CHAPTER XIV

CONSTANTINE ENCOUNTERS THE SHARK

Some brass-buttoned official of the railway company or harbor authority was near enough to pay heed to our strange behavior. He also caught sufficient of Karl’s excited words to attach some significance to them, though, of course, they must have sounded in his ears like the broken gabble of dementia. Quite civilly (seeing that we bore the tip-giving appearance) the man approached.

“Is the young gentleman ill?” he asked. “Can I git him anythink?”

Karl turned and looked at him. The man’s jaw fell and he stepped back a pace. Away out in mid-stream of the Mersey I saw the Cunarder stop; a tug in attendance reversed engines and dropped astern. There was no need to tell me that Karl was not mistaken. Constantine’s soul was even then passing, somewhere out there amidst the swirling waters. Within twenty minutes, at the utmost, the tragedy would be reported ashore, and there was no knowing what this suspicious policeman might say, if, as I suspected, he were able to piece together Karl’s disjointed sentences.

The situation demanded coolness--it was no time for vain regrets. I advised Grier to take Karl to our hotel without an instant’s delay, and there await my arrival.

“Make him talk to you,” I insisted. “Keep him occupied incessantly until I join you.”

The older man was dazed, frightened a little, I think, by the glimpse he had caught of a strange light in Karl’s eyes, but still incredulous, as we mortals are apt to be when faced with truth. Indeed we only yield prompt and unquestioning belief to glib imposture, and the more outrageous it is the more perfervid dupes do we become.

“For Karl’s sake and your own, Grier,” I whispered, emphatically, “do not hesitate. You can trust me. I will bring all news. Constantine is surely dead, but, if we are wrong and he still lives, I will bring him to you.”

My earnestness had its effect. Grier hurried his son away from the landing-stage. Then I tackled the policeman.

“You saw that my young friend had a sudden and severe attack of neurosthenia?” I said.

The bewilderment left the man’s face.

“Is that it, sir?” he said. “By gum! it must be an awful thing. He fairly scared me.”

“He scares every one connected with him. It is not really serious, but it is induced by excitement, and he often receives strangely accurate impressions of events that are taking place at a distance. Just now he imagined that a friend of his had fallen overboard from the liner.”

“So I heard him say, sir, and, s’elp me, if somethink hasn’t gone wrong!”

Nothing could be clearer now. The huge vessel was motionless, her rails were black with passengers gazing aft, and the tug had lowered a boat.

“Well,” I said, “whatever it is there is little to be gained by adding to the publicity of it, and you know what fiends these newspaper men are when they get hold of a sensational paragraph.”

My hand went to my pocket, a fine instance of hypnotic suggestion.

“I never did see anythink like his eyes, sir,” said the man, dubiously. I produced a sovereign.

“Poor fellow!” I murmured in commiseration. “He is a great trial to us. We really should not have brought him here. But you can quite see that we do not want any comment on his--er--peculiar--”

“Oh, of course, sir. We chaps often have to keep eyes and ears open and mouths shut, sir.”

We moved apart. The Cunarder gained her berth after a quarter of an hour’s delay. A stream of passengers flowed down the broad gangway. Running through the boisterous greetings of friends and the turmoil of people anxious to secure their luggage, I heard a crescendo of broken exclamations which carried their special import to me alone:

“Oh, my dear, it was perfectly shocking. It has quite spoiled my trip.”

“Must have been cracked!”

“A young man like him! Just fancy it!”

“Guess he was tired of bein’ rich. Never had that complaint myself.”

There was no need to ask of whom they spoke. It was an awkward moment to seek information from the ship’s officers. The triumph of organization which marks the Atlantic mail service would speedily empty the crowded decks, and already two cataracts of boxes and steamer trunks were hurtling over the side into the Customs shed. My opportunity would soon arrive. So, stifling my horrible imaginings as best I might, I mixed with the throng, and thus, by chance, encountered one who had been an eye-witness of Constantine’s last madness.

My most recent acquaintance, the man in uniform, while helping a passenger with his portmanteau, asked if there had been an accident before the vessel warped alongside the landing-stage. The answer he received led him to hail me in passing.

“Here’s a gentleman who can tell you all about it, sir,” he said, thinking, no doubt, he ought to consolidate the gift of that sovereign.

“Are you a friend of Mr. Constantine’s?” demanded the stranger, a pleasant-looking, square-faced man, whom I found afterwards to be the London partner of an important Anglo-American house of discount brokers.

“No. I only happened to accompany some people who came here to meet him.”

“Are they waiting yet?”

“No. They heard of the affair and have gone. Of course it upset them a good deal.”

“By Jove, it was ghastly. I knew Constantine--have done business with him for years, in fact. He was always a quiet, sober sort of fellow. I, for one, never suspected he was given to drink.”

“Was he?” I asked.

“Well, I am not exactly an expert where delirium tremens is concerned, but surely this could be nothing else?”

“All I have been told is that he threw himself overboard.”

“That was the finish, natural enough when one comes to review things again. He kept very much to himself on board, rather avoided me and others, we thought; but we put that down to illness. He had a deck cabin, and seldom appeared unless the sea was rough. Then he would find a sheltered place and gaze at the waves for hours. Yet, whenever I spoke to him, he was quite civil, a trifle reserved, perhaps, but as sane as I am myself. Like everybody else, he seemed to brighten up when we entered the Mersey. He was standing on the promenade deck, near the saloon hatch, within a yard of me, and, like the rest of us, looking at the shipping in the docks. Suddenly he let out a screech like a wild Indian. He made me jump, I can assure you. He was a swarthy-skinned chap, but his color was green when I turned towards him. He seemed to be gazing at something in the water, and so far as I could understand his words, gurgled deep in his throat, he thought he saw a shark.”

“A shark!”

“Yes. It was all utter rot, of course. I was so taken aback that I could only stare at him. Several ladies screamed, they were so frightened; but Constantine put his hand inside the left breast of his waistcoat, whipped out a dagger, and began to stab savagely at the air. I was certain he had gone mad, until, a few minutes later, a steward told me he had practically lived on champagne all the way from New York. Like other men in the neighborhood, I was thinking seriously of grappling with him from behind, when he gave another yell and bounded across the top of the companionway to the starboard side. That is the Birkenhead side of the ship, you know, and the deck there was almost deserted. He knocked three people down who were in his way, and began to climb the rail. I made after him, but just missed him, though my hand touched his heel. He struck the water, vanished, and just then the ship swung round towards the landing-stage.”

“So the screw caught him when he rose,” I blurted out involuntarily.

“Ah! you heard of that? I never saw him again, but his bedroom steward said that when the tug’s dingey picked him up he was still living, though a propeller blade had taken a leg clean off.”

“Do you mean to say--”

“Oh, he died while they were lifting him out of the water. Strange thing he should have had that notion about the shark and then lose a leg, wasn’t it?”

I managed to find words to thank my informant, whose name and address I obtained, though I was so agitated that he expressed his regret if he had harrowed my feelings with his recital. Luckily, he was discovered by a Liverpool merchant whom he knew, and we parted with a promise to meet in London.

Though I have seen many distressing sights during the course of a varied life, I have never felt so near sickness, so physically overcome, as amidst that cheery, bustling, chatting crowd. I drifted away aimlessly, filled with an absurd terror, which caused me almost to cringe when I passed a policeman. Ridiculous as the notion was, I fancied that Karl, his father, Maggie, and myself were _participes criminis_, sharers in the awful secret which led to that poor mangled body being carried to a mortuary. It is all very well now to smile at the shaken nerves which induced this shrinking, self-condemnatory frame of mind. It was very real and terrible then, nor was it lessened by the knowledge that my friends would probably suffer from the same delusion in their turn.

Slinking, conscience-stricken, through the barrier, I saw a refreshment buffet. To this day I can recall the surprise of the barmaid when I grabbed a bottle of French brandy and poured out what she said was two-shillings’ worth of best cognac, “warranted pure,” which I drank neat.

“Well, I never!” she gasped.

“Nor I, hardly ever,” I managed to say, for the ardent spirit reinvigorated me. And let me interpolate here, as a breathing-space in a thrilling moment, that it is a fine thing never to drink brandy when in good health; thus it becomes an invaluable tonic in physical suffering or mental depression.

Well, I hastened to the hotel, refusing a cab, in the belief that the brandy and the exercise would restore the disturbed poise of my faculties. The walk was a trifle longer than I had counted on, so a full hour elapsed between our parting and our meeting. As I expected, Karl was in a very distressed state, and I was called on to deride in him the foolish conceit which had shaken my very soul at the docks. His father’s British phlegm was superb on this trying occasion. To him, Constantine was an admitted scoundrel, and a “nigger” at that.

“Never heard such nonsense in my life!” he declared, in the true “Confound it, sir! what d’ye mean?” manner of John Bull, which a Scotsman quickly makes his own when he comes South. “Of course, I am sorry this Armenian firebrand has taken his own life, but it is quite evident that if he did not face an Eternal Judge he would soon be called on to face an earthly one. You talk about personal responsibility for the death of a madman, a loony who has visions and carries a long knife concealed on his person! What next, I wonder? My firm belief is that his untimely decease was a dispensation of Providence!”

Having thus called in the big battalion of the British nation, Mr. Grier preened his chest and was for an immediate return to Oxford, where he would remain with his son until the end of term. You cannot argue with a man who describes such a tragedy as Constantine’s as an “untimely decease.” The phrase lent to our discussion a grim humor, of which my excellent friend was sublimely unconscious.

And, indeed, looking back in calmness to the tumultuous thoughts of that day, I have ever been thankful that his stolid good sense came to our aid. It must not be forgotten that Grier the elder had small experience of Karl’s sixth sense. He remembered the events of early years in India, of course, and had heard of Constantine’s rescue at the time of its occurrence, while Mrs. Grier’s faithful reports told him that his son remained a prodigy. But was there ever an only son who, if ordinarily intelligent, had not some wonderful attribute known only to his parents? “So many single chicks so many prodigies,” the proverb might run. And since the tea-planter quitted India he had been exceedingly prosperous in his financial undertakings, mostly connected with the ever-expanding tea trade. He was one of the wise men who resisted the temptation to grow the coarse leaf on his plantations, and now he was reaping the reward, as the “large output” school was discredited, whereas Grier’s “fine growth” companies were amassing wealth.

Hence, a mind which was wont to be receptive of esoteric ideas during the long Calcutta nights of past years was now more occupied with the affairs of commerce. He was piling up money, and for what? To enable Karl to enter Parliament, marry well, and earn a peerage. That is one form of heredity, when the father’s ambitions center wholly in the son. So Grier senior valued foresight, but, as our cousins say, he had no use for “far sight” as practised by Karl. I suspected that he was profoundly annoyed with me for seeming to encourage the exercise of the telegnomic sense (wherein he was misled by the accident of our coming together again owing to its revelations), and it was a proud moment for me when, not long ago, he confessed his error and recanted his opinions.

However, he was a rock to which we clung for salvation during that storm-tossed afternoon in a Liverpool hotel, for we had barely resolved to take the next train to Oxford and London respectively, than there came a telegram addressed to Karl.

He opened and read the message with a strange listlessness.

“I was expecting something of the kind,” he said, handing the slip of pink paper to his father. “I knew it had ended; I knew it on the landing-stage.”

The telegram was from Maggie. It ran:

“Sympathize with you in dreadful event. We leave England to-night. Farewell.”

“What does it mean?” I asked incredulously. “Why is she going so suddenly? How does she know anything about Constantine? And what has ended?”

Karl turned aside and pretended to look out of the window. The soft-hearted fellow was ashamed to let us see the tears in his eyes.

I examined the telegram more closely. It had been a long time on the way, nearly an hour. It was despatched before any one on the landing-stage (save three people, none of whom could communicate with her) had the least inkling of the Armenian’s suicide.

Had Maggie, too, been a spellbound witness of that elfin spring into the river? Had she seen all? And what was the significance of Karl’s weary cry: “I knew it had ended?”

I glanced at him again, but his head was bowed, his face hidden by his hands. Silence was best, just then.