Paul Harley

“ Familiarity with crime in many guises and under many skies had developed in Paul Harley a sort of sixth sense. It was a fugitive, fickle thing, as are all the powers which belong to the realm of genius or inspiration. Often enough it failed him entirely, he had assured me, that odd, sudden chill as of an abrupt lowering of the temperature, which, I understood, often advised him of the nearness of enmity actively malignant. ”

“ Paul Harley was notable because of that intellectual strength which does not strike one immediately, since it is purely temperamental, but which, nevertheless, invests its possessor with an aura of distinction. ”

“ Once more safe in his dressing room, the pedler rapidly transformed himself into Paul Harley, and Paul Harley, laying his watch upon the table before him, lighted his pipe and indulged in half an hour's close thinking. ”

“ Close inquiries at the Savoy Hotel had shown that Harley had not been there. Wessex, who was a thorough artist within his limitations, had satisfied himself that none of the callers who had asked for Ormûz Khân, and no one who had loitered about the lobbies, could possibly have been even a disguised Paul Harley. ”

“ To see a man die in the heat of battle, a man one has known and called friend, is strange and terrible. Here in this moon-bathed Tudor garden it was a horror almost beyond my powers to endure.
Paul Harley, without touching the prone figure, stood up. Indeed no examination of the victim was necessary. A rifle bullet had pierced his brain, and he lay there dead with his head toward the hills.
I clutched at Harley’s shoulder, but he stood rigidly, staring up the slope past the angle of the tower, to where a gable of the Guest House jutted out from the trees. ”

“ It was sheer intuition, no doubt, but it convinced him.
A moment later he had rung the bell; and as a man opened the door, showing a easy and well-lighted lobby within, the fear aura no longer touched Paul Harley. Out from the doorway came hominess and that air of security and peace which had seemed to characterize the house when viewed from outside. The focus of menace, therefore, lay not inside the house of Sir Charles but without. It was very curious. In the next instant came a possible explanation.
“Mr. Paul Harley?” said the butler tentatively. ”

“ Harley leaned forward, resting one hand upon the table. “I know I was followed,” he said, sternly. “I was followed because I have entered upon the biggest case of my career.” He paused and smiled in a very grim fashion. “A suspicion begins to dawn upon my mind that if I fail it will also be my last case. You understand me?”
“I understand absolutely,” replied Nicol Brinn. “These are dull days. It’s meat and drink to me to smell big danger.”
Paul Harley lighted a cigarette and watched the speaker closely the while. ”

“ Again Paul Harley’s cigarette glowed in the darkness.
“I am prepared to swear,” he replied, “that it was the shadow of a woman.”
“Harley——”
“Don’t get excited, Knox. I am dealing with the strangest case of my career, and I am jumping to no conclusions. But just let us look at the circumstances judicially. The whole of the domestic staff we may dismiss, with the one exception of Mrs. Fisher, who, so far as I can make out, occupies the position of a sort of working housekeeper, and whose rooms are in the corner of the west wing immediately facing the kitchen garden. ”

“ Paul Harley did not reply. He concluded, quite correctly, that the organization had failed to detect himself in the person of the nervous cobbler. He drew courage from this deduction. Fire-Tongue was not omniscient.
“It is possible,” continued the unseen speaker, in whom Harley had now definitely recognized Ormuz Khan’s secretary, “that you recently overheard a resolution respecting yourself. Your death, in fact, had been determined upon. Life and death being synonymous, the philosopher contemplates either with equanimity.” ”

“ But we do not ask you to become a neophyte. Disciples must seek us, we do not seek disciples. We only ask for your word that you will be silent.”
“It is impossible,” said Harley, tersely.
“Think well of the matter. It may not seem so impossible to-morrow.”
“I decline definitely.”
“You are sustaining yourself with false hopes, Mr. Harley. You think you have clues which will enable you to destroy a system rooted in the remote past. Also you forget that you have lost your freedom.”
Paul Harley offered no further answer to the speaker concealed behind the violet curtain. ”

“ Paul Harley, although the fact was unknown to the general public, occupied something of the position of an unofficial field marshal of the forces arrayed against evildoers. Throughout the war he had undertaken confidential work of the highest importance, especially in regard to the Near East, with which he was intimately acquainted. A member of the English bar, and the last court of appeal to which Home Office and Foreign Office alike came in troubled times, the brass plate upon the door of his unassuming premises in Chancery Lane conveyed little or nothing to the uninitiated. ”

“ Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am that man."
Silence fell again, and Paul Harley, staring down at Nicol Brinn, realized that this indeed was the most hopelessly mystifying case which fate had ever thrown in his way. This millionaire scholar and traveller, whose figure was as familiar in remote cities of the world as it was familiar in New York, in Paris, and in London, could not conceivably be associated with any criminal organization. ”

“ Paul Harley sat quite still, smoking and watching.
He had learned to face the inevitable with composure, and now, apprehending the worst, he waited, puffing at his pipe. Presently he detected the sound of someone crossing the room toward him, or rather toward the screen. He lay back against the mattress which formed the back of the divan, and watched the gap below the curtain.
Suddenly he perceived a pair of glossy black boots. Their wearer was evidently standing quite near the screen, possibly listening. Harley had an idea that some second person stood immediately behind the first. ”

“ The driver pulled up as Paul Harley stepped into the road, and following a brief conversation Harley set out westward, performing a detour before heading south for Lower Claybury, a little town with which he was only slightly acquainted. No evidence of espionage could he detect, but the note of danger spoke intimately to his inner consciousness; so that when, the metropolis left behind, he found himself in the hilly Surrey countryside, more than once he pulled up, sitting silent for a while and listening intently. ”

“ MAN WITH THE SHAVEN SKULL
I A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE
“Pull that light lower,” ordered Inspector Wessex. “There you are, Mr. Harley; what do you make of it?”
Paul Harley and I bent gingerly over the ghastly exhibit to which the C.I.D. official had drawn our attention, and to view which we had journeyed from Chancery Lane to Wapping. ”

“ He'd got within twenty feet of the irregular ball, and had adjusted his gravity regulator to enable him to leap to its top, when he stopped as abruptly as though he had been suddenly paralyzed. Over the two deep pits that resembled nostrils in the grotesque mask of a face he thought he had observed a quiver. The illusion had occurred in just the proper place for an eyelid. It was startling, to say the least.
"I'm getting imaginative," said Harley. He spoke aloud as a man tends to do when he is alone and uneasy. "I'd better get a tighter grip on my nerves, or—good God!" ”

“ Of these men the most eminent were two great Herefordshire squires, Robert Harley and Paul Foley.
The space which Robert Harley fills in the history of three reigns, his elevation, his fall, the influence which, at a great crisis, he exercised on the politics of all Europe, the close intimacy in which he lived with some of the greatest wits and poets of his time, and the frequent recurrence of his name in the works of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Prior, must always make him an object of interest. Yet the man himself was of all men the least interesting. ”

“ A tremendous, weirdly manlike creature looming in the dim night—a thing that seemed a part of the planetoid itself, fashioned from the very dirt and rock from which it had risen—a thing immune to the ray-pistol, that latest and deadliest of man-made small-arms—a thing that moved like a walking mountain and stared with terrible, stony eyes at its prey! That was what the fellow said he had faintly made out in the darkness before his nerves had finally given way.
He had impressed Harley as being a capable kind of a person, too ”

“ And that is why we can't offer the place for sale. It would be suicide for anyone to try to make a home there."
"Has anyone ever tried it?" asked Harley. "Any competent adventurer, I mean?"
"Yes. Twice we sold Z-40 before we realized that there was something terribly wrong with it. Both buyers were hardy, intrepid men. The first was never heard of after thirty-six hours on the asteroid. The second man managed to escape in his Blinco Dart, and came back to Earth to tell of a vast creature that had attacked him during one of the three-hour nights. ”

“ Harley only dimly heard what he said. Something to the effect that the man had been worried after selling the fatal asteroid. Had got in touch with the Radivision Corporation and learned that this call number was dead. Had come with men and big guns to rescue him, if it wasn't too late, and take him back to Earth. Had cruised for half an hour before locating him. "I've been calling myself a murderer ever since I let you have Z-40, Mr. ”

“ She noticed that they seemed to think of Harley as one like Jimmy Grayson—that is, one of themselves—and they never considered him raw or green in any respect.
Her confidence in Harley and the momentary elation returned as they stood there in this cup in the mountain-side and looked out upon the expanse of peak and plain. She ate, too, with an appetite that the mountain air sharpened, and she thrilled with strength and hope. ”

“ Sacrifice such exuberance of life and spirit to that bloodless heart, to that cold and earthward intellect! By Heavens, it shall not be!"
"But whom can the exile possibly have seen of birth and fortunes to render him a fitting spouse for his daughter? Whom, my lord, except yourself?"
"Me!" exclaimed Harley, angrily, and changing color. "I worthy of such a creature? I—with my habits! I—silken egotist that I am! And you, a poet, to form such an estimate of one who might be the queen of a poet's dream!" ”

“ He drew his pipe from between his teeth, and:
"Yes, what do you want with me?" he asked.
"Your attention, Mr. Harley, for a few moments, if you feel sufficiently recovered."
"Pray proceed," said Harley.
Of the presence of a second person beyond the screen he was now assured, for he had detected the sound of whispered instructions; and sinking lower and lower upon the divan, he peered surreptitiously under the border of the curtain, believing it to be more than probable that his movements were watched. ”

“ Harley.—"Then I am satisfied as to your conduct, but not as to his. For he has too acute an intellect not to know what it is to forfeit independence; and, depend upon it, he has made his calculations, and would throw you into the bargain in any balance that he could strike in his favor. You go by your experience in judging men; I by my instincts. Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals—only we are too conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. ”

“ Basta! youth will be youth."
"He has no youth left in him!" exclaimed Harley, passionately. "I doubt if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old—as he was in long-clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts. I disliked him at the first—his eye, his smile, his voice, his very footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage: it may destroy all chance of your restoration." ”

“ The sun, a huge red ball, sank in the prairie, twilight fell, the ordeal of the dining-car was repeated, and not long afterwards Harley sought his bed in the swaying berth. The next morning they were in the home town, and there were a band and a reception committee, and Harley slipped quietly away to his hotel, being reminded first by the Graysons that he was to take dinner with them. ”

“ And there were ambassadors and ministers, and wits and brilliant debaters, and first-rate dandies (dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men) . Amongst all these various persons, Harley, so long a stranger to the London world, seemed to make himself at home with the ease of an Alcibiades. Many of the less juvenile ladies remembered him, and rushed to claim his acquaintance, with nods and becks, and wreathed smiles. He had ready compliment for each. And few indeed were there, men or women, for whom Harley L’Estrange had not appropriate attraction. ”

“ Dale broke from Violante and hurried down the corridor; Violante stood on the same spot, stunned and breathless. Harley on the brink of some strange sin! Harley to wake, the victim of remorse! Harley to be saved, as he had saved her father! Her breast heaved, her colour went and came, her eyes were raised, her lips murmured. She advanced with soft footsteps up the corridor; she saw the lights gleaming from Harley's room, and suddenly they were darkened, as the inmate of the room shut to the door, with angry and impatient hand.
An outward act often betrays the inward mind. ”