of a mediaeval writer, "chaunges dre"? Let us turn for light
+to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
+bronze Hera.'
+
+I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
+follows:
+
+'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
+of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
+precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
+his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
+end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
+thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
+turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
+which lose it.'[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Assurément la turquoise a une âme plus intelligente que
+l'âme de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
+touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
+jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
+Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, à fin que l'on ne
+recoure pas à Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
+precieuse; ainsi, peut-être, il deçoit nos esprits par la turquoise:
+car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
+couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' _Anselm de Boot_, Book II.]
+
+'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
+have the property of changing its colour--a change which was
+universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
+owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
+many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
+thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
+well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
+specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
+may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
+in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
+that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
+stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
+lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
+that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
+that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
+the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
+infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
+chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
+baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
+the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
+final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
+stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
+All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
+And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
+somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'
+
+For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
+the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:
+
+'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
+immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
+history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
+centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
+the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
+Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
+ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
+right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in _all_ lands, and at
+_all_ times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
+virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
+garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
+Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
+in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
+Already you have a semi-comic "gold-cure" for alcoholism, and you have
+heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
+scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
+it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
+fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
+what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
+inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'
+
+_Note_.--As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
+Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
+may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
+have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
+of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
+skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
+found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.
+
+
+
+
+THE S.S.
+
+'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....
+
+'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Geschöpf,
+das falsch lebt, wird früh zerstört. Unfruchtbarkeit, kümmerliches
+Dasein, frühzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Flüche, die Kennzeichen
+ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
+much into the world along with them....
+
+'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
+a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
+early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
+displeasure.']
+
+[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
+panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
+ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
+depleted of Men (i.e. _after the battle with Cleomenes_) that the
+slaves usurped everything--ruling and disposing--until such time as the
+sons of the slain were grown up.']
+
+To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
+what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
+being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
+sensational case of _felo de se_ published in the newspapers is sure to
+be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
+out of all proportion with the _extent_ of each particular outbreak.
+Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
+wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
+fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
+Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
+perished by the scourge; while that at the _Hôtel des Invalides_ in
+Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
+present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
+throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
+black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
+brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
+dear sick stress of her desire--with just such faintings, wanton fires,
+does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
+to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.
+
+   'When she sees a bank
+   Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
+   Her servants, what a pretty place it were
+   To bury lovers in; and make her maids
+   Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'
+
+[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: _The Maid's Tragedy_.]
+
+The _mode_ spreads--then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
+obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes _comme il faut_, this cerecloth
+acquiring all the attractiveness and _éclat_ of a wedding-garment. The
+coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
+of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
+There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
+pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
+explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
+sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.
+
+It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
+year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
+in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
+I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
+answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
+woe at Bethany:
+
+'Come and see.'
+
+To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'
+
+I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
+cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
+know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
+referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
+thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
+even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
+the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
+note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
+Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
+derision and censure--for it will be remembered that to many minds the
+mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
+conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
+self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
+and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
+wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
+police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
+under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
+panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
+people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
+agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
+The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
+doubt, the haunting _fear_. None felt himself quite safe; men
+recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
+affright, and to know not why--that is the transcendentalism of terror.
+The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
+in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
+walketh _by night_ that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
+being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
+And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
+but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
+that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris _Bourse_, business
+decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
+practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
+answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
+motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.
+
+It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
+Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
+because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
+invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
+time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
+had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
+flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
+excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
+eyes. I avow that that lonesome room--gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
+perfumed light--shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
+narcotic-breathing draperies--pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
+brooding occupant--grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
+remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
+midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
+cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
+all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
+friend.
+
+Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
+into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
+words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
+laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
+properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
+gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
+all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
+of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
+must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
+the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
+an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
+suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
+and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
+for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
+the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
+firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
+he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with which he was
+always tormented by any mystery which momentarily baffled him, I was,
+of course, forced to hold my peace. On the third day, however, of his
+own accord he asked me to what epidemic I had referred. I then detailed
+to him some of the strange events which were agitating the mind of the
+outside world. From the very first he was interested: later on that
+interest grew into a passion, a greedy soul-consuming quest after the
+truth, the intensity of which was such at last as to move me even to
+pity.
+
+I may as well here restate the facts as I communicated them to Zaleski.
+The concatenation of incidents, it will be remembered, started with the
+extraordinary death of that eminent man of science, Professor
+Schleschinger, consulting laryngologist to the Charité Hospital in
+Berlin. The professor, a man of great age, was on the point of
+contracting his third marriage with the beautiful and accomplished
+daughter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von Friedrich. The contemplated
+union, which was entirely one of those _mariages de convenance_ so
+common in good society, sprang out of the professor's ardent desire to
+leave behind him a direct heir to his very considerable wealth. By his
+first two marriages, indeed, he had had large families, and was at this
+very time surrounded by quite an army of little grandchildren, from
+whom (all his direct descendants being dead) he might have been content
+to select his heir; but the old German prejudices in these matters are
+strong, and he still hoped to be represented on his decease by a son of
+his own. To this whim the charming Ottilie was marked by her parents as
+the victim. The wedding, however, had been postponed owing to a slight
+illness of the veteran scientist, and just as he was on the point of
+final recovery from it, death intervened to prevent altogether the
+execution of his design. Never did death of man create a profounder
+sensation; _never was death of man followed by consequences more
+terrible_. The _Residenz_ of the scientist was a stately mansion near
+the University in the _Unter den Linden_ boulevard, that is to say, in
+the most fashionable _Quartier_ of Berlin. His bedroom from a
+considerable height looked out on a small back garden, and in this room
+he had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical
+attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all
+this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various
+topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of
+what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain
+grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had
+found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the
+horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion
+to make a _post-mortem_ examination. The woman had suffered from
+partial paralysis. She had a small young family, none of whom, however,
+could give any account of the slip, except one little girl, who
+declared that she had taken it 'from her mother's mouth' after death.
+The slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, as though it had been
+smeared with honey. The professor added that all through his illness he
+had been employing himself by examining these figures. He was
+convinced, he said, that they contained some archaeological
+significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a
+slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,--on the bed of a dead
+Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the
+_mouth_ of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident
+seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the
+instinct--so strong in him--to investigate, to probe. For days, he
+declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the
+figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe
+that the figures--rude and uncouth as they were--were only such as
+might be drawn by any school-boy in an idle moment. They consisted
+merely of a man and a woman seated on a bench, with what looked like an
+ornamental border running round them. After a pleasant evening's
+scientific gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after midnight, took his
+departure from the bed-side. An hour later the servants were roused
+from sleep by one deep, raucous cry proceeding from the professor's
+room. They hastened to his door; it was locked on the inside; all was
+still within. No answer coming to their calls, the door was broken in.
+They found their master lying calm and dead on his bed. A window of the
+room was open, but there was nothing to show that any one had entered
+it. Dr. Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on the scene. After
+examining the body, he failed to find anything to account for the
+sudden demise of his old friend and chief. One observation, however,
+had the effect of causing him to tingle with horror. On his entrance he
+had noticed, lying on the side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with
+which the professor had been toying in the earlier part of the day, and
+had removed it. But, as he was on the point of leaving the room, he
+happened to approach the corpse once more, and bending over it, noticed
+that the lips and teeth were slightly parted. Drawing open the now
+stiffened jaws, he found--to his amazement, to his stupefaction--that,
+neatly folded beneath the dead tongue, lay just such another piece of
+papyrus as that which he had removed from the bed. He drew it out--it
+was clammy. He put it to his nose,--it exhaled the fragrance of honey.
+He opened it,--it was covered by figures. He compared them with the
+figures on the other slip,--they were just so similar as two
+draughtsmen hastily copying from a common model would make them. The
+doctor was unnerved: he hurried homeward, and immediately submitted the
+honey on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical analysis: he suspected
+poison--a subtle poison--as the means of a suicide, grotesquely,
+insanely accomplished. He found the fluid to be perfectly
+innocuous,--pure honey, and nothing more.
+
+The next day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor
+Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the
+papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of
+actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own
+hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical
+profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen,
+Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance;
+within three weeks from the night on which Professor Schleschinger met
+his unaccountable end, eight thousand persons in Germany, France, and
+Great Britain, died in that startlingly sudden and secret manner which
+we call 'tragic', many of them obviously by their own hands, many, in
+what seemed the servility of a fatal imitativeness, with figured,
+honey-smeared slips of papyrus beneath their tongues. Even now--now,
+after years--I thrill intensely to recall the dread remembrance; but to
+live through it, to breathe daily the mawkish, miasmatic atmosphere,
+all vapid with the suffocating death--ah, it was terror too deep,
+nausea too foul, for mortal bearing. Novalis has somewhere hinted at
+the possibility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous suicide and
+voluntary return by the whole human family into the sweet bosom of our
+ancient Father--I half expected it was coming, had come, _then_. It was
+as if the old, good-easy, meek-eyed man of science, dying, had left his
+effectual curse on all the world, and had thereby converted
+civilisation into one omnivorous grave, one universal charnel-house. I
+spent several days in reading out to Zaleski accounts of particular
+deaths as they had occurred. He seemed never to tire of listening,
+lying back for the most part on the silver-cushioned couch, and wearing
+an inscrutable mask. Sometimes he rose and paced the carpet with
+noiseless foot-fall, his steps increasing to the swaying, uneven
+velocity of an animal in confinement as a passage here or there
+attracted him, and then subsiding into their slow regularity again. At
+any interruption in the reading, he would instantly turn to me with a
+certain impatience, and implore me to proceed; and when our stock of
+matter failed, he broke out into actual anger that I had not brought
+more with me. Henceforth the negro, Ham, using my trap, daily took a
+double journey--one before sunrise, and one at dusk--to the nearest
+townlet, from which he would return loaded with newspapers. With
+unimaginable eagerness did both Zaleski and I seize, morning after
+morning, and evening after evening, on these budgets, to gloat for long
+hours over the ever-lengthening tale of death. As for him, sleep
+forsook him. He was a man of small reasonableness, scorning the
+limitations of human capacity; his palate brooked no meat when his
+brain was headlong in the chase; even the mild narcotics which were now
+his food and drink seemed to lose something of their power to mollify,
+to curb him. Often rising from slumber in what I took to be the dead of
+night--though of day or night there could be small certainty in that
+dim dwelling--I would peep into the domed chamber, and see him there
+under the livid-green light of the censer, the leaden smoke issuing
+from his lips, his eyes fixed unweariedly on a square piece of ebony
+which rested on the coffin of the mummy near him. On this ebony he had
+pasted side by side several woodcuts--snipped from the newspapers--of
+the figures traced on the pieces of papyrus found in the mouths of the
+dead. I could see, as time passed, that he was concentrating all his
+powers on these figures; for the details of the deaths themselves were
+all of a dreary sameness, offering few salient points for
+investigation. In those cases where the suicide had left behind him
+clear evidence of the means by which he had committed the act, there
+was nothing to investigate; the others--rich and poor alike, peer and
+peasant--trooped out by thousands on the far journey, without leaving
+the faintest footprint to mark the road by which they had gone.
+
+This was perhaps the reason that, after a time, Zaleski discarded the
+newspapers, leaving their perusal to me, and turned his attention
+exclusively to the ebon tablet. Knowing as I full well did the daring
+and success of his past spiritual adventures,--the subtlety, the
+imagination, the imperial grip of his intellect,--I did not at all
+doubt that his choice was wise, and would in the end be justified.
+These woodcuts--now so notorious--were all exactly similar in design,
+though minutely differing here and there in drawing. The following is a
+facsimile of one of them taken by me at random:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The time passed. It now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid
+pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of
+Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in
+his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I
+decided at last--if mystery there were--was too deep, too dark, for
+him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more
+from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat
+reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard a loud cry from
+the vaulted chamber. I rushed to the door and beheld him standing,
+gazing with wild eyes at the ebon tablet held straight out in front of
+him.
+
+'By Heaven!' he cried, stamping savagely with his foot. 'By Heaven!
+Then I certainly _am_ a fool! _It is the staff of Phaebus in the hand
+of Hermes!'_
+
+I hastened to him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'have you discovered anything?'
+
+'It is possible.'
+
+'And has there really been foul play--murder--in any of these deaths?'
+
+'Of that, at least, I was certain from the first.'
+
+'Great God!' I exclaimed, 'could any son of man so convert himself into
+a fiend, a beast of the wilderness....'
+
+'You judge precisely in the manner of the multitude,' he answered
+somewhat petulantly. 'Illegal murder is always a mistake, but not
+necessarily a crime. Remember Corday. But in cases where the murder of
+one is really fiendish, why is it qualitatively less fiendish than the
+murder of many? On the other hand, had Brutus slain a thousand
+Caesars--each act involving an additional exhibition of the sublimest
+self-suppression--he might well have taken rank as a saint in heaven.'
+
+Failing for the moment to see the drift or the connection of the
+argument, I contented myself with waiting events. For the rest of that
+day and the next Zaleski seemed to have dismissed the matter of the
+tragedies from his mind, and entered calmly on his former studies. He
+no longer consulted the news, or examined the figures on the tablet.
+The papers, however, still arrived daily, and of these he soon
+afterwards laid several before me, pointing, with a curious smile, to a
+small paragraph in each. These all appeared in the advertisement
+columns, were worded alike, and read as follows:
+
+'A true son of Lycurgus, _having news_, desires to know the _time_ and
+_place_ of the next meeting of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R----
+Abbey, in the county of M----.'
+
+I gazed in mute alternation at the advertisement and at him. I may here
+stop to make mention of a very remarkable sensation which my
+association with him occasionally produced in me. I felt it with
+intense, with unpleasant, with irritating keenness at this moment. It
+was the sensation of being borne aloft--aloft--by a force external to
+myself--such a sensation as might possibly tingle through an earthworm
+when lifted into illimitable airy heights by the strongly-daring
+pinions of an eagle. It was the feeling of being hurried out beyond
+one's depth--caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of
+some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have
+experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me--winged, rocking,
+ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!--round a too narrow curve. It was a
+sensation very far from agreeable.
+
+'To that,' he said, pointing to the paragraph, 'we may, I think,
+shortly expect an answer. Let us only hope that when it comes it may be
+immediately intelligible.'
+
+We waited throughout the whole of that day and night, hiding our
+eagerness under the pretence of absorption in our books. If by chance I
+fell into an uneasy doze, I found him on waking ever watchful, and
+poring over the great tome before him. About the time, however, when,
+could we have seen it, the first grey of dawn must have been peeping
+over the land, his impatience again became painful to witness; he rose
+and paced the room, muttering occasionally to himself. This only
+ceased, when, hours later, Ham entered the room with an envelope in his
+hand. Zaleski seized it--tore it open--ran his eye over the
+contents--and dashed it to the ground with an oath.
+
+'Curse it!' he groaned. 'Ah, curse it! unintelligible--every syllable
+of it!'
+
+I picked up the missive and examined it. It was a slip of papyrus
+covered with the design now so hideously familiar, except only that the
+two central figures were wanting. At the bottom was written the date of
+the 15th of November--it was then the morning of the 12th--and the name
+'Morris.' The whole, therefore, presented the following appearance:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+My eyes were now heavy with sleep, every sense half-drunken with the
+vapourlike atmosphere of the room, so that, having abandoned something
+of hope, I tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into a profound
+slumber, which lasted till what must have been the time of the
+gathering in of the shades of night. I then rose. Missing Zaleski, I
+sought through all the chambers for him. He was nowhere to be seen. The
+negro informed me with an affectionate and anxious tremor in the voice
+that his master had left the rooms some hours before, but had said
+nothing to him. I ordered the man to descend and look into the sacristy
+of the small chapel wherein I had deposited my _calèche_, and in the
+field behind, where my horse should be. He returned with the news that
+both had disappeared. Zaleski, I then concluded, had undoubtedly
+departed on a journey.
+
+I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by. He
+wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being. It was like
+matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski had never
+before withdrawn himself from the _surveillance_ of this sturdy
+watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their
+little cosmos. Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some
+light on the meaning of this catastrophe. But I too was in the dark.
+The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken,
+childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of
+some great danger to the person of his master. So a day passed away,
+and then another. On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a
+letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski. It was hastily
+scribbled in pencil, dated 'London, Nov. 14th,' and ran thus:
+
+'For my body--should I not return by Friday night--you will, no doubt,
+be good enough to make search. _Descend_ the river, keeping constantly
+to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the _Descensus Aesopi._
+Seek diligently, and you will find. For the rest, you know my fancy for
+cremation: take me, if you will, to the crematorium of _Père-Lachaise._
+My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.'
+
+Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to
+communicate a word of it. I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed,
+I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night! It was then
+Thursday morning. And I was expected to wait through the dreary
+interval uncertain, agonised, inactive! I was offended with my friend;
+his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction. The leaden
+hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of
+my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep. On the next morning,
+however, another letter--a rather massive one--reached me. The covering
+was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the
+words: 'This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before
+Saturday.' I therefore laid the packet aside unread.
+
+I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o'clock, if nothing
+happened, I should make some sort of effort. But from six I remained,
+with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten. I was so utterly at
+a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I
+could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear
+absurd. But at midnight I sprang up--no longer would I endure the
+carking suspense. I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way. I
+had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished. Then I
+remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole
+vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but
+hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the
+labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted
+vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with
+something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out
+before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an
+hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what
+felt like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank back, unnerved as I
+already was, with a murmur of affright.
+
+'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.
+
+Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
+my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.
+
+Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
+With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.
+
+It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
+of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
+breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
+to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
+want sleep--only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
+by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
+infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
+garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
+dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
+reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
+girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed _ceinture_. With all
+the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
+the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
+unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
+the sleeper woke, in his eye,--full of divine instinct,--flitted the
+wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
+austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
+pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
+fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
+by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said:
+
+'We have, Shiel, had before us a very remarkable series of murders, and
+a very remarkable series of suicides. Were they in any way connected?
+To this extent, I think--that the mysterious, the unparalleled nature
+of the murders gave rise to a morbid condition in the public mind,
+which in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. But though such an
+epidemic has its origin in the instinct of imitation so common in men,
+you must not suppose that the mental process is a _conscious_ one. A
+person feels an impulse to go and do, and is not aware that at bottom
+it is only an impulse to go and do _likewise_. He would indeed
+repudiate such an assumption. Thus one man destroys himself, and
+another imitates him--but whereas the former uses a pistol, the latter
+uses a rope. It is rather absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of
+those cases in which the slip of papyrus has been found in the mouth
+after death, the cause of death has been the slavish imitativeness of
+the suicidal mania,--for this, as I say, is never _slavish._ The
+papyrus then--quite apart from the unmistakable evidences of suicide
+invariably left by each self-destroyer--affords us definite and certain
+means by which we can distinguish the two classes of deaths; and we are
+thus able to divide the total number into two nearly equal halves.
+
+'But you start--you are troubled--you never heard or read of murder
+such as this, the simultaneous murder of thousands over wide areas of
+the face of the globe; here you feel is something outside your
+experience, deeper than your profoundest imaginings. To the question
+"by whom committed?" and "with what motive?" your mind can conceive no
+possible answer. And yet the answer must be, "by man, and for human
+motives,"--for the Angel of Death with flashing eye and flaming sword
+is himself long dead; and again we can say at once, by no _one_ man,
+but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no _common_ men,
+but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
+and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
+society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
+integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.
+
+'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
+immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
+of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,--but to
+motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
+engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
+hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
+exact knowledge of the mystery.
+
+'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
+_reading_ of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
+behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
+this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
+that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
+lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
+and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
+another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
+myself, were these drawings meant to represent,--letters, numbers,
+things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
+because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
+wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
+part of its inventor to make a picture of the _serpent;_ S being the
+sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
+view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
+of course you know that all letters were originally _pictures of
+things,_ and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I
+therefore assumed, by way of trial, that the snakes in the diagram
+stood for a sibilant letter, that is, either C or S. And thence,
+supposing this to be the case, I deduced: firstly, that all the other
+figures stood for letters; and secondly, that they all appeared in the
+form of pictures of the things of which those letters were originally
+meant to be pictures. Thus the letter "m," one of the four "_liquid_"
+consonants, is, as we now write it, only a shortened form of a waved
+line; and as a waved line it was originally written, and was the
+character by which _a stream of running water_ was represented in
+writing; indeed it only owes its name to the fact that when the lips
+are pressed together, and "m" uttered by a continuous effort, a certain
+resemblance to the murmur of running water is produced. The longer
+waved line in the diagram I therefore took to represent "m"; and it at
+once followed that the shorter meant "n," for no two letters of the
+commoner European alphabets differ only in length (as distinct from
+shape) except "m" and "n", and "w" and "v"; indeed, just as the French
+call "w" "double-ve," so very properly might "m" be called "double-en."
+But, in this case, the longer not being "w," the shorter could not be
+"v": it was therefore "n." And now there only remained the heart and
+the triangle. I was unable to think of any letter that could ever have
+been intended for the picture of a heart, but the triangle I knew to be
+the letter #A.# This was originally written without the cross-bar from
+prop to prop, and the two feet at the bottom of the props were not
+separated as now, but joined; so that the letter formed a true
+triangle. It was meant by the primitive man to be a picture of his
+primitive house, this house being, of course, hut-shaped, and
+consisting of a conical roof without walls. I had thus, with the
+exception of the heart, disentangled the whole, which then (leaving a
+space for the heart) read as follows:
+
+     { ss
+ 'mn {    anan ... san.'
+     { cc
+
+But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
+'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
+also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'--except 'mnemonics' and
+its fellows--I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
+letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
+as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
+was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
+the first 's.' Thus I got
+
+'m ns sanan... san,'
+
+or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,
+
+'mens sana in... sano.'
+
+The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
+'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot--showing that the word as it stood was
+an abbreviation--conclusively proved every one of my deductions.
+
+'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
+central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
+heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
+light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
+as to the _general_ significance of these figures, for I saw at once
+their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
+you are not minutely acquainted with the _technique_ of these stones, I
+may as well show you one, which I myself removed from an old grave in
+Tarentum.'
+
+He took from a niche a small piece of close-grained marble, about a
+foot square, and laid it before me. On one side it was exquisitely
+sculptured in relief.
+
+'This,' he continued, 'is a typical example of the Greek grave-stone,
+and having seen one specimen you may be said to have seen almost all,
+for there is surprisingly little variety in the class. You will observe
+that the scene represents a man reclining on a couch; in his hand he
+holds a _patera,_ or dish, filled with grapes and pomegranates, and
+beside him is a tripod bearing the viands from which he is banqueting.
+At his feet sits a woman--for the Greek lady never reclined at table.
+In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent
+may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable
+pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from
+which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I
+considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the
+papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim.
+I said to myself: it can only be that the assassins have bound
+themselves to the observance of a strict and narrow ritual from which
+no departure is under any circumstances permitted--perhaps for the sake
+of signalling the course of events to others at a distance. But what
+ritual? That question I was able to answer when I knew the answer to
+these others,--why _under the tongue,_ and why _smeared with honey?_
+For no reason, except that the Greeks (not the Romans till very late in
+their history) always placed an _obolos,_ or penny, beneath the tongue
+of the dead to pay his passage across the Stygian river of ghosts; for
+no reason, except that to these same Greeks honey was a sacred fluid,
+intimately associated in their minds with the mournful subject of
+Death; a fluid with which the bodies of the deceased were anointed, and
+sometimes--especially in Sparta and the Pelasgic South--embalmed; with
+which libations were poured to Hermes Psuchopompos, conductor of the
+dead to the regions of shade; with which offerings were made to all the
+chthonic deities, and the souls of the departed in general. You
+remember, for instance, the melancholy words of Helen addressed to
+Hermione in _Orestes:_
+
+ [Greek: _Kai labe choas tasd'en cheroin komas t'emas
+ elthousa d'amphi ton Klutaimnaestras taphon
+ melikrat'aphes galaktos oinopon t'achnaen._]
+
+And so everywhere. The ritual then of the murderers was a _Greek_
+ritual, their cult a Greek cult--preferably, perhaps, a South Greek
+one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative
+peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this
+semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more
+certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were
+drawn from a Greek model.
+
+'Here, however, I came to a standstill. I was infinitely puzzled by the
+rod in the man's hand. In none of the Greek grave-reliefs does any such
+thing as a rod make an appearance, except in one well-known example
+where the god Hermes--generally represented as carrying the _caduceus_,
+or staff, given him by Phoebus--appears leading a dead maiden to the
+land of night. But in every other example of which I am aware the
+sculpture represents a man _living_, not dead, banqueting _on earth_,
+not in Hades, by the side of his living companion. What then could be
+the significance of the staff in the hand of this living man? It was
+only after days of the hardest struggle, the cruellest suspense, that
+the thought flashed on me that the idea of Hermes leading away the dead
+female might, in this case, have been carried one step farther; that
+the male figure might be no living man, no man at all, but _Hermes
+himself_ actually banqueting in Hades with the soul of his disembodied
+_protégée_! The thought filled me with a rapture I cannot describe, and
+you witnessed my excitement. But, at all events, I saw that this was a
+truly tremendous departure from Greek art and thought, to which in
+general the copyists seemed to cling so religiously. There must
+therefore be a reason, a strong reason, for vandalism such as this. And
+that, at any rate, it was no longer difficult to discover; for now I
+knew that the male figure was no mortal, but a god, a spirit, a DAEMON
+(in the Greek sense of the word); and the female figure I saw by the
+marked shortness of her drapery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan; no
+matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a LASSIE; and now I had forced on
+me lassie daemon, _Lacedaemon._
+
+'This then was the badge, the so carefully-buried badge, of this
+society of men. The only thing which still puzzled and confounded me at
+this stage was the startling circumstance that a _Greek_ society should
+make use of a _Latin_ motto. It was clear that either all my
+conclusions were totally wrong, or else the motto _mens sana in corpore
+sano_ contained wrapped up in itself some acroamatic meaning which I
+found myself unable to penetrate, and which the authors had found no
+Greek motto capable of conveying. But at any rate, having found this
+much, my knowledge led me of itself one step further; for I perceived
+that, widely extended as were their operations, the society was
+necessarily in the main an _English,_ or at least an English-speaking
+one--for of this the word "lassie" was plainly indicative: it was easy
+now to conjecture London, the monster-city in which all things lose
+themselves, as their head-quarters; and at this point in my
+investigations I despatched to the papers the advertisement you have
+seen.'
+
+'But,' I exclaimed, 'even now I utterly fail to see by what mysterious
+processes of thought you arrived at the wording of the advertisement;
+even now it conveys no meaning to my mind.'
+
+'That,' he replied,' will grow clear when we come to a right
+understanding of the baleful _motive_ which inspired these men. I have
+already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one
+possible method of doing so--and that was, by all means, by any means,
+to find out some condition or other common to every one of the victims
+before death. It is true that I was unable to do this in some few
+cases, but where I failed, I was convinced that my failure was due to
+the insufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, rather than to the
+actual absence of the condition. Now, let us take almost any two cases
+you will, and seek for this common condition: let us take, for example,
+the first two that attracted the attention of the world--the poor woman
+of the slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by
+as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely,
+in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated
+_striae_ of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she
+has a "small young" family, which, had she lived, might have been
+increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia,
+"partial paralysis." The professor, too, has had not one, but two,
+large families, and an "army of grand-children": but note well the
+startling, the hideous fact, that _every one of his children is dead!_
+The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in _every one_ of
+those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism,
+lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean--but not before they have had time
+to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army
+of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his
+old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race
+still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance,
+the point of resemblance,--you see it? And, O heaven, is it not too
+sad? For me, I tell you, the whole business has a tragic pitifulness
+too deep for words. But this brings me to the discussion of a large
+matter. It would, for instance, be interesting to me to hear what you,
+a modern European, saturated with all the notions of your little day,
+what _you_ consider the supreme, the all-important question for the
+nations of Europe at this moment. Am I far wrong in assuming that you
+would rattle off half a dozen of the moot points agitating rival
+factions in your own land, select one of them, and call that "the
+question of the hour"? I wish I could see as you see; I wish to God I
+did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask
+you, what _precisely_ was it that ruined the old nations--that brought,
+say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy
+imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom,
+believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things--it was simply
+War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain
+myself: this is a novel view to you, and you are perhaps unable to
+conceive how or why war was so fatal to the old world, because you see
+how little harmful it is to the new. If you collected in a promiscuous
+way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all
+simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of
+view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small,
+wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna
+in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and
+uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many,
+would flow on, and the void would soon be filled. But the effect would
+only be thus insignificant, if, as I said, your millions were taken
+promiscuously (as in the modern army), not if they were _picked_
+men----in _that_ case the loss (or gain) would be excessive, and
+permanent for all time. Now, the war-hosts of the ancient
+commonwealths--not dependent on the mechanical contrivances of the
+modern army--were necessarily composed of the very best men: the
+strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound in wind and limb. Under these
+conditions the State shuddered through all her frame, thrilled adown
+every filament, at the death of a single one of her sons in the field.
+As only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, their number after each
+battle became larger _in proportion to the whole_ than before. Thus the
+nation, more and more, with ever-increasing rapidity, declined in
+bodily, and of course spiritual, quality, until the _end_ was reached,
+and Nature swallowed up the weaklings whole; and thus war, which to the
+modern state is at worst the blockhead and indecent _affaires
+d'honneur_ of persons in office--and which, surely, before you and I
+die will cease altogether--was to the ancient a genuine and
+remorselessly fatal scourge.
+
+'And now let me apply these facts to the Europe of our own time. We no
+longer have world-serious war--but in its place we have a scourge, the
+effect of which on the modern state is _precisely the same_ as the
+effect of war on the ancient, only,--in the end,--far more destructive,
+far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
+pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
+--shudder--as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
+bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
+medical, and especially surgical, science--that, if you like, for us
+all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what
+surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions"
+whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
+State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
+the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
+deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
+The net result is in each case the same--the altered ratio of the total
+amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
+disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
+worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
+must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
+becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
+him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
+slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
+saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian _he_, but
+a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
+Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and
+Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
+quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
+antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
+such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
+time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
+man to laugh at disease--laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
+natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
+destroying its ever-expanding _existence_. Do you know that at this
+moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
+suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
+whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
+hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like
+missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
+mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
+vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
+are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
+consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
+sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
+thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
+course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
+Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
+people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
+men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand--with a
+thrill of intensest joy, I say it!--is to be seen, if not yet
+commencing civilisation, then progress, progress--wide as the
+world--toward it: only here--at the heart--is there decadence, fatty
+degeneration. Brain-evolution--and favouring airs--and the ripening
+time--and the silent Will of God, of God--all these in conspiracy seem
+to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
+luxury of glory--when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
+more disease--that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
+especially--so sensitive to the physician's art--living on by hundreds
+of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
+who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
+proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
+curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
+may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
+question: _why?_ Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
+cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
+that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
+_therefore_ be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
+to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
+tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
+just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
+for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
+sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
+unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
+leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
+answer that question--I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
+the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
+humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
+it, coerced into sympathy with it. "Beautiful" I say: for if anywhere
+in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
+hospital _savants_ bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
+pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
+wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
+parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
+Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
+_lachesis mutus_; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
+_in_human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
+me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
+dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
+of the inner verities of this our earthly being--the dogma, that by the
+shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
+man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
+the necessity that one man die, "so that the whole people perish not"?
+Can it be true that by nothing less than the "three days of pestilence"
+shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
+alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
+inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
+anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
+foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
+is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
+future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
+glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism--the
+immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
+part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
+bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
+not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the _accoucheur,_ of
+the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
+breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
+function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
+are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
+Sparta--the "man-taming Sparta" Simonides calls her--answered them.
+Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
+of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
+under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
+parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
+commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
+he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
+place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
+that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
+stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
+Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
+all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
+express the idea "ugly," meant also "hateful," "vile," "disgraceful"
+--and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
+fact alone; for they considered--and rightly--that there is no
+sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
+perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful--if only very moderate pains
+be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
+Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
+Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
+barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
+Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
+"lament" on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
+the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
+thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
+the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
+one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
+remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
+understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
+papers.'
+
+Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular _tirade_, paused:
+replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
+cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
+and then continued:
+
+'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
+what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
+I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
+and an address, too--but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
+course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
+to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
+circumstance that the Latin proverb _mens sana etc._ should be adopted
+as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
+motto _contained an address_--the address of their meeting-place, or at
+least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
+of solving--and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour--this
+enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
+extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
+that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
+difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
+cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
+secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
+there was any _consistency_ in the system of cyphers at all, for it
+belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
+others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
+therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
+actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
+form _mens sana in ... pore sano._ I wrote this down, and what
+instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
+_liquids_ in the motto--six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
+of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
+_mnnnnr_, and you can see that the very appearance of the "m's" and
+"n's" (especially when _written_) running into one another, of itself
+suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
+of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
+inference of _the Thames_; there, or near there, would I find those
+whom I sought. The letters "mnnnnr," then, meant the Thames: what did
+the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
+placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
+these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
+occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
+inevitably get the word _Aesopi._ And now I was fairly startled by this
+symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
+respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
+_"Aesopi."_ For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
+wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
+wise--their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
+also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
+wisdom with wealth--true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
+all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
+he is typical, therefore, of death--the shedding of blood--as a result
+of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
+"in much wisdom is much sorrow." But how accurately all this fitted in
+with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
+was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
+immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.
+
+'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
+The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
+I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
+light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
+manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
+sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
+betoken any sort of connection with the word "Aesopi." In this way I
+passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
+fast my craft, and in a spirit of _diablerie_ spent the night in a
+common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
+beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
+_bonne camaraderie_ which the prevailing fear of death could not
+altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again--on,
+and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
+had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
+should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
+men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
+meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
+proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
+and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
+on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
+came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
+into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
+the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
+of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
+was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
+at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway--a winding
+road--leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
+its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
+the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
+was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
+And then--and then--tingling now with a thousand raptures--I beheld a
+pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
+counterpart of the first--and then, still leading on in the same
+direction, another pool--and then a great rock, heart-shaped--and then
+another winding road--and then another pool of water. All was a
+model--_exact to the minutest particular_--of the device on the
+papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
+short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
+three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
+representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
+heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
+and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
+rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
+at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
+black letters, was marked the words, "DESCENSUS AESOPI." It was
+necessary, therefore, to go _down_: the meeting-place was subterranean.
+It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
+ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
+series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
+descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
+confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
+_ziphos_ and _peltè_. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
+long with an earnest scrutiny.
+
+'"You are a Spartan?" he asked at length.
+
+'"Yes," I answered promptly.
+
+'"Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?"
+
+'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.
+
+'"You _are_ a Spartan?" he repeated.
+
+'I nodded with emphasis.
+
+'"Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?"
+
+'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
+that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
+of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency--to stretch
+itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
+_no_ combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
+alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
+lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
+by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
+always placed under the _tongue_ of the dead; I remembered, too, that
+among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to "turn
+up the _thumb_" (_pollicem vertere_) was a symbol significant of death.
+I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
+aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.
+
+'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
+supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
+the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
+walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
+reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
+chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
+stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
+gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
+From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.
+
+'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
+fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
+not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
+means by which my body might be traced.  'But on the next day a new
+thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: "these men are not common
+assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
+against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
+immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
+They will not therefore take mine, _unless_ they suppose me to be the
+only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
+think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
+designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
+such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
+whole secret, and--if the necessity should arise--_letting them know_
+that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
+life will be assured." I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
+account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
+the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
+time.
+
+'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
+day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
+at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
+sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
+hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the
+wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the
+mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I
+repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
+you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the "Morris," whose name
+appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _littérateur_ of that
+name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.
+
+'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
+undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
+wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
+with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
+methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too
+harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
+earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
+on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
+this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
+was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
+was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
+A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their
+murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated
+with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
+Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
+How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
+language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
+floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
+perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied
+lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
+rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that
+moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_
+utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some
+coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
+the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
+placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
+clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength
+remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _calèche_, and
+started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
+for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
+after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
+in this condition you found me.
+
+'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
+this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
+others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not
+unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
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+<title>Prince Zaleski</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Prince Zaleski
+
+Author: M.P. Shiel
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE ZALESKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Wilelmina Malli re, Sjaani and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+<table align="center" width="80%"><tr><td>
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" alt="title" /><br />
+M. P. Shiel = Matthew Phipps Shiel
+</td>
+    <td>
+      <h3 align="center">TO</h3>
+      <h3 align="center">MY DEAR MOTHER</h3>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+      <h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+      <p><strong><a href="#race">The Race of Orven</a></strong></p>
+      <p><strong><a href="#stone">The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks</a></strong></p>
+      <p><strong><a href="#thess">The S.S.</a></strong></p>
+
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="race"></a><h2>THE RACE OF ORVEN</h2>
+
+<p>Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
+Zaleski&mdash;victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
+fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
+native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
+the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
+passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
+more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
+been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.</p>
+
+<p>But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
+exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
+repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
+attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
+mistrust of the <i>d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment</i> of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
+hermitage.</p>
+
+<p>I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
+palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
+approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
+the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
+deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
+finally put up my <i>cal&egrave;che</i> in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
+chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
+behind the domain.</p>
+
+<p>As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
+not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
+select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
+regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
+much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
+the manner of a Roman <i>atrium</i>, and from the oblong pool of turgid
+water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
+squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
+corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
+through a mazeland of apartments&mdash;suite upon suite&mdash;along many a length
+of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
+uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
+<i>ricochets</i> to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
+emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
+vestige of furniture&mdash;nowhere a trace of human life.</p>
+
+<p>After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
+near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
+of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
+lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
+silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
+One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
+Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
+the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
+visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
+to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.</p>
+
+<p>The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
+the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
+<i>lampas</i> of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
+certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
+me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
+light, and the fumes of the narcotic <i>cannabis sativa</i>&mdash;the base of the
+<i>bhang</i> of the Mohammedans&mdash;in which I knew it to be the habit of my
+friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
+heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
+Prince Zaleski to be a consummate <i>cognoscente</i>&mdash;a profound amateur&mdash;as
+well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
+the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
+the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
+Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
+The general effect was a <i>bizarrerie</i> of half-weird sheen and gloom.
+Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
+miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
+leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
+gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
+in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
+epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
+vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
+invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
+draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
+stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
+trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
+which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
+hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.</p>
+
+<p>Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
+Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
+time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
+my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
+adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
+delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
+Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
+pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling <i>hashish</i>,
+prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
+breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
+partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
+Turkish <i>beneesh</i>, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
+first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
+and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
+features.</p>
+
+<p>'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I have met him in &quot;the world.&quot; His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
+at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
+I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
+peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour&mdash;a
+strong likeness between father and son.'</p>
+
+<p>I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
+as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.</p>
+
+<p>'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
+Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
+also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
+author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
+eminence in the <i>corps diplomatique</i>, and lately (though, strictly
+speaking, <i>unebenb&uuml;rtig</i>) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
+Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-&uuml;ppigen, a lady with a strain of
+indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
+a very old and distinguished one, though&mdash;especially in modern
+days&mdash;far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
+become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
+immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
+reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
+simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
+<i>en bloc</i>. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
+that you have not already read it in the papers.'</p>
+
+<p>'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
+thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
+of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
+years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
+with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
+exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
+father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
+India. Considered as the first step in the <i>rapprochement</i> of this
+proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
+message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
+official; it ran:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;<i>Return. The beginning of the end is come.</i>&quot; Whereupon Randolph did
+return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
+Lord Pharanx was dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Murdered</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
+Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
+an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
+this feeling, for he said at once:</p>
+
+<p>'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
+might even have foretold it, years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Foretold&mdash;what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'</p>
+
+<p>'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed&mdash;tell
+me all the facts you know.'</p>
+
+<p>Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
+I continued the narrative.</p>
+
+<p>'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
+without cordiality, without affection&mdash;a shaking of hands across a
+barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
+metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
+interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
+observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
+father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
+an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
+sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
+the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
+of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
+low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
+It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
+of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
+migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
+part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
+of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
+fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
+boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
+noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
+master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
+kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
+occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
+doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
+them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
+and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
+and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
+to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
+that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now&mdash;possibly
+owing to the sedentary life he led&mdash;became fastidious, insisting on
+<i>recherch&eacute;</i> bits. I mention all these details to you&mdash;as I shall
+mention others&mdash;not because they have the least connection with the
+tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
+and you have requested me to state all I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of <i>ennui</i>, 'you are right. I may
+as well hear the whole&mdash;if I must hear a part.'</p>
+
+<p>'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
+day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
+still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
+he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
+are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
+most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
+past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
+this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
+himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
+candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
+is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings&mdash;reported in
+local papers&mdash;at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
+laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
+Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
+condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
+class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
+round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
+proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
+to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
+elementary botany? <i>Why</i> mechanics?'</p>
+
+<p>This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
+was pleased, but answered:</p>
+
+<p>'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
+vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
+young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
+come to a new character in the drama&mdash;the chief character of all. One
+day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
+owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
+approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
+eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
+showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
+manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
+distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
+Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
+past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
+the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
+the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
+vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
+that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
+called Lee.</p>
+
+<p>'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
+the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
+admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
+of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
+returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
+private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
+one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
+seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
+word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
+jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
+opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
+again.</p>
+
+<p>'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
+asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
+persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
+bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
+The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
+meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
+Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
+unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
+that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
+in the new political convert. The <i>rendezvous</i>&mdash;always held under cover
+of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
+Hester&mdash;sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
+would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
+ceased.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
+this unearthed letter of Randolph's&mdash;what was in it?'</p>
+
+<p>I read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Dear Mdlle. Cibras,&mdash;I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
+my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
+only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
+unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
+your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
+precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
+will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point&mdash;within, say, three or
+four days&mdash;of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
+appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
+<i>centime</i> under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
+something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
+implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
+bounds of reason.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sincerely yours,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;RANDOLPH.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
+candour. But the <i>facts</i>&mdash;were they true? <i>Did</i> the earl make a new
+will in the time specified?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,&mdash;but that may have been because his death intervened.'</p>
+
+<p>'And in the old will, <i>was</i> Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,&mdash;that at least was correct.'</p>
+
+<p>A shadow of pain passed over his face.</p>
+
+<p>'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
+England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
+letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
+The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
+room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
+introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
+by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
+his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
+arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
+protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
+recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
+man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
+evidence being heard. On the next day&mdash;the 7th&mdash;Hester, entering the
+room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
+(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
+fire), that Lord Pharanx has been &quot;drinking heavily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
+see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
+hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
+note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Maude Cibras.&mdash;You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
+south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
+through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
+nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
+from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
+false. Destroy this note. PHARANX.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
+countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
+fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
+expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal <i>inquisitiveness</i>
+&mdash;an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
+His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central <i>puncta</i>
+of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
+gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
+Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics&mdash;his fingers
+livid with the fixity of his grip&mdash;he bent on it that strenuous
+inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
+mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
+other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
+my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me&mdash;the end,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
+failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
+she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
+for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
+too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
+returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
+Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
+Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
+gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
+informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
+leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
+this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
+scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
+brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph&mdash;who was
+present at the time&mdash;further drew her attention to these by telling her
+that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
+the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
+this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
+about the estate.</p>
+
+<p>'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
+except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
+his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
+giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
+document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
+servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
+Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
+found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
+account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
+view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
+the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
+by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
+clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
+collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
+o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.</p>
+
+<p>'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
+The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
+ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
+of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett&mdash;for Hester has
+somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
+takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
+Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
+over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
+hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
+gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
+casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
+frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
+in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
+flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
+forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
+moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
+on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
+Then on her dazed senses there supervenes&mdash;so she swore&mdash;the
+consciousness that some object is moving in the room&mdash;moving apparently
+of its own accord&mdash;moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
+nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm&mdash;a
+strange something&mdash;globular-white&mdash;looking, as she says, &quot;like a
+good-sized ball of cotton&quot;&mdash;rise directly from the floor before her,
+ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
+sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
+reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
+rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
+prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
+she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
+is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.</p>
+
+<p>'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
+woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
+shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
+his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
+his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
+gasp: &quot;Did you hear something&mdash;from below?&quot; They answer &quot;yes&quot; in
+chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
+troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
+news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
+for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
+light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
+obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
+Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
+Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
+nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
+woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
+out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
+a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
+first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
+labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
+how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
+as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
+their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
+now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
+to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
+this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
+hears him murmur the words, &quot;My God, what can have happened now?&quot; His
+horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
+trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
+phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
+agonised moan, &quot;My God!&quot; and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
+the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
+wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
+does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
+window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
+but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
+large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
+missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
+lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
+a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
+trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
+means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
+placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
+secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
+horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
+sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
+out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
+so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
+death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
+returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
+pronounce their verdict of &quot;guilty.&quot; But she denied shooting Lord
+Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
+no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
+points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
+tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
+of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
+The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
+propounded. But no theory explained <i>all</i> the points. The ferment,
+however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
+on the gallows.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus I ended my narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
+Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
+proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the <i>Lakm&eacute;</i> of
+Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
+his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
+and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
+up to an ivory <i>escritoire</i>, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
+and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
+with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.</p>
+
+<p>'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
+word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
+the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
+confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
+yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you&mdash;you do
+not get a clean <i>coup d'oeil</i> of the whole regiment of facts, and their
+causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
+that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
+is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
+making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
+punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
+occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
+does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
+this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
+mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
+be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
+merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
+world at large&mdash;shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
+not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
+attainment in general, as <i>mood</i> in particular. Whether or when such
+mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
+often think that when the era of civilisation begins&mdash;as assuredly it
+shall some day begin&mdash;when the races of the world cease to be
+credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
+the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a <i>clairvoyant</i> culture.
+But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
+man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
+presence. In individuals, yes&mdash;in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
+English Milton and Bishop Berkeley&mdash;but in humanity, never; and hardly
+in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
+not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
+concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
+conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
+requisite to a <i>r&eacute;gime</i> of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
+of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
+person&mdash;he is one of your cherished &quot;novel&quot;-writers, by the way, if
+that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
+novelty&mdash;once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
+on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
+civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
+certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
+his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
+hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
+general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
+Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
+of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
+part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
+it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
+profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
+anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
+together&mdash;to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
+triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
+defining it as &quot;the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,&quot;
+should surely at this hour be <i>too</i> primitive&mdash;<i>too</i> Opic&mdash;to bring
+anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
+very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
+in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: <i>id&eacute;a</i>]
+which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed&mdash;far,
+perhaps, by ages and aeons&mdash;from becoming part of the general
+conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
+ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
+intricate one of living <i>together: &agrave; propos</i> of which your body
+corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
+fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
+really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile <i>you</i> and <i>I</i> are handicapped.
+The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
+air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
+can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
+invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
+the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
+shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
+with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being &quot;the
+alone complete.&quot; To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
+into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
+ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present&mdash;<i>a
+horrid strain</i>! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
+may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
+know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
+gravity, gravity&mdash;chiefest curse of Eden's sin!&mdash;is hostile. When
+indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
+orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
+Icarian &quot;organa&quot; in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
+which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
+not Goethe who assures us that &quot;further reacheth no man, make he what
+stretching he will&quot;? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
+absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
+Paris is <i>far</i> from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
+Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
+ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
+if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
+many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
+we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
+root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
+the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not <i>quite</i> right&mdash;as,
+indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I <i>know</i>
+whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know&mdash;as clearly, as
+precisely, as a man can know&mdash;that Beatrice Cenci was not &quot;guilty&quot; as
+certain recently-discovered documents &quot;prove&quot; her, but that the Shelley
+version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It <i>is</i>
+possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit&mdash;or say a hand, or a
+dactyl&mdash;to your stature; you may develop powers slightly&mdash;very
+slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree&mdash;in advance of those
+of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
+live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
+mass&mdash;when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
+Cultured Mood has at length arrived&mdash;that their exercise will become
+easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
+presciences, prisms, <i>s&eacute;ances</i>, what introspective craft, Genie
+apocalypses, shall not <i>then</i> become possible to the few who stand
+spiritually in the van of men.</p>
+
+<p>'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
+myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
+the very little puzzle you have placed before me&mdash;one which we
+certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
+at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
+the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
+Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
+enemies; he is the <i>fianc&eacute;</i> of a princess whose husband he is probably
+too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
+father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
+hand, we&mdash;you and I&mdash;know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
+moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
+world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
+assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
+that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
+could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
+murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
+motives&mdash;strong, adequate, irresistible&mdash;and by &quot;irresistible&quot; I mean a
+motive which must be <i>far</i> stronger than even the love of life
+itself&mdash;we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.</p>
+
+<p>'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
+contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
+not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
+her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
+guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of <i>Th&eacute;&acirc;tre des
+Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s</i> type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
+some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
+However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras&mdash;a violent woman, a woman of
+lawless passions&mdash;assuring her that in four or five days she will be
+excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
+plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
+sequence&mdash;though, of course, the <i>intention</i> to produce by his words
+the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
+of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
+produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
+opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
+Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
+tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
+favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
+intention on the part of the earl, we <i>may</i> make the same presumption
+in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
+letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
+double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
+impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
+exact <i>locale</i> of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
+mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
+the district. Can it be possible that Randolph <i>had told her</i>? And here
+again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
+told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
+absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
+further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
+actions are in themselves <i>outr&eacute;</i>, suspicious, they are rendered, not
+less <i>outr&eacute;</i>, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
+himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
+that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
+himself: &quot;Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
+father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
+order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
+attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
+being discovered <i>en flagrant d&eacute;lit</i>, will escape every shadow of
+suspicion.&quot; But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
+made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative&mdash;for he
+leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
+with the letter to Cibras on the 8th&mdash;Randolph despatches it, but the
+earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
+the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
+suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
+Randolph&mdash;finding now that Cibras has &quot;left the country,&quot; that, in
+fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him&mdash;could
+he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
+of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
+abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
+lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
+burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
+of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
+our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who &quot;<i>chose</i>&quot; to gather the
+jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
+attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
+little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
+surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
+the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
+elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the <i>class</i>.
+Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of <i>that</i> seem natural.
+But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
+the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
+quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
+that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
+a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
+clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
+of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
+uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
+have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
+mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
+but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
+the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
+room just overhead, caused by his preparation for &quot;a journey to
+London.&quot; But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
+master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
+Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
+significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?</p>
+
+<p>'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
+Randolph was guilty of something&mdash;some evil intention&mdash;though of
+precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
+would pause: he would reflect that <i>as</i> the father was implicated in
+those acts, and <i>as</i> he was innocent of any such intention, so might
+possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
+of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
+imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
+by evil intention on the part of Randolph&mdash;one act in which his father
+certainly did <i>not</i> participate&mdash;what follows next? Why, that we revert
+at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that <i>all</i> the
+other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
+and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
+conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share <i>might</i>
+have sprung from a like motive in <i>his</i> mind also; nor should the mere
+obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
+least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
+against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
+pass on.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
+deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
+sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
+murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
+ceased&mdash;how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
+becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
+round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
+track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
+and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
+and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were <i>half
+obliterated by the snow</i>. Two things then are clear: that the persons
+who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
+different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
+your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
+&quot;burglars.&quot; But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
+tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
+first&mdash;the woman's&mdash;the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
+second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
+points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
+examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
+when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
+&quot;My God! what has happened <i>now</i>?&quot; But why &quot;now&quot;? The word cannot refer
+to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
+heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
+destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have <i>expected</i> to find the
+window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
+who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
+therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
+to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
+hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
+glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
+That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
+the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
+Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit&mdash;if there
+was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; <i>they</i> did
+not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
+after the snow has ceased to fall,&mdash;that is, after, long after, they
+have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
+their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
+then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
+of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
+night.'</p>
+
+<p>'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow&mdash;the
+neckerchief!'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
+the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
+mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
+refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
+a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
+inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
+Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
+should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
+the improbable. The jewels had been <i>put</i> there with the object of
+throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
+catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
+open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
+this was deliberately done by some one&mdash;would it be rash to say at once
+by whom?</p>
+
+<p>'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
+begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
+statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
+that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
+at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
+humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
+woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
+believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
+deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
+reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
+being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
+intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
+satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
+fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
+their curiosity of what <i>is</i>. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
+whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
+is to <i>peep</i>. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
+their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
+history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
+this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
+true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
+one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
+surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
+white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
+taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
+How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
+be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic condition) the
+result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
+nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
+accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
+acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
+have been light in the room&mdash;a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
+to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
+proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
+alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
+the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
+from the room above&mdash;from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
+one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
+room. It <i>must</i> be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
+driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
+that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
+&quot;driven&quot; upward disappears. We at once ask, why not <i>drawn</i> upward
+through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
+visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
+established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
+is it unreasonable&mdash;even without further evidence&mdash;to suspect another
+in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
+rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
+her leg. Had she fallen <i>over</i> some object, as you supposed, the result
+might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
+being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
+inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
+But this gives us an approximate idea of the <i>size</i> of the lower hole;
+it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
+therefore to admit that &quot;good-sized ball of cotton&quot; of which the woman
+speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
+upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
+evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
+must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
+seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
+which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
+replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
+removal of which had caused so much commotion in Randolph's room on the
+fatal day. Hester Dyett would have been able to notice and bring at
+least one of the apertures forward in evidence, but she fainted before
+she had time to find out the cause of her fall, and an hour later it
+was, you remember, Randolph himself who bore her from the room. But
+should not the aperture in the top floor have been observed by the
+class? Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open space in the middle
+of the room. But it was not observed, and therefore its position was
+not there, but in the only other place left&mdash;behind the apparatus used
+in demonstration. That then was <i>one</i> useful object which the
+apparatus&mdash;and with it the elaborate hypocrisy of class, and speeches,
+and candidature&mdash;served: it was made to act as a curtain, a screen. But
+had it no other purpose? That question we may answer when we know its
+name and its nature. And it is not beyond our powers to conjecture this
+with something like certainty. For the only &quot;machines&quot; possible to use
+in illustration of simple mechanics are the screw, the wedge, the
+scale, the lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's machine. The
+mathematical principles which any of these exemplify would, of course,
+be incomprehensible to such a class, but the first five most of all,
+and as there would naturally be some slight pretence of trying to make
+the learners understand, I therefore select the last; and this
+selection is justified when we remember that on the shot being heard,
+Randolph leans for support on the &quot;machine,&quot; and stands in its shadow;
+but any of the others would be too small to throw any appreciable
+shadow, except one&mdash;the wheel, and-axle&mdash;and that one would hardly
+afford support to a tall man in the erect position. The Atwood's
+machine is therefore forced on us; as to its construction, it is, as
+you are aware, composed of two upright posts, with a cross-bar fitted
+with pulleys and strings, and is intended to show the motion of bodies
+acting under a constant force&mdash;the force of gravity, to wit. But now
+consider all the really glorious uses to which those same pulleys may
+be turned in lowering and lifting unobserved that &quot;ball of cotton&quot;
+through the two apertures, while the other strings with the weights
+attached are dangling before the dull eyes of the peasants. I need only
+point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
+was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
+why.</p>
+
+<p>'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
+shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
+for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
+have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
+expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
+also discover the <i>means</i> by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
+that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
+Cibras&mdash;for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
+neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
+the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
+establish a substantial, an irrefutable <i>alibi</i> for himself by going to
+Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
+the deed&mdash;that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
+fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
+<i>alibi</i> is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
+witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
+so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been. Why
+then, expecting the death, did he not take some such journey? Obviously
+because on <i>this</i> occasion his personal presence was necessary. When,
+<i>in conjunction</i> with this, we recall the fact that during the
+intrigues with Cibras the lectures were discontinued, and again resumed
+immediately on her unlooked-for departure, we arrive at the conclusion
+that the means by which Lord Pharanx's death was expected to occur was
+the personal presence of Randolph <i>in conjunction</i> with the political
+speeches, the candidature, the class, the apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>'But though he stands condemned of foreknowing, and being in some sort
+connected with, his father's death, I can nowhere find any indication
+of his having personally accomplished it, or even of his ever having
+had any such intention. The evidence is evidence of complicity&mdash;and
+nothing more. And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;even of <i>this</i> we began by acquitting
+him unless we could discover, as I said, some strong, adequate,
+altogether irresistible motive for such complicity. Failing this, we
+ought to admit that at some point our argument has played us false, and
+led us into conclusions wholly at variance with our certain knowledge
+of the principles underlying human conduct in general. Let us therefore
+seek for such a motive&mdash;something deeper than personal enmity, stronger
+than personal ambition, <i>than the love of life itself!</i> And now, tell
+me, at the time of the occurrence of this mystery, was the whole past
+history of the House of Orven fully investigated?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not to my knowledge,' I answered; 'in the papers there were, of
+course, sketches of the earl's career, but that I think was all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yet it cannot be that their past was unknown, but only that it was
+ignored. Long, I tell you, long and often, have I pondered on that
+history, and sought to trace with what ghastly secret has been pregnant
+the destiny, gloomful as Erebus and the murk of black-peplosed Nux,
+which for centuries has hung its pall over the men of this ill-fated
+house. Now at last I know. Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror is
+that history; down the silent corridors of the ages have these
+blood-soaked sons of Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing talons
+of the dread Eumenides. The first earl received his patent in 1535 from
+the eighth Henry. Two years later, though noted as a rabid &quot;king's
+man,&quot; he joined the Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and was
+soon after executed, with Darcy and some other lords. His age was then
+fifty. His son, meantime, had served in the king's army under Norfolk.
+It is remarkable, by the way, that females have all along been rare in
+the family, and that in no instance has there been more than one son.
+The second earl, under the sixth Edward, suddenly threw up a civil
+post, hastened to the army, and fell at the age of forty at the battle
+of Pinkie in 1547. He was accompanied by his son. The third in 1557,
+under Mary, renounced the Catholic faith, to which, both before and
+since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
+forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
+in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
+<i>of the same day</i> he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
+later on, in 1591, seen by <i>his</i> son to fall from a lofty balcony at
+Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
+time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
+the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
+window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
+but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
+soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by <i>radix
+aconiti indica</i>, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
+except to <i>savants</i>, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
+An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
+House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
+now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
+suspicion, of course, fell on <i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
+with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
+this intimate knowledge of <i>all</i> the great families of Europe! It was
+as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
+history of the Orvens.</p>
+
+<p>'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
+family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
+marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
+show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
+large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
+seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not
+design that the last Lord of Orven should any more hide from the world
+the guilty secret of his race. It was the will of the gods&mdash;and he
+betrayed himself. &quot;Return,&quot; he writes, &quot;the beginning of the end is
+come.&quot; What end?</p>
+
+<p><i>The</i> end&mdash;perfectly well known to Randolph, needing no explanation for
+<i>him</i>. The old, old end, which in the ancient dim time led the first
+lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king; and another, still
+devout, to renounce his cherished faith, and yet another to set fire to
+the home of his ancestors. You have called the two last scions of the
+family &quot;a proud and selfish pair of beings&quot;; proud they were, and
+selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
+personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
+in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
+selfishness of <i>race</i>. What consideration, think you, other than the
+weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
+shame&mdash;for as such he certainly regards it&mdash;of a conversion to
+radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have <i>died</i> rather than make this
+pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it&mdash;and the reason? It
+is because he has received that awful summons from home; because &quot;the
+end&quot; is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
+meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming <i>too</i> acute;
+because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
+house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
+endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
+able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
+intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
+malady which physicians call &quot;<i>General Paralysis of the Insane</i>.&quot; You
+remember I took from your hands the newspaper containing the earl's
+letter to Cibras, in order to read it with my own eyes. I had my
+reasons, and I was justified. That letter contains three mistakes in
+spelling: &quot;here&quot; is printed &quot;hear,&quot; &quot;pass&quot; appears as &quot;pas,&quot; and &quot;room&quot;
+as &quot;rume.&quot; Printers' errors, you say? But not so&mdash;one might be, two in
+that short paragraph could hardly be, three would be impossible. Search
+the whole paper through, and I think you will not find another. Let us
+reverence the theory of probabilities: the errors were the writer's,
+not the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have
+this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of
+middle age&mdash;the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died
+mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his
+race&mdash;the heritage of madness&mdash;is falling or fallen on him, he summons
+his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the
+tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down
+through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it
+is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without
+detection&mdash;and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is
+suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
+life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
+be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
+blossoms into a popular candidate.</p>
+
+<p>'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
+of Maude Cibras; he hopes that <i>she</i> may be made to destroy the earl;
+but when she fails him, he recurs to it&mdash;recurs to it all suddenly, for
+Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
+eyes, could any eye see him&mdash;so much so that on the last day none of
+the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
+Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
+not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
+she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
+bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
+The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
+pistol, such as this'&mdash;here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
+weapon from a drawer near him&mdash;'that appeared in the gloom to the
+excited Hester as a &quot;ball of cotton,&quot; while it was being drawn upward
+by the Atwood's machine. But if the earl shot himself he could not have
+done so after being stabbed to the heart. Maude Cibras, therefore,
+stabbed a dead man. She would, of course, have ample time for stealing
+into the room and doing so after the shot was fired, and before the
+party reached the balcony window, on account of the delay on the stairs
+in procuring a second light; in going to the earl's door; in examining
+the tracks, and so on. But having stabbed a dead man, she is not guilty
+of murder. The message I just now sent by Ham was one addressed to the
+Home Secretary, telling him on no account to let Cibras die to-morrow.
+He well knows my name, and will hardly be silly enough to suppose me
+capable of using words without meaning. It will be perfectly easy to
+prove my conclusions, for the pieces removed from, and replaced in, the
+floorings can still be detected, if looked for; the pistol is still, no
+doubt, in Randolph's room, and its bore can be compared with the bullet
+found in Lord Pharanx's brain; above all, the jewels stolen by the
+&quot;burglars&quot; are still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, and may
+readily be discovered I therefore expect that the d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment will now
+take a somewhat different turn.'</p>
+
+<p>That the d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment did take a different turn, and pretty strictly in
+accordance with Zaleski's forecast, is now matter of history, and the
+incidents, therefore, need no further comment from me in this place.</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="stone"></a><h2>THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>'Russia,' said Prince Zaleski to me one day, when I happened to be on a
+visit to him in his darksome sanctuary&mdash;'Russia may be regarded as land
+surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way,
+it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of <i>Britain</i> as an island,
+unless indeed the word be understood as a mere <i>modus loquendi</i> arising
+out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a
+small continent. Near her&mdash;a little to the south-east&mdash;is situated the
+large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing
+to these shores should commune within himself: &quot;I now cross to the
+Mainland&quot;; and retracing his steps: &quot;I now return to the fragment rent
+by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country.&quot; And this I say not in
+the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in
+my mind merely the relative depth and extent&mdash;the <i>non-insularity</i>, in
+fact&mdash;of the impressions made by the several nations on the world. But
+this island of Europe has herself an island of her own: the name of it,
+Russia. She, of all lands, is the <i>terra incognita</i>, the unknown land;
+till quite lately she was more&mdash;she was the undiscovered, the
+unsuspected land. She <i>has</i> a literature, you know, and a history, and
+a language, and a purpose&mdash;but of all this the world has hardly so much
+as heard. Indeed, she, and not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real
+Ultima Thule of modern times, the true Island of Mystery.'</p>
+
+<p>I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski here, not so much on account of
+the splendid tribute to my country contained in them, as because it
+ever seemed to me&mdash;and especially in connection with the incident I am
+about to recall&mdash;that in this respect at least he was a genuine son of
+Russia; if she is the Land, so truly was he the Man, of Mystery. I who
+knew him best alone knew that it was impossible to know him. He was a
+being little of the present: with one arm he embraced the whole past;
+the fingers of the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of the future. He
+seemed to me&mdash;I say it deliberately and with forethought&mdash;to possess
+the unparalleled power not merely of disentangling in retrospect, but
+of unravelling in prospect, and I have known him to relate <i>coming</i>
+events with unimaginable minuteness of precision. He was nothing if not
+superlative: his diatribes, now culminating in a very <i>extravaganza</i> of
+hyperbole&mdash;now sailing with loose wing through the downy, witched,
+Dutch cloud-heaps of some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia of
+thought&mdash;now laying down law of the Medes for the actual world of
+to-day&mdash;had oft-times the strange effect of bringing back to my mind
+the very singular old-epic epithet, [Greek: aenemoen]&mdash;<i>airy</i>&mdash;as
+applied to human thought. The mere grip of his memory was not simply
+extraordinary, it had in it a token, a hint, of the strange, the
+pythic&mdash;nay, the sibylline. And as his reflecting intellect, moreover,
+had all the lightness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you could
+contrive to follow each dazzlingly swift successive step, by the sum of
+which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
+astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.</p>
+
+<p>I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
+and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
+from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
+agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
+distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
+had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
+a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
+incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
+condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
+book to the agent.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
+prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
+absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
+profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
+was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
+assenting, I proceeded to do so.</p>
+
+<p>The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
+oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
+in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
+within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
+Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
+equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
+space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
+was lineally connected with&mdash;though, of course, not descendant
+from&mdash;that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
+convent, who wrote the now so celebrated <i>Jocelini Chronica</i>: and the
+chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
+time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
+inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">Or shuld it chaunges dre,</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.5em;">The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'</span><br />
+
+<p>The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
+figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
+letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
+the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
+another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
+inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
+size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
+remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
+Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
+in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
+research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
+their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
+years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
+Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
+acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give <i>verbatim</i>
+the extracts from his diary:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 11</i>.&mdash;This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
+the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
+it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
+Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly&mdash;seemed to have been looking forward to
+it&mdash;and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
+factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
+Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
+this was also my father's birthday; and <i>his</i> father's; and repeated
+the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
+walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of <i>himself</i>
+sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
+pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.</p>
+
+<p>'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
+successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
+show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
+declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
+and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription &quot;Has&quot; meant. I
+informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June l5</i>.&mdash;Some new element has entered into our existence here.
+Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
+and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
+hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain&mdash;a
+drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
+fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
+chosen child!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 18</i>.&mdash;Ul-Jabal?&mdash;that man is <i>the very Devil incarnate!</i></p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 19</i>.&mdash;So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
+poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
+Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
+to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
+wealth&mdash;the debt I owe him&mdash;has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
+<i>I</i> instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?</p>
+
+<p>'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
+with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
+had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
+shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball&mdash;I saw <i>them</i>, and nothing
+else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
+crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
+viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
+has stolen my life. The stone is gone&mdash;gone, my precious gem. A
+weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
+marble floor.</p>
+
+<p>'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
+shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 20</i>.&mdash;Ah, Ul-Jabal&mdash;my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
+God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
+yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
+not&mdash;not&mdash;the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
+semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
+went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
+after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
+might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
+clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!&mdash;he has taken
+the <i>other</i> stone from the <i>other</i> cup&mdash;a thing of little value to any
+man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 21</i>.&mdash;Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has <i>not</i> replaced it&mdash;not
+<i>it</i>&mdash;but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
+and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
+engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value&mdash;a stone I
+have never seen before. How has he obtained it&mdash;whence? I must brace
+myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
+this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
+in the balance.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 22</i>.&mdash;Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
+to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
+flinched: and drank&mdash;drank.</p>
+
+<p>'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
+make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
+in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
+Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
+me that browse of hell&mdash;to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 23</i>.&mdash;The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
+I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
+as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
+which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
+into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
+The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
+and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which <i>he himself</i>
+put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
+shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 24</i>.&mdash;No more&mdash;no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
+Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
+of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
+twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 25</i>.&mdash;He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
+him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
+door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
+should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
+treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
+right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
+book&mdash;the more the pity for the world, not for me.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 26</i>.&mdash;Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
+<i>another</i> stone in the Edmundsbury chalice&mdash;also identical in nearly
+every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
+entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
+stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
+replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
+from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
+a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>June 28</i>.&mdash;I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
+It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life&mdash;and which is the
+best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
+murder&mdash;I, with this withered hand&mdash;so that I get back the heritage
+which is mine.</p>
+
+<p>'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
+room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
+that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
+his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
+a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
+out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
+the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
+its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
+When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. &quot;Now,&quot; he
+said, grinning down at me, &quot;now you have at last delivered all into my
+hands.&quot; He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
+upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 1</i>.&mdash;Life against life&mdash;and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
+than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not <i>yet</i> am I ready
+to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
+paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let <i>him</i> die. Many and
+many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
+averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
+times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
+chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
+lost&mdash;a mere fiction <i>at first</i>, an idler's dream <i>then</i>, but
+now&mdash;now&mdash;that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
+things, and a fact among facts&mdash;no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
+as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
+surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
+hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
+insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
+saw a Syrian's head cleft open&mdash;a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
+have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 2</i>.&mdash;I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
+and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
+thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
+Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
+all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 7</i>.&mdash;The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
+grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
+for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
+to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
+lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
+greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
+slay my enemy, and make an end?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July</i> 8.&mdash;Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
+through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
+could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
+First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
+the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
+lie my few garments&mdash;and opened it. Ah, I have the stone&mdash;safe&mdash;safe!
+He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
+where I would be least likely to seek it&mdash;<i>in my own trunk</i>! And yet I
+dread, most intensely I dread, to look.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July</i> 9.&mdash;The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
+have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
+have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 10</i>.&mdash;In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
+past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
+cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
+the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
+him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
+unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
+the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
+gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
+pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
+the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
+that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
+and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
+vaults,&mdash;the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,&mdash;how had I
+forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
+had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
+might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
+the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?&mdash;but he held the
+key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
+his head bent down. The thought came to me <i>then</i>, that, had I but the
+courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
+Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
+his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
+me&mdash;thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
+my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
+headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
+caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
+chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
+dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 11</i>.&mdash;I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
+remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
+tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 12</i>.&mdash;I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
+He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
+Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
+taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
+pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
+and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
+failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>'July l3.&mdash;I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
+soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
+late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
+a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
+It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>'July l4.&mdash;Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
+man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
+him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
+no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
+would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,&mdash;and is gone!</p>
+
+<p>'July l5.&mdash;Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
+far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
+with him&mdash;the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
+ebbing in my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>Here the manuscript abruptly ended.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
+couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
+he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
+as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
+apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
+round on me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Has</i> it a meaning?'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
+note, the <i>nuance</i> of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
+<i>enough</i>, inductive and deductive cunning <i>enough</i>, not only a meaning,
+but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
+human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
+that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
+not read the diary to me before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
+life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
+day is this?'</p>
+
+<p>'This is the 20th.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
+still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
+seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
+business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
+with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
+you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
+Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
+Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
+matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'</p>
+
+<p>As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:</p>
+
+<p>'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected&mdash;from the
+Indian?'</p>
+
+<p>'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian&mdash;Persian.'</p>
+
+<p>Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
+which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
+telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
+the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
+and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
+Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.</p>
+
+<p>'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
+has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
+really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
+Jocelin was found by his servant&mdash;I imagine he had a servant, though no
+mention is made of any&mdash;lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
+Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem&mdash;an oval stone,
+white in colour&mdash;the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
+Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence&mdash;no trace of
+poison&mdash;the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
+this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
+I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three&mdash;and in one island
+in the South Seas, forty-four&mdash;different methods of doing murder, any
+one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
+agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.</p>
+
+<p>'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
+first, <i>who</i> is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
+this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
+name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
+afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
+man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
+his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
+manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
+lived. &quot;What,&quot; he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
+long-desired gem, &quot;what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'&quot;&mdash;the
+meaning which <i>he</i> so well knew. &quot;One of the lost secrets of the
+world,&quot; replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
+Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
+circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
+the solution of the riddle, or else&mdash;what is more likely, in spite of
+his rather high-flown estimate of his own &quot;Reason&quot;&mdash;that his mind, and
+the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
+than the Edmundsbury Monks. But <i>they</i> did not make the stone, nor did
+they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk&mdash;they got it from
+some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
+stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
+someone from whom <i>he</i> received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
+of time. And consider the character of the engraving&mdash;it consists of <i>a
+mythological animal</i>, and some words, of which the letters &quot;Has&quot; only
+are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
+Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
+Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
+glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
+that the figure of the <i>scarabaeus</i> on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
+infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
+grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
+that evidence alone&mdash;though there is more&mdash;that this gem was certainly
+Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of &quot;Has&quot; vanishes:
+for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
+Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
+precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
+childishly calls &quot;the lost secrets of the world&quot;: for every successive
+inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
+led astray in his investigation. &quot;Has&quot; is, in fact, part of the word
+&quot;Hasn-us-Sabah,&quot; and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
+obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
+shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
+of graving in precious stones than the Persians,&mdash;by a rude, mediaeval
+Englishman, in short,&mdash;the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
+of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman&mdash;who
+either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
+him&mdash;do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
+fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
+red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
+I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
+that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
+his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
+of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
+believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
+incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
+Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
+politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
+&mdash;the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
+him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
+well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
+of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, <i>and
+plundered</i>, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
+or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
+this time there was a cordial <i>rapprochement</i> between Saladin and
+Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
+generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
+deep mystic importance, took place&mdash;remember &quot;The Talisman,&quot; and the
+&quot;Lee Penny&quot;; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
+then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
+(as we are informed by the <i>Jocelini Chronica</i>) was <i>opened by the
+Abbot</i> at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
+occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
+it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
+this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
+whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
+presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
+surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
+bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, &quot;al
+Hasani&quot; or &quot;Ismaili&quot;&mdash;&quot;that accursed <i>Ishmaelite</i>,&quot; the baronet
+exclaims in one place&mdash;still live, are still a flourishing sect
+impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
+chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
+&quot;Lebanon&quot; on which Sir Jocelin &quot;picked up&quot; his too doubtful scribe and
+literary helper?</p>
+
+<p>'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the
+Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
+his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
+England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
+breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
+over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
+stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
+secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
+to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
+that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
+with another stone similar in size and shape&mdash;these being well known to
+him&mdash;to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
+so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
+chalice was not often <i>opened</i> by the baronet, and this would therefore
+have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
+assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
+appears all the trouble he took to <i>engrave</i> the false stone in an
+exactly similar manner to the other. <i>That</i> could not help him in
+producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
+being <i>seen</i>, but only <i>heard</i> in the cup, is proved by the fact that
+he selected a stone of a different <i>colour</i>. This colour, as I shall
+afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
+are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
+last stone, the white one&mdash;I shall prove that it was white&mdash;which
+Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided <i>two</i>
+substitutes, and that he had engraved these <i>two</i>, without object, in
+the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
+<i>having</i> done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
+prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not <i>prepared</i> any substitute; and
+it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
+probable that he could <i>by chance</i> have possessed two old gems exactly
+similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
+the word &quot;Hasn-us-Sabah.&quot; I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
+not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
+Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
+never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
+point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
+motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
+for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
+order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
+making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
+real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.</p>
+
+<p>'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
+evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
+positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
+that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
+the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
+exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
+its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
+certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
+equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
+his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
+believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. &quot;Now,&quot; he cries in
+triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room&mdash;&quot;<i>now</i> you have
+delivered all into my hands.&quot; &quot;All&quot; what, Sir Jocelin wonders. &quot;All,&quot;
+of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
+precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that <i>he</i> has
+done&mdash;hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
+own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
+accordingly hastens into his chamber, and &quot;locks the door,&quot; in order,
+by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
+examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
+is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
+the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
+like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
+deposited it in a place of perfect safety&mdash;such as, with or without
+lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
+afforded&mdash;his more reasonable <i>r&ocirc;le</i> would have been that of
+unconscious <i>nonchalance</i>, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
+fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
+hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
+secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
+that Ul-Jabal &quot;holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
+down&quot;: can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of <i>search</i>?
+Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
+able to suspect that both are seekers.</p>
+
+<p>'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
+the stone by the Persian than all this&mdash;and that is the murder of the
+baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
+a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
+murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
+power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
+semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
+him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder&mdash;the clear means of
+gaining the stone&mdash;presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
+moment&mdash;indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
+very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
+It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
+gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
+of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
+admitting of the designation &quot;gown,&quot; have usually only outer
+pockets&mdash;large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
+robe. But a stone of that size <i>must</i> have made such a pocket bulge
+outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
+perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
+his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
+there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
+the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
+narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
+there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
+ultimate detection, pursuit&mdash;and this is a land of Law, swift and
+fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus&mdash;thus surely, and thus
+secretly&mdash;can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
+very next day he leaves the house&mdash;no more shall the mistrustful
+baronet, who is &quot;hiding something from him,&quot; see his face. He carries
+with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
+contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his &quot;brown gowns,&quot; and a
+snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
+that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
+<i>house</i>, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
+during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
+<i>far and wide</i> &quot;with uncovered head.&quot; Can you not picture the
+distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
+long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
+may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
+Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
+to <i>hide</i> the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to <i>seek</i> it, for
+he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
+in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
+previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
+has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
+&quot;the old days of love&quot;; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
+sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is &quot;brown as the leaves of autumn.&quot;
+That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
+hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour&mdash;it was the
+yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
+has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
+tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
+he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
+the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
+no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
+outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
+two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
+neurotic condition; I thought of those &quot;fibrillary twitchings,&quot;
+indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
+sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
+stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
+urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
+dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
+the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
+sudden, the terrific shock of seeing <i>himself</i> sitting in the chair
+before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been <i>placed</i> there by
+Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
+to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death&mdash;if he <i>be</i>
+dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
+Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
+snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
+all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
+plague, and, I hope, straightway go and&mdash;hang himself.'</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
+the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
+now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
+'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
+which Zaleski had been detailing to me.</p>
+
+<p>'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
+with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
+discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
+exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
+above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
+these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
+turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
+inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
+that if &quot;this stone be stolen,&quot; or if it &quot;chaunges dre,&quot; the House of
+Saul and its head &quot;anoon&quot; (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. &quot;Dre,&quot; I may
+remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
+with the Saxon &quot;<i>dreogan</i>,&quot; meaning to &quot;suffer.&quot; So that the writer at
+least contemplated that the stone might &quot;suffer changes.&quot; But what kind
+of changes&mdash;external or internal? External change&mdash;change of
+environment&mdash;is already provided for when he says, &quot;shulde this Ston
+stalen bee&quot;; &quot;chaunges,&quot; therefore, in <i>his</i> mind, meant internal
+changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
+this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
+name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
+immediately discoverable. For it was a &quot;sky-blue&quot; stone; a sky-blue,
+sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
+its name&mdash;it was a <i>turquoise</i>. But can the turquoise, to the certain
+knowledge of a mediaeval writer, &quot;chaunges dre&quot;? Let us turn for light
+to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
+bronze Hera.'</p>
+
+<p>I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
+of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
+precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
+his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
+end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
+thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
+turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
+which lose it.'<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+<blockquote> <p><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>'Assur&eacute;ment la turquoise a une &acirc;me plus intelligente que
+l'&acirc;me de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
+touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
+jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
+Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, &agrave; fin que l'on ne
+recoure pas &agrave; Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
+precieuse; ainsi, peut-&ecirc;tre, il de&ccedil;oit nos esprits par la turquoise:
+car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
+couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' <i>Anselm de Boot</i>, Book II.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
+have the property of changing its colour&mdash;a change which was
+universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
+owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
+many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
+thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
+well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
+specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
+may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
+in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
+that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
+stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
+lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
+that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
+that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
+the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
+infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
+chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
+baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
+the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
+final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
+stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
+All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
+And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
+somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
+the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:</p>
+
+<p>'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
+immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
+history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
+centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
+the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
+Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
+ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
+right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in <i>all</i> lands, and at
+<i>all</i> times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
+virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
+garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
+Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
+in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
+Already you have a semi-comic &quot;gold-cure&quot; for alcoholism, and you have
+heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
+scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
+it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
+fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
+what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
+inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Note</i>.&mdash;As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
+Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
+may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
+have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
+of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
+skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
+found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+<a name="thess"></a><h2>THE S.S.</h2>
+
+<p>'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....</p>
+
+<p>'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Gesch&ouml;pf,
+das falsch lebt, wird fr&uuml;h zerst&ouml;rt. Unfruchtbarkeit, k&uuml;mmerliches
+Dasein, fr&uuml;hzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Fl&uuml;che, die Kennzeichen
+ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
+much into the world along with them....</p>
+
+<p>'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
+a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
+early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
+displeasure.']</p>
+
+<p>[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
+panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
+ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
+depleted of Men (i.e. <i>after the battle with Cleomenes</i>) that the
+slaves usurped everything&mdash;ruling and disposing&mdash;until such time as the
+sons of the slain were grown up.']</p>
+
+<p>To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
+what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
+being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
+sensational case of <i>felo de se</i> published in the newspapers is sure to
+be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
+out of all proportion with the <i>extent</i> of each particular outbreak.
+Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
+wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
+fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
+Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
+perished by the scourge; while that at the <i>H&ocirc;tel des Invalides</i> in
+Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
+present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
+throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
+black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
+brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
+dear sick stress of her desire&mdash;with just such faintings, wanton fires,
+does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
+to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">'When she sees a bank</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Her servants, what a pretty place it were</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">To bury lovers in; and make her maids</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.75em;">Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'</span><br />
+
+<p>[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>The <i>mode</i> spreads&mdash;then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
+obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes <i>comme il faut</i>, this cerecloth
+acquiring all the attractiveness and <i>&eacute;clat</i> of a wedding-garment. The
+coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
+of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
+There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
+pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
+explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
+sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
+year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
+in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
+I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
+answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
+woe at Bethany:</p>
+
+<p>'Come and see.'</p>
+
+<p>To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'</p>
+
+<p>I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
+cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
+know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
+referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
+thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
+even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
+the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
+note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
+Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
+derision and censure&mdash;for it will be remembered that to many minds the
+mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
+conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
+self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
+and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
+wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
+police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
+under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
+panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
+people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
+agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
+The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
+doubt, the haunting <i>fear</i>. None felt himself quite safe; men
+recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
+affright, and to know not why&mdash;that is the transcendentalism of terror.
+The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
+in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
+walketh <i>by night</i> that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
+being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
+And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
+but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
+that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris <i>Bourse</i>, business
+decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
+practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
+answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
+motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
+Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
+because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
+invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
+time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
+had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
+flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
+excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
+eyes. I avow that that lonesome room&mdash;gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
+perfumed light&mdash;shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
+narcotic-breathing draperies&mdash;pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
+brooding occupant&mdash;grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
+remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
+midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
+cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
+all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
+into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
+words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
+laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
+properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
+gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
+all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
+of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
+must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
+the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
+an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
+suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
+and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
+for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
+the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
+firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
+he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with which he was
+always tormented by any mystery which momentarily baffled him, I was,
+of course, forced to hold my peace. On the third day, however, of his
+own accord he asked me to what epidemic I had referred. I then detailed
+to him some of the strange events which were agitating the mind of the
+outside world. From the very first he was interested: later on that
+interest grew into a passion, a greedy soul-consuming quest after the
+truth, the intensity of which was such at last as to move me even to
+pity.</p>
+
+<p>I may as well here restate the facts as I communicated them to Zaleski.
+The concatenation of incidents, it will be remembered, started with the
+extraordinary death of that eminent man of science, Professor
+Schleschinger, consulting laryngologist to the Charit&eacute; Hospital in
+Berlin. The professor, a man of great age, was on the point of
+contracting his third marriage with the beautiful and accomplished
+daughter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von Friedrich. The contemplated
+union, which was entirely one of those <i>mariages de convenance</i> so
+common in good society, sprang out of the professor's ardent desire to
+leave behind him a direct heir to his very considerable wealth. By his
+first two marriages, indeed, he had had large families, and was at this
+very time surrounded by quite an army of little grandchildren, from
+whom (all his direct descendants being dead) he might have been content
+to select his heir; but the old German prejudices in these matters are
+strong, and he still hoped to be represented on his decease by a son of
+his own. To this whim the charming Ottilie was marked by her parents as
+the victim. The wedding, however, had been postponed owing to a slight
+illness of the veteran scientist, and just as he was on the point of
+final recovery from it, death intervened to prevent altogether the
+execution of his design. Never did death of man create a profounder
+sensation; <i>never was death of man followed by consequences more
+terrible</i>. The <i>Residenz</i> of the scientist was a stately mansion near
+the University in the <i>Unter den Linden</i> boulevard, that is to say, in
+the most fashionable <i>Quartier</i> of Berlin. His bedroom from a
+considerable height looked out on a small back garden, and in this room
+he had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical
+attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all
+this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various
+topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of
+what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain
+grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had
+found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the
+horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion
+to make a <i>post-mortem</i> examination. The woman had suffered from
+partial paralysis. She had a small young family, none of whom, however,
+could give any account of the slip, except one little girl, who
+declared that she had taken it 'from her mother's mouth' after death.
+The slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, as though it had been
+smeared with honey. The professor added that all through his illness he
+had been employing himself by examining these figures. He was
+convinced, he said, that they contained some archaeological
+significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a
+slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,&mdash;on the bed of a dead
+Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the
+<i>mouth</i> of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident
+seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the
+instinct&mdash;so strong in him&mdash;to investigate, to probe. For days, he
+declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the
+figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe
+that the figures&mdash;rude and uncouth as they were&mdash;were only such as
+might be drawn by any school-boy in an idle moment. They consisted
+merely of a man and a woman seated on a bench, with what looked like an
+ornamental border running round them. After a pleasant evening's
+scientific gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after midnight, took his
+departure from the bed-side. An hour later the servants were roused
+from sleep by one deep, raucous cry proceeding from the professor's
+room. They hastened to his door; it was locked on the inside; all was
+still within. No answer coming to their calls, the door was broken in.
+They found their master lying calm and dead on his bed. A window of the
+room was open, but there was nothing to show that any one had entered
+it. Dr. Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on the scene. After
+examining the body, he failed to find anything to account for the
+sudden demise of his old friend and chief. One observation, however,
+had the effect of causing him to tingle with horror. On his entrance he
+had noticed, lying on the side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with
+which the professor had been toying in the earlier part of the day, and
+had removed it. But, as he was on the point of leaving the room, he
+happened to approach the corpse once more, and bending over it, noticed
+that the lips and teeth were slightly parted. Drawing open the now
+stiffened jaws, he found&mdash;to his amazement, to his stupefaction&mdash;that,
+neatly folded beneath the dead tongue, lay just such another piece of
+papyrus as that which he had removed from the bed. He drew it out&mdash;it
+was clammy. He put it to his nose,&mdash;it exhaled the fragrance of honey.
+He opened it,&mdash;it was covered by figures. He compared them with the
+figures on the other slip,&mdash;they were just so similar as two
+draughtsmen hastily copying from a common model would make them. The
+doctor was unnerved: he hurried homeward, and immediately submitted the
+honey on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical analysis: he suspected
+poison&mdash;a subtle poison&mdash;as the means of a suicide, grotesquely,
+insanely accomplished. He found the fluid to be perfectly
+innocuous,&mdash;pure honey, and nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor
+Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the
+papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of
+actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own
+hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical
+profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen,
+Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance;
+within three weeks from the night on which Professor Schleschinger met
+his unaccountable end, eight thousand persons in Germany, France, and
+Great Britain, died in that startlingly sudden and secret manner which
+we call 'tragic', many of them obviously by their own hands, many, in
+what seemed the servility of a fatal imitativeness, with figured,
+honey-smeared slips of papyrus beneath their tongues. Even now&mdash;now,
+after years&mdash;I thrill intensely to recall the dread remembrance; but to
+live through it, to breathe daily the mawkish, miasmatic atmosphere,
+all vapid with the suffocating death&mdash;ah, it was terror too deep,
+nausea too foul, for mortal bearing. Novalis has somewhere hinted at
+the possibility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous suicide and
+voluntary return by the whole human family into the sweet bosom of our
+ancient Father&mdash;I half expected it was coming, had come, <i>then</i>. It was
+as if the old, good-easy, meek-eyed man of science, dying, had left his
+effectual curse on all the world, and had thereby converted
+civilisation into one omnivorous grave, one universal charnel-house. I
+spent several days in reading out to Zaleski accounts of particular
+deaths as they had occurred. He seemed never to tire of listening,
+lying back for the most part on the silver-cushioned couch, and wearing
+an inscrutable mask. Sometimes he rose and paced the carpet with
+noiseless foot-fall, his steps increasing to the swaying, uneven
+velocity of an animal in confinement as a passage here or there
+attracted him, and then subsiding into their slow regularity again. At
+any interruption in the reading, he would instantly turn to me with a
+certain impatience, and implore me to proceed; and when our stock of
+matter failed, he broke out into actual anger that I had not brought
+more with me. Henceforth the negro, Ham, using my trap, daily took a
+double journey&mdash;one before sunrise, and one at dusk&mdash;to the nearest
+townlet, from which he would return loaded with newspapers. With
+unimaginable eagerness did both Zaleski and I seize, morning after
+morning, and evening after evening, on these budgets, to gloat for long
+hours over the ever-lengthening tale of death. As for him, sleep
+forsook him. He was a man of small reasonableness, scorning the
+limitations of human capacity; his palate brooked no meat when his
+brain was headlong in the chase; even the mild narcotics which were now
+his food and drink seemed to lose something of their power to mollify,
+to curb him. Often rising from slumber in what I took to be the dead of
+night&mdash;though of day or night there could be small certainty in that
+dim dwelling&mdash;I would peep into the domed chamber, and see him there
+under the livid-green light of the censer, the leaden smoke issuing
+from his lips, his eyes fixed unweariedly on a square piece of ebony
+which rested on the coffin of the mummy near him. On this ebony he had
+pasted side by side several woodcuts&mdash;snipped from the newspapers&mdash;of
+the figures traced on the pieces of papyrus found in the mouths of the
+dead. I could see, as time passed, that he was concentrating all his
+powers on these figures; for the details of the deaths themselves were
+all of a dreary sameness, offering few salient points for
+investigation. In those cases where the suicide had left behind him
+clear evidence of the means by which he had committed the act, there
+was nothing to investigate; the others&mdash;rich and poor alike, peer and
+peasant&mdash;trooped out by thousands on the far journey, without leaving
+the faintest footprint to mark the road by which they had gone.</p>
+
+<p>This was perhaps the reason that, after a time, Zaleski discarded the
+newspapers, leaving their perusal to me, and turned his attention
+exclusively to the ebon tablet. Knowing as I full well did the daring
+and success of his past spiritual adventures,&mdash;the subtlety, the
+imagination, the imperial grip of his intellect,&mdash;I did not at all
+doubt that his choice was wise, and would in the end be justified.
+These woodcuts&mdash;now so notorious&mdash;were all exactly similar in design,
+though minutely differing here and there in drawing. The following is a
+facsimile of one of them taken by me at random:</p>
+
+<div align="center"><img src="images/ill.jpg" alt="woodcut" /> </div>
+<p>The time passed. It now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid
+pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of
+Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in
+his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I
+decided at last&mdash;if mystery there were&mdash;was too deep, too dark, for
+him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more
+from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat
+reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard a loud cry from
+the vaulted chamber. I rushed to the door and beheld him standing,
+gazing with wild eyes at the ebon tablet held straight out in front of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'By Heaven!' he cried, stamping savagely with his foot. 'By Heaven!
+Then I certainly <i>am</i> a fool! <i>It is the staff of Phaebus in the hand
+of Hermes!'</i></p>
+
+<p>I hastened to him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'have you discovered anything?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is possible.'</p>
+
+<p>'And has there really been foul play&mdash;murder&mdash;in any of these deaths?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of that, at least, I was certain from the first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Great God!' I exclaimed, 'could any son of man so convert himself into
+a fiend, a beast of the wilderness....'</p>
+
+<p>'You judge precisely in the manner of the multitude,' he answered
+somewhat petulantly. 'Illegal murder is always a mistake, but not
+necessarily a crime. Remember Corday. But in cases where the murder of
+one is really fiendish, why is it qualitatively less fiendish than the
+murder of many? On the other hand, had Brutus slain a thousand
+Caesars&mdash;each act involving an additional exhibition of the sublimest
+self-suppression&mdash;he might well have taken rank as a saint in heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>Failing for the moment to see the drift or the connection of the
+argument, I contented myself with waiting events. For the rest of that
+day and the next Zaleski seemed to have dismissed the matter of the
+tragedies from his mind, and entered calmly on his former studies. He
+no longer consulted the news, or examined the figures on the tablet.
+The papers, however, still arrived daily, and of these he soon
+afterwards laid several before me, pointing, with a curious smile, to a
+small paragraph in each. These all appeared in the advertisement
+columns, were worded alike, and read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>'A true son of Lycurgus, <i>having news</i>, desires to know the <i>time</i> and
+<i>place</i> of the next meeting of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R----
+Abbey, in the county of M----.'</p>
+
+<p>I gazed in mute alternation at the advertisement and at him. I may here
+stop to make mention of a very remarkable sensation which my
+association with him occasionally produced in me. I felt it with
+intense, with unpleasant, with irritating keenness at this moment. It
+was the sensation of being borne aloft&mdash;aloft&mdash;by a force external to
+myself&mdash;such a sensation as might possibly tingle through an earthworm
+when lifted into illimitable airy heights by the strongly-daring
+pinions of an eagle. It was the feeling of being hurried out beyond
+one's depth&mdash;caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of
+some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have
+experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me&mdash;winged, rocking,
+ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!&mdash;round a too narrow curve. It was a
+sensation very far from agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>'To that,' he said, pointing to the paragraph, 'we may, I think,
+shortly expect an answer. Let us only hope that when it comes it may be
+immediately intelligible.'</p>
+
+<p>We waited throughout the whole of that day and night, hiding our
+eagerness under the pretence of absorption in our books. If by chance I
+fell into an uneasy doze, I found him on waking ever watchful, and
+poring over the great tome before him. About the time, however, when,
+could we have seen it, the first grey of dawn must have been peeping
+over the land, his impatience again became painful to witness; he rose
+and paced the room, muttering occasionally to himself. This only
+ceased, when, hours later, Ham entered the room with an envelope in his
+hand. Zaleski seized it&mdash;tore it open&mdash;ran his eye over the
+contents&mdash;and dashed it to the ground with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>'Curse it!' he groaned. 'Ah, curse it! unintelligible&mdash;every syllable
+of it!'</p>
+
+<p>I picked up the missive and examined it. It was a slip of papyrus
+covered with the design now so hideously familiar, except only that the
+two central figures were wanting. At the bottom was written the date of
+the 15th of November&mdash;it was then the morning of the 12th&mdash;and the name
+'Morris.' The whole, therefore, presented the following appearance:</p>
+
+<div align="center"><img src="images/ill.jpg" alt="woodcut" />
+ </div>
+
+<p>My eyes were now heavy with sleep, every sense half-drunken with the
+vapourlike atmosphere of the room, so that, having abandoned something
+of hope, I tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into a profound
+slumber, which lasted till what must have been the time of the
+gathering in of the shades of night. I then rose. Missing Zaleski, I
+sought through all the chambers for him. He was nowhere to be seen. The
+negro informed me with an affectionate and anxious tremor in the voice
+that his master had left the rooms some hours before, but had said
+nothing to him. I ordered the man to descend and look into the sacristy
+of the small chapel wherein I had deposited my <i>cal&egrave;che</i>, and in the
+field behind, where my horse should be. He returned with the news that
+both had disappeared. Zaleski, I then concluded, had undoubtedly
+departed on a journey.</p>
+
+<p>I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by. He
+wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being. It was like
+matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski had never
+before withdrawn himself from the <i>surveillance</i> of this sturdy
+watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their
+little cosmos. Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some
+light on the meaning of this catastrophe. But I too was in the dark.
+The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken,
+childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of
+some great danger to the person of his master. So a day passed away,
+and then another. On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a
+letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski. It was hastily
+scribbled in pencil, dated 'London, Nov. 14th,' and ran thus:</p>
+
+<p>'For my body&mdash;should I not return by Friday night&mdash;you will, no doubt,
+be good enough to make search. <i>Descend</i> the river, keeping constantly
+to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the <i>Descensus Aesopi.</i>
+Seek diligently, and you will find. For the rest, you know my fancy for
+cremation: take me, if you will, to the crematorium of <i>P&egrave;re-Lachaise.</i>
+My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.'</p>
+
+<p>Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to
+communicate a word of it. I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed,
+I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night! It was then
+Thursday morning. And I was expected to wait through the dreary
+interval uncertain, agonised, inactive! I was offended with my friend;
+his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction. The leaden
+hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of
+my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep. On the next morning,
+however, another letter&mdash;a rather massive one&mdash;reached me. The covering
+was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the
+words: 'This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before
+Saturday.' I therefore laid the packet aside unread.</p>
+
+<p>I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o'clock, if nothing
+happened, I should make some sort of effort. But from six I remained,
+with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten. I was so utterly at
+a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I
+could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear
+absurd. But at midnight I sprang up&mdash;no longer would I endure the
+carking suspense. I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way. I
+had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished. Then I
+remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole
+vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but
+hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the
+labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted
+vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with
+something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out
+before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an
+hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what
+felt like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank back, unnerved as I
+already was, with a murmur of affright.</p>
+
+<p>'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.</p>
+
+<p>Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
+my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
+With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
+of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
+breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
+to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
+want sleep&mdash;only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
+by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
+infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
+garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
+dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
+reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
+girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed <i>ceinture</i>. With all
+the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
+the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
+unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
+the sleeper woke, in his eye,&mdash;full of divine instinct,&mdash;flitted the
+wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
+austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
+pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
+fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
+by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said:</p>
+
+<p>'We have, Shiel, had before us a very remarkable series of murders, and
+a very remarkable series of suicides. Were they in any way connected?
+To this extent, I think&mdash;that the mysterious, the unparalleled nature
+of the murders gave rise to a morbid condition in the public mind,
+which in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. But though such an
+epidemic has its origin in the instinct of imitation so common in men,
+you must not suppose that the mental process is a <i>conscious</i> one. A
+person feels an impulse to go and do, and is not aware that at bottom
+it is only an impulse to go and do <i>likewise</i>. He would indeed
+repudiate such an assumption. Thus one man destroys himself, and
+another imitates him&mdash;but whereas the former uses a pistol, the latter
+uses a rope. It is rather absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of
+those cases in which the slip of papyrus has been found in the mouth
+after death, the cause of death has been the slavish imitativeness of
+the suicidal mania,&mdash;for this, as I say, is never <i>slavish.</i> The
+papyrus then&mdash;quite apart from the unmistakable evidences of suicide
+invariably left by each self-destroyer&mdash;affords us definite and certain
+means by which we can distinguish the two classes of deaths; and we are
+thus able to divide the total number into two nearly equal halves.</p>
+
+<p>'But you start&mdash;you are troubled&mdash;you never heard or read of murder
+such as this, the simultaneous murder of thousands over wide areas of
+the face of the globe; here you feel is something outside your
+experience, deeper than your profoundest imaginings. To the question
+&quot;by whom committed?&quot; and &quot;with what motive?&quot; your mind can conceive no
+possible answer. And yet the answer must be, &quot;by man, and for human
+motives,&quot;&mdash;for the Angel of Death with flashing eye and flaming sword
+is himself long dead; and again we can say at once, by no <i>one</i> man,
+but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no <i>common</i> men,
+but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
+and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
+society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
+integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.</p>
+
+<p>'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
+immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
+of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,&mdash;but to
+motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
+engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
+hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
+exact knowledge of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
+<i>reading</i> of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
+behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
+this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
+that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
+lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
+and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
+another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
+myself, were these drawings meant to represent,&mdash;letters, numbers,
+things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
+because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
+wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
+part of its inventor to make a picture of the <i>serpent;</i> S being the
+sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
+view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
+of course you know that all letters were originally <i>pictures of
+things,</i> and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I
+therefore assumed, by way of trial, that the snakes in the diagram
+stood for a sibilant letter, that is, either C or S. And thence,
+supposing this to be the case, I deduced: firstly, that all the other
+figures stood for letters; and secondly, that they all appeared in the
+form of pictures of the things of which those letters were originally
+meant to be pictures. Thus the letter &quot;m,&quot; one of the four &quot;<i>liquid</i>&quot;
+consonants, is, as we now write it, only a shortened form of a waved
+line; and as a waved line it was originally written, and was the
+character by which <i>a stream of running water</i> was represented in
+writing; indeed it only owes its name to the fact that when the lips
+are pressed together, and &quot;m&quot; uttered by a continuous effort, a certain
+resemblance to the murmur of running water is produced. The longer
+waved line in the diagram I therefore took to represent &quot;m&quot;; and it at
+once followed that the shorter meant &quot;n,&quot; for no two letters of the
+commoner European alphabets differ only in length (as distinct from
+shape) except &quot;m&quot; and &quot;n&quot;, and &quot;w&quot; and &quot;v&quot;; indeed, just as the French
+call &quot;w&quot; &quot;double-ve,&quot; so very properly might &quot;m&quot; be called &quot;double-en.&quot;
+But, in this case, the longer not being &quot;w,&quot; the shorter could not be
+&quot;v&quot;: it was therefore &quot;n.&quot; And now there only remained the heart and
+the triangle. I was unable to think of any letter that could ever have
+been intended for the picture of a heart, but the triangle I knew to be
+the letter #A.# This was originally written without the cross-bar from
+prop to prop, and the two feet at the bottom of the props were not
+separated as now, but joined; so that the letter formed a true
+triangle. It was meant by the primitive man to be a picture of his
+primitive house, this house being, of course, hut-shaped, and
+consisting of a conical roof without walls. I had thus, with the
+exception of the heart, disentangled the whole, which then (leaving a
+space for the heart) read as follows:</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.25em;">{ ss</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">'mn {&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;anan ... san.'</span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 1.25em;">{ cc</span><br />
+
+<p>But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
+'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
+also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'&mdash;except 'mnemonics' and
+its fellows&mdash;I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
+letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
+as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
+was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
+the first 's.' Thus I got</p>
+
+<p>'m ns sanan... san,'</p>
+
+<p>or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,</p>
+
+<p>'mens sana in... sano.'</p>
+
+<p>The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
+'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot&mdash;showing that the word as it stood was
+an abbreviation&mdash;conclusively proved every one of my deductions.</p>
+
+<p>'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
+central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
+heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
+light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
+as to the <i>general</i> significance of these figures, for I saw at once
+their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
+you are not minutely acquainted with the <i>technique</i> of these stones, I
+may as well show you one, which I myself removed from an old grave in
+Tarentum.'</p>
+
+<p>He took from a niche a small piece of close-grained marble, about a
+foot square, and laid it before me. On one side it was exquisitely
+sculptured in relief.</p>
+
+<p>'This,' he continued, 'is a typical example of the Greek grave-stone,
+and having seen one specimen you may be said to have seen almost all,
+for there is surprisingly little variety in the class. You will observe
+that the scene represents a man reclining on a couch; in his hand he
+holds a <i>patera,</i> or dish, filled with grapes and pomegranates, and
+beside him is a tripod bearing the viands from which he is banqueting.
+At his feet sits a woman&mdash;for the Greek lady never reclined at table.
+In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent
+may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable
+pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from
+which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I
+considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the
+papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim.
+I said to myself: it can only be that the assassins have bound
+themselves to the observance of a strict and narrow ritual from which
+no departure is under any circumstances permitted&mdash;perhaps for the sake
+of signalling the course of events to others at a distance. But what
+ritual? That question I was able to answer when I knew the answer to
+these others,&mdash;why <i>under the tongue,</i> and why <i>smeared with honey?</i>
+For no reason, except that the Greeks (not the Romans till very late in
+their history) always placed an <i>obolos,</i> or penny, beneath the tongue
+of the dead to pay his passage across the Stygian river of ghosts; for
+no reason, except that to these same Greeks honey was a sacred fluid,
+intimately associated in their minds with the mournful subject of
+Death; a fluid with which the bodies of the deceased were anointed, and
+sometimes&mdash;especially in Sparta and the Pelasgic South&mdash;embalmed; with
+which libations were poured to Hermes Psuchopompos, conductor of the
+dead to the regions of shade; with which offerings were made to all the
+chthonic deities, and the souls of the departed in general. You
+remember, for instance, the melancholy words of Helen addressed to
+Hermione in <i>Orestes:</i></p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;">[Greek: <i>Kai labe choas tasd'en cheroin komas t'emas</i></span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;"><i>elthousa d'amphi ton Klutaimnaestras taphon</i></span><br />
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 0.25em;"><i>melikrat'aphes galaktos oinopon t'achnaen.</i>]</span><br />
+
+<p>And so everywhere. The ritual then of the murderers was a <i>Greek</i>
+ritual, their cult a Greek cult&mdash;preferably, perhaps, a South Greek
+one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative
+peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this
+semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more
+certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were
+drawn from a Greek model.</p>
+
+<p>'Here, however, I came to a standstill. I was infinitely puzzled by the
+rod in the man's hand. In none of the Greek grave-reliefs does any such
+thing as a rod make an appearance, except in one well-known example
+where the god Hermes&mdash;generally represented as carrying the <i>caduceus</i>,
+or staff, given him by Phoebus&mdash;appears leading a dead maiden to the
+land of night. But in every other example of which I am aware the
+sculpture represents a man <i>living</i>, not dead, banqueting <i>on earth</i>,
+not in Hades, by the side of his living companion. What then could be
+the significance of the staff in the hand of this living man? It was
+only after days of the hardest struggle, the cruellest suspense, that
+the thought flashed on me that the idea of Hermes leading away the dead
+female might, in this case, have been carried one step farther; that
+the male figure might be no living man, no man at all, but <i>Hermes
+himself</i> actually banqueting in Hades with the soul of his disembodied
+<i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>! The thought filled me with a rapture I cannot describe, and
+you witnessed my excitement. But, at all events, I saw that this was a
+truly tremendous departure from Greek art and thought, to which in
+general the copyists seemed to cling so religiously. There must
+therefore be a reason, a strong reason, for vandalism such as this. And
+that, at any rate, it was no longer difficult to discover; for now I
+knew that the male figure was no mortal, but a god, a spirit, a DAEMON
+(in the Greek sense of the word); and the female figure I saw by the
+marked shortness of her drapery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan; no
+matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a LASSIE; and now I had forced on
+me lassie daemon, <i>Lacedaemon.</i></p>
+
+<p>'This then was the badge, the so carefully-buried badge, of this
+society of men. The only thing which still puzzled and confounded me at
+this stage was the startling circumstance that a <i>Greek</i> society should
+make use of a <i>Latin</i> motto. It was clear that either all my
+conclusions were totally wrong, or else the motto <i>mens sana in corpore
+sano</i> contained wrapped up in itself some acroamatic meaning which I
+found myself unable to penetrate, and which the authors had found no
+Greek motto capable of conveying. But at any rate, having found this
+much, my knowledge led me of itself one step further; for I perceived
+that, widely extended as were their operations, the society was
+necessarily in the main an <i>English,</i> or at least an English-speaking
+one&mdash;for of this the word &quot;lassie&quot; was plainly indicative: it was easy
+now to conjecture London, the monster-city in which all things lose
+themselves, as their head-quarters; and at this point in my
+investigations I despatched to the papers the advertisement you have
+seen.'</p>
+
+<p>'But,' I exclaimed, 'even now I utterly fail to see by what mysterious
+processes of thought you arrived at the wording of the advertisement;
+even now it conveys no meaning to my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'That,' he replied,' will grow clear when we come to a right
+understanding of the baleful <i>motive</i> which inspired these men. I have
+already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one
+possible method of doing so&mdash;and that was, by all means, by any means,
+to find out some condition or other common to every one of the victims
+before death. It is true that I was unable to do this in some few
+cases, but where I failed, I was convinced that my failure was due to
+the insufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, rather than to the
+actual absence of the condition. Now, let us take almost any two cases
+you will, and seek for this common condition: let us take, for example,
+the first two that attracted the attention of the world&mdash;the poor woman
+of the slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by
+as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely,
+in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated
+<i>striae</i> of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she
+has a &quot;small young&quot; family, which, had she lived, might have been
+increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia,
+&quot;partial paralysis.&quot; The professor, too, has had not one, but two,
+large families, and an &quot;army of grand-children&quot;: but note well the
+startling, the hideous fact, that <i>every one of his children is dead!</i>
+The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in <i>every one</i> of
+those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism,
+lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean&mdash;but not before they have had time
+to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched &quot;army
+of grand-children.&quot; And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his
+old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race
+still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance,
+the point of resemblance,&mdash;you see it? And, O heaven, is it not too
+sad? For me, I tell you, the whole business has a tragic pitifulness
+too deep for words. But this brings me to the discussion of a large
+matter. It would, for instance, be interesting to me to hear what you,
+a modern European, saturated with all the notions of your little day,
+what <i>you</i> consider the supreme, the all-important question for the
+nations of Europe at this moment. Am I far wrong in assuming that you
+would rattle off half a dozen of the moot points agitating rival
+factions in your own land, select one of them, and call that &quot;the
+question of the hour&quot;? I wish I could see as you see; I wish to God I
+did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask
+you, what <i>precisely</i> was it that ruined the old nations&mdash;that brought,
+say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy
+imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom,
+believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things&mdash;it was simply
+War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain
+myself: this is a novel view to you, and you are perhaps unable to
+conceive how or why war was so fatal to the old world, because you see
+how little harmful it is to the new. If you collected in a promiscuous
+way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all
+simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of
+view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small,
+wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna
+in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and
+uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many,
+would flow on, and the void would soon be filled. But the effect would
+only be thus insignificant, if, as I said, your millions were taken
+promiscuously (as in the modern army), not if they were <i>picked</i>
+men----in <i>that</i> case the loss (or gain) would be excessive, and
+permanent for all time. Now, the war-hosts of the ancient
+commonwealths&mdash;not dependent on the mechanical contrivances of the
+modern army&mdash;were necessarily composed of the very best men: the
+strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound in wind and limb. Under these
+conditions the State shuddered through all her frame, thrilled adown
+every filament, at the death of a single one of her sons in the field.
+As only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, their number after each
+battle became larger <i>in proportion to the whole</i> than before. Thus the
+nation, more and more, with ever-increasing rapidity, declined in
+bodily, and of course spiritual, quality, until the <i>end</i> was reached,
+and Nature swallowed up the weaklings whole; and thus war, which to the
+modern state is at worst the blockhead and indecent <i>affaires
+d'honneur</i> of persons in office&mdash;and which, surely, before you and I
+die will cease altogether&mdash;was to the ancient a genuine and
+remorselessly fatal scourge.</p>
+
+<p>'And now let me apply these facts to the Europe of our own time. We no
+longer have world-serious war&mdash;but in its place we have a scourge, the
+effect of which on the modern state is <i>precisely the same</i> as the
+effect of war on the ancient, only,&mdash;in the end,&mdash;far more destructive,
+far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
+pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
+&mdash;shudder&mdash;as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
+bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
+medical, and especially surgical, science&mdash;that, if you like, for us
+all, is &quot;the question of the hour!&quot; And what a question! of what
+surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other &quot;questions&quot;
+whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
+State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
+the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
+deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
+The net result is in each case the same&mdash;the altered ratio of the total
+amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
+disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
+worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
+must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
+becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
+him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
+slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
+saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian <i>he</i>, but
+a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
+Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of &quot;Gorgon and Hydra and
+Chimaeras dire&quot;; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
+quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
+antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
+such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
+time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
+man to laugh at disease&mdash;laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
+natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
+destroying its ever-expanding <i>existence</i>. Do you know that at this
+moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
+suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
+whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
+hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth &quot;cured,&quot; like
+missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
+mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
+vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
+are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
+consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
+sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
+thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
+course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
+Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
+people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
+men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand&mdash;with a
+thrill of intensest joy, I say it!&mdash;is to be seen, if not yet
+commencing civilisation, then progress, progress&mdash;wide as the
+world&mdash;toward it: only here&mdash;at the heart&mdash;is there decadence, fatty
+degeneration. Brain-evolution&mdash;and favouring airs&mdash;and the ripening
+time&mdash;and the silent Will of God, of God&mdash;all these in conspiracy seem
+to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
+luxury of glory&mdash;when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
+more disease&mdash;that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
+especially&mdash;so sensitive to the physician's art&mdash;living on by hundreds
+of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
+who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
+proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
+curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
+may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
+question: <i>why?</i> Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
+cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
+that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
+<i>therefore</i> be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
+to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
+tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
+just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
+for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
+sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
+unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
+leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
+answer that question&mdash;I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
+the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
+humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
+it, coerced into sympathy with it. &quot;Beautiful&quot; I say: for if anywhere
+in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
+hospital <i>savants</i> bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
+pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
+wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
+parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
+Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
+<i>lachesis mutus</i>; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
+<i>in</i>human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
+me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
+dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
+of the inner verities of this our earthly being&mdash;the dogma, that by the
+shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
+man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
+the necessity that one man die, &quot;so that the whole people perish not&quot;?
+Can it be true that by nothing less than the &quot;three days of pestilence&quot;
+shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
+alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
+inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
+anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
+foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
+is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
+future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
+glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism&mdash;the
+immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
+part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
+bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
+not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the <i>accoucheur,</i> of
+the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
+breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
+function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
+are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
+Sparta&mdash;the &quot;man-taming Sparta&quot; Simonides calls her&mdash;answered them.
+Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
+of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
+under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
+parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
+commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
+he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
+place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
+that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
+stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
+Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
+all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
+express the idea &quot;ugly,&quot; meant also &quot;hateful,&quot; &quot;vile,&quot; &quot;disgraceful&quot;
+&mdash;and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
+fact alone; for they considered&mdash;and rightly&mdash;that there is no
+sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
+perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful&mdash;if only very moderate pains
+be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
+Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
+Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
+barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
+Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
+&quot;lament&quot; on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
+the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
+thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
+the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
+one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
+remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
+understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
+papers.'</p>
+
+<p>Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular <i>tirade</i>, paused:
+replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
+cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
+and then continued:</p>
+
+<p>'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
+what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
+I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
+and an address, too&mdash;but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
+course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
+to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
+circumstance that the Latin proverb <i>mens sana etc.</i> should be adopted
+as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
+motto <i>contained an address</i>&mdash;the address of their meeting-place, or at
+least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
+of solving&mdash;and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour&mdash;this
+enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
+extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
+that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
+difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
+cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
+secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
+there was any <i>consistency</i> in the system of cyphers at all, for it
+belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
+others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
+therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
+actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
+form <i>mens sana in ... pore sano.</i> I wrote this down, and what
+instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
+<i>liquids</i> in the motto&mdash;six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
+of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
+<i>mnnnnr</i>, and you can see that the very appearance of the &quot;m's&quot; and
+&quot;n's&quot; (especially when <i>written</i>) running into one another, of itself
+suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
+of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
+inference of <i>the Thames</i>; there, or near there, would I find those
+whom I sought. The letters &quot;mnnnnr,&quot; then, meant the Thames: what did
+the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
+placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
+these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
+occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
+inevitably get the word <i>Aesopi.</i> And now I was fairly startled by this
+symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
+respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
+<i>&quot;Aesopi.&quot;</i> For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
+wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
+wise&mdash;their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
+also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
+wisdom with wealth&mdash;true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
+all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
+he is typical, therefore, of death&mdash;the shedding of blood&mdash;as a result
+of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
+&quot;in much wisdom is much sorrow.&quot; But how accurately all this fitted in
+with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
+was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
+immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.</p>
+
+<p>'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
+The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
+I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
+light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
+manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
+sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
+betoken any sort of connection with the word &quot;Aesopi.&quot; In this way I
+passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
+fast my craft, and in a spirit of <i>diablerie</i> spent the night in a
+common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
+beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
+<i>bonne camaraderie</i> which the prevailing fear of death could not
+altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again&mdash;on,
+and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
+had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
+should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
+men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
+meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
+proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
+and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
+on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
+came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
+into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
+the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
+of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
+was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
+at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway&mdash;a winding
+road&mdash;leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
+its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
+the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
+was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
+And then&mdash;and then&mdash;tingling now with a thousand raptures&mdash;I beheld a
+pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
+counterpart of the first&mdash;and then, still leading on in the same
+direction, another pool&mdash;and then a great rock, heart-shaped&mdash;and then
+another winding road&mdash;and then another pool of water. All was a
+model&mdash;<i>exact to the minutest particular</i>&mdash;of the device on the
+papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
+short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
+three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
+representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
+heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
+and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
+rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
+at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
+black letters, was marked the words, &quot;DESCENSUS AESOPI.&quot; It was
+necessary, therefore, to go <i>down</i>: the meeting-place was subterranean.
+It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
+ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
+series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
+descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
+confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
+<i>ziphos</i> and <i>pelt&egrave;</i>. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
+long with an earnest scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;You are a Spartan?&quot; he asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered promptly.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;You <i>are</i> a Spartan?&quot; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'I nodded with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
+that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
+of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency&mdash;to stretch
+itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
+<i>no</i> combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
+alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
+lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
+by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
+always placed under the <i>tongue</i> of the dead; I remembered, too, that
+among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to &quot;turn
+up the <i>thumb</i>&quot; (<i>pollicem vertere</i>) was a symbol significant of death.
+I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
+aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.</p>
+
+<p>'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
+supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
+the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
+walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
+reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
+chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
+stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
+gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
+From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
+fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
+not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
+means by which my body might be traced.  'But on the next day a new
+thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: &quot;these men are not common
+assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
+against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
+immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
+They will not therefore take mine, <i>unless</i> they suppose me to be the
+only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
+think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
+designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
+such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
+whole secret, and&mdash;if the necessity should arise&mdash;<i>letting them know</i>
+that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
+life will be assured.&quot; I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
+account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
+the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
+time.</p>
+
+<p>'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
+day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
+at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
+sacred&mdash;solemn&mdash;full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
+hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms&mdash;of the
+wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice&mdash;of the
+mingling of all the tongues of Europe&mdash;I shall not speak; nor shall I
+repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
+you&mdash;though I may, perhaps, mention that the &quot;Morris,&quot; whose name
+appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known <i>litt&eacute;rateur</i> of that
+name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
+undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
+wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
+with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
+methods with approval&mdash;these I could not but consider too rash, too
+harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
+earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
+on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
+this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
+was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
+was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
+A powerful and little-known anaesthetic&mdash;the means by which all their
+murders have been accomplished&mdash;was now produced. A cloth, saturated
+with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
+Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
+How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
+language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
+floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
+perhaps&mdash;now&mdash;there was silence around me; that <i>now,</i> could my palsied
+lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
+rose focussed to the effort&mdash;my body jerked itself upwards. At that
+moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I <i>did</i>
+utter something&mdash;my dead and shuddering tongue <i>did</i> babble forth some
+coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
+the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
+placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
+clear&mdash;I <i>had</i> uttered something&mdash;I was saved. With what of strength
+remained to me I reached the place where I had left your <i>cal&egrave;che</i>, and
+started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
+for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
+after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
+in this condition you found me.</p>
+
+<p>'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
+this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
+others&mdash;to how many others <i>they</i> cannot guess&mdash;I think it is not
+unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'</p>
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+
+
+<br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br />
+
+</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Prince Zaleski
+
+Author: M.P. Shiel
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE ZALESKI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Wilelmina Malli re, Sjaani and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE ZALESKI
+
+M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel
+
+_Come now, and let us reason together._
+  ISAIAH
+
+_Of the strange things that befell the valiant Knight in the Sable
+Mountain;  and how he imitated the penance of Beltenebros._
+  CERVANTES
+
+[Greek: All'est'ekeino panta lekta, panta de tolmaeta;]
+  SOPHOCLES
+
+1895
+
+TO
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER
+
+CONTENTS
+
+The Race of Orven
+
+The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks
+
+The S.S.
+
+
+
+THE RACE OF ORVEN
+
+Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
+Zaleski--victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
+fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
+native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
+the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
+passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
+more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
+been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.
+
+But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
+exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
+repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
+attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
+mistrust of the _denoument_ of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
+hermitage.
+
+I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
+palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
+approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
+the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
+deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
+finally put up my _caleche_ in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
+chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
+behind the domain.
+
+As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
+not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
+select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
+regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
+much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
+the manner of a Roman _atrium_, and from the oblong pool of turgid
+water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
+squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
+corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
+through a mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length
+of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
+uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
+_ricochets_ to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
+emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
+vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.
+
+After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
+near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
+of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
+lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
+silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
+One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
+Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
+the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
+visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
+to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.
+
+The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
+the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
+_lampas_ of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
+certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
+me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
+light, and the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the
+_bhang_ of the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be the habit of my
+friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
+heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
+Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound amateur--as
+well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
+the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
+the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
+Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
+The general effect was a _bizarrerie_ of half-weird sheen and gloom.
+Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
+miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
+leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
+gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
+in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
+epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
+vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
+invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
+draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
+stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
+trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
+which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
+hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.
+
+Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
+Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
+time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
+my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
+adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
+delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
+Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
+pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling _hashish_,
+prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
+breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
+partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
+Turkish _beneesh_, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
+first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
+and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
+features.
+
+'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.
+
+'I have met him in "the world." His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
+at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
+I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
+peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour--a
+strong likeness between father and son.'
+
+I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
+as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.
+
+'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
+Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
+also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
+author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
+eminence in the _corps diplomatique_, and lately (though, strictly
+speaking, _unebenbuertig_) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
+Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-ueppigen, a lady with a strain of
+indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
+a very old and distinguished one, though--especially in modern
+days--far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
+become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
+immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
+reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
+simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
+_en bloc_. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
+that you have not already read it in the papers.'
+
+'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
+thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'
+
+'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
+of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
+years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
+with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
+exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
+father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
+India. Considered as the first step in the _rapprochement_ of this
+proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
+message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
+official; it ran:
+
+'"_Return. The beginning of the end is come._" Whereupon Randolph did
+return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
+Lord Pharanx was dead.'
+
+'_Murdered_?'
+
+A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
+Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
+an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
+this feeling, for he said at once:
+
+'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
+might even have foretold it, years ago.'
+
+'Foretold--what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'
+
+'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed--tell
+me all the facts you know.'
+
+Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
+I continued the narrative.
+
+'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
+without cordiality, without affection--a shaking of hands across a
+barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
+metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
+interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
+observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
+father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
+an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
+sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
+the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
+of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
+low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
+It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
+of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
+migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
+part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
+of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
+fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
+boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
+noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
+master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
+kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
+occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
+doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
+them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
+and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
+and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
+to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
+that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now--possibly
+owing to the sedentary life he led--became fastidious, insisting on
+_recherche_ bits. I mention all these details to you--as I shall
+mention others--not because they have the least connection with the
+tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
+and you have requested me to state all I know.'
+
+'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of _ennui_, 'you are right. I may
+as well hear the whole--if I must hear a part.'
+
+'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
+day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
+still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
+he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
+are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
+most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
+past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
+this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
+himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
+candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
+is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings--reported in
+local papers--at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
+laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
+Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
+condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
+class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
+round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
+proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'
+
+'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
+to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
+elementary botany? _Why_ mechanics?'
+
+This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
+was pleased, but answered:
+
+'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
+vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
+young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
+come to a new character in the drama--the chief character of all. One
+day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
+owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
+approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
+eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
+showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
+manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
+distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
+Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
+past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
+the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
+the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
+vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
+that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
+called Lee.
+
+'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
+the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
+admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
+of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
+returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
+private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
+one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
+seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
+word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
+jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
+opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
+again.
+
+'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
+asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
+persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
+bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
+The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
+meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
+Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
+unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
+that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
+in the new political convert. The _rendezvous_--always held under cover
+of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
+Hester--sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
+would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
+ceased.'
+
+'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
+this unearthed letter of Randolph's--what was in it?'
+
+I read as follows:
+
+'"Dear Mdlle. Cibras,--I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
+my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
+only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
+unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
+your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
+precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
+will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point--within, say, three or
+four days--of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
+appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
+_centime_ under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
+something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
+implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
+bounds of reason.
+
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"RANDOLPH."'
+
+'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
+candour. But the _facts_--were they true? _Did_ the earl make a new
+will in the time specified?'
+
+'No,--but that may have been because his death intervened.'
+
+'And in the old will, _was_ Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'
+
+'Yes,--that at least was correct.'
+
+A shadow of pain passed over his face.
+
+'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
+England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
+letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
+The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
+room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
+introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
+by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
+his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
+arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
+protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
+recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
+man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
+evidence being heard. On the next day--the 7th--Hester, entering the
+room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
+(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
+fire), that Lord Pharanx has been "drinking heavily."
+
+'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
+see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
+hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
+note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
+follows:
+
+'"Maude Cibras.--You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
+south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
+through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
+nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
+from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
+false. Destroy this note. PHARANX."'
+
+As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
+countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
+fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
+expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal _inquisitiveness_
+--an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
+His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central _puncta_
+of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
+gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
+Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics--his fingers
+livid with the fixity of his grip--he bent on it that strenuous
+inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
+mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
+other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
+victory.
+
+When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
+my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.
+
+'Tell me--the end,' he said.
+
+'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
+failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
+she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
+for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
+too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
+returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
+Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
+Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
+gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
+informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
+leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
+this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
+scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
+brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph--who was
+present at the time--further drew her attention to these by telling her
+that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
+the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
+this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
+about the estate.
+
+'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
+except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
+his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
+giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
+document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
+servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
+Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
+found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
+account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
+view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
+the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
+by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
+clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
+collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
+o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.
+
+'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
+The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
+ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
+of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett--for Hester has
+somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
+takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
+Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
+over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
+hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
+gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
+casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
+frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
+in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
+flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
+forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
+moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
+on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
+Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
+consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
+of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
+nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
+strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
+good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
+ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
+sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
+reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
+rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
+prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
+she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
+is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.
+
+'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
+woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
+shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
+his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
+his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
+gasp: "Did you hear something--from below?" They answer "yes" in
+chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
+troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
+news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
+for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
+light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
+obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
+Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
+Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
+nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
+woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
+out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
+a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
+first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
+labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
+how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
+as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
+their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
+now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
+to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
+this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
+hears him murmur the words, "My God, what can have happened now?" His
+horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
+trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
+phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
+agonised moan, "My God!" and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
+the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
+wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
+does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
+window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
+but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
+large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
+missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
+lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
+a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
+trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
+means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
+placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
+secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
+horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
+sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
+out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
+so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.
+
+'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
+death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
+returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
+pronounce their verdict of "guilty." But she denied shooting Lord
+Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
+no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
+points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
+tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
+of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
+The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
+propounded. But no theory explained _all_ the points. The ferment,
+however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
+on the gallows.'
+
+Thus I ended my narrative.
+
+Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
+Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
+proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the _Lakme_ of
+Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
+his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
+and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
+up to an ivory _escritoire_, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
+and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
+with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.
+
+'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
+word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
+the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
+confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
+yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you--you do
+not get a clean _coup d'oeil_ of the whole regiment of facts, and their
+causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
+that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
+is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
+making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
+punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
+occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
+does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
+this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
+mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
+be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
+merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
+world at large--shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
+not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
+attainment in general, as _mood_ in particular. Whether or when such
+mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
+often think that when the era of civilisation begins--as assuredly it
+shall some day begin--when the races of the world cease to be
+credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
+the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a _clairvoyant_ culture.
+But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
+man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
+presence. In individuals, yes--in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
+English Milton and Bishop Berkeley--but in humanity, never; and hardly
+in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
+not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
+concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
+conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
+requisite to a _regime_ of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
+of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
+person--he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if
+that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
+novelty--once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
+on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
+civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
+certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
+his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
+hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
+general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
+Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
+of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
+part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
+it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
+profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
+anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
+together--to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
+triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
+defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,"
+should surely at this hour be _too_ primitive--_too_ Opic--to bring
+anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
+very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
+in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: _idea_]
+which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed--far,
+perhaps, by ages and aeons--from becoming part of the general
+conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
+ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
+intricate one of living _together: a propos_ of which your body
+corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
+fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
+really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile _you_ and _I_ are handicapped.
+The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
+air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
+can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
+invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
+the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
+shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
+with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the
+alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
+into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
+ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present--_a
+horrid strain_! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
+may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
+know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
+gravity, gravity--chiefest curse of Eden's sin!--is hostile. When
+indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
+orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
+Icarian "organa" in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
+which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
+not Goethe who assures us that "further reacheth no man, make he what
+stretching he will"? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
+absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
+Paris is _far_ from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
+Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
+ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
+if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
+many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
+we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
+root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
+the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not _quite_ right--as,
+indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I _know_
+whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know--as clearly, as
+precisely, as a man can know--that Beatrice Cenci was not "guilty" as
+certain recently-discovered documents "prove" her, but that the Shelley
+version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It _is_
+possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit--or say a hand, or a
+dactyl--to your stature; you may develop powers slightly--very
+slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree--in advance of those
+of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
+live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
+mass--when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
+Cultured Mood has at length arrived--that their exercise will become
+easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
+presciences, prisms, _seances_, what introspective craft, Genie
+apocalypses, shall not _then_ become possible to the few who stand
+spiritually in the van of men.
+
+'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
+myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
+the very little puzzle you have placed before me--one which we
+certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
+at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
+the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
+Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
+enemies; he is the _fiance_ of a princess whose husband he is probably
+too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
+father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
+hand, we--you and I--know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
+moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
+world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
+assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
+that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
+could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
+murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
+motives--strong, adequate, irresistible--and by "irresistible" I mean a
+motive which must be _far_ stronger than even the love of life
+itself--we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.
+
+'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
+contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
+not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
+her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
+guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of _Theatre des
+Varietes_ type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
+some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
+However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras--a violent woman, a woman of
+lawless passions--assuring her that in four or five days she will be
+excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
+plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
+sequence--though, of course, the _intention_ to produce by his words
+the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
+of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
+produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
+opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
+Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
+tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
+favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
+intention on the part of the earl, we _may_ make the same presumption
+in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
+letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
+double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
+impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
+exact _locale_ of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
+mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
+the district. Can it be possible that Randolph _had told her_? And here
+again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
+told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
+absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
+further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
+actions are in themselves _outre_, suspicious, they are rendered, not
+less _outre_, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
+himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
+that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
+himself: "Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
+father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
+order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
+attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
+being discovered _en flagrant delit_, will escape every shadow of
+suspicion." But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
+made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative--for he
+leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
+with the letter to Cibras on the 8th--Randolph despatches it, but the
+earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
+the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
+suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
+Randolph--finding now that Cibras has "left the country," that, in
+fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him--could
+he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
+of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
+abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
+lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
+burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
+of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
+our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who "_chose_" to gather the
+jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
+attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
+little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
+surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
+the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
+elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the _class_.
+Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of _that_ seem natural.
+But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
+the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
+quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
+that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
+a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
+clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
+of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
+uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
+have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
+mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
+but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
+the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
+room just overhead, caused by his preparation for "a journey to
+London." But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
+master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
+Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
+significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?
+
+'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
+Randolph was guilty of something--some evil intention--though of
+precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
+would pause: he would reflect that _as_ the father was implicated in
+those acts, and _as_ he was innocent of any such intention, so might
+possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
+of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
+imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
+by evil intention on the part of Randolph--one act in which his father
+certainly did _not_ participate--what follows next? Why, that we revert
+at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that _all_ the
+other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
+and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
+conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share _might_
+have sprung from a like motive in _his_ mind also; nor should the mere
+obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
+least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
+against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
+pass on.
+
+'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
+deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
+sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
+murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
+ceased--how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
+becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
+round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
+track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
+and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
+and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were _half
+obliterated by the snow_. Two things then are clear: that the persons
+who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
+different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
+your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
+"burglars." But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
+tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
+first--the woman's--the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
+second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
+points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
+examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
+when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
+"My God! what has happened _now_?" But why "now"? The word cannot refer
+to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
+heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
+destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have _expected_ to find the
+window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
+who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
+therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
+to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
+hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
+glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
+That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
+the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
+Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit--if there
+was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; _they_ did
+not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
+after the snow has ceased to fall,--that is, after, long after, they
+have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
+their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
+then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
+of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
+night.'
+
+'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow--the
+neckerchief!'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
+the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
+mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
+refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
+a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
+inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
+Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
+should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
+the improbable. The jewels had been _put_ there with the object of
+throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
+catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
+open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
+this was deliberately done by some one--would it be rash to say at once
+by whom?
+
+'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
+begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
+statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
+that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
+at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
+humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
+woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
+believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
+deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
+reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
+being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
+intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
+satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
+fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
+their curiosity of what _is_. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
+whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
+is to _peep_. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
+their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
+history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
+this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
+true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
+one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
+surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
+white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
+taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
+How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
+be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic condition) the
+result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
+nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
+accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
+acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
+have been light in the room--a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
+to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
+proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
+alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
+the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
+from the room above--from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
+one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
+room. It _must_ be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
+driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
+that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
+"driven" upward disappears. We at once ask, why not _drawn_ upward
+through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
+visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
+established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
+is it unreasonable--even without further evidence--to suspect another
+in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
+rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
+her leg. Had she fallen _over_ some object, as you supposed, the result
+might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
+being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
+inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
+But this gives us an approximate idea of the _size_ of the lower hole;
+it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
+therefore to admit that "good-sized ball of cotton" of which the woman
+speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
+upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
+evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
+must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
+seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
+which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
+replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
+removal of which had caused so much commotion in Randolph's room on the
+fatal day. Hester Dyett would have been able to notice and bring at
+least one of the apertures forward in evidence, but she fainted before
+she had time to find out the cause of her fall, and an hour later it
+was, you remember, Randolph himself who bore her from the room. But
+should not the aperture in the top floor have been observed by the
+class? Undoubtedly, if its position was in the open space in the middle
+of the room. But it was not observed, and therefore its position was
+not there, but in the only other place left--behind the apparatus used
+in demonstration. That then was _one_ useful object which the
+apparatus--and with it the elaborate hypocrisy of class, and speeches,
+and candidature--served: it was made to act as a curtain, a screen. But
+had it no other purpose? That question we may answer when we know its
+name and its nature. And it is not beyond our powers to conjecture this
+with something like certainty. For the only "machines" possible to use
+in illustration of simple mechanics are the screw, the wedge, the
+scale, the lever, the wheel-and-axle, and Atwood's machine. The
+mathematical principles which any of these exemplify would, of course,
+be incomprehensible to such a class, but the first five most of all,
+and as there would naturally be some slight pretence of trying to make
+the learners understand, I therefore select the last; and this
+selection is justified when we remember that on the shot being heard,
+Randolph leans for support on the "machine," and stands in its shadow;
+but any of the others would be too small to throw any appreciable
+shadow, except one--the wheel, and-axle--and that one would hardly
+afford support to a tall man in the erect position. The Atwood's
+machine is therefore forced on us; as to its construction, it is, as
+you are aware, composed of two upright posts, with a cross-bar fitted
+with pulleys and strings, and is intended to show the motion of bodies
+acting under a constant force--the force of gravity, to wit. But now
+consider all the really glorious uses to which those same pulleys may
+be turned in lowering and lifting unobserved that "ball of cotton"
+through the two apertures, while the other strings with the weights
+attached are dangling before the dull eyes of the peasants. I need only
+point out that when the whole company trooped out of the room, Randolph
+was the last to leave it, and it is not now difficult to conjecture
+why.
+
+'Of what, then, have we convicted Randolph? For one thing, we have
+shown that by marks of feet in the snow preparation was made beforehand
+for obscuring the cause of the earl's death. That death must therefore
+have been at least expected, foreknown. Thus we convict him of
+expecting it. And then, by an independent line of deduction, we can
+also discover the _means_ by which he expected it to occur. It is clear
+that he did not expect it to occur when it did by the hand of Maude
+Cibras--for this is proved by his knowledge that she had left the
+neighbourhood, by his evidently genuine astonishment at the sight of
+the closed window, and, above all, by his truly morbid desire to
+establish a substantial, an irrefutable _alibi_ for himself by going to
+Plymouth on the day when there was every reason to suppose she would do
+the deed--that is, on the 8th, the day of the earl's invitation. On the
+fatal night, indeed, the same morbid eagerness to build up a clear
+_alibi_ is observable, for he surrounds himself with a cloud of
+witnesses in the upper chamber. But that, you will admit, is not nearly
+so perfect a one as a journey, say, to Plymouth would have been. Why
+then, expecting the death, did he not take some such journey? Obviously
+because on _this_ occasion his personal presence was necessary. When,
+_in conjunction_ with this, we recall the fact that during the
+intrigues with Cibras the lectures were discontinued, and again resumed
+immediately on her unlooked-for departure, we arrive at the conclusion
+that the means by which Lord Pharanx's death was expected to occur was
+the personal presence of Randolph _in conjunction_ with the political
+speeches, the candidature, the class, the apparatus.
+
+'But though he stands condemned of foreknowing, and being in some sort
+connected with, his father's death, I can nowhere find any indication
+of his having personally accomplished it, or even of his ever having
+had any such intention. The evidence is evidence of complicity--and
+nothing more. And yet--and yet--even of _this_ we began by acquitting
+him unless we could discover, as I said, some strong, adequate,
+altogether irresistible motive for such complicity. Failing this, we
+ought to admit that at some point our argument has played us false, and
+led us into conclusions wholly at variance with our certain knowledge
+of the principles underlying human conduct in general. Let us therefore
+seek for such a motive--something deeper than personal enmity, stronger
+than personal ambition, _than the love of life itself!_ And now, tell
+me, at the time of the occurrence of this mystery, was the whole past
+history of the House of Orven fully investigated?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge,' I answered; 'in the papers there were, of
+course, sketches of the earl's career, but that I think was all.'
+
+'Yet it cannot be that their past was unknown, but only that it was
+ignored. Long, I tell you, long and often, have I pondered on that
+history, and sought to trace with what ghastly secret has been pregnant
+the destiny, gloomful as Erebus and the murk of black-peplosed Nux,
+which for centuries has hung its pall over the men of this ill-fated
+house. Now at last I know. Dark, dark, and red with gore and horror is
+that history; down the silent corridors of the ages have these
+blood-soaked sons of Atreus fled shrieking before the pursuing talons
+of the dread Eumenides. The first earl received his patent in 1535 from
+the eighth Henry. Two years later, though noted as a rabid "king's
+man," he joined the Pilgrimage of Grace against his master, and was
+soon after executed, with Darcy and some other lords. His age was then
+fifty. His son, meantime, had served in the king's army under Norfolk.
+It is remarkable, by the way, that females have all along been rare in
+the family, and that in no instance has there been more than one son.
+The second earl, under the sixth Edward, suddenly threw up a civil
+post, hastened to the army, and fell at the age of forty at the battle
+of Pinkie in 1547. He was accompanied by his son. The third in 1557,
+under Mary, renounced the Catholic faith, to which, both before and
+since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
+forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
+in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
+_of the same day_ he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
+later on, in 1591, seen by _his_ son to fall from a lofty balcony at
+Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
+time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
+the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
+window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
+but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
+soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by _radix
+aconiti indica_, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
+except to _savants_, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
+An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
+House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
+now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
+suspicion, of course, fell on _him_.'
+
+As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
+with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
+this intimate knowledge of _all_ the great families of Europe! It was
+as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
+history of the Orvens.
+
+'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
+family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
+marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
+show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
+large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
+seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not
+design that the last Lord of Orven should any more hide from the world
+the guilty secret of his race. It was the will of the gods--and he
+betrayed himself. "Return," he writes, "the beginning of the end is
+come." What end?
+
+_The_ end--perfectly well known to Randolph, needing no explanation for
+_him_. The old, old end, which in the ancient dim time led the first
+lord, loyal still at heart, to forsake his king; and another, still
+devout, to renounce his cherished faith, and yet another to set fire to
+the home of his ancestors. You have called the two last scions of the
+family "a proud and selfish pair of beings"; proud they were, and
+selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
+personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
+in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
+selfishness of _race_. What consideration, think you, other than the
+weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
+shame--for as such he certainly regards it--of a conversion to
+radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have _died_ rather than make this
+pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it--and the reason? It
+is because he has received that awful summons from home; because "the
+end" is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
+meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming _too_ acute;
+because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
+house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
+endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
+able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
+intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
+malady which physicians call "_General Paralysis of the Insane_." You
+remember I took from your hands the newspaper containing the earl's
+letter to Cibras, in order to read it with my own eyes. I had my
+reasons, and I was justified. That letter contains three mistakes in
+spelling: "here" is printed "hear," "pass" appears as "pas," and "room"
+as "rume." Printers' errors, you say? But not so--one might be, two in
+that short paragraph could hardly be, three would be impossible. Search
+the whole paper through, and I think you will not find another. Let us
+reverence the theory of probabilities: the errors were the writer's,
+not the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have
+this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of
+middle age--the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died
+mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his
+race--the heritage of madness--is falling or fallen on him, he summons
+his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the
+tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down
+through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days it
+is difficult for a man to commit the suicidal act without
+detection--and if madness is a disgrace to the race, equally so is
+suicide. Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
+life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
+be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
+blossoms into a popular candidate.
+
+'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
+of Maude Cibras; he hopes that _she_ may be made to destroy the earl;
+but when she fails him, he recurs to it--recurs to it all suddenly, for
+Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
+eyes, could any eye see him--so much so that on the last day none of
+the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
+Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
+not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
+she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
+bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
+The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
+pistol, such as this'--here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
+weapon from a drawer near him--'that appeared in the gloom to the
+excited Hester as a "ball of cotton," while it was being drawn upward
+by the Atwood's machine. But if the earl shot himself he could not have
+done so after being stabbed to the heart. Maude Cibras, therefore,
+stabbed a dead man. She would, of course, have ample time for stealing
+into the room and doing so after the shot was fired, and before the
+party reached the balcony window, on account of the delay on the stairs
+in procuring a second light; in going to the earl's door; in examining
+the tracks, and so on. But having stabbed a dead man, she is not guilty
+of murder. The message I just now sent by Ham was one addressed to the
+Home Secretary, telling him on no account to let Cibras die to-morrow.
+He well knows my name, and will hardly be silly enough to suppose me
+capable of using words without meaning. It will be perfectly easy to
+prove my conclusions, for the pieces removed from, and replaced in, the
+floorings can still be detected, if looked for; the pistol is still, no
+doubt, in Randolph's room, and its bore can be compared with the bullet
+found in Lord Pharanx's brain; above all, the jewels stolen by the
+"burglars" are still safe in some cabinet of the new earl, and may
+readily be discovered I therefore expect that the denoument will now
+take a somewhat different turn.'
+
+That the denoument did take a different turn, and pretty strictly in
+accordance with Zaleski's forecast, is now matter of history, and the
+incidents, therefore, need no further comment from me in this place.
+
+
+
+
+THE STONE OF THE EDMUNDSBURY MONKS
+
+
+'Russia,' said Prince Zaleski to me one day, when I happened to be on a
+visit to him in his darksome sanctuary--'Russia may be regarded as land
+surrounded by ocean; that is to say, she is an island. In the same way,
+it is sheer gross irrelevancy to speak of _Britain_ as an island,
+unless indeed the word be understood as a mere _modus loquendi_ arising
+out of a rather poor geographical pleasantry. Britain, in reality, is a
+small continent. Near her--a little to the south-east--is situated the
+large island of Europe. Thus, the enlightened French traveller passing
+to these shores should commune within himself: "I now cross to the
+Mainland"; and retracing his steps: "I now return to the fragment rent
+by wrack and earthshock from the Mother-country." And this I say not in
+the way of paradox, but as the expression of a sober truth. I have in
+my mind merely the relative depth and extent--the _non-insularity_, in
+fact--of the impressions made by the several nations on the world. But
+this island of Europe has herself an island of her own: the name of it,
+Russia. She, of all lands, is the _terra incognita_, the unknown land;
+till quite lately she was more--she was the undiscovered, the
+unsuspected land. She _has_ a literature, you know, and a history, and
+a language, and a purpose--but of all this the world has hardly so much
+as heard. Indeed, she, and not any Antarctic Sea whatever, is the real
+Ultima Thule of modern times, the true Island of Mystery.'
+
+I reproduce these remarks of Zaleski here, not so much on account of
+the splendid tribute to my country contained in them, as because it
+ever seemed to me--and especially in connection with the incident I am
+about to recall--that in this respect at least he was a genuine son of
+Russia; if she is the Land, so truly was he the Man, of Mystery. I who
+knew him best alone knew that it was impossible to know him. He was a
+being little of the present: with one arm he embraced the whole past;
+the fingers of the other heaved on the vibrant pulse of the future. He
+seemed to me--I say it deliberately and with forethought--to possess
+the unparalleled power not merely of disentangling in retrospect, but
+of unravelling in prospect, and I have known him to relate _coming_
+events with unimaginable minuteness of precision. He was nothing if not
+superlative: his diatribes, now culminating in a very _extravaganza_ of
+hyperbole--now sailing with loose wing through the downy, witched,
+Dutch cloud-heaps of some quaintest tramontane Nephelococcugia of
+thought--now laying down law of the Medes for the actual world of
+to-day--had oft-times the strange effect of bringing back to my mind
+the very singular old-epic epithet, [Greek: aenemoen]--_airy_--as
+applied to human thought. The mere grip of his memory was not simply
+extraordinary, it had in it a token, a hint, of the strange, the
+pythic--nay, the sibylline. And as his reflecting intellect, moreover,
+had all the lightness of foot of a chamois kid, unless you could
+contrive to follow each dazzlingly swift successive step, by the sum of
+which he attained his Alp-heights, he inevitably left on you the
+astounding, the confounding impression of mental omnipresence.
+
+I had brought with me a certain document, a massive book bound in iron
+and leather, the diary of one Sir Jocelin Saul. This I had abstracted
+from a gentleman of my acquaintance, the head of a firm of inquiry
+agents in London, into whose hand, only the day before, it had come. A
+distant neighbour of Sir Jocelin, hearing by chance of his extremity,
+had invoked the assistance of this firm; but the aged baronet, being in
+a state of the utmost feebleness, terror, and indeed hysterical
+incoherence, had been able to utter no word in explanation of his
+condition or wishes, and, in silent abandonment, had merely handed the
+book to the agent.
+
+A day or two after I had reached the desolate old mansion which the
+prince occupied, knowing that he might sometimes be induced to take an
+absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too
+profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution, I asked him if he
+was willing to hear the details read out from the diary, and on his
+assenting, I proceeded to do so.
+
+The brief narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable
+oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice,
+in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long
+within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St.
+Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two
+equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow
+space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say,
+was lineally connected with--though, of course, not descendant
+from--that same Jocelin of Brakelonda, a brother of the Edmundsbury
+convent, who wrote the now so celebrated _Jocelini Chronica_: and the
+chalice had fallen into the possession of the family, seemingly at some
+time prior to the suppression of the monastery about 1537. On it was
+inscribed in old English characters of unknown date the words:
+
+  'Shulde this Ston stalen bee,
+  Or shuld it chaunges dre,
+  The Houss of Sawl and hys Hed anoon shal de.'
+
+The stone itself was an intaglio, and had engraved on its surface the
+figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
+letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
+the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
+another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
+inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
+size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.
+
+Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
+remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
+Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
+in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
+research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
+their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
+years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
+Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
+acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give _verbatim_
+the extracts from his diary:
+
+'_June 11_.--This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
+the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
+it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
+Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly--seemed to have been looking forward to
+it--and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
+factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
+Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
+this was also my father's birthday; and _his_ father's; and repeated
+the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
+walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of _himself_
+sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
+pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.
+
+'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
+successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
+show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
+declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
+and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription "Has" meant. I
+informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.
+
+'_June l5_.--Some new element has entered into our existence here.
+Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
+and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
+hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain--a
+drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
+fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
+chosen child!
+
+'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_
+
+'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
+poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
+Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
+to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
+wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
+_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?
+
+'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
+with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
+had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
+shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
+else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
+crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
+viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
+has stolen my life. The stone is gone--gone, my precious gem. A
+weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
+marble floor.
+
+'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
+shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?
+
+'_June 20_.--Ah, Ul-Jabal--my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
+God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
+yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
+not--not--the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
+semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
+went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
+after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
+might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
+clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!--he has taken
+the _other_ stone from the _other_ cup--a thing of little value to any
+man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?
+
+'_June 21_.--Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has _not_ replaced it--not
+_it_--but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
+and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
+engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value--a stone I
+have never seen before. How has he obtained it--whence? I must brace
+myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
+this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
+in the balance.
+
+'_June 22_.--Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
+to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
+flinched: and drank--drank.
+
+'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
+make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
+in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
+Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
+me that browse of hell--to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.
+
+'_June 23_.--The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
+I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
+as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
+which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
+into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
+The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
+and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which _he himself_
+put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
+shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!
+
+'_June 24_.--No more--no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
+Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
+of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
+twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
+attention.
+
+'_June 25_.--He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
+him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
+door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
+should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
+treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
+right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
+book--the more the pity for the world, not for me.
+
+'_June 26_.--Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
+_another_ stone in the Edmundsbury chalice--also identical in nearly
+every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
+entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
+stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
+replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
+from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
+a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!
+
+'_June 28_.--I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
+It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life--and which is the
+best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
+murder--I, with this withered hand--so that I get back the heritage
+which is mine.
+
+'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
+room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
+that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
+his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
+a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
+out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
+the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
+its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
+When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he
+said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my
+hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
+upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?
+
+'_July 1_.--Life against life--and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
+than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not _yet_ am I ready
+to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
+paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let _him_ die. Many and
+many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
+averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
+times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
+chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
+lost--a mere fiction _at first_, an idler's dream _then_, but
+now--now--that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
+things, and a fact among facts--no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
+as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
+surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
+hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
+insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
+saw a Syrian's head cleft open--a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
+have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.
+
+'_July 2_.--I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
+and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
+thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
+Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
+all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.
+
+'_July 7_.--The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
+grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
+for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
+to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
+lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
+greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
+slay my enemy, and make an end?
+
+'_July_ 8.--Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
+through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
+could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
+First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
+the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
+lie my few garments--and opened it. Ah, I have the stone--safe--safe!
+He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
+where I would be least likely to seek it--_in my own trunk_! And yet I
+dread, most intensely I dread, to look.
+
+'_July_ 9.--The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
+have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
+have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?
+
+'_July 10_.--In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
+past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
+cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
+the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
+him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
+unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
+the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
+gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
+pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
+the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
+that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
+and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
+vaults,--the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,--how had I
+forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
+had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
+might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
+the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?--but he held the
+key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
+his head bent down. The thought came to me _then_, that, had I but the
+courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
+Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
+his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
+me--thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
+my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
+headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
+caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
+chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
+dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.
+
+'_July 11_.--I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
+remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
+tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.
+
+'_July 12_.--I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
+He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
+Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
+taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
+pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
+and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
+failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
+love.
+
+'July l3.--I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
+soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
+late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
+a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
+It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.
+
+'July l4.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
+man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
+him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
+no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
+would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,--and is gone!
+
+'July l5.--Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
+far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
+with him--the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
+ebbing in my heart.'
+
+Here the manuscript abruptly ended.
+
+Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
+couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
+he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
+as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
+apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
+round on me, and said:
+
+'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'
+
+'_Has_ it a meaning?'
+
+Zaleski smiled.
+
+'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
+note, the _nuance_ of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
+_enough_, inductive and deductive cunning _enough_, not only a meaning,
+but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
+human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
+that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
+not read the diary to me before.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
+life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
+day is this?'
+
+'This is the 20th.'
+
+'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
+still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
+seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
+business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
+with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
+you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
+Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
+Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
+matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'
+
+As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:
+
+'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected--from the
+Indian?'
+
+'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian--Persian.'
+
+Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
+which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
+telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
+the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
+and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
+Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.
+
+'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
+has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
+really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
+Jocelin was found by his servant--I imagine he had a servant, though no
+mention is made of any--lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
+Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem--an oval stone,
+white in colour--the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
+Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence--no trace of
+poison--the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
+this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
+I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three--and in one island
+in the South Seas, forty-four--different methods of doing murder, any
+one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
+agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.
+
+'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
+first, _who_ is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
+this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
+name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
+afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
+man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
+his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
+manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
+lived. "What," he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
+long-desired gem, "what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'"--the
+meaning which _he_ so well knew. "One of the lost secrets of the
+world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
+Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
+circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
+the solution of the riddle, or else--what is more likely, in spite of
+his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"--that his mind, and
+the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
+than the Edmundsbury Monks. But _they_ did not make the stone, nor did
+they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk--they got it from
+some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
+stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
+someone from whom _he_ received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
+of time. And consider the character of the engraving--it consists of _a
+mythological animal_, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only
+are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
+Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
+Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
+glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
+that the figure of the _scarabaeus_ on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
+infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
+grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
+that evidence alone--though there is more--that this gem was certainly
+Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of "Has" vanishes:
+for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
+Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
+precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
+childishly calls "the lost secrets of the world": for every successive
+inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
+led astray in his investigation. "Has" is, in fact, part of the word
+"Hasn-us-Sabah," and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
+obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
+shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
+of graving in precious stones than the Persians,--by a rude, mediaeval
+Englishman, in short,--the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
+of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman--who
+either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
+him--do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
+fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
+red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
+I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
+that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
+his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
+of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
+believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
+incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
+Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
+politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
+--the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
+him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
+well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
+of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, _and
+plundered_, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
+or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
+this time there was a cordial _rapprochement_ between Saladin and
+Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
+generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
+deep mystic importance, took place--remember "The Talisman," and the
+"Lee Penny"; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
+then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
+(as we are informed by the _Jocelini Chronica_) was _opened by the
+Abbot_ at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
+occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
+it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
+this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
+whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
+presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
+surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
+bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, "al
+Hasani" or "Ismaili"--"that accursed _Ishmaelite_," the baronet
+exclaims in one place--still live, are still a flourishing sect
+impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
+chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
+"Lebanon" on which Sir Jocelin "picked up" his too doubtful scribe and
+literary helper?
+
+'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the
+Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of
+his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to
+England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the
+breast of the founder of his sect. In dread of spoiling all by
+over-rashness, he waits, perhaps for years, till he makes sure that the
+stone is the right one by seeing it with his own eyes, and learns the
+secret of the spring by which the chalice is opened. He then proceeds
+to steal it. So far all is clear enough. Now, this too is conceivable,
+that, intending to commit the theft, he had beforehand provided himself
+with another stone similar in size and shape--these being well known to
+him--to the other, in order to substitute it for the real stone, and
+so, for a time at least, escape detection. It is presumable that the
+chalice was not often _opened_ by the baronet, and this would therefore
+have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But
+assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd
+appears all the trouble he took to _engrave_ the false stone in an
+exactly similar manner to the other. _That_ could not help him in
+producing the deception, for that he did not contemplate the stone
+being _seen_, but only _heard_ in the cup, is proved by the fact that
+he selected a stone of a different _colour_. This colour, as I shall
+afterwards show you, was that of a pale, brown-spotted stone. But we
+are met with something more extraordinary still when we come to the
+last stone, the white one--I shall prove that it was white--which
+Ul-Jabal placed in the cup. Is it possible that he had provided _two_
+substitutes, and that he had engraved these _two_, without object, in
+the same minutely careful manner? Your mind refuses to conceive it; and
+_having_ done this, declines, in addition, to believe that he had
+prepared even one substitute; and I am fully in accord with you in this
+conclusion.
+
+'We may say then that Ul-Jabal had not _prepared_ any substitute; and
+it may be added that it was a thing altogether beyond the limits of the
+probable that he could _by chance_ have possessed two old gems exactly
+similar in every detail down to the very half-obliterated letters of
+the word "Hasn-us-Sabah." I have now shown, you perceive, that he did
+not make them purposely, and that he did not possess them accidentally.
+Nor were they the baronet's, for we have his declaration that he had
+never seen them before. Whence then did the Persian obtain them? That
+point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his
+motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all,
+for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in
+order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by
+making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the
+real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.
+
+'You are surprised; for you argue that if we are to take the baronet's
+evidence at all, we must take it in this particular also, and he
+positively asserts that he saw the Persian take the stone. It is true
+that there are indubitable signs of insanity in the document, but it is
+the insanity of a diseased mind manifesting itself by fantastic
+exaggeration of sentiment, rather than of a mind confiding to itself
+its own delusions as to matters of fact. There is therefore nothing so
+certain as that Ul-Jabal did steal the gem; but these two things are
+equally evident: that by some means or other it very soon passed out of
+his possession, and that when it had so passed, he, for his part,
+believed it to be in the possession of the baronet. "Now," he cries in
+triumph, one day as he catches Sir Jocelin in his room--"_now_ you have
+delivered all into my hands." "All" what, Sir Jocelin wonders. "All,"
+of course, meant the stone. He believes that the baronet has done
+precisely what the baronet afterwards believes that _he_ has
+done--hidden away the stone in the most secret of all places, in his
+own apartment, to wit. The Persian, sure now at last of victory,
+accordingly hastens into his chamber, and "locks the door," in order,
+by an easy search, to secure his prize. When, moreover, the baronet is
+examining the house at night with his lens, he believes that Ul-Jabal
+is spying his movements; when he extends his operations to the park,
+the other finds pretexts to be near him. Ul-Jabal dogs his footsteps
+like a shadow. But supposing he had really had the jewel, and had
+deposited it in a place of perfect safety--such as, with or without
+lenses, the extensive grounds of the manor-house would certainly have
+afforded--his more reasonable _role_ would have been that of
+unconscious _nonchalance_, rather than of agonised interest. But, in
+fact, he supposed the owner of the stone to be himself seeking a secure
+hiding-place for it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the
+secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports
+that Ul-Jabal "holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent
+down": can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of _search_?
+Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is
+able to suspect that both are seekers.
+
+'But, after all, there is far better evidence of the non-possession of
+the stone by the Persian than all this--and that is the murder of the
+baronet, for I can almost promise you that our messenger will return in
+a few minutes. Now, it seems to me that Ul-Jabal was not really
+murderous, averse rather to murder; thus the baronet is often in his
+power, swoons in his arms, lies under the influence of narcotics in
+semi-sleep while the Persian is in his room, and yet no injury is done
+him. Still, when the clear necessity to murder--the clear means of
+gaining the stone--presents itself to Ul-Jabal, he does not hesitate a
+moment--indeed, he has already made elaborate preparations for that
+very necessity. And when was it that this necessity presented itself?
+It was when the baronet put the false stone in the pocket of a loose
+gown for the purpose of confronting the Persian with it. But what kind
+of pocket? I think you will agree with me, that male garments,
+admitting of the designation "gown," have usually only outer
+pockets--large, square pockets, simply sewed on to the outside of the
+robe. But a stone of that size _must_ have made such a pocket bulge
+outwards. Ul-Jabal must have noticed it. Never before has he been
+perfectly sure that the baronet carried the long-desired gem about on
+his body; but now at last he knows beyond all doubt. To obtain it,
+there are several courses open to him: he may rush there and then on
+the weak old man and tear the stone from him; he may ply him with
+narcotics, and extract it from the pocket during sleep. But in these
+there is a small chance of failure; there is a certainty of near or
+ultimate detection, pursuit--and this is a land of Law, swift and
+fairly sure. No, the old man must die: only thus--thus surely, and thus
+secretly--can the outraged dignity of Hasn-us-Sabah be appeased. On the
+very next day he leaves the house--no more shall the mistrustful
+baronet, who is "hiding something from him," see his face. He carries
+with him a small parcel. Let me tell you what was in that parcel: it
+contained the baronet's fur cap, one of his "brown gowns," and a
+snow-white beard and wig. Of the cap we can be sure; for from the fact
+that, on leaving his room at midnight to follow the Persian through the
+_house_, he put it on his head, I gather that he wore it habitually
+during all his waking hours; yet after Ul-Jabal has left him he wanders
+_far and wide_ "with uncovered head." Can you not picture the
+distracted old man seeking ever and anon with absent mind for his
+long-accustomed head-gear, and seeking in vain? Of the gown, too, we
+may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led
+Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there
+to _hide_ the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to _seek_ it, for
+he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it
+in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been
+previously seen in his room. But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal
+has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in
+"the old days of love"; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep
+sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is "brown as the leaves of autumn."
+That is the evidence of which I spake in the beginning as giving us a
+hint of the exact shade of the Oriental's colour--it was the
+yellowish-brown of a sered leaf. And now that the face of the baronet
+has been smeared with this indelible pigment, all is ready for the
+tragedy, and Ul-Jabal departs. He will return, but not immediately, for
+he will at least give the eyes of his victim time to grow accustomed to
+the change of colour in his face; nor will he tarry long, for there is
+no telling whether, or whither, the stone may not disappear from that
+outer pocket. I therefore surmise that the tragedy took place a day or
+two ago. I remembered the feebleness of the old man, his highly
+neurotic condition; I thought of those "fibrillary twitchings,"
+indicating the onset of a well-known nervous disorder sure to end in
+sudden death; I recalled his belief that on account of the loss of the
+stone, in which he felt his life bound up, the chariot of death was
+urgent on his footsteps; I bore in mind his memory of his grandfather
+dying in agony just seventy years ago after seeing his own wraith by
+the churchyard-wall; I knew that such a man could not be struck by the
+sudden, the terrific shock of seeing _himself_ sitting in the chair
+before the mirror (the chair, you remember, had been _placed_ there by
+Ul-Jabal) without dropping down stone dead on the spot. I was thus able
+to predict the manner and place of the baronet's death--if he _be_
+dead. Beside him, I said, would probably be found a white stone. For
+Ul-Jabal, his ghastly impersonation ended, would hurry to the pocket,
+snatch out the stone, and finding it not the stone he sought, would in
+all likelihood dash it down, fly away from the corpse as if from
+plague, and, I hope, straightway go and--hang himself.'
+
+It was at this point that the black mask of Ham framed itself between
+the python-skin tapestries of the doorway. I tore from him the paper,
+now two days old, which he held in his hand, and under the heading,
+'Sudden death of a Baronet,' read a nearly exact account of the facts
+which Zaleski had been detailing to me.
+
+'I can see by your face that I was not altogether at fault,' he said,
+with one of his musical laughs; 'but there still remains for us to
+discover whence Ul-Jabal obtained his two substitutes, his motive for
+exchanging one for the other, and for stealing the valueless gem; but,
+above all, we must find where the real stone was all the time that
+these two men so sedulously sought it, and where it now is. Now, let us
+turn our attention to this stone, and ask, first, what light does the
+inscription on the cup throw on its nature? The inscription assures us
+that if "this stone be stolen," or if it "chaunges dre," the House of
+Saul and its head "anoon" (i.e. anon, at once) shall die. "Dre," I may
+remind you, is an old English word, used, I think, by Burns, identical
+with the Saxon "_dreogan_," meaning to "suffer." So that the writer at
+least contemplated that the stone might "suffer changes." But what kind
+of changes--external or internal? External change--change of
+environment--is already provided for when he says, "shulde this Ston
+stalen bee"; "chaunges," therefore, in _his_ mind, meant internal
+changes. But is such a thing possible for any precious stone, and for
+this one in particular? As to that, we might answer when we know the
+name of this one. It nowhere appears in the manuscript, and yet it is
+immediately discoverable. For it was a "sky-blue" stone; a sky-blue,
+sacred stone; a sky-blue, sacred, Persian stone. That at once gives us
+its name--it was a _turquoise_. But can the turquoise, to the certain
+knowledge of a mediaeval writer, "chaunges dre"? Let us turn for light
+to old Anselm de Boot: that is he in pig-skin on the shelf behind the
+bronze Hera.'
+
+I handed the volume to Zaleski. He pointed to a passage which read as
+follows:
+
+'Assuredly the turquoise doth possess a soul more intelligent than that
+of man. But we cannot be wholly sure of the presence of Angels in
+precious stones. I do rather opine that the evil spirit doth take up
+his abode therein, transforming himself into an angel of light, to the
+end that we put our trust not in God, but in the precious stone; and
+thus, perhaps, doth he deceive our spirits by the turquoise: for the
+turquoise is of two sorts: those which keep their colour, and those
+which lose it.'[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Assurement la turquoise a une ame plus intelligente que
+l'ame de l'homme. Mais nous ne pouvons rien establir de certain
+touchant la presence des Anges dans les pierres precieuses. Mon
+jugement seroit plustot que le mauvais esprit, qui se transforme en
+Ange de lumiere se loge dans les pierres precieuses, a fin que l'on ne
+recoure pas a Dieu, mais que l'on repose sa creance dans la pierre
+precieuse; ainsi, peut-etre, il decoit nos esprits par la turquoise:
+car la turquoise est de deux sortes, les unes qui conservent leur
+couleur et les autres qui la perdent.' _Anselm de Boot_, Book II.]
+
+'You thus see,' resumed Zaleski, 'that the turquoise was believed to
+have the property of changing its colour--a change which was
+universally supposed to indicate the fading away and death of its
+owner. The good De Boot, alas, believed this to be a property of too
+many other stones beside, like the Hebrews in respect of their urim and
+thummim; but in the case of the turquoise, at least, it is a
+well-authenticated natural phenomenon, and I have myself seen such a
+specimen. In some cases the change is a gradual process; in others it
+may occur suddenly within an hour, especially when the gem, long kept
+in the dark, is exposed to brilliant sunshine. I should say, however,
+that in this metamorphosis there is always an intermediate stage: the
+stone first changes from blue to a pale colour spotted with brown, and,
+lastly, to a pure white. Thus, Ul-Jabal having stolen the stone, finds
+that it is of the wrong colour, and soon after replaces it; he supposes
+that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes
+the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and,
+infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury
+chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the
+baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for
+the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its
+final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two
+stones have been substituted by Ul-Jabal for his own invaluable gem.
+All this while the gem was lying serenely in its place in the chalice.
+And thus it came to pass that in the Manor-house of Saul there arose a
+somewhat considerable Ado about Nothing.'
+
+For a moment Zaleski paused; then, turning round and laying his hand on
+the brown forehead of the mummy by his side, he said:
+
+'My friend here could tell you, and he would, a fine tale of the
+immensely important part which jewels in all ages have played in human
+history, human religions, institutions, ideas. He flourished some five
+centuries before the Messiah, was a Memphian priest of Amsu, and, as
+the hieroglyphics on his coffin assure me, a prime favourite with one
+Queen Amyntas. Beneath these mouldering swaddlings of the grave a great
+ruby still cherishes its blood-guilty secret on the forefinger of his
+right hand. Most curious is it to reflect how in _all_ lands, and at
+_all_ times, precious minerals have been endowed by men with mystic
+virtues. The Persians, for instance, believed that spinelle and the
+garnet were harbingers of joy. Have you read the ancient Bishop of
+Rennes on the subject? Really, I almost think there must be some truth
+in all this. The instinct of universal man is rarely far at fault.
+Already you have a semi-comic "gold-cure" for alcoholism, and you have
+heard of the geophagism of certain African tribes. What if the
+scientist of the future be destined to discover that the diamond, and
+it alone, is a specific for cholera, that powdered rubellite cures
+fever, and the chryso-beryl gout? It would be in exact conformity with
+what I have hitherto observed of a general trend towards a certain
+inborn perverseness and whimsicality in Nature.'
+
+_Note_.--As some proof of the fineness of intuition evidenced by
+Zaleski, as distinct from his more conspicuous powers of reasoning, I
+may here state that some years after the occurrence of the tragedy I
+have recorded above, the skeleton of a man was discovered in the vaults
+of the Manor-house of Saul. I have not the least doubt that it was the
+skeleton of Ul-Jabal. The teeth were very prominent. A rotten rope was
+found loosely knotted round the vertebrae of his neck.
+
+
+
+
+THE S.S.
+
+'Wohlgeborne, gesunde Kinder bringen viel mit....
+
+'Wenn die Natur verabscheut, so spricht sie es laut aus: das Geschoepf,
+das falsch lebt, wird frueh zerstoert. Unfruchtbarkeit, kuemmerliches
+Dasein, fruehzeitiges Zerfallen, das sind ihre Flueche, die Kennzeichen
+ihrer Strenge.' GOETHE. [Footnote: 'Well-made, healthy children bring
+much into the world along with them....
+
+'When Nature abhors, she speaks it aloud: the creature that lives with
+a false life is soon destroyed. Unfruitfulness, painful existence,
+early destruction, these are her curses, the tokens of her
+displeasure.']
+
+[Greek: Argos de andron echaerothae outo, oste oi douloi auton eschon
+panta ta praegmata, archontes te kai diepontes, es ho epaebaesan hoi
+ton apolomenon paides.] HERODOTUS. [Footnote: 'And Argos was so
+depleted of Men (i.e. _after the battle with Cleomenes_) that the
+slaves usurped everything--ruling and disposing--until such time as the
+sons of the slain were grown up.']
+
+To say that there are epidemics of suicide is to give expression to
+what is now a mere commonplace of knowledge. And so far are they from
+being of rare occurrence, that it has even been affirmed that every
+sensational case of _felo de se_ published in the newspapers is sure to
+be followed by some others more obscure: their frequency, indeed, is
+out of all proportion with the _extent_ of each particular outbreak.
+Sometimes, however, especially in villages and small townships, the
+wildfire madness becomes an all-involving passion, emulating in its
+fury the great plagues of history. Of such kind was the craze in
+Versailles in 1793, when about a quarter of the whole population
+perished by the scourge; while that at the _Hotel des Invalides_ in
+Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the
+present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind
+throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and
+black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a
+brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the
+dear sick stress of her desire--with just such faintings, wanton fires,
+does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary
+to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour.
+
+   'When she sees a bank
+   Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
+   Her servants, what a pretty place it were
+   To bury lovers in; and make her maids
+   Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.'
+
+[Footnote: Beaumont and Fletcher: _The Maid's Tragedy_.]
+
+The _mode_ spreads--then rushes into rage: to breathe is to be
+obsolete: to wear the shroud becomes _comme il faut_, this cerecloth
+acquiring all the attractiveness and _eclat_ of a wedding-garment. The
+coffin is not too strait for lawless nuptial bed; and the sweet clods
+of the valley will prove no barren bridegroom of a writhing progeny.
+There is, however, nothing specially mysterious in the operation of a
+pestilence of this nature: it is as conceivable, if not yet as
+explicable, as the contagion of cholera, mind being at least as
+sensitive to the touch of mind as body to that of body.
+
+It was during the ever-memorable outbreak of this obscure malady in the
+year 1875 that I ventured to break in on the calm of that deep Silence
+in which, as in a mantle, my friend Prince Zaleski had wrapped himself.
+I wrote, in fact, to ask him what he thought of the epidemic. His
+answer was in the laconic words addressed to the Master in the house of
+woe at Bethany:
+
+'Come and see.'
+
+To this, however, he added in postscript: 'but what epidemic?'
+
+I had momentarily lost sight of the fact that Zaleski had so absolutely
+cut himself off from the world, that he was not in the least likely to
+know anything even of the appalling series of events to which I had
+referred. And yet it is no exaggeration to say that those events had
+thrown the greater part of Europe into a state of consternation, and
+even confusion. In London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, especially
+the excitement was intense. On the Sunday preceding the writing of my
+note to Zaleski, I was present at a monster demonstration held in Hyde
+Park, in which the Government was held up on all hands to the popular
+derision and censure--for it will be remembered that to many minds the
+mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring
+conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere
+self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless
+and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some
+wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the
+police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed
+under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand
+panaceas were invented, a thousand aimless censures passed. But the
+people listened with vacant ear. Never have I seen the populace so
+agitated, and yet so subdued, as with the sense of some impending doom.
+The glittering eye betrayed the excitement, the pallor of the cheek the
+doubt, the haunting _fear_. None felt himself quite safe; men
+recognised shuddering the grin of death in the air. To tingle with
+affright, and to know not why--that is the transcendentalism of terror.
+The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind
+in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that
+walketh _by night_ that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to
+being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks.
+And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had
+but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard
+that on the Stock Exchange, as in the Paris _Bourse_, business
+decreased to a minimum. In Parliament the work of law-threshing
+practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
+answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
+motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.
+
+It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
+Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
+because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
+invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
+time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
+had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
+flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
+excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
+eyes. I avow that that lonesome room--gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
+perfumed light--shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
+narcotic-breathing draperies--pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
+brooding occupant--grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
+remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
+midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
+cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
+all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
+friend.
+
+Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
+into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
+words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
+laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
+properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
+gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
+all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
+of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
+must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
+the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
+an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
+suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
+and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
+for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
+the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
+firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
+he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with which he was
+always tormented by any mystery which momentarily baffled him, I was,
+of course, forced to hold my peace. On the third day, however, of his
+own accord he asked me to what epidemic I had referred. I then detailed
+to him some of the strange events which were agitating the mind of the
+outside world. From the very first he was interested: later on that
+interest grew into a passion, a greedy soul-consuming quest after the
+truth, the intensity of which was such at last as to move me even to
+pity.
+
+I may as well here restate the facts as I communicated them to Zaleski.
+The concatenation of incidents, it will be remembered, started with the
+extraordinary death of that eminent man of science, Professor
+Schleschinger, consulting laryngologist to the Charite Hospital in
+Berlin. The professor, a man of great age, was on the point of
+contracting his third marriage with the beautiful and accomplished
+daughter of the Herr Geheimrath Otto von Friedrich. The contemplated
+union, which was entirely one of those _mariages de convenance_ so
+common in good society, sprang out of the professor's ardent desire to
+leave behind him a direct heir to his very considerable wealth. By his
+first two marriages, indeed, he had had large families, and was at this
+very time surrounded by quite an army of little grandchildren, from
+whom (all his direct descendants being dead) he might have been content
+to select his heir; but the old German prejudices in these matters are
+strong, and he still hoped to be represented on his decease by a son of
+his own. To this whim the charming Ottilie was marked by her parents as
+the victim. The wedding, however, had been postponed owing to a slight
+illness of the veteran scientist, and just as he was on the point of
+final recovery from it, death intervened to prevent altogether the
+execution of his design. Never did death of man create a profounder
+sensation; _never was death of man followed by consequences more
+terrible_. The _Residenz_ of the scientist was a stately mansion near
+the University in the _Unter den Linden_ boulevard, that is to say, in
+the most fashionable _Quartier_ of Berlin. His bedroom from a
+considerable height looked out on a small back garden, and in this room
+he had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical
+attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all
+this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various
+topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of
+what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain
+grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had
+found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the
+horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion
+to make a _post-mortem_ examination. The woman had suffered from
+partial paralysis. She had a small young family, none of whom, however,
+could give any account of the slip, except one little girl, who
+declared that she had taken it 'from her mother's mouth' after death.
+The slip was soiled, and had a fragrant smell, as though it had been
+smeared with honey. The professor added that all through his illness he
+had been employing himself by examining these figures. He was
+convinced, he said, that they contained some archaeological
+significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a
+slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,--on the bed of a dead
+Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the
+_mouth_ of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident
+seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the
+instinct--so strong in him--to investigate, to probe. For days, he
+declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the
+figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe
+that the figures--rude and uncouth as they were--were only such as
+might be drawn by any school-boy in an idle moment. They consisted
+merely of a man and a woman seated on a bench, with what looked like an
+ornamental border running round them. After a pleasant evening's
+scientific gossip, Dr. Hofmeier, a little after midnight, took his
+departure from the bed-side. An hour later the servants were roused
+from sleep by one deep, raucous cry proceeding from the professor's
+room. They hastened to his door; it was locked on the inside; all was
+still within. No answer coming to their calls, the door was broken in.
+They found their master lying calm and dead on his bed. A window of the
+room was open, but there was nothing to show that any one had entered
+it. Dr. Hofmeier was sent for, and was soon on the scene. After
+examining the body, he failed to find anything to account for the
+sudden demise of his old friend and chief. One observation, however,
+had the effect of causing him to tingle with horror. On his entrance he
+had noticed, lying on the side of the bed, the piece of papyrus with
+which the professor had been toying in the earlier part of the day, and
+had removed it. But, as he was on the point of leaving the room, he
+happened to approach the corpse once more, and bending over it, noticed
+that the lips and teeth were slightly parted. Drawing open the now
+stiffened jaws, he found--to his amazement, to his stupefaction--that,
+neatly folded beneath the dead tongue, lay just such another piece of
+papyrus as that which he had removed from the bed. He drew it out--it
+was clammy. He put it to his nose,--it exhaled the fragrance of honey.
+He opened it,--it was covered by figures. He compared them with the
+figures on the other slip,--they were just so similar as two
+draughtsmen hastily copying from a common model would make them. The
+doctor was unnerved: he hurried homeward, and immediately submitted the
+honey on the papyrus to a rigorous chemical analysis: he suspected
+poison--a subtle poison--as the means of a suicide, grotesquely,
+insanely accomplished. He found the fluid to be perfectly
+innocuous,--pure honey, and nothing more.
+
+The next day Germany thrilled with the news that Professor
+Schleschinger had destroyed himself. For suicide, however, some of the
+papers substituted murder, though of neither was there an atom of
+actual proof. On the day following, three persons died by their own
+hands in Berlin, of whom two were young members of the medical
+profession; on the day following that, the number rose to nineteen,
+Hamburg, Dresden, and Aachen joining in the frenzied death-dance;
+within three weeks from the night on which Professor Schleschinger met
+his unaccountable end, eight thousand persons in Germany, France, and
+Great Britain, died in that startlingly sudden and secret manner which
+we call 'tragic', many of them obviously by their own hands, many, in
+what seemed the servility of a fatal imitativeness, with figured,
+honey-smeared slips of papyrus beneath their tongues. Even now--now,
+after years--I thrill intensely to recall the dread remembrance; but to
+live through it, to breathe daily the mawkish, miasmatic atmosphere,
+all vapid with the suffocating death--ah, it was terror too deep,
+nausea too foul, for mortal bearing. Novalis has somewhere hinted at
+the possibility (or the desirability) of a simultaneous suicide and
+voluntary return by the whole human family into the sweet bosom of our
+ancient Father--I half expected it was coming, had come, _then_. It was
+as if the old, good-easy, meek-eyed man of science, dying, had left his
+effectual curse on all the world, and had thereby converted
+civilisation into one omnivorous grave, one universal charnel-house. I
+spent several days in reading out to Zaleski accounts of particular
+deaths as they had occurred. He seemed never to tire of listening,
+lying back for the most part on the silver-cushioned couch, and wearing
+an inscrutable mask. Sometimes he rose and paced the carpet with
+noiseless foot-fall, his steps increasing to the swaying, uneven
+velocity of an animal in confinement as a passage here or there
+attracted him, and then subsiding into their slow regularity again. At
+any interruption in the reading, he would instantly turn to me with a
+certain impatience, and implore me to proceed; and when our stock of
+matter failed, he broke out into actual anger that I had not brought
+more with me. Henceforth the negro, Ham, using my trap, daily took a
+double journey--one before sunrise, and one at dusk--to the nearest
+townlet, from which he would return loaded with newspapers. With
+unimaginable eagerness did both Zaleski and I seize, morning after
+morning, and evening after evening, on these budgets, to gloat for long
+hours over the ever-lengthening tale of death. As for him, sleep
+forsook him. He was a man of small reasonableness, scorning the
+limitations of human capacity; his palate brooked no meat when his
+brain was headlong in the chase; even the mild narcotics which were now
+his food and drink seemed to lose something of their power to mollify,
+to curb him. Often rising from slumber in what I took to be the dead of
+night--though of day or night there could be small certainty in that
+dim dwelling--I would peep into the domed chamber, and see him there
+under the livid-green light of the censer, the leaden smoke issuing
+from his lips, his eyes fixed unweariedly on a square piece of ebony
+which rested on the coffin of the mummy near him. On this ebony he had
+pasted side by side several woodcuts--snipped from the newspapers--of
+the figures traced on the pieces of papyrus found in the mouths of the
+dead. I could see, as time passed, that he was concentrating all his
+powers on these figures; for the details of the deaths themselves were
+all of a dreary sameness, offering few salient points for
+investigation. In those cases where the suicide had left behind him
+clear evidence of the means by which he had committed the act, there
+was nothing to investigate; the others--rich and poor alike, peer and
+peasant--trooped out by thousands on the far journey, without leaving
+the faintest footprint to mark the road by which they had gone.
+
+This was perhaps the reason that, after a time, Zaleski discarded the
+newspapers, leaving their perusal to me, and turned his attention
+exclusively to the ebon tablet. Knowing as I full well did the daring
+and success of his past spiritual adventures,--the subtlety, the
+imagination, the imperial grip of his intellect,--I did not at all
+doubt that his choice was wise, and would in the end be justified.
+These woodcuts--now so notorious--were all exactly similar in design,
+though minutely differing here and there in drawing. The following is a
+facsimile of one of them taken by me at random:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The time passed. It now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid
+pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of
+Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in
+his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I
+decided at last--if mystery there were--was too deep, too dark, for
+him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more
+from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat
+reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard a loud cry from
+the vaulted chamber. I rushed to the door and beheld him standing,
+gazing with wild eyes at the ebon tablet held straight out in front of
+him.
+
+'By Heaven!' he cried, stamping savagely with his foot. 'By Heaven!
+Then I certainly _am_ a fool! _It is the staff of Phaebus in the hand
+of Hermes!'_
+
+I hastened to him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'have you discovered anything?'
+
+'It is possible.'
+
+'And has there really been foul play--murder--in any of these deaths?'
+
+'Of that, at least, I was certain from the first.'
+
+'Great God!' I exclaimed, 'could any son of man so convert himself into
+a fiend, a beast of the wilderness....'
+
+'You judge precisely in the manner of the multitude,' he answered
+somewhat petulantly. 'Illegal murder is always a mistake, but not
+necessarily a crime. Remember Corday. But in cases where the murder of
+one is really fiendish, why is it qualitatively less fiendish than the
+murder of many? On the other hand, had Brutus slain a thousand
+Caesars--each act involving an additional exhibition of the sublimest
+self-suppression--he might well have taken rank as a saint in heaven.'
+
+Failing for the moment to see the drift or the connection of the
+argument, I contented myself with waiting events. For the rest of that
+day and the next Zaleski seemed to have dismissed the matter of the
+tragedies from his mind, and entered calmly on his former studies. He
+no longer consulted the news, or examined the figures on the tablet.
+The papers, however, still arrived daily, and of these he soon
+afterwards laid several before me, pointing, with a curious smile, to a
+small paragraph in each. These all appeared in the advertisement
+columns, were worded alike, and read as follows:
+
+'A true son of Lycurgus, _having news_, desires to know the _time_ and
+_place_ of the next meeting of his Phyle. Address Zaleski, at R----
+Abbey, in the county of M----.'
+
+I gazed in mute alternation at the advertisement and at him. I may here
+stop to make mention of a very remarkable sensation which my
+association with him occasionally produced in me. I felt it with
+intense, with unpleasant, with irritating keenness at this moment. It
+was the sensation of being borne aloft--aloft--by a force external to
+myself--such a sensation as might possibly tingle through an earthworm
+when lifted into illimitable airy heights by the strongly-daring
+pinions of an eagle. It was the feeling of being hurried out beyond
+one's depth--caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of
+some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have
+experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me--winged, rocking,
+ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!--round a too narrow curve. It was a
+sensation very far from agreeable.
+
+'To that,' he said, pointing to the paragraph, 'we may, I think,
+shortly expect an answer. Let us only hope that when it comes it may be
+immediately intelligible.'
+
+We waited throughout the whole of that day and night, hiding our
+eagerness under the pretence of absorption in our books. If by chance I
+fell into an uneasy doze, I found him on waking ever watchful, and
+poring over the great tome before him. About the time, however, when,
+could we have seen it, the first grey of dawn must have been peeping
+over the land, his impatience again became painful to witness; he rose
+and paced the room, muttering occasionally to himself. This only
+ceased, when, hours later, Ham entered the room with an envelope in his
+hand. Zaleski seized it--tore it open--ran his eye over the
+contents--and dashed it to the ground with an oath.
+
+'Curse it!' he groaned. 'Ah, curse it! unintelligible--every syllable
+of it!'
+
+I picked up the missive and examined it. It was a slip of papyrus
+covered with the design now so hideously familiar, except only that the
+two central figures were wanting. At the bottom was written the date of
+the 15th of November--it was then the morning of the 12th--and the name
+'Morris.' The whole, therefore, presented the following appearance:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+My eyes were now heavy with sleep, every sense half-drunken with the
+vapourlike atmosphere of the room, so that, having abandoned something
+of hope, I tottered willingly to my bed, and fell into a profound
+slumber, which lasted till what must have been the time of the
+gathering in of the shades of night. I then rose. Missing Zaleski, I
+sought through all the chambers for him. He was nowhere to be seen. The
+negro informed me with an affectionate and anxious tremor in the voice
+that his master had left the rooms some hours before, but had said
+nothing to him. I ordered the man to descend and look into the sacristy
+of the small chapel wherein I had deposited my _caleche_, and in the
+field behind, where my horse should be. He returned with the news that
+both had disappeared. Zaleski, I then concluded, had undoubtedly
+departed on a journey.
+
+I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by. He
+wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being. It was like
+matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit. Prince Zaleski had never
+before withdrawn himself from the _surveillance_ of this sturdy
+watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their
+little cosmos. Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some
+light on the meaning of this catastrophe. But I too was in the dark.
+The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken,
+childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of
+some great danger to the person of his master. So a day passed away,
+and then another. On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a
+letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski. It was hastily
+scribbled in pencil, dated 'London, Nov. 14th,' and ran thus:
+
+'For my body--should I not return by Friday night--you will, no doubt,
+be good enough to make search. _Descend_ the river, keeping constantly
+to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the _Descensus Aesopi._
+Seek diligently, and you will find. For the rest, you know my fancy for
+cremation: take me, if you will, to the crematorium of _Pere-Lachaise._
+My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.'
+
+Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to
+communicate a word of it. I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed,
+I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski. Friday night! It was then
+Thursday morning. And I was expected to wait through the dreary
+interval uncertain, agonised, inactive! I was offended with my friend;
+his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction. The leaden
+hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of
+my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep. On the next morning,
+however, another letter--a rather massive one--reached me. The covering
+was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the
+words: 'This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before
+Saturday.' I therefore laid the packet aside unread.
+
+I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o'clock, if nothing
+happened, I should make some sort of effort. But from six I remained,
+with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten. I was so utterly at
+a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I
+could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear
+absurd. But at midnight I sprang up--no longer would I endure the
+carking suspense. I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way. I
+had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished. Then I
+remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole
+vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but
+hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the
+labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted
+vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with
+something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out
+before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an
+hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what
+felt like cold and humid human flesh. I shrank back, unnerved as I
+already was, with a murmur of affright.
+
+'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.
+
+Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
+my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.
+
+Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
+With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.
+
+It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
+of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
+breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
+to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
+want sleep--only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
+by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
+infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
+garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
+dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
+reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
+girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed _ceinture_. With all
+the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
+the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
+unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
+the sleeper woke, in his eye,--full of divine instinct,--flitted the
+wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
+austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
+pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
+fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
+by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said:
+
+'We have, Shiel, had before us a very remarkable series of murders, and
+a very remarkable series of suicides. Were they in any way connected?
+To this extent, I think--that the mysterious, the unparalleled nature
+of the murders gave rise to a morbid condition in the public mind,
+which in turn resulted in the epidemic of suicide. But though such an
+epidemic has its origin in the instinct of imitation so common in men,
+you must not suppose that the mental process is a _conscious_ one. A
+person feels an impulse to go and do, and is not aware that at bottom
+it is only an impulse to go and do _likewise_. He would indeed
+repudiate such an assumption. Thus one man destroys himself, and
+another imitates him--but whereas the former uses a pistol, the latter
+uses a rope. It is rather absurd, therefore, to imagine that in any of
+those cases in which the slip of papyrus has been found in the mouth
+after death, the cause of death has been the slavish imitativeness of
+the suicidal mania,--for this, as I say, is never _slavish._ The
+papyrus then--quite apart from the unmistakable evidences of suicide
+invariably left by each self-destroyer--affords us definite and certain
+means by which we can distinguish the two classes of deaths; and we are
+thus able to divide the total number into two nearly equal halves.
+
+'But you start--you are troubled--you never heard or read of murder
+such as this, the simultaneous murder of thousands over wide areas of
+the face of the globe; here you feel is something outside your
+experience, deeper than your profoundest imaginings. To the question
+"by whom committed?" and "with what motive?" your mind can conceive no
+possible answer. And yet the answer must be, "by man, and for human
+motives,"--for the Angel of Death with flashing eye and flaming sword
+is himself long dead; and again we can say at once, by no _one_ man,
+but by many, a cohort, an army of men; and again, by no _common_ men,
+but by men hellish (or heavenly) in cunning, in resource, in strength
+and unity of purpose; men laughing to scorn the flimsy prophylactics of
+society, separated by an infinity of self-confidence and spiritual
+integrity from the ordinary easily-crushed criminal of our days.
+
+'This much at least I was able to discover from the first; and
+immediately I set myself to the detection of motive by a careful study
+of each case. This, too, in due time, became clear to me,--but to
+motive it may perhaps be more convenient to refer later on. What next
+engaged my attention was the figures on the papyrus, and devoutly did I
+hope that by their solution I might be able to arrive at some more
+exact knowledge of the mystery.
+
+'The figures round the border first attracted me, and the mere
+_reading_ of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that
+behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and
+this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive
+that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different
+lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta,
+and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one
+another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked
+myself, were these drawings meant to represent,--letters, numbers,
+things, or abstractions? This I was the more readily able to determine
+because I have often, in thinking over the shape of the Roman letter S,
+wondered whether it did not owe its convolute form to an attempt on the
+part of its inventor to make a picture of the _serpent;_ S being the
+sibilant or hissing letter, and the serpent the hissing animal. This
+view, I fancy (though I am not sure), has escaped the philologists, but
+of course you know that all letters were originally _pictures of
+things,_ and of what was S a picture, if not of the serpent? I
+therefore assumed, by way of trial, that the snakes in the diagram
+stood for a sibilant letter, that is, either C or S. And thence,
+supposing this to be the case, I deduced: firstly, that all the other
+figures stood for letters; and secondly, that they all appeared in the
+form of pictures of the things of which those letters were originally
+meant to be pictures. Thus the letter "m," one of the four "_liquid_"
+consonants, is, as we now write it, only a shortened form of a waved
+line; and as a waved line it was originally written, and was the
+character by which _a stream of running water_ was represented in
+writing; indeed it only owes its name to the fact that when the lips
+are pressed together, and "m" uttered by a continuous effort, a certain
+resemblance to the murmur of running water is produced. The longer
+waved line in the diagram I therefore took to represent "m"; and it at
+once followed that the shorter meant "n," for no two letters of the
+commoner European alphabets differ only in length (as distinct from
+shape) except "m" and "n", and "w" and "v"; indeed, just as the French
+call "w" "double-ve," so very properly might "m" be called "double-en."
+But, in this case, the longer not being "w," the shorter could not be
+"v": it was therefore "n." And now there only remained the heart and
+the triangle. I was unable to think of any letter that could ever have
+been intended for the picture of a heart, but the triangle I knew to be
+the letter #A.# This was originally written without the cross-bar from
+prop to prop, and the two feet at the bottom of the props were not
+separated as now, but joined; so that the letter formed a true
+triangle. It was meant by the primitive man to be a picture of his
+primitive house, this house being, of course, hut-shaped, and
+consisting of a conical roof without walls. I had thus, with the
+exception of the heart, disentangled the whole, which then (leaving a
+space for the heart) read as follows:
+
+     { ss
+ 'mn {    anan ... san.'
+     { cc
+
+But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
+'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
+also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'--except 'mnemonics' and
+its fellows--I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
+letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
+as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
+was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
+the first 's.' Thus I got
+
+'m ns sanan... san,'
+
+or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,
+
+'mens sana in... sano.'
+
+The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
+'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot--showing that the word as it stood was
+an abbreviation--conclusively proved every one of my deductions.
+
+'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
+central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
+heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
+light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
+as to the _general_ significance of these figures, for I saw at once
+their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
+you are not minutely acquainted with the _technique_ of these stones, I
+may as well show you one, which I myself removed from an old grave in
+Tarentum.'
+
+He took from a niche a small piece of close-grained marble, about a
+foot square, and laid it before me. On one side it was exquisitely
+sculptured in relief.
+
+'This,' he continued, 'is a typical example of the Greek grave-stone,
+and having seen one specimen you may be said to have seen almost all,
+for there is surprisingly little variety in the class. You will observe
+that the scene represents a man reclining on a couch; in his hand he
+holds a _patera,_ or dish, filled with grapes and pomegranates, and
+beside him is a tripod bearing the viands from which he is banqueting.
+At his feet sits a woman--for the Greek lady never reclined at table.
+In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent
+may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable
+pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from
+which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I
+considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the
+papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim.
+I said to myself: it can only be that the assassins have bound
+themselves to the observance of a strict and narrow ritual from which
+no departure is under any circumstances permitted--perhaps for the sake
+of signalling the course of events to others at a distance. But what
+ritual? That question I was able to answer when I knew the answer to
+these others,--why _under the tongue,_ and why _smeared with honey?_
+For no reason, except that the Greeks (not the Romans till very late in
+their history) always placed an _obolos,_ or penny, beneath the tongue
+of the dead to pay his passage across the Stygian river of ghosts; for
+no reason, except that to these same Greeks honey was a sacred fluid,
+intimately associated in their minds with the mournful subject of
+Death; a fluid with which the bodies of the deceased were anointed, and
+sometimes--especially in Sparta and the Pelasgic South--embalmed; with
+which libations were poured to Hermes Psuchopompos, conductor of the
+dead to the regions of shade; with which offerings were made to all the
+chthonic deities, and the souls of the departed in general. You
+remember, for instance, the melancholy words of Helen addressed to
+Hermione in _Orestes:_
+
+ [Greek: _Kai labe choas tasd'en cheroin komas t'emas
+ elthousa d'amphi ton Klutaimnaestras taphon
+ melikrat'aphes galaktos oinopon t'achnaen._]
+
+And so everywhere. The ritual then of the murderers was a _Greek_
+ritual, their cult a Greek cult--preferably, perhaps, a South Greek
+one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative
+peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this
+semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more
+certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were
+drawn from a Greek model.
+
+'Here, however, I came to a standstill. I was infinitely puzzled by the
+rod in the man's hand. In none of the Greek grave-reliefs does any such
+thing as a rod make an appearance, except in one well-known example
+where the god Hermes--generally represented as carrying the _caduceus_,
+or staff, given him by Phoebus--appears leading a dead maiden to the
+land of night. But in every other example of which I am aware the
+sculpture represents a man _living_, not dead, banqueting _on earth_,
+not in Hades, by the side of his living companion. What then could be
+the significance of the staff in the hand of this living man? It was
+only after days of the hardest struggle, the cruellest suspense, that
+the thought flashed on me that the idea of Hermes leading away the dead
+female might, in this case, have been carried one step farther; that
+the male figure might be no living man, no man at all, but _Hermes
+himself_ actually banqueting in Hades with the soul of his disembodied
+_protegee_! The thought filled me with a rapture I cannot describe, and
+you witnessed my excitement. But, at all events, I saw that this was a
+truly tremendous departure from Greek art and thought, to which in
+general the copyists seemed to cling so religiously. There must
+therefore be a reason, a strong reason, for vandalism such as this. And
+that, at any rate, it was no longer difficult to discover; for now I
+knew that the male figure was no mortal, but a god, a spirit, a DAEMON
+(in the Greek sense of the word); and the female figure I saw by the
+marked shortness of her drapery to be no Athenian, but a Spartan; no
+matron either, but a maiden, a lass, a LASSIE; and now I had forced on
+me lassie daemon, _Lacedaemon._
+
+'This then was the badge, the so carefully-buried badge, of this
+society of men. The only thing which still puzzled and confounded me at
+this stage was the startling circumstance that a _Greek_ society should
+make use of a _Latin_ motto. It was clear that either all my
+conclusions were totally wrong, or else the motto _mens sana in corpore
+sano_ contained wrapped up in itself some acroamatic meaning which I
+found myself unable to penetrate, and which the authors had found no
+Greek motto capable of conveying. But at any rate, having found this
+much, my knowledge led me of itself one step further; for I perceived
+that, widely extended as were their operations, the society was
+necessarily in the main an _English,_ or at least an English-speaking
+one--for of this the word "lassie" was plainly indicative: it was easy
+now to conjecture London, the monster-city in which all things lose
+themselves, as their head-quarters; and at this point in my
+investigations I despatched to the papers the advertisement you have
+seen.'
+
+'But,' I exclaimed, 'even now I utterly fail to see by what mysterious
+processes of thought you arrived at the wording of the advertisement;
+even now it conveys no meaning to my mind.'
+
+'That,' he replied,' will grow clear when we come to a right
+understanding of the baleful _motive_ which inspired these men. I have
+already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one
+possible method of doing so--and that was, by all means, by any means,
+to find out some condition or other common to every one of the victims
+before death. It is true that I was unable to do this in some few
+cases, but where I failed, I was convinced that my failure was due to
+the insufficiency of the evidence at my disposal, rather than to the
+actual absence of the condition. Now, let us take almost any two cases
+you will, and seek for this common condition: let us take, for example,
+the first two that attracted the attention of the world--the poor woman
+of the slums of Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by
+as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely,
+in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated
+_striae_ of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she
+has a "small young" family, which, had she lived, might have been
+increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia,
+"partial paralysis." The professor, too, has had not one, but two,
+large families, and an "army of grand-children": but note well the
+startling, the hideous fact, that _every one of his children is dead!_
+The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in _every one_ of
+those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism,
+lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean--but not before they have had time
+to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army
+of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his
+old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race
+still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance,
+the point of resemblance,--you see it? And, O heaven, is it not too
+sad? For me, I tell you, the whole business has a tragic pitifulness
+too deep for words. But this brings me to the discussion of a large
+matter. It would, for instance, be interesting to me to hear what you,
+a modern European, saturated with all the notions of your little day,
+what _you_ consider the supreme, the all-important question for the
+nations of Europe at this moment. Am I far wrong in assuming that you
+would rattle off half a dozen of the moot points agitating rival
+factions in your own land, select one of them, and call that "the
+question of the hour"? I wish I could see as you see; I wish to God I
+did not see deeper. In order to lead you to my point, what, let me ask
+you, what _precisely_ was it that ruined the old nations--that brought,
+say Rome, to her knees at last? Centralisation, you say, top-heavy
+imperialism, dilettante pessimism, the love of luxury. At bottom,
+believe me, it was not one of these high-sounding things--it was simply
+War; the sum total of the battles of centuries. But let me explain
+myself: this is a novel view to you, and you are perhaps unable to
+conceive how or why war was so fatal to the old world, because you see
+how little harmful it is to the new. If you collected in a promiscuous
+way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all
+simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of
+view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small,
+wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna
+in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and
+uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many,
+would flow on, and the void would soon be filled. But the effect would
+only be thus insignificant, if, as I said, your millions were taken
+promiscuously (as in the modern army), not if they were _picked_
+men----in _that_ case the loss (or gain) would be excessive, and
+permanent for all time. Now, the war-hosts of the ancient
+commonwealths--not dependent on the mechanical contrivances of the
+modern army--were necessarily composed of the very best men: the
+strong-boned, the heart-stout, the sound in wind and limb. Under these
+conditions the State shuddered through all her frame, thrilled adown
+every filament, at the death of a single one of her sons in the field.
+As only the feeble, the aged, bided at home, their number after each
+battle became larger _in proportion to the whole_ than before. Thus the
+nation, more and more, with ever-increasing rapidity, declined in
+bodily, and of course spiritual, quality, until the _end_ was reached,
+and Nature swallowed up the weaklings whole; and thus war, which to the
+modern state is at worst the blockhead and indecent _affaires
+d'honneur_ of persons in office--and which, surely, before you and I
+die will cease altogether--was to the ancient a genuine and
+remorselessly fatal scourge.
+
+'And now let me apply these facts to the Europe of our own time. We no
+longer have world-serious war--but in its place we have a scourge, the
+effect of which on the modern state is _precisely the same_ as the
+effect of war on the ancient, only,--in the end,--far more destructive,
+far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
+pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
+--shudder--as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
+bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
+medical, and especially surgical, science--that, if you like, for us
+all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what
+surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions"
+whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
+State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
+the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
+deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
+The net result is in each case the same--the altered ratio of the total
+amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
+disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
+worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
+must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
+becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
+him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
+slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
+saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian _he_, but
+a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
+Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and
+Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
+quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
+antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
+such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
+time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
+man to laugh at disease--laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
+natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
+destroying its ever-expanding _existence_. Do you know that at this
+moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
+suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
+whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
+hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like
+missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
+mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
+vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
+are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
+consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
+sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
+thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
+course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
+Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
+people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
+men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand--with a
+thrill of intensest joy, I say it!--is to be seen, if not yet
+commencing civilisation, then progress, progress--wide as the
+world--toward it: only here--at the heart--is there decadence, fatty
+degeneration. Brain-evolution--and favouring airs--and the ripening
+time--and the silent Will of God, of God--all these in conspiracy seem
+to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
+luxury of glory--when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
+more disease--that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
+especially--so sensitive to the physician's art--living on by hundreds
+of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
+who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
+proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
+curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
+may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
+question: _why?_ Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
+cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
+that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
+_therefore_ be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
+to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
+tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
+just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
+for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
+sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
+unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
+leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
+answer that question--I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
+the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
+humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
+it, coerced into sympathy with it. "Beautiful" I say: for if anywhere
+in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
+hospital _savants_ bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
+pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
+wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
+parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
+Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
+_lachesis mutus_; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
+_in_human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
+me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
+dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
+of the inner verities of this our earthly being--the dogma, that by the
+shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
+man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
+the necessity that one man die, "so that the whole people perish not"?
+Can it be true that by nothing less than the "three days of pestilence"
+shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
+alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
+inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
+anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
+foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
+is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
+future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
+glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism--the
+immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
+part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
+bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
+not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the _accoucheur,_ of
+the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
+breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
+function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
+are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
+Sparta--the "man-taming Sparta" Simonides calls her--answered them.
+Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
+of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
+under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
+parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
+commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
+he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
+place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
+that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
+stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
+Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
+all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
+express the idea "ugly," meant also "hateful," "vile," "disgraceful"
+--and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
+fact alone; for they considered--and rightly--that there is no
+sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
+perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful--if only very moderate pains
+be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
+Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
+Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
+barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
+Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
+"lament" on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
+the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
+thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
+the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
+one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
+remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
+understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
+papers.'
+
+Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular _tirade_, paused:
+replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
+cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
+and then continued:
+
+'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
+what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
+I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
+and an address, too--but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
+course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
+to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
+circumstance that the Latin proverb _mens sana etc._ should be adopted
+as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
+motto _contained an address_--the address of their meeting-place, or at
+least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
+of solving--and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour--this
+enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
+extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
+that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
+difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
+cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
+secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
+there was any _consistency_ in the system of cyphers at all, for it
+belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
+others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
+therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
+actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
+form _mens sana in ... pore sano._ I wrote this down, and what
+instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
+_liquids_ in the motto--six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
+of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
+_mnnnnr_, and you can see that the very appearance of the "m's" and
+"n's" (especially when _written_) running into one another, of itself
+suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
+of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
+inference of _the Thames_; there, or near there, would I find those
+whom I sought. The letters "mnnnnr," then, meant the Thames: what did
+the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
+placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
+these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
+occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
+inevitably get the word _Aesopi._ And now I was fairly startled by this
+symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
+respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
+_"Aesopi."_ For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
+wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
+wise--their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
+also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
+wisdom with wealth--true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
+all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
+he is typical, therefore, of death--the shedding of blood--as a result
+of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
+"in much wisdom is much sorrow." But how accurately all this fitted in
+with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
+was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
+immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.
+
+'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
+The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
+I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
+light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
+manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
+sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
+betoken any sort of connection with the word "Aesopi." In this way I
+passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
+fast my craft, and in a spirit of _diablerie_ spent the night in a
+common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
+beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
+_bonne camaraderie_ which the prevailing fear of death could not
+altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again--on,
+and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
+had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
+should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
+men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
+meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
+proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
+and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
+on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
+came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
+into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
+the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
+of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
+was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
+at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway--a winding
+road--leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
+its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
+the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
+was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
+And then--and then--tingling now with a thousand raptures--I beheld a
+pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
+counterpart of the first--and then, still leading on in the same
+direction, another pool--and then a great rock, heart-shaped--and then
+another winding road--and then another pool of water. All was a
+model--_exact to the minutest particular_--of the device on the
+papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
+short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
+three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
+representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
+heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
+and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
+rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
+at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
+black letters, was marked the words, "DESCENSUS AESOPI." It was
+necessary, therefore, to go _down_: the meeting-place was subterranean.
+It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
+ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
+series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
+descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
+confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
+_ziphos_ and _pelte_. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
+long with an earnest scrutiny.
+
+'"You are a Spartan?" he asked at length.
+
+'"Yes," I answered promptly.
+
+'"Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?"
+
+'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.
+
+'"You _are_ a Spartan?" he repeated.
+
+'I nodded with emphasis.
+
+'"Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?"
+
+'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
+that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
+of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency--to stretch
+itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
+_no_ combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
+alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
+lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
+by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
+always placed under the _tongue_ of the dead; I remembered, too, that
+among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to "turn
+up the _thumb_" (_pollicem vertere_) was a symbol significant of death.
+I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
+aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.
+
+'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
+supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
+the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
+walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
+reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
+chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
+stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
+gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
+From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.
+
+'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
+fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
+not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
+means by which my body might be traced.  'But on the next day a new
+thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: "these men are not common
+assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
+against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
+immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
+They will not therefore take mine, _unless_ they suppose me to be the
+only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
+think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
+designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
+such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
+whole secret, and--if the necessity should arise--_letting them know_
+that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
+life will be assured." I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
+account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
+the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
+time.
+
+'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
+day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
+at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
+sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
+hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the
+wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the
+mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I
+repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
+you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the "Morris," whose name
+appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _litterateur_ of that
+name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.
+
+'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
+undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
+wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
+with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
+methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too
+harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
+earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
+on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
+this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
+was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
+was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
+A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their
+murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated
+with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
+Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
+How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
+language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
+floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
+perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied
+lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
+rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that
+moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_
+utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some
+coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
+the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
+placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
+clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength
+remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _caleche_, and
+started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
+for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
+after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
+in this condition you found me.
+
+'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
+this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
+others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not
+unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel
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