Prince Zaleski Part 2

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 h.e.l.l. 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 G.o.ddess 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 n.o.ble Son of the Prophet of G.o.d! 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 a.s.sa.s.sin. 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 l.u.s.t 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 h.e.l.l--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 sanct.i.ty 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in the pa.s.sage. 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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.n.u.script 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, bis.m.u.th 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-sh.e.l.l 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.suredly 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 a.s.sure 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.