Chapter XI: Part 11

Mrs Fitzwilliam made a sufficient introduction and waited for the interest to develop. So far the point of Carrados’s visit had not appeared.

“I believe that you know something about motors?” inquired the blind man.

“Well, what if I do?” retorted the bus-driver. His attitude was protective rather than intentionally offensive.

“If you do, I should be glad if you would look at the engine of my car. It got shaken, I fancy, in a slight accident that we had in Holborn this afternoon.”

“Oh!” The driver looked hard at Mr Carrados, but failed to get behind an expression of mild urbanity. “Why didn’t you say so at first?” he grumbled. “All right; I’ll trot round with you. Shan’t be long, missis.”

He led the way out and closed the door behind them, not ceasing to regard his visitor with a distrustful curiosity. At the gate he stopped, having by that time brought his mind round to the requirements of the situation, and faced Carrados.

“Look here,” he said, “what’s up? You don’t want me to look at no bloomin’ engine, you know. I don’t half like the whole bally business, let me tell you. What’s the gaime?”

“It’s a very simple game for you if you play it straightforwardly,” answered Carrados. “I want to know just how much you had to do with saving that man’s life in Holborn to-day.”

Fitzwilliam instinctively fell back a step and his gaze on Carrados quickened in its tensity.

“What d’yer mean?” he demanded with a quality of apprehension in his voice.

“That is complicating the game,” replied Carrados mildly. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“And what if I do?” demanded the driver. “What have you got to do with it, may I ask?”

“That is very reasonable. I happened to be in the car following you. We were scraped, but I am not making any claim for paint whatever happened. I am satisfied that you did very well indeed in the circumstances, and if a letter to your people--I know one of the directors--saying as much would be of any use to you----”

“Now we’re getting on, sir,” was the mollified admission. “You mustn’t mind a bit of freshness, so to speak. You took me by surprise, that’s what it was, and I’ve been wound up ever since that happened.” He hesitated, and then flung out the question almost with a passionate directness: “What was it, sir; in God’s name, what was it?”

“What was it?” repeated the blind man’s level voice persuasively.

“It wasn’t me. I couldn’t have done nothing. I didn’t see the man, not in time to have an earthly. Then we stopped. Good Gawd, I’ve never felt a stop like that before. It was as though a rubber band had tightened and pulled us up against ten yards squoze into one, so that you didn’t hardly know it. I hadn’t nothing to do with it. Not a brake was on, and the throttle open and the engine running. There we were. And me half silly.”

“You did very well,” said Carrados soothingly.

“I did nothing. If it had been left to me there’d have been a inquest. You seem to have noticed something, sir. How do you work it out?”

Carrados parried the question with a disingenuous allusion to the laws of chance. He had not yet worked it out, but he was not disposed to lay his astonishing conclusions, so far as they went, before the bus-driver’s crude discrimination. He had learned what he wanted. With a liberal acknowledgment of the service and a reiteration of his promise to write, he bade Mr Fitzwilliam good-night and returned to his waiting car.

“Back home, Harris,” he directed. He had gone out with some intention of including Hapsburg Square in his peregrination. He was now assured that his anxiety was groundless.

But the next morning all his confidence was shattered in a moment. It was his custom before and during breakfast to read by touch the headings of the various items in the newspapers and to mark for Greatorex’s later reading such paragraphs as claimed his interest. Generally he could, with some inconvenience, distinguish even the ordinary type by the same faculty, but sometimes the inequality of pressure made this a laborious process. There was no difficulty about the larger types, however, and with a terrible misgiving finger-tip and brain had at once grasped the significance of a prominent heading:

FATAL GAS EXPLOSION
HAPSBURG SQUARE BOARDING-HOUSE IN FLAMES

“Are you there, Parkinson?” he asked.

Parkinson could scarcely believe his well-ordered ears. Not since the early days of his affliction had Carrados found it necessary to ask such a question.

“Yes, sir, I’m here,” he almost stammered in reply. “I hope you are not unwell, sir?”

“I’m all right, thanks,” responded his master dryly--unable even then not to discover some amusement in having for once scared Parkinson out of his irreproachable decorum. “I was mentally elsewhere. I want you to read me this paragraph.”

“The one about Dr Tulloch, sir?” The name had caught the man’s eye at once. “Dear, dear me, sir.”

“Yes; go on,” said Carrados, with his nearest approach to impatience.

“‘During the early hours of this morning,’” read Parkinson, “‘52 Hapsburg Square was the scene of a gas explosion which was unhappily attended by loss of life. Shortly after midnight the neighbourhood was alarmed by the noise of a considerable explosion which appeared to blow out the window and front wall of one of the upper bedrooms, but as the part in question was almost immediately involved in flames it is uncertain what really happened. The residents of the house, which is a boarding establishment carried on by Miss Vole (a relative, we are informed, of Archdeacon Vole of Worpsley), were quickly made aware of their danger and escaped. The engines arrived within a few minutes of the alarm and soon averted any danger of the fire spreading. When it was possible to penetrate into the upper part of the house it was discovered that the occupant of the bedroom where the explosion took place, a Dr Tulloch who had only recently returned to this country from India, had perished. Owing to the charred state of the body it is impossible to judge how he died, but in all probability he was mercifully killed or at least rendered unconscious by the force of the explosion.’ That is all, sir.”

“I ought to have kept him,” muttered Carrados reproachfully. “I ought to have insisted. The thing has been full of mistakes.” He could discover very little further interest in his breakfast and turned to the other papers for possible enlargement of the details. “We shall have to go down,” he remarked casually. “Say in half-an-hour. Tell Harris.”

“Very well, sir.”

Greatorex, just arrived for the day, and diffusing an atmosphere of easy competence and inoffensively general familiarity, put his head in at the door.

“Morning, sir,” he nodded. “Tulloch’s here and wants to see you. Came in with me. Hullo, Parkinson, seen a ghost?”

“He hasn’t yet,” volunteered his master. “But we both expect to. Yes, send him in here. Only one mistake the more, you see,” he added to his servant. “And one the less,” he added to himself.

“I might just as well have stayed, you know,” was Tulloch’s greeting. He included the still qualmish Parkinson in his genial domination of the room, and going across to his friend he dropped a weighty hand upon his shoulder.

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth than in your philosophy, Horatio,’” he barbarously misquoted with significance. “There, you see, Wynn, I can apply Shakespeare to the situation as well as you.”

“Quite so,” assented Carrados. “In the meanwhile will you have some breakfast?”

“It’s what I came in the hopes of,” admitted the doctor. “That and being burned out of hearth and home. I thought that I might as well quarter myself on you for a couple of days. You’ve seen the papers?”

His friend indicated the still open sheet.

“Ah, that one. _The Morning Reporter_ gave me a better obituary. I often had a sort of morbid fancy to know what they’d say about me afterwards. It seemed unattainable, but, like most things, it’s a sad disappointment when it comes. Six lines is the longest, Wynn, and they’ve got me degree wrong.”

“Whose was the body?” asked Carrados.

Gravity descended upon Tulloch at the question. He looked round to make sure that Parkinson had left the room.

“No one will ever know, I’m hoping,” he replied. “He was charred beyond recognition. But you know, Wynn, and I know and we can hold our tongues.”

“The Indian avenger, of course?”

“Yes. I went round there early this morning expecting nothing and found the place a wreck. One can only guess now what happened, but the gas-bracket is just beneath that trap-door I told you of and there’s a light kept burning in the passage outside. One of the half-pay men brought me a nasty wavy dagger that had been picked up in the road. ‘One of your Indian curiosities, I suppose, Dr Tulloch?’ he remarked. I let it pass at that, for I was becoming cautious among so much devilment. ‘I’m afraid that there’s nothing else of yours left,’ he went on, ‘and there wouldn’t have been this if it hadn’t been blown through the window.’ He was quite right. I haven’t a thing left in the world but this now celebrated Norfolk suit that I stand up in, and, as matters are, I’m jolly well glad you didn’t give me time to change yesterday.”

“Ah,” assented Carrados thoughtfully. “Still the Norfolk suit, of course. Tell me, Jim--you had it in India?”

“To be sure I had. It was new then. You know, one doesn’t always go about there in white drill and a cork helmet, as your artists here seem to imagine. It’s cold sometimes, I can tell you. This coat is warm; I got very fond of it. You can’t understand one getting fond of a mere suit, you with your fifty changes of fine raiment.”

“Of course I can. I have a favourite jacket that I would not part from for rubies, and it’s considerably more of an antique than yours. That’s still a serviceable suit, Jim. Come and let me have a look at it.”

“What d’ye mean?” said Tulloch, complying half reluctantly. “You’re making fun of me little suit and it’s the only thing in the world that stands between me and the entire.”

“Come here,” repeated Carrados. “I am not in the least guying. I’m far too serious. I am more serious, I think, than I have ever been in my life before.” He placed the wondering doctor before him and proceeded to run a light hand about the details of his garments, turning him round until the process was complete. “You wore these clothes when the native you call Calico came to you that night?”

“It’s more than likely. The nights were cold.”

Carrados seemed strangely moved. He got up, walked to the window, as his custom was, for enlightenment, and then, after wandering about the room, touching here and there an object indecisively, he unlocked a cabinet and slid out a tray of silver coins.

“You’ve never seen these, have you?” he asked with scanty interest.

“No, what are they?” responded Tulloch, looking on.

“Pagan art at its highest. The worship of the strong and beautiful.”

“Worth a bit?” suggested Tulloch knowingly.

“Not what they cost.” Carrados shot back the tray and paced the room again. “You haven’t told me yet how you were preserved.”

“How----?”

“Last night. You know that you escaped death again.”

“I suppose I did. Yes.... And do you know why I have been hesitating to tell you?”

“Why?”

“Because you won’t believe me.”

Carrados permitted himself to smile a shade.

“Try,” he said laconically.

“Well, of course, I quite intended to.... The sober truth is, Wynn, that I forgot the address and could not get there. It was the silliest and the simplest thing in the world. I walked to the station here, booked for Russell Square and took a train. When I got out there I started off and then suddenly pulled up. Where was I going? My mind, I found, on that one point had developed a perfect blank. All the facts had vanished. Drum my encephalon how I might, I could not recall Miss Vole, 52, or Hapsburg Square. Mark you, it wasn’t loss of memory in the ordinary sense. I remembered everything else; I knew who I was and what I wanted well enough. Of course the first thing I did was to turn out my pockets. I had letters, certainly, but none to that address and nothing else to help me. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘it’s a silly game, but I’ll walk round till I find it.’ Had again! I walked for half-an-hour, but I saw nothing the faintest degree familiar. Then I saw ‘London Directory Taken Here’ in a pub. window. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘When I see the name it will all come back again.’ I went in, had something and looked through the ‘Streets’ section from beginning to end.” He shook his head shrewdly. “It didn’t work.”

“Did it occur to you to ring me up? You’d given me the address.”

“It did; and then I thought, ‘No, it’s midnight now’--it was by then--‘and he may have turned in early and be asleep.’ Well, things had got to such a pass that it seemed the simplest move to walk into the first moderate hotel I came to, pay for my bed and tell them to wake me at six, and that’s what I did. Now what do you make of that?”

“That depends,” replied Carrados slowly. “The scientist would perhaps hint at a telepathic premonition operating subconsciously through receptive nerve centres. The sceptic would call it a lucky coincidence. The Catholic--the devout Catholic--would claim another miracle.”

“Oh, come now!” protested Tulloch.

“Yes, come now,” struck in Carrados, rising with decision and moving towards the door. “Come to my room and then you shall judge for yourself. It’s too much for any one man to contemplate alone. Come on.” He walked quickly across the hall to his study, dismissing Greatorex elsewhere with a word, and motioned the mystified doctor to a chair. Then he locked the door and sat down himself.

“I want you to carry your mind back to that night in your tent when the native Khaligar, towards whom you had done an imperishable service, presented himself before you. By the inexorable ruling of his class he was your bondsman in service until he had repaid you in kind. This, Jim, you failed to understand as it stood vitally to him, for the whole world, two pantheons and perhaps ten thousand years formed a great gulf between your mind and his. You would not be repaid, and yet he wished to die.”

The doctor nodded. “I dare say it comes to that,” he said.

“He could not die with this debt undischarged. And so, in the obscurity of your tent, beneath your unsuspecting eyes, this conjurer did, as he was satisfied, requite you. You thought you saw him wrap the relic in its covering. You did not. You thought he put it back among his dress. He did not. Instead, he slipped it dexterously between the lining and the cloth of your own coat at the thick part of a band. You had seen him do much cleverer things even in the open sunlight.”

“You don’t say,” exclaimed Tulloch, springing to his feet, “that even now--”

“Wait!” cried the blind man warningly. “Don’t seek it yet. You have to face a more stupendous problem first.”

“What is that?”

“Three times at least your life has been--as we may say--miraculously preserved. It was not your doing, your expertness, my friend.... What is this sacred relic that once was in its jewelled shrine on the high altar of the great cathedral at Goa, that opulent archbishopric of the East to which Catholic Portugal in the sixteenth century sent all that was most effective of treasure, brain and muscle to conquer the body and soul of India?”

“You suggested that it might be the original relic to which Valasquez had referred.”

“Not now; only that the natives may have thought so. What would be more natural than that an ignorant despoiler should assume the thing which he found the most closely guarded and the most richly casketed to be the object for which he himself would have the deepest veneration?”

“Then I don’t follow you,” said Tulloch.

“Because I have the advantage of having turned to the local and historical records bearing on the circumstances since you first started me,” Carrados replied. “For instance, in the year 1582 Akbar, who was a philosopher and a humorist as well as a model ruler, sent an invitation to the ‘wise men among the Franks’ at Goa to journey to Agra, there to meet in public controversy before him a picked band of Mohammedan mullas and prove the superiority of their faith. The challenge was accepted. Abu-l-Fazl records the curious business and adds a very significant detail. These Catholic priests, to cut the matter short in the spirit of the age, offered to walk through a fiery furnace in the defence of their belief. It came to nothing, because the other side backed out, but the challenge is suggestive because, however fond the priesthood of those times was of putting other people to the ordeal of fire and water, its members were singularly modest about submitting to such tests themselves. What mystery was there here, Tulloch? What had those priests of Goa that made them so self-confident?”

“This relic, you suggest?”

“Yes, I do. But, now, what is that relic? A monkey’s or an ape-god’s tooth, an iron-stained belemnite, the fragment of a pagan idol--you and I can smile at that. We are Christians. No matter how unorthodox, no matter how non-committal our attitude may have grown, there is upon us the unconscious and hereditary influence of century after century of blind and implicit faith. To you and to me, no less than to every member of the more credent Church of Rome, to everyone who has listened to the story as a little child, it is only conceivable that if miraculous virtues reside in anything inanimate it must pre-eminently be in the close accessories of that great world’s tragedy, when, as even secular and unfriendly historians have been driven to admit, something out of the order of nature did shake the heavens.”

“But this,” articulated Tulloch with dry throat, leaning instinctively forward from the pressure of his coat, “this--what is it, then?”

“You described it as looking like a nail,” responded Carrados. “It is a nail. Rusty, you said, and it could not well be otherwise than red with rust. And old. Nearly nineteen hundred years old; quite, perhaps.”

Tulloch came unsteadily to his feet and slowly slipping off his coat he put it gently away on a table apart from where they sat.

“Is it possible?” he asked in an awestruck whisper. “Wynn, is it--is it really possible?”

“It is not only possible,” he heard the blind man’s more composed voice replying, “but in one aspect it is even very natural. Physically, we are dealing with an historical fact. Somewhere on the face of the earth these things must be enduring; scattered, buried, lost perhaps, but still existent. And among the thousands of relics that the different churches have made claim to it would be remarkable indeed if some at least were not authentic. That is the material aspect.”

“Yes,” assented Tulloch anxiously, “yes; that is simple, natural. But the other side, Carrados--the things that we know have happened--what of that?”

“That,” replied Carrados, “is for each man to judge according to his light.”

“But you?” persisted Tulloch. “Are you convinced?”

“I am offered a solution that explains everything when no other theory will,” replied the blind man evasively. Then on the top of Tulloch’s unsatisfied “Ah!” he added: “But there is something else that confronts you. What are you going to do?” and his face was towards the table across the room.

“Have you thought of that?”

“It has occurred to me. I wondered how you would act.”

It was some time before either spoke again. Then Tulloch broke the silence.

“You can lend me some things?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Then I will decide,” he announced with resolution. “Whatever we may think, whatever might be urged, I cannot touch this thing; I dare not even look on it. It has become too solemn, too awful, in my mind, to be seen by any man again. To display it, to submit it to the test of what would be called ‘scientific proof,’ to have it photographed and ‘written up’--impossible, incredible! On the other hand, to keep it safely to myself--no, I cannot do that either. You feel that with me?”

The blind man nodded.

“There is another seemly, reverent way. The opportunity offers. I found a letter at the house this morning. I meant to tell you of it. I have got the appointment that I told you of and in three days I start for South America. I will take the coat just as it is, weight it beyond the possibility of recovery and sink it out of the world in the deepest part of the Atlantic; beyond controversy, and safe from falling to any ignoble use. You can supply me with a box and lead. You approve of that?”

“I will help you,” said Carrados, rising.

THE END

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Transcriber’s Notes

This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this ebook is granted to the public domain.

The following changes and corrections have been made:

• p. 37: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “Mr Marrable started rather violently.” • p. 39: Changed “fusilade” to “fusillade” in phrase “the fusillade shrivelled away.” • p. 40: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “Mr Marrable.... Lot 192, _History and Antiquities of the County, etc._” • p. 47: Changed “Dr Dillworthy” to “Mr Dillworthy” in phrase “What was the next lot that Mr Dillworthy bought?” • p. 60: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “Mr Carlyle did not pull his man up in a few weeks.” • p. 62: Changed “shread” to “shred” in phrase “did not leave behind him one solitary shred of evidence.” • p. 78: Added period after phrase “admitted Beedel modestly.” • p. 108: Moved question mark inside closing single quotation mark in phrase “‘What was?’ I asked.” • p. 110: Added opening single quotation mark before phrase “It isn’t since Tuesday, sir.” • p. 123: Added em-dash after “monument” in phrase “the most important monument--the Judge.” • p. 148: Added closing double quotation mark after phrase “I have only seen something in the _Indicator_.” • p. 149: Removed period after “Mrs” in phrase “Mrs Dupreen was by no means in easy circumstances.” • p. 153: Changed “be” to “he” in phrase “Where had he bought it?” • p. 158: Changed “Steet” to “Street” in phrase “the point nearest Trenion Street.” • p. 160: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “Mr Lightcraft will know how to administer it.” • p. 176: Changed “canont” to “cannot” in phrase “that this confident, suspicious man cannot see her now.” • p. 198: Added period after phrase “interposed his employer with decision.” • p. 205: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “I’ll tell you what it is, Mr Belting.” • p. 213: Changed “uprasied” to “upraised” in phrase “he said with upraised hand.” • p. 217: Changed single to double closing double quotation mark after phrase “You haven’t given me the chance of playing host for a month or more.” • p. 223: Removed duplicate “a” in phrase “a piece of superfluous honesty.” • p. 229: Changed triple to double closing double quotation mark after phrase “We’ve had no one from there anyway.” • p. 234: Changed “the the” to “on the” in phrase “and then focussed on the column.” • p. 235: Added “of” in phrase “the mere act of sipping.” • p. 247: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “declared Mr Carlyle with warm approval as the door closed.” • p. 250: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “You seem troubled, Parkinson.” • p. 255: Changed “profund” to “profound” in phrase “the general atmosphere of profound somnolence that enveloped the Metaphysical.” • p. 262: Changed “Strathbane” to “Strathblane” in phrase “Carrados’s car drew up at Strathblane Lodge.” • p. 263: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “Mr Carrados happens to be blind, Mr Spinola.” • p. 268: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “If you had no conscience you would be a dangerous opponent, Mr Carrados.” • p. 276: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “you have been too clever for an old man, Mr Carrados?” • p. 263: Removed period after “Mr” in phrase “you have surpassed the dreams of Babbage, Mr Spinola.” • p. 284: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “Not guilty, my lord!” • p. 295: Added period after “Rev.” in phrase “The Rev. Byam Hosier, the senior curate.” • p. 318: Added period after phrase “One never knows what may happen next.” • p. 329: Changed “its” to “it” in phrase “and it protects from harm.” • p. 330: Changed “that I do” to “than I do” in phrase “I expect that you run more risks than I do.” • p. 351: Changed “selfconfident” to “self-confident” in phrase “What had those priests of Goa that made them so self-confident?”