Melville Davisson Post

“ They guttered around the sheet of foolscap wet with the scrawls and splashes of Dillworth's quill. My father stood at a window looking out, the girl in a flood of tears, relaxed and helpless, in the protection of his arm.
And far down the long turnpike, white like an expanded ribbon, the hunchback rode his great horse in a gallop, perched like a monkey, his knees doubled, his head bobbing, his loose body rolling in the saddle—while the black, distorted shadow that had followed my father into this tragic house went on before him like some infernal messenger convoying the rider to the Pit. ”

“ London could not think of a ne'er-do-well to equal him in the memory of its oldest gossips—and all the time with every penny, he was putting together this immense treasure—for her. A dreamer writing a romance might imagine a thing like this, but had it any equal in the realities of life?
She looked down at the chain of great jewels, and the fragment of prickly shrub with its poppy-shaped yellow flower. They were symbols, each, of an immense idealism, an immense conception of sacrifice that lifted the actors in their dramas into gigantic figures illumined with the halos of romance. ”

“ The daughter of an obscure juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud, singing in a Swiss meadow, had been taken up by a wealthy American, traveling in Switzerland on an April morning-old, enervated with the sun of the Riviera, and displeased with life. And this rich old woman, her rheumatic fingers loaded with jewels, had transformed the daughter of the juge d'instruction of the Canton of Vaud into a singing wonder that made every human creature see again the dreams of his youth before him leading into the Elysian Fields. ”

“ But in the meantime Major Carstair had gone on into the Gobi seeking the fantastic treasure.”
The girl turned toward the man, a wide-eyed, eager, lighted face.
“Do you realize,” she said, “the sort of treasure that my father sacrificed his life to search for?”
The Oriental spoke slowly.
“It was to destroy a Kingdom,” he said.
“To destroy the Kingdom of Pain!” She replied, “My father was seeking an anesthetic more powerful than the derivatives of domestic opium. He searched the world for it. In the little, wild desert flower lay, he thought, the essence of this treasure. ”

“ My father walked about the room, his face in reflection. Gosford sat at his ease, transcribing a note on his portfolio. Old Gaeki had gone back to his chair and to his little case of bottles; he got them up on his knees, as though he would be diverted by fingering the tools of his profession. Lewis was in plain distress, for he held the law and its disposition to be inviolable; the boy stood with a find defiance, ennobled by the trust in his father's honor. One could not take his stratagem for a criminal act; he was only a child, for all his twenty years of life. ”

“ But within this room, split off from the great chamber of a church, events covert and sinister seemed preparing to assemble.
My father, big and dominant, was behind the table, his great shoulders blotting out the window.
Mr. Lucian Morrow sat doubled in a chair, and Zindorf stood with the closed door behind him.
“You see, Zindorf,” he said, “each master has his set of signs. Most of us have learned the signs of one master only. But you have learned the signs of both. And you must be careful not to bring the signs of your first master into the service of your last one.” ”

“ The house was within a hundred paces of the loch, in a place of wild beauty on a bit of moor, yellow with gorse, extending from the great barren mountains behind it right down into the water. Immense banners of mist lay along the tops of these mountain peaks, and streams of water like skeins of silk marked the deep gorges in dazzling whiteness.
The loch was a crooked finger of the sea hooked into the land. It was clear as glass in the bright morning. The open sea was directly beyond the crook of the finger, barred out by a nest of needlepointed rocks. ”

“ Love is or it is not. It is the longing of elements torn asunder, at the beginning of things, to be rejoined.”
The girl turned swiftly, her body erect, her face lifted.
“But this great act,” she cried. “My father, I, all of our blood, are moved by romance—by the romance of sacrifice. Look how my father died seeking an antidote for the pain of the world. How shall I meet this sacrifice of Lord Eckhart?”
Something strange began to dawn in the wide Mongolian face.
“What sacrifice?”
The girl came over swiftly to the table. She scattered the mass of jewels with a swift gesture. ”

“ I cried, “the judge was right to cut short the criminal trial and issue a lunacy warrant. This creature is the maddest lunatic in this whole asylum. The human mind is capable of any absurdity.”
Sir Henry looked at me with a queer ironical smile.
“The judge was wrong,” he said. “The creature, as you call him, is as sane as any of us.”
“Then you believe this amazing story?” I said.
“I believe Rodman was found at daylight dead on the hearth, with practically every bone in his body crushed,” he replied.
“Certainly,” I said. “We all know that is true. But why was he killed?” ”

“ He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.
“Listen, Zindorf,” he cried; “the bell began to toll for Duncan, but it tolls now for the murderer of Ordez. It tolls to raise the country against the assassin!”
The false monk had the courage of his master. He stood out and faced my father.
“But can you find him, Pendleton,” he said. And his harsh voice was firm. “You find Ordez dead; well, some assassin shot him and carried his body into the cut of the abandoned road. But who was that assassin? Is Virginia scant of murderers? Do you know the right one?” ”

“ The hunchback began to twist his fingers.
“Where did he ride then? A man and a horse could not vanish.”
“They did vanish,” said my father.
“Now you utter fool talk!” cried Dillworth.
“I speak the living truth,” replied my father. “Your brother David and your horse disappeared out of sound and hearing—disappeared out of the sight and knowledge of men—after he rode away from your door on that fatal night.”
“Well,” said the hunchback, “since my brother David rode away from my door—and you know that—I am free of obligation for him.” ”

“ The rail's sound.”
“There could be only two causes,” said Marion. “It was either weakened by a natural agency or a human agency.”
The track boss made an annoyed gesture, like a practical person vexed with the refinements of a theorist.
“But how are you going to tell?”
“Now,” said Marion, “there is always a point as you follow a thing down, where the human design in it must appear, if there is a human design in it. The human mind can falsify events within a limited area. ”

“ What reasonable human care could prevent he must answer for, but the outrage of a criminal would not be taken in the public mind against him. On the contrary, the sympathy of the public would flow in. When the people feel that a man is making every effort for their welfare, the criminal act of an outsider brings them over wholly to his support. Profound interest carried Marion off her feet.
“I was in a panic the other day, and Clinton said, 'Don't let rotten luck get your goat. I'm done if an engineer runs by a block, but nothing else can put it over on me'!” ”

“ My father answered in his great dominating voice
“God knows him, Zindorf, and I know him!... The man who murdered Ordez made a fatal blunder... He used a sign of God in the service of the devil and he is ruined!”
The big man stepped slowly backward into the room, while my father's voice, filling the big empty spaces of the house, followed after him.
“You are lost, Zindorf! Satan is insulted, and God is outraged! You are lost!” ”

“ Her early life lay so far below in a world remote and detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of Vaud with the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of a juge d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated on her shoulders. Her father's life was given over to the labors of criminal investigation, but it was a field that returned nothing in the way of material gain. ”

“ The man paused; then he added, with the offensive chuckling laugh:
“Go to such an one, Lady Muriel. Who shall turn aside from virtue in distress? Perhaps, in the whole of London, I alone have the brutality—shall we call it—to resist that spectacle.”
The woman rose. Her face was now flushed and angry.
“I do not know of any form of brutality in which you do not excel, Hecklemeir,” she said. “I have a notion to, go to Scotland Yard with the whole story of your secret traffic.” ”

“ My father stood up with a twisted, ironical smile.
“If you doubt my skill, Mr. Gosford, as a fortune, or rather a misfortune-teller I will ask Mr. Lewis and Herman Gaeki to tell me what they see.”
The two men crossed the room and stooped over the paper, while my father held the crystal. The manner and the bearing of the men changed. They grew on the instant tense and fired with interest.
“I see it!” said the old doctor, with a queer foreign expletive.
“And I,” cried Lewis, “see something more than Pendleton's vision. I see the penitentiary in the distance.” ”

“ There was one man in the world that everybody wished could have been present at the time. That was Sir Henry Marquis. Marquis was chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. He had been in charge of the English secret service on the frontier of the Shan states, and at the time he was in Asia.
As soon as Scotland Yard could release Sir Henry, it sent him. Rodman's genius was the common property of the world. The American Government could not, even with the verdict of a trial court, let Rodman's death go by under the smoke-screen of such a weird, inscrutable mystery. ”

“ When she lifted it Bramwell Winton was standing in the door.
In terror her hand caught up the automatic pistol out of the tin box. She acted with no clear, no determined intent. It was a gesture of fear and of indecision; escape through menace was perhaps the subconscious motive; the most primitive, the most common motive of all creatures in the corner. It extends downward from the human mind through all life. ”

“ The judge turned swiftly. “What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean, monsieur,” she answered, “that if a man is innocent of a crime, he cannot require a lawyer to defend him.”
The judge was astonished, but he was an old man and had seen many strange events happen along the way of a criminal trial.
“But why do you say this man is innocent,” he said.
“I will show you, monsieur,” and she came around the railing into the pit of the court before his bench. She carried in her hand the menu upon which, at the table in the cafe the night before, she had made a drawing of the scene of the homicide. ”

“ Marion and the big track boss continued with this woman looking on.
I feared to speak or move; the thing was like a sort of trap, set with ghastly cunning, by some evil Fate. The ruin of a woman it would have. And perhaps on the vast level plain where it evilly dwelt, through its hard all-seeing eyes, the ruin and the sorrow either way would be precisely equal. How could I, then, lay a finger on the scale.
“Now,” said Marion, “when the engine reached this point on the track, one of the rails gave way first.”
The big workman looked steadily at her.
“How do you know that, Miss Warfield?” ”

“ He sat in an upright chair that seemed to have been provided especially for him. The great bulk of him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, tough fiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea thing. One got an impression of strength.
The country was before the open window; the clusters of cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending indiscernibly into the sky. ”

“ But the will, sir, stands for itself, as Mr. Lewis will assure you.”
Young Marshall looked anxiously at the lawyer.
“Is that the law, sir?”
“It is the law of Virginia,” said Lewis, “that a will by a competent testator, drawn in form, requires no collateral explanation to support it.”
My father seemed brought up in a cul-de-sac. His face was tense and disturbed. He stood by the table; and now, as by accident, he put out his hand and took up the Japanese crystal supported by the necks of the three bronze storks. He appeared unconscious of the act, for he was in deep reflection. ”

“ We realized that we had to deal with a nature possessing in one direction the exact accurate knowledge of a man of science, and in another the wonder extravagances of a child. The Dalai Lama was not yet able to be consulted, and it seemed to us a better plan to say no more about the impossible treasure, and address our endeavors to the practical side of Major Carstair's intelligence instead. ”