The Air Pirate Part 31

On one of the wild and lonely Breton moors a goat-herd had discovered the wreckage of a large airship. By it was the body of a young man, but only one body. The telegrams urgently asked me to come over at once.

I did so, in my fastest patrol boat. Lying in a wild wilderness of gorse and heather were the remains of the Pirate Ship. It had been destroyed beyond possibility of reconstruction, and destroyed methodically and deliberately while at rest upon the ground. There was no doubt about that. The body I afterwards saw in the Morgue at Quimper was that of Gascoigne. He had not met his death by any accidental means, but had been stabbed in the back.

He must have been dead for quite two days before the goat-herd made his discovery, and of Vargus, living or dead, there was not a trace.

I was back in London again that night, and just as I was going to bed in Half Moon Street the bell of the flat rang. Thumbwood went to the door and announced that Mr. Danjuro wished to see me.

He was in evening dress, and quite his old self again to outward appearances, except that his black hair had turned an iron grey.

For a moment or two we discussed details of the inquest that had been held _in camera_ upon poor Van Adams, arrangements made for the trial of the three surviving pirates, and so on. Then I told him what I had seen at Quimper.

"Mr. Muir Lockhart told me of the telegrams from France," he said. "I called at Whitehall, but you had already started for Quimper, Sir John.

I must apologize for such a late call, but I was anxious to hear your news. Now I see my way clear."

"I suppose, after your great loss, you will go back to America, or perhaps j.a.pan, and settle down?"

He shook his head.

"You know," I continued, "that if you cared for it, there is a highly-paid and important position open to you with the Air Police?

Nothing would give me greater pleasure, as you know, than to have you as a colleague."

"I thank you, Sir John, but I have other work to do. I am a rich man, but that only interests me, inasmuch as it is a means to an end. When that end is reached ..."

He made a curious gesture with his arm, which I did not understand.

"May I ask what your work is?"

He looked at me with surprise.

"Vargus is still alive," he said simply.

"He will be caught soon. The police of the world are looking for him, if he is alive."

"I think it will be a long pursuit, Sir John. He has got off with the treasure, and I know one or two things about him which are not generally known. I do not think that Mr. Vargus will fall into the hands of the police."

"Then you ...?"

"It is my work. I owe the spirit of my patron this man's blood, and I shall pay the debt. Were he to hide in the depths of the sea, sooner or later I shall find him. There is no power strong enough in life to keep us two apart."

He had dropped his voice. The words hissed like a knife upon a strop.

"I wish you good luck," I said at length, and was about to say more, to express my grat.i.tude again, when he cut me short.

"I am leaving for Paris in half an hour," he said, "and must bid you farewell, Sir John. Convey my humble compliments to Miss Shepherd," and with a low bow and a frigid handshake he was gone.

Six weeks afterwards, on the day before my wedding, I received a magnificent j.a.panese vase of the old Satsuma enamel, but the card enclosed bore no address.

I did not see this extraordinary being again for nearly two years. Of that meeting I shall write in the following short epilogue.

EPILOGUE

In the winter of 19-- I was at Monte Carlo for three weeks, taking a short holiday alone, and also looking out for a villa at Roquebrune or Mentone for my wife, who was to come out with the baby as soon as the house had been secured.

Now and again I went into the "Rooms" and staked a louis or two upon an even chance or a _transversale_ at roulette; but, speaking generally, the Casino bored me. The cosmopolitan crowd of smart people--like champagne corks floating on a cesspool--the professional gamblers, with their veil of decorous indifference concealing a fierce greed for money which they have not earned--a sprinkling of wood-ash over a glowing fire--presented little interest, and I much preferred long walks and drives in the earthly paradise of Les Alpes Maritimes.

I stayed at the Metropole Hotel, making it the base of my excursions, and one evening, after dinner, I paid one of my rare visits to the Casino. I wandered about the gilded, stuffy saloons, with their illuminations of oil-lamps--so that no enterprising gentleman may cut the electric wires and make off with the money on the tables!--the low voices and almost sanctimonious manner of the players, the over-dressed demi-mondaines who glide about with their hard, evil eyes. The place was very full. All the chairs round the roulette tables were occupied, and people were standing behind the chairs as well. As I am tall, I was able to reach over and place my stakes, and I did so several times. When I had lost four louis with monotonous regularity, I decided that it was not worth while, and thought I would go and smoke, for, contrary to the usual pictures in the magazines, smoking is _not_ allowed in the roulette or trente-et-quarante rooms.

So I went out into the Atrium, the great pillared entrance hall, which looks like an important provincial corn exchange, and lit a cigarette.

The place was fairly full of people, walking up and down, or reading the latest telegrams, which are fixed up upon a green-baize screen, and I was watching them idly when, coming round the corner from the cloak-room, I saw--Danjuro!

My heart gave a sudden leap, the sight of him was so utterly unexpected and recalled so much. To tell the truth, he seemed to belong to a long past and forgotten dream, for Connie and I, by mutual consent, hardly ever spoke of the days of the pirates.

Danjuro was about fifteen yards away. I saw his face distinctly, and was certain that I was not mistaken. Then he looked up, and I could swear that he saw and recognized me.

Be that as it may, he turned and slipped round the corner like a weasel, and when I got there he had vanished. I made a search, of course, though I knew how futile it would be if he wished to avoid me, and the result was as I expected. There wasn't a trace of him anywhere, and none of the attendants or door-keepers had seen a j.a.panese gentleman anywhere.

I went for a walk on the terrace in the moonlight, and then returned to the hotel and sought my bed. For a long time I could not sleep. The sight of Danjuro had made me restless. A legion of memories trooped through the brain, and curiosity marshalled the procession. What was that enigmatic and sinister being doing here? Was he still upon his ruthless quest, moving through the panorama of European life like some wandering Jew of vengeance? Nothing had ever been heard of Vargus again.

For my part, I shared the opinion of the police bureaux of the Continent, that the soft-voiced and malignant scoundrel was dead.

It was pathetic to think of Danjuro prowling through life to avenge his patron, wasting his magnificent powers upon a hopeless quest. Pathetic, yes--so ran my thoughts--but one can't think of Danjuro as an ordinary human being. He was simply a single idea, clothed in flesh, a marvellous machine designed for one operation only, a specialist so perfect that he became a monomaniac.

Poor Van Adams, to protect and serve him had been Danjuro's whole life.

Every faculty of mind and body had been devoted to that one end. And yet he must have loved the American to have served him so? And if he could love he was human!

I wrestled with the problem till dawn, and got no nearer a solution. I knew that, despite our companionship in peril and the extraordinary adventures we had gone through together, if Van Adams had lived and for any reason had told Danjuro to put me out of the way, the little man would have executed the job with neatness, dispatch, and an entire absence of compunction.

I decided that Danjuro, as a subject of psychological a.n.a.lysis, was quite beyond me, and did my best to forget the incident. With an effort I managed to do so, and got a few hours' sleep before Thumbwood called me. I said nothing to him of having seen Danjuro, for he also is unwilling to talk much of the days of terror--perhaps because his wife, Wilson, that was, and is still, Connie's handmaid--so strenuously objects to it.

About half-past eleven I left the hotel and strolled to the foot of the funicular railway which hauls one up from the narrow ledge of land on which Monte Carlo stands to the heights of La Turbie. I designed to lunch at the excellent hotel at the top in the clear mountain air, and then to walk along the Upper Corniche towards Roquebrune, Eze, and the mountains above Mentone. There is much to explore in these high regions--ruins of Roman and medieval forts, built as a defence against the raiding Moors of the Mediterranean, and here and there delightful villas among pine-woods and olive groves, far from the haunts of men.

It was a house of this description, a mountain hermitage, that I wished to find and take for six months. I knew that they were occasionally to be let, but somewhat difficult to come across upon the books of the agents. In Monte Carlo I had been a.s.sured that personal exploration was the best and quickest way.

I lunched at La Turbie on a magnificent _bouillabaisse_ and _riz-de-veau_, and after an interval set out upon my walk. It was a magnificent afternoon, the air golden clear. Far away out to sea Corsica lay like a dim cloud. The mountain side fell in terrace after terrace of olives to groups of painted houses looking like toys. Away to the right were the red roofs and gleaming white buildings of the Monte Carlo palaces, and the promontory of the Tete du Chien was perfectly outlined in the azure of the sea.

"Yes," I thought, "upon this great height is the place to live when one comes to the Cote d'Azur, and I won't go home to-night until I have found something...." And I began to climb by a by-path.

The afternoon was hot. After a mile or two I rested in the shade of a great rock and fell asleep. When I awoke the sun, which sets early in winter, even on the Riviera, was declining. I was not quite sure of my direction, but thought that I could make Roquebrune by an oblique path over the spur of the mountain, and from there easily descend to Cap Martin and get a carriage, and take the tram which crawls along the cliff to Monte Carlo. So I set out.

The path, however, did not prove to be the right one, and it was twilight, or that extremely short interval which does duty for it in the south, before I came to three or four stone huts fronting a plateau with an enclosure full of goats. I explained my predicament to a swarthy woman who sat knitting at a door, and she gave me directions. She also said, in mingled French and Italian, for the frontier was not five miles away, that there would be a small empty villa to be let a mile onwards--at least, she believed so.

"Can you tell me the name of the owner, madame?" I asked.

"But, no, m'sieu. It is a new gentleman. He has bought the villa and the larger one, which is close to it but higher up the hill. He is a scholar of some sort, and lives quite alone, so he cannot want the smaller house on the road. It was, moreover, always let in the time of the last owner, M. Visguis, of Nice."