CHAPTER XI

THE KEY OF THE TREASURE-HOUSE

Well might Mrs. Hutchinson rail at us with a certain peevishness; here was true midsummer madness, if ever the dog-days’ frolic gamboled within the bounds of staid London. And what a wild jostling of ideas, apparently remote as the poles, contributed to the medley; agonic lines, polarization of ships and fire-irons, a curious experiment in an hotel at Oxford, and a girl humming _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ in mid-Atlantic--these were the magic passwords, it would seem, to a new wonder-cave of Ali Baba. I fancied I could hear those fiddles singing the accompaniment to the lovelorn count’s impassioned verses. In this latest version of the immortal comedy I was playing Figaro, and Mrs. Hutchinson, if judged by her present impatient mood, provided a fair substitute for Dr. Bartholdo.

Yet, what did it all mean? Karl, to my own knowledge, had not despatched his telegnomic sense on a roving commission that Sunday afternoon at Oxford. He had subjected a poker to what he termed “magnetic induction” merely in order to illustrate his unimpaired bodily and mental vigor when I expressed some anxiety about the effect on his health of practising too often a new and perhaps dangerous force. Again, if not at that moment, he had striven subsequently to glean some intelligence of Maggie’s doings, only to encounter repeated failure day after day, until she met Signor Bocci in Liverpool a few hours previously. Nevertheless, I was sure that communication between those two was established in that instant, a sympathetic contact, conscious in the maiden’s case, unconscious in the youth’s. Perhaps, while humming Almaviva’s strains, the Rosina of the _Merlin_ applied the words to herself.

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.

I turned my eyes for a second from Maggie’s face and looked at Karl. He reminded me of a youthful warrior of the age of chivalry, who, guarding his armor in some holy fane during the still watches of the night, found a sweet vision smiling on him instead of the stone saint or stained-glass picture of crude daylight. Evidently he was unaware of having exerted any perturbing influence on Maggie. He was quite genuinely surprised by the coincidence revealed by her words.

The girl herself seemed to be anxious that we should not answer her mother’s question.

“It is difficult to tell you exactly what happened,” she exclaimed hurriedly. “I was so confused afterwards that I scarcely could form a coherent idea, and that is why mama complains that I have not said much about it. But I can give you certain incidents which stood out clearly. In the first place, I seemed to lose my senses. I had a curious sensation akin to that felt if one’s arm goes to sleep, as we say; only this was general in its effect, and I had not been sitting in an awkward position. Then I heard voices. Everything was dark, though, of course, you understand it was broad daylight on board the ship. Still, I thought I heard two men talking about me, and their remarks were so peculiar that I could not help listening. I should explain that the men were not on board. Indeed, I believe, they were then, and are now, in New York.”

“Were they Wilhelm Steindal and Paul Constantine?” said Karl, eagerly.

The question was out before he realized that it had better have remained unspoken. The effect was as instantaneous as any writer of melo-farce could hope for. Mrs. Hutchinson clapped her hands in her excitement, and Maggie became very red indeed.

“So you, too, knew all about it,” she murmured.

“No,” said Karl. “I know absolutely nothing of any incident on board the _Merlin_ which affects, in any way, the experience you are relating.”

“Or afterwards?”

“None, whatever. But I am interrupting you. I am sorry. It was quite involuntary on my part.”

Miss Hutchinson appeared to gain confidence after this. She and Karl, and, to a certain extent, I myself, were in the position of ships of different nationalities on the high seas, using the same code-signals, but unable to interpret them without reference to a translation.

“It is very astonishing to my mother and me to hear you mention those names,” she said. “We only met Mr. Constantine a week before we left the States. He introduced us to Mr. Steindal. At that time, and, indeed, during the past year, I entertained the hope of earning some degree of fame as a violinist. I have made successful appearances in Berlin, London, New York, Boston, and other places, and Mr. Steindal should have proved to be an exceedingly valuable acquaintance. But Mr. Constantine offended me the evening before we sailed, and the words I heard in my dream bore out his previous conduct so completely that I have almost resolved to abandon the idea of a professional career.”

“Did you ever hear anything like it?” demanded Mrs. Hutchinson, who was brought back with a bump from psychical manifestations to the hard matter-of-fact details of existence. “Here is this foolish girl thinking of foregoing the results of several years of expensive tuition and some very flattering public receptions, just because she had a queer vision in mid-Atlantic.”

“Mother, dear, there was no vision about Mr. Constantine’s behavior at Manhattan Beach?”

“No, but that wretched Armenian is not all the world! It is a nice thing if two Anglo-Indians allow a dark person of his type to affect their lives.”

Neither Karl nor I moved a muscle when Manhattan Beach was mentioned. But how quaintly these youngsters’ careers had become interwoven after so many years of separation! And what an amazing thing it was that Maggie _heard_ but did not _see_, when one remembered that music broke the seal of Karl’s spiritual hearing! However, I must restrain my speculative thoughts, for Maggie was speaking again.

“I call it a dream,” she said earnestly, “but I use that word for want of a better. I feel in my heart, in my brain, that I really did hear what Constantine and Steindal said to each other. They planned a great many things, and, if proof were wanted, Steindal’s agent met us at Liverpool to-day and made the offer I told my mother of last Sunday.”

Mrs. Hutchinson, poised on the very pinnacle of doubt, nodded her head.

“That is true enough,” she admitted, smiling in her perplexity, “and it is all through you, Mr. Grier, or shall I call you Karl? That is why I wrote to your mother. We were delayed by fog in the Irish Sea, or we should have been in London before her telegram could have reached you.”

Karl only smiled in reply. It was almost impossible for either him or me to comment on the broken narrative which reached us. How bewildered and unnerved the two ladies would be if they realized the minuteness with which we fitted each statement they made into the detailed story we already possessed!

“Yes,” said Maggie, speaking very slowly, “no doubt you have been wondering how you can possibly be bound up with my affairs?”

She paused, as if to permit Karl to give some hint that he already possessed the clue to her wanderings in the maze of intangible things. He helped her by saying:

“We have a story to tell, Miss Hutchinson. I, too, have undergone some extraordinary experiences, but most certainly I did not encounter you in spirit-land while you crossed the Atlantic. I may say that I endeavored to do so, for reasons that shall be made clear, but I failed.”

She smiled delightedly. It occurred to me that Karl had said exactly that which she wanted him to say. I pictured Hooper reveling in analytical hair-splitting when we related this conversation to him. Nevertheless, the solution of this latest problem in occultism baffled both him and me for many a day.

“I will pass from Steindal and Constantine,” she said, “and come to the next phase of my novel experience. Their voices ceased, and I seemed to recover some sense of my true surroundings. I knew I was at sea in a moving vessel. I could feel the vibration of the propeller, but the only human being of whose presence I was conscious was you, Mr. Grier.”

“What an unreceptive soul I must possess!” cried Karl, gallantly.

“You came and took hold of my left hand,” she went on. “You said, ‘Maggie, don’t you remember me? I am Karl Grier.’ I think I endeavored to reply, but the words seemed to die away in my throat. You bent over me and told me not to accept the contract Steindal’s agent would offer me at Liverpool. Then, you gave me a lot of news about yourself and your father and mother. The years seemed to slip back until we were children again in the Kalanullah tea-garden. I don’t believe I have ever been so delighted as I was by the knowledge that we had both gone back to our childhood. Have you really no knowledge whatever of all this?”

Hooper himself could not have discharged that final question with more unexpected forensic skill than did this mere girl. It seemed to afford her the supreme test of his assurance. Thenceforth, she gave herself no further trouble on that point.

Her natural vivacity now replaced the somewhat hysterical restraint which she had exercised hitherto. She told us that she had both seen Karl and heard his voice on three subsequent occasions, and these visitations, though in no way alarming while they lasted, were so mysterious in their semblance of actuality, and dwelt so constantly in her thoughts, that her mother, to whom she had related each incident after its occurrence, determined to seek an interview with Karl, at the earliest opportunity which presented itself on their arrival in England. The mother bore out her daughter’s story at all points, though she stoutly held to the opinion that the whole affair was the outcome of over-study--Maggie having worked very hard during her visit to the States--combined with the exercise of some telepathic gift which Karl had undoubtedly exercised when a child.

But even Mrs. Hutchinson was compelled to retreat from this logical fortress when Karl asked me to tell his old friends all that had taken place at Oxford. Maggie listened with a ferverish intentness that did not escape me. Her shining eyes and parted lips betrayed her. She impressed me as searching for some key which should open the door of complete understanding, but the search was not rewarded--that much I knew when we bade each other “good-night” at a late hour.

Karl and I escorted the ladies to the corridor in which their room was situated, the hotel being so full that we were scattered over three floors. Mrs. Hutchinson, glad to escape from the brain-tangling problems which we could not shirk in discussing recent events, was chatting with Karl about his father and mother, and I seized the opportunity to put a question to pretty Miss Margaret as she walked by my side.

“In your subsequent visions of Karl,” I said, “did you ever attempt to speak to him?”

“No. It was either impossible or I did not experience the desire.”

She answered so readily that I was encouraged to go a step further.

“Did you, of your own will, strive to resist these appearances, notwithstanding their seemingly pleasurable nature?”

She looked at me quickly, and the ghost of a smile dimpled her cheeks.

“Yes,” she said simply. “I do not mind confessing that they frightened me terribly, afterwards, when I thought about them, but not at the time.”

“Were you thinking of Karl when you met Bocci this afternoon?”

“How could we help it, when his predictions were verified the instant we stepped off the steamer’s gangway? I must have spoken of him to my mother just before he saw us standing in the Customs shed. Oh, how strange it all is! What will be the outcome?”

A man passed us and glared at me as though he would like to wring my neck. I imagine he thought I was worrying Maggie. She had changed her travelling costume for a dinner-blouse and a light silk skirt. I noticed that her bosom heaved tumultuously and a soft light leaped into her eyes. But I pursued the topic no further, and we parted a few seconds later.

Next morning, Karl and I were waiting in the vestibule to take the ladies in to breakfast, when the inquiry clerk slipped from behind his desk and approached me with a business-like air.

“Are you Mr. Grier, sir?” he asked.

“No, this is Mr. Grier.”

Karl looked at the little man, who seemed half prepared to tremble before another Olympian glance. But Karl’s face would reassure a timid child when, as Hooper put it, he was “disconnected.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the clerk, “but I thought you would like to know that there was a man here last night inquiring for you.”

“A man?” said Karl, blankly.

The hotel official, even if he had curt manners with unprotected travellers, was smart enough to discriminate between real mahogany and veneer.

“Yes,” he answered off-handedly, “a foreigner, an Italian, I think. He did not want to see you, but he seemed anxious to find out if you were staying here, and if you had met Mrs. and Miss Hutchinson. Of course I told him you were in the hotel, but as for the ladies, I knew nothing whatever about them.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“No, sir.”

Karl described Bocci, and the inquiry clerk recognized him instantly.

“That’s him,” he cried (people always do say “That’s him,” no one save a parson or a school-master uses the nominative); “I hope I did right in choking him off?”

“You’re a wonder,” said Karl, laughing, and the clerk quitted us, feeling that he must have greatly mistaken the looks and utterances of this exceedingly nice young gentleman on the previous day.