The Man from Brodney's Part 17

Hollingsworth Chase, attended by Selim, came down from his mountain retreat. He heard the sibilant hiss of the scorned Persians as he pa.s.sed among them on the outskirts of the crowd; he observed the threatening att.i.tude of the men who waited and watched; he saw the white, ugly face of Von Blitz quivering with triumph; he felt the breath of disaster upon his cheek. And yet he walked among them without fear, his head erect, his eyes defiant. He knew that a crisis had come, but he smiled as he walked up to meet it, with a confidence that was sublime.

The market-place was a large open tract in the extreme west end of the town, some distance removed from the business street and the pier. On two sides were the tents of the fruit peddlers and the vegetable hucksters, negroes who came in from the country with their produce. The other sides were taken up by the fabric and gewgaw venders, while in the centre stood the platforms from which the auctioneers offered treasures from the Occident. Through a break in the foothills, the chateau was plainly discernible, the sea being obscured from view by the dense forest that crowned the cliffs.

Chase made his way boldly to the nearest platform, exchanging bows with the surprised Von Blitz and the saturnine Rasula, who stood quite near.

The men of j.a.pat slowly drew close in as he mounted the platform, The gleaming eyes that shone in the light of the torches did not create any visible sign of uneasiness in the American, even though down in his heart he trembled. He knew the double chance he was to take. From where he stood looking out over those bronze faces, he could pick out the scowling husbands who hated him because their wives hated them. He could see Ben Ali, the master of two beauties from Teheran and the handsome dancing girl from Cairo; there was Amriph, who basked erstwhile in the sunshine of a bargain from Damascus and a seraph from Bagdad, but who now groped about in the blackness of their contempt; and others, all of whom felt in their bitter hearts that their misery was due to the prowess of this gallant figure.

Afar off stood the group of women who had inspired this hatred and distrust. Behind them, despised and uncountenanced by the Oriental elect, were crowded the native women, who, down in their hearts, loathed the usurpers. It was Chase's hope that the husbands of these simple women would ultimately stand at his side in the fight for supremacy--and they were vastly in the majority. If he could convince these men that his dealings with them were honest, Von Blitz could "go hang."

He faced the crowd, knowing that all there were against him. "Von Blitz!" he called suddenly. The German started and stepped back involuntarily, as if he had been reprimanded.

"I've called this meeting in order to give you a chance to say to my face some of the things you are saying behind my back. Thank G.o.d, all of you men understand English. I want you to hear what Von Blitz has to say in public, and then I want you to hear what I say to him. Incidentally, you may have something to say for yourselves. In the first place, I want you all to understand just how I stand in respect to my duties as your legal representative. Von Blitz and Rasula and others, I hear, have undertaken to discredit my motives as the agent of your London advisers.

Let me say, right here, that the man who says that I have played you false in the slightest degree, is a liar--a _d.a.m.ned_ liar, if you prefer it that way. You have been told that I am selling you out to the lawyers for the opposition. That is lie number one. You have been led to believe that I make false reports to your London solicitors. Lie number two. You have been poisoned with the story that I covet certain women in this town--too numerous to mention, I believe. That is lie number three. They are all beautiful, my friends, but I wouldn't have one of 'em as a gift.

"For the past few nights my home has been watched. I want to announce to you that if I see anybody hanging around the bungalow after to-day, I'm going to put a bullet through him, just as I would through a dog. Please bear that in mind. Now, to come down to Von Blitz. You can't drive me out of this island, old man. You have lied about me ever since I beat you up that night. You are sacrificing the best interests of these people in order to gratify a personal spite, in order to wreak a personal vengeance. Stop! You can talk when I have finished. You have set spies upon my track. You have told these husbands that their wives need watching. You have turned them against me and against their wives, who are as pure and virtuous as the snow which you never see. (G.o.d, forgive me!) All this, my friend, in order to get even with me. I don't ask you to retract anything you've said. I only intend you to know that I can crush you as I would a peanut, if you know what that is. You----"

Von Blitz, foaming with rage, broke in: "I suppose you vill call out der warships! We are not fools! You can fool some of----"

"Now, see here, Von Blitz, I'll show whether I can call out a warship whenever I need one. I have never intended to ask naval help except in case of an attack by our enemies up at the chateau. You can't believe that I seek to turn those big guns against my own clients--the clients I came out here to serve with my life's blood if necessary. But, hear me, you Dutch lobster! I can have a British man-of-war here in ten hours to take you off this island and hang you from a yard arm on the charge of conspiracy against the Crown."

Von Blitz and Rasula laughed scornfully and turned to the crowd. The latter began to harangue his fellows. "This man is a--a--" he began.

"A bluff!" prompted Von Blitz, glaring at his tall accuser.

"A bluff," went on Rasula. "He can do none of these things. Nor can the Americans at the chateau. I know that they are liars. They--"

"I'll make you pay for that, Rasula. Your time is short. Men of j.a.pat, I don't want to serve you unless you trust me--"

A dozen voices cried: "We don't trust you!" "Dog of a Christian! Son of a snake!" Von Blitz glowed with satisfaction.

"One moment, please! Rasula knows that I came out here to represent Sir John Brodney. He knows how I am regarded in London. He is jealous because I have not listened to his chatter. I am not responsible for the probable delay in settling the estate. If you are not very careful, you will ruin every hope for success that you may have had in the beginning.

The Crown will take it out of your hands. You've got to show yourselves worthy of handling the affairs of this company. You can't do it if you listen to such carrion as Von Blitz and Rasula. Oh, I'm not afraid of you! I know that you have written to Sir John, Rasula, asking that I be recalled. He won't recall me, rest a.s.sured, unless he throws up the case. I have his own letters to prove that he is satisfied with my work out here. I am satisfied that there are enough fair-minded men in this crowd to protect me. They will stand by me in the end. I call upon--"

But a howl of dissent from the throng brought him up sharply. His face went white and for a moment he feared the malevolence that stared at him from all sides. He looked frequently in the direction of the distant chateau. An anxious gleam came into his eyes--was it of despair? A hundred men were shouting, but no one seemed to have the courage to break over the line that he had drawn. Knives slipped from many sashes; Von Blitz was screaming with insane laughter, pointing his finger at the discredited American. While they shouted and cursed, his gaze never left the cleft in the hills. He did not attempt to cry them down; the effort would have been in vain. Suddenly a wild, happy light came into his anxious, searching eyes. He gave a mighty shout and raised his hands, commanding silence.

Selim, clinging to his side, also had seen the sky-rocket which arose up from the chateau and dropped almost instantly into the wall of trees.

There was something in the face and voice of the American that quelled the riotous disorder.

"You fools!" he shouted, "take warning! I have told you that I would not turn the guns of England and America against you unless you turned against me. I am your friend--but, by the great Mohammed you'll pay for my life with every one of your own if you resort to violence. Listen!

To-day I learned that my life was threatened. I sent a message in the air to the nearest battleship. There is not an hour in the day or night that I or the people in the chateau cannot call upon our governments for help. My call to-day has been answered, as I knew it would be. There is always a warship near at hand, my friends. It is for you to say whether a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l--"

Von Blitz leaped upon a platform and shouted madly: "Fools! Don't believe him! He cannot bring der ships here! He lies--he lies! He--"

At that moment, a shrill clamour of voices arose in the distance--the cries of women and children. Chase's heart gave a great bound of joy. He knew what it meant. The crowd turned to learn the cause of this sudden disturbance. Across the square, coming from the town, raced the women and children, gesticulating wildly and screaming with excitement.

Chase pointed his finger at Von Blitz and shouted:

"I can't, eh? There's a British warship standing off the harbour now, and her guns are trained--"

But he did not complete the astounding, stupefying sentence. The women were screaming:

"The warship! The warship! Fly! Fly!"

In a second, the entire a.s.semblage was racing furiously, doubtingly, yet fearfully toward the pier. Von Blitz and Rasula shouted in vain. They were left with Chase, who smiled triumphantly upon their ghastly faces.

"Gentlemen, they are not deceived. There _is_ a warship out there. You came near to showing your hand to-night. Now come along with me, and I'll show my hand to you. Rasula, you'd better draw in your claws.

You're ent.i.tled to some consideration. But Von Blitz! Jacob, you are standing on very thin ice. I can have you shot to-morrow morning."

Von Blitz sputtered and snarled. "It is all a lie! It is a trick!" He would have drawn his revolver had not Rasula grasped his arm. The native lawyer dragged him off toward the pier, half-doubting his own senses.

Just outside the harbour, plainly distinguishable in the moonlight, lay a great cruiser, her searchlights whipping the sky and sea with long white lashes.

The gaping, awe-struck crowd in the street parted to let Chase pa.s.s through on his way to the bungalow. He was riding one of Wyckholme's thoroughbreds, a fiery, beautiful grey. His manner was that of a medieval conqueror. He looked neither to right nor to left, but kept his eyes straight ahead, ignoring the islanders as completely as if they did not exist.

"It's more like a Christian Endeavour meeting than it was ten minutes ago," he was saying to himself, all the time wondering when some reckless unbeliever would hurl a knife at his back. He gravely winked his eye in the direction of the chateau. "Good old Britt!" he muttered in his exultation.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LANTERN ABOVE

Chase sat for hours on his porch that night, gazing down upon the chateau. Lights gleamed in a hundred of its windows. He knew that revelry held forth in what he was pleased enough to call the feudal castle, and yet his heart warmed toward the gay people who danced and sang while he thirsted at the gates.

The bitterness of his own isolation, the ostracism that circ.u.mstance had forced upon him, would have been maddening on this night had not all rancour been tempered by the glorious achievement in the market-place.

He wondered if the Princess knew what he had dared and what he had accomplished in the early hours of the night. He wondered if they had pointed out his solitary light to her--if, now and then, she bestowed a casual glance upon that twinkling star of his. The porch lantern hung almost directly above his head.

He was not fool enough to think that he had permanently pulled the wool over the eyes of the islanders. Sooner or later they would come to know that he had tricked them, and then--well, he could only shake his head in dubious contemplation of the hundred things that might happen. He smiled as he smoked, however, for he looked down upon a world that thought only of the night at hand.

The chateau was indeed the home of revelry. The pent-up, struggling spirits of those who had dwelt therein for months in solitude arose in the wild stampede for freedom. All petty differences between Lady Deppingham and Drusilla Browne, and they were quite common now, were forgotten in the whirlwind of relief that came with the strangers from the yacht. Mrs. Browne's good-looking eager husband revelled in the prospect of this delirious night--this almost Arabian night. He was swept off his feet by the radiant Princess--the Scheherezade of his boyhood dreams; his blithe heart thumped as it had not done since he was a boy. The d.u.c.h.ess of N---- and the handsome Marchioness of B---- came into his tired, hungry life at a moment when it most needed the light.

It was he who fairly dragged Lady Agnes aside and proposed the banquet, the dance, the concert--everything--and it was he who carried out the hundred spasmodic instructions that she gave.

Late in the night, long after the dinner and the dance, the tired but happy company flocked to the picturesque hanging garden for rest and the last refreshment. Every man was in his ducks or flannels, every woman in the coolest, the daintiest, the sweetest of frocks. The night was clear and hot; the drinks were cold.

The hanging garden was a wonderfully constructed open-air plaisance suspended between the chateau itself and the great cliff in whose shadow it stood. The cliff towered at least three hundred feet above the roof of the spreading chateau, a veritable stone wall that extended for a mile or more in either direction. Its crest was covered with trees beyond which, in all its splendour, rose the gra.s.s-covered mountain peak. Here and there, along the face of this rocky palisade, tiny streams of water leaked through and came down in a never-ending spray, leaving the rocks cool and slimy from its touch.

Near the chateau there was a real waterfall, reminding one in no small sense of the misty veils at Lauterbrunnen or Giesbach. The swift stream which obtained life from these falls, big and little, ran along the base of the cliff for some distance and was then diverted by means of a deep, artificial channel into an almost complete circuit of the chateau, forming the moat. It sped along at the foot of the upper terrace, a wide torrent that washed between solid walls of masonry which rose to a height of not less than ten feet on either side. There were two drawbridges--seldom used but always practicable. One, a handsome example of bridge building, crossed the current at the terminus of the grand approach which led up from the park; the other opened the way to the stables and the servants' quarters at the rear. A small, stationary bridge crossed the vicious stream immediately below the hanging garden and led to the ladders by which one ascended to the caverns that ran far back into the mountain.

Two big, black, irregular holes in the face of the cliff marked the entrance to these deep, rambling caves, wonderful caverns wrought by the convulsions of the dead volcano, cracks made by these splintering earthquakes when the island was new.

The garden hung high between the building and the cliff, swung by a score of great steel cables. These cables were riveted soundly in the solid rock of the cliff at one end and fastened as safely to the stone walls of the chateau at the other. It swung staunchly from its moorings, with the constancy of a suspension bridge, and trembled at the slightest touch.

It was at least a hundred feet square. The floor was covered with a foot or more of soil in which the rich gra.s.s and plants of the tropics flourished. There were tiny flower beds in the center; baby palms, patchouli plants and a maze of interlacing vines marked the edges of this wonderful garden in mid-air. Cool fountains sprayed the air at either end of the green enclosure: the illusion was complete.

The walls surrounding the garden were three feet high and were intended to represent the typical English garden wall of brick. To gain access to the hanging garden, one crossed a narrow bridge, which led from the second balcony of the chateau. There was not an hour in the day when protection from the sun could not be found in this little paradise.