The City in the Clouds Part 23

"Brother," he said, "I understand, and I say again, now that I can say it in a new voice, my life is yours."

Then I began on my own account.

"Tell me," I said, "of yourself. Many of your fellow-countrymen come here--the lower orders--and they're all employed by the millionaire, Gideon Morse, who seems to prefer the men of China to any other. You also, Pu-Yi, are connected with this colossal mystery?"

He didn't answer for a moment, but looked down at the glowing end of his cigarette.

"Yes," he replied, with some constraint, "I am in the service of the honorable Mr. Gideon Mendoza Morse. I am, in fact, his private secretary and through me his instructions are conveyed to the various heads of departments."

"You are fortunate. I suppose that before long you will be able to fulfill your ambitions and retire to China?"

With a quick glance at me he admitted that this was so.

"And yet," I said thoughtfully, "it must be a very trying service, despite that you live in Wonderland, in a City of Enchantment."

Again I caught a swift regard and he leant forward in his chair.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

I hazarded a bold shot.

"Simply because the man is mad," I said.

His bright eyes narrowed to glittering slits.

"You quote gossip of the newspapers," he replied.

"Do I? I happen to know more than the newspapers do."

He rose to his feet, took two steps towards me, and looked down with a twitching face.

"Who _are_ you?" he said, and his whole frail frame trembled.

I caught him firmly by the arm and stared into his face--G.o.d knows what my own was like.

"I am the one who has been waiting, the one who is waiting, to help--the one who has come to save," I said, and my voice was not my own--it was as if the words were put into my mouth by an outside power.

He wrenched his arm away, gave a little cry, strode to the mantelpiece and bent his head upon his arms. His whole body was shaken with convulsive sobs.

I stood in the middle of the room watching him, hardly daring to breathe, feeling that my heart was swelling until it occupied the whole of my body.

At length he looked up.

"Then I shall be of some use to Her after all," he said. "This is too much honor. The Lily of White Jade--"

He staggered back, his face working terribly, and fell in a huddled heap upon the floor. I was just opening my mouth to call for Rolston when there came a thunderous knocking upon the side door of the house.

I ran into the dimly lit pa.s.sage and as I did so Rolston flitted out of the bar door and stood beside me.

"I have heard everything," he whispered, "but what, what is this?"

He pointed to the door, and as he did so there was again the thunder of the knocker and the whirr of the electric bell.

Hardly knowing what I did I shot back the bolts at top and bottom, turned the heavy key in its lock and opened the door.

Outside in the moonlight a figure was standing, a man in a heavy fur coat, carrying a suitcase in his left hand.

"What the devil--" I was beginning, when he pushed past me and came into the hall.

Then I saw, with a leap of all my pulses, that it was Lord Arthur Winstanley.

CHAPTER NINE

It was four o'clock in the morning. A bitter wind had risen and was wailing around the "Golden Swan," interspersed with heavy storms of hail which rattled on roof and windows. Outside the tempest shrieked and was accompanied by a vast, humming, harp-like noise as it flung itself against the lattice-work of the towers and vibrated over Richmond like a chorus of giant aeolian harps. Arthur and I sat in the shabby sitting-room, which had been the theater of so much emotion that night, and stared at each other with troubled faces.

There was a little pattering noise, and Bill Rolston came in, closing the door carefully behind him.

"He wants you to go up to him, Sir Thomas. You told me to use my own discretion. Since we carried him up and I gave him the bromides, I haven't left his bedside. I talked to him in his own language, but he wouldn't say a word until I threw off every disguise and told him who I really was and who you were also."

"But, Rolston, you may have spoiled everything!"

He shook his head.

"You don't know what I know. Now that he's aware you are of his own rank, and that I am your lieutenant, his life is absolutely your forfeit. If you were to tell him to commit suicide he would do it at once as the most natural thing in the world, to preserve his honor. He is your man from this moment, Sir Thomas, just as I am."

"Then I'll go up. Arthur, you don't mind?"

"Mind! I thought I brought a bomb-sh.e.l.l into your house to-night, and so I have too, but to find all this going on simply robs me of speech.

Meanwhile, if you will introduce me to this Asiatic gentleman who speaks such excellent English, and whom, from repute I guess to be Mr. William Rolston, I daresay we can amuse ourselves during the remainder of this astonishing night. And," he continued, "if there is such a thing as a ham upon the premises, some thick slices grilled upon this excellent fire, and some cool ale in a pewter--"

I left them to it and went upstairs to my chamber. It was lit with two or three candles in silver holders--I had made the place quite habitable by now--and lying on my bed, covered with an eiderdown, his eyes feverish, his face flushed, lay the Mandarin.

His eyes opened and he smiled. It was the first time I had seen the delicate, melancholy lips light up in a real smile.

"What's that for?" I said, as I sat down by the bedside.

"You are so big, and strong, Prince," he replied, "and large and confident; and your disguise fell from you as you came in and I saw you as you were."

I knelt beside the bed and my breath came thick and fast.

"For G.o.d's sake don't play with me," I said, "not that you are doing that. You have met Her--Miss Morse I mean, my Juanita?"

"Prince, she has deigned to give me her confidence in some degree. I do my work in the wonderful library that Mr. Morse has built. It's a great hall, full of the rarest volumes; and there are long windows from which one can look down upon London and gaze beyond the City to where the wrinkled sea beats around the coast. And, day by day, in her loneliness, the Fairest of Maidens has come to this high place and taken a book of poems, sat in the embrasure, and stared down at the world below."

He raised a thin hand and held it upright. It was so transparent that the light of a candle behind turned it to blood red.