CHAPTER XIII

CONSTANTINE TAKES A JOURNEY

My first lucid intent was to lead the girl away from that place of gapers. She was overwrought. Perhaps the music, flooding her soul with harmony, had proved a mischievous adjunct to the somewhat exciting topic of our discourse. But, with a little gasp or two, she recovered her self-possession. Some experience of a platform, of facing singly the dim rows of upturned faces, is of utmost value in these emergencies. In my youth, being both shy and nervous, I was speedily cured from those ailments by becoming a newspaper reporter. Many a time, walking towards the platform through a densely packed audience, have I been cheered loudly as the candidate, or lecturer, and then boohed vehemently by people annoyed at their own mistake. This treatment, repeated every night for a week, will remove the worst attack of bashfulness.

So Maggie, now, with a well-simulated laugh, drove the terror from her lips if not from her eyes.

“No,” she said; “it has passed. Let us remain here.”

She seated herself again. To deceive the curious, in case we were being watched, I lit a cigarette, strolled towards the orchestra, and asked the leader, whom I knew, to play a favorite waltz, one of Waldteufel’s. The obliging Hungarian (whose name was O’Rourke!) promptly exhibited an “Extra” card, and I returned to our alcove, “the cynosure of every eye,” as we used to say in good journalese.

Maggie’s brown eyes had grown larger and darker, her face smaller and white, during my brief absence.

“Better not risk another experiment like that,” I suggested, feeling guilty in not insisting that her mother should be warned at once.

“You need have no fear in that regard. I am quite incapable of undergoing such an ordeal again to-night.”

Certainly her appearance bore out her words. It occurred to me instantly that she shared with Karl the intuitive knowledge of a temporary exhaustion of the dynamic store which fed this wonderful sixth sense. It was not a continuous endowment, like sight or hearing. Its use drew upon a fund, obviously of limited extent in Maggie’s case, which, when depleted, restored itself by slow, natural processes. I fitted this discovery into other parts of the puzzle. Like a child arranging one of those interesting toys made of a number of equal cubes bearing a section of a picture on each face, no sooner did I identify any special feature in telegnomy than I marked its assigned place on the chart I had constructed in my mind.

“You seem to have had a trying experience,” I said, encouragingly.

“Do I? What did I say, how did I look, when I awoke?”

When a girl asks a question of that sort she is quite normal. I reassured her.

“I have no recollection of being afraid while I was listening to Constantine,” she explained. “It was the half-waking remembrance of what he said that terrified me. I seemed to think that he was about to--to stab Karl with a knife that very instant. Oh, it was dreadful!”

“Tell me what took place. Did you see him?”

“No. I only heard vaguely, as one might hear violent words and the sound of blows through a thin partition. When the ’cello began to play the lament of Vulcan, I suddenly understood that a great many mythological attributes of gods and goddesses must have arisen from a more or less accurate perception by studious ancients of unknown or, rather, little-used human powers. But why are you smiling? Is that a very old discovery?”

“It becomes newer every day. Forgive me, Miss Hutchinson. I was really congratulating myself on my own perspicacity. I was sure that the words, as well as the music, had affected you.”

“But why am I so helpless against these attacks?” she murmured, pathetically. “What is this man, Constantine, to me that his voice should sound in my ears though half the earth intervenes?”

Her eyes became suspiciously limpid, but she lifted her head defiantly.

“Why should I dread him, too?” she cried. “It seems, somehow, that were it not for him I should not have met you and Karl. There can be no doubt that we should not have met so soon. And, with you two to help, it should certainly be an easy matter to circumvent Constantine.”

“Is it placing too great a strain on you to ask what you have heard?”

She bent nearer. Almost a child in years, she seemed to be changing into a woman--with all a woman’s passion and capacity for endurance--changing even while we sat there amidst the babel of talk in many a foreign tongue, with the tender voluptuous plaint of the waltz beating like a heart in rhythmic diapason.

“This is the time I grow frightened of myself,” she said, with a wistful little smile. “Just now I was afraid on Karl’s behalf. I wish--and yet I do not wish--that some one else were favored with these visions. Sometimes they are--quite--thrilling. But this one thrilled me in an exceedingly unpleasant way. Have you seen Sarah Bernhardt in that awful play, wherein she hears her lover being tortured to make him confess a secret which she knows? Well, I felt something like that when I came to a knowledge of my whereabouts. What time is it now in New York?”

I glanced at my watch. It was 9.30 P.M.

“A little after four o’clock in the afternoon,” I said.

“Then Constantine is in his office. He deals in grain, among other things. One day he explained to me the manner in which a silver currency in Russia and India affects the business done on a gold standard in Canada and the States. Sometimes his agents are instructed to buy above the market rate so as to equalize quotations. He is reputed to be a very clever financier.”

“You know him fairly well?” I asked. There was never a woman born who could tell a story without parentheses. These side issues are as essential to her recital as gussets to a dress.

“I have met him several times. I must confess he was interesting until he asked me to marry him.”

“Oh, he reached that stage?”

“You can put it that way if you like. Such a thought had never crossed my mind previously. He became hateful to me at once. I could not endure his presence. I would as soon think of embracing something cold and clammy, like a snake.”

I did not point out that a snake is neither cold nor clammy. A nice young python, for instance, in his multi-colored spring suit, is as grateful and comforting to the touch as a roll of soft plush. But the antipathy of woman for the serpent is an old feud, harking back, I fancy, to the beginning of things. You ought to hear some of the queer tales about snakes current among the natives of India.

Maggie brushed away the memory of the Armenian’s love-making with a gesture of disdain.

“Gounod’s music set me a-dreaming,” she said. “If you indulge in composition there is no better jumping-off place than one of those delicious minor chords wherein the motif flutters for a moment before it enters upon a new phase. I had run away ahead of the air when I experienced that pins-and-needles sensation I have spoken about----”

“Were you cold?” I broke in.

“Slightly. Not as one feels an icy draught of air, but rather the chilliness of sitting motionless in a cold room. Instead of the music I heard a telephone bell. Constantine’s voice answered. There was a pause, and some one, Steindal I expect, told him that Karl Grier was with me in London, and that I was unwilling to sign the contract offered by Bocci. Constantine’s exclamations made me understand so much. There was more ringing, and I distinctly heard Constantine reserving a cabin on a steamer which sails on Saturday. Then he appeared to give way to a fit of passion. He used horrid words, and he vowed to stab Karl through and through. I actually heard the blows of his hand on the table, and he almost shrieked in his rage. Yet I thought there was fear in his voice, too. Oh, please tell me, do you think that this is all madness? I am afraid again, now, not of that man, but of myself!”

Here was a bright and imaginative girl on the verge of hysteria owing to the startling exercise of a sense the existence of which neither she nor any one connected with her had even suspected a week earlier. To my thinking, the best way to calm her natural fears was to insist on the scientific accuracy of impressions which might otherwise be regarded as dangerous delusions. So I took her, with the preciseness of a road-surveyor, along the strange path already traversed by Karl, and took care to prove that the human machine, so far as hearing was concerned, only acted more speedily and over greater distances than its iron and copper imitators. Its limits were exactly the same.

“If I were favored as you and Karl are, I should strive to cultivate my knowledge rather than retard its growth by needless alarm,” I said. “Luckily, in these days men have learnt to inquire causes instead of falling flat on their faces in superstitious awe when they encounter some new trick of nature. It is only a few months since a patient, lying in a hospital ward containing a crucifix, had a complete facsimile of the sacred image imprinted on the skin of his shoulder during a thunderstorm. More recently, a man bathing in the sea, running for shelter when a storm broke, was struck by lightning. When picked up, a perfect photograph of a neighboring building was found on his breast. Now, these incidents are rightly regarded as exceedingly interesting, but they are neither supernatural nor conducive to insanity. Nature acted as a photographer, dispensing with the tripod, the camera, and the black cloth. That is all.”

“It is a good deal,” said Maggie, a trifle awestricken, but nevertheless pleased, I thought, to know that others than herself were subjected to disturbing phenomena.

Not far distant was sitting a lady of pronounced shapeliness rendered impressive by her exceedingly décolleté dress. I recognized in her the widow of a wealthy provision merchant. I pointed her out to my companion.

“The pity is that such genuine lightning effects are so rare,” I said. “Otherwise our adipose friend there, passing one of her late husband’s shops some day, might be indelibly branded ‘Best Home-cured Bacon’ across the broad of her back.”

A harmless joke of that kind, even as the humble necessary worm, can serve a useful purpose. Maggie was kind enough to laugh, and we dropped from the clouds forthwith. Mrs. Hutchinson joined us, but her daughter was so quiet--being ordinarily a lively girl, with all a girl’s readiness to quiz good-humoredly her neighbors’ dresses and looks--that the sharp maternal scrutiny quickly detected her abstracted air.

So there was nothing for it but an adjournment to our sitting-room, where, after prolonged conclave, we decided that Maggie should not only decline Steindal’s help, but place herself in the hands of ---- another agent, and risk the Polish-Jew’s hostility. Again, when Karl’s murder was being spoken of--though I attributed little weight to the love-sick Armenian’s threats--it was essential that his father should be taken into our counsels. By this time I was as convinced of the reliability of these telegnomic sights and sounds as of the existence of animalculæ invisible to the naked eye but seen through a microscope.

Early next morning I telegraphed to my friend, Grier senior, asking him to come to London on important business. I also cabled to a firm in New York, saying it would oblige me if they ascertained definitely whether or not Mr. Paul Constantine sailed from that port during the following day.

Now, Karl had promised me that, in the event of any further trances taking place, he would write to me without delay, giving details and carefully noting exact times. It came as no surprise when I opened a telegram from him:

“Constantine sails by to-morrow’s Cunarder. Letter follows.”

I showed it to Maggie.

“You two are beginning to indulge in simultaneous magnetization,” I said. “You may depend upon it, Karl had a look round New York about half-past nine last night, Greenwich time. He brought you with him. If you were not so timid you would soon be able to see as well as hear.”

“You forget that I can see _him_,” she said, and her voice was so low that I glanced at her and was surprised to find her cheeks suffused with color.

“Did you see him last night?” I demanded.

“No, but I was conscious of his presence.”

“Conscious! How?”

“I cannot tell,” she answered simply. “I only know that it is so.”

“Yet you have astonished me frequently by your direct way of expressing your meaning. There are so many forms of consciousness.”

“Some of them are new to me. When Karl magnetized your hands did you know what was happening?”

“I felt a numbing cold from the wrists to the finger-tips.”

“That is akin to my sensation, too, but it is general, as I have told you already.”

I laughed. Being an old fogy, I had omitted a most important factor in the affairs of these young people. If, as I suspected, Maggie was as badly smitten as Karl with that curable disease of the heart called love, it was fairly certain that these two were thinking of each other at every spare moment of the day, not to mention their dreams.

Karl’s letter, explicit enough in all details, bore out Maggie’s statement. Constantine was behaving like an incipient homicidal maniac. He had purchased a deadly looking dagger, of Sicilian manufacture; hence, it was a reasonable assumption that the blade would be efficient if properly used.

“I purpose meeting the scoundrel and kicking him into his senses,” wrote Karl, coolly; but his father and I, assured that Constantine had, indeed, quitted the States, considered the matter far too serious to be left to such a haphazard method of treatment. Grier _père_, what between anxiety on his son’s account and annoyance that the dawn of a splendid career should be clouded by this rejuvenescence of a faculty which he fondly believed was long since dead as a doornail, was not the best of counselors at this crisis.

In view of the tragedy which did actually take place, I have often wondered, in those quiet hours when a man reviews the past without prejudice, whether any better course was open to us than that which we adopted.

Our difficulties were many and embarrassing. It was not Constantine but we who were liable to be treated as lunatics if we told our story to any self-respecting policeman. Imagination boggles at the picture of the “intelligent officer” when asked to arrest a man on telegnomic information. As it is not my design to treat jocosely a most lamentable chapter of Karl’s biography, I must omit any analysis of the official mind on that topic.

After much debate, we decided to deal with the situation ourselves, and collectively. I must insist that this was the elder Grier’s plan. True, I fell in with it, but not without grave foreboding. Your prosperous, hard-headed man of affairs does not lay sufficient stress on the overwhelming power of the primary instincts, and Grier would have scoffed at any theory that in the triangular conflict of positive and negative forces set up by Karl, Maggie, and the Armenian, we had gone back æons in the life-history of humanity.

However, I was a party to the scheme, so I must share its responsibility. Karl’s tutor set him free for the requisite twenty-four hours, and we three went to Liverpool to meet the mail steamer. We intended to persuade Constantine to remain in that city a few hours, talk over the whole matter fully and squarely, and point out to him the utter folly of his pursuit of Maggie and his design on Karl’s life.

It was so very straightforward and easy when viewed in the “common-sense aspect.” As if muddle-headed saws and statutes would avail against a law of creation! Will you believe it, we two grayheads completely omitted Karl’s sixth sense from our calculations! There were we, full of wise aphorisms and sapient advice, ready to deal with Constantine on the basis of a transaction in wheat, awaiting on the landing-stage the coming of the big steamer, when Karl, whom neither of us had addressed for a minute or two, suddenly attracted our attention by a choking noise.

He would have fallen had not his father caught him. His face, usually so cheerfully healthy, wore a distressing pallor, his lips were tremulous, his eyes distended.

I knew, too late, what had happened.

“Good heavens, Grier!” I whispered, “Karl has seen Constantine on board the ship!”

“Yes,” murmured Karl, hoarsely, gazing wildly from one to the other of us. “I saw him, and he saw me. He has just committed suicide! He jumped overboard! His body was caught by the screw! Oh, may the Lord pardon me! I believe I impelled him to it!”