I
TOM MERRIWETHER, only son and heir of E. H. Merriwether, finished the grape-fruit and took up the last of that morning's mail. He had acquired the feminine habit of reading letters at the table from his father, who had the wasteful American vice of time-saving.
He read the card, frowned, glanced at his father, and seemed to be on the point of speaking; but he changed his mind, laughed, and tore the card into bits.
The day was Monday, and this was what the card said:
If Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether will go to 777 Fifth Avenue any forenoon this week and answer just one little question about his past life he will hear something to his advantage.
Idle men who live in New York are always busy. Tom had many things to think about; but all of them were about the present or the future. His past caused him neither uneasiness nor remorse.
On the following Monday young Mr. Merriwether received, among other invitations, this:
If Tom Merriwether will call at 777 Fifth Avenue any forenoon this week and answer one question he will do that which is both kindly—and wise!
It was in the same handwriting, on the same kind of card, and in the same kind of ink as the first. Now Tom had the Merriwether imagination. His father exercised it in building railroads into waterless deserts whereon he clearly saw a myriad men labor, love, and multiply, thereby insuring freight and passengers to the same railroads. The son had to invent his romances in New York.
Ordinarily the second invitation would have given him something to busy himself with; but it happened that he was at that moment planning to do a heartbreaking thing without breaking any heart. Billy Larremore, the veteran whose devotion to polo was responsible for so many of the team's victories in the past, was not aware that age had bade him cease playing. It would break his loyal heart not to play in the forthcoming international match. Tom Merriwether had been delegated to break the news.
Thinking about it made him forget all about the letter until the following Monday, when he received the third invitation:
Merriwether,—Come to 777 Fifth Avenue Tuesday morning at ten-thirty without fail and answer the question.
He crumpled the card and was about to throw it away when he changed his mind. Perhaps it would be wise to give it to a detective agency. But what could he say he feared? Then he decided it was probably a joke. Somebody wished to put him in the ridiculous position of ringing the bell of 777, showing the card—and being told to get out. It was to be regretted that this would seem funny to some of his perennially juvenile intimates at the Rivulet Club.
An hour later, as he walked down the Avenue, he looked curiously at 777. It was one of those newcomer houses erected by speculative builders to sell furnished to out-of-town would-be climbers or to local stock-market bankers who, being Hebrews, were too sensible to wish to climb, but were not sensible enough not to wish to live on Fifth Avenue.
Tom resolved to ask Raymond Silliman, who played at being in the real-estate business, to find out who lived at 777. Meantime he did a little shopping—wedding-presents—and went to luncheon at his club. He had not quite finished his coffee when he was summoned to the telephone.
“Hello! Mr. Merriwether?” said a woman's voice—clear, sweet, and vibrant, but unknown. “This is Miss Hervey—the nurse—Dr. Leighton's trained nurse. They asked me to tell you about your father. Don't be alarmed!”
“Go on!” commanded young Merriwether, sharply.
“It is nothing serious—really! But if you could come home it probably—Yes, doctor! I am coming!” And the conversation ceased abruptly.
Tom instantly left the club. He took the solitary taxicab that stood in front of the club. He afterward recalled the fact that there was only one where usually there were half a dozen.
“Eight-sixty-nine Fifth Avenue. Go up Madison to Sixtieth and then turn into the Avenue. Hurry!”
“Very good, sir,” said the chauffeur.
The taxicab dashed madly up Madison and up Fifth Avenue, and finally stopped—not before the Merriwether home, but in front of Number 777. Before he could ask the chauffeur what he meant by it both doors of the cab opened at once and two men sandwiched between them Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether. The one on the west, or Central Park, side threateningly held in his hand a business-like javelin—not at all the kind that silly people hang on the walls in their childish attempts at decorative barbarity. The man who half entered the taxicab from the east, or sidewalk, side held in his left hand a beer-schooner full of a colorless liquid that smoked, and in his right something completely but loosely covered by a white-linen handkerchief.
“Please listen, Mr. Merriwether!” said the man with the glass. “Do nothing! Don't even move! Hear me first!”
“Is my father—”
“I am glad to say he is well and happy, and working in his office down-town. The message that brought you here was a subterfuge. Your father is as usual. We arranged it so you had to take this particular taxicab. Don't stir, please!”
“What does all this mean?” asked Tom, impatiently.
“I am about to have the honor of telling you,” answered the man.
He had no hat and wore clerical garments. His clean-shaved face was pale—almost sallow—and young Merriwether noticed that his forehead was very high. His dark-brown eyes were full of the earnestness of all zealots, which makes you dislike to enter into an argument—first, because of the futility of arguing with a zealot; and, second, because said zealot probably knows a million times more about the subject than you and can outargue you without trouble. So Tom simply listened with an alertness that would not overlook any chance to strike back.
“This glass contains fuming sulphuric acid. It will sear the face and destroy the eyesight with much rapidity and completeness. Also”—here he shook off the handkerchief from his right hand and showed a revolver—“this is the very latest in automatics; marvelously efficient; dumdum bullets; stop an elephant! I am about to solicit a great favor.”
Tom Merriwether looked into the earnest, pleading eyes. Then he glanced on the other side, at the bull-necked husky with the business-like spear. Then he turned to the clerical garb.
“I see I am in the hands of my friends!” said Tom, pleasantly.
“The doctor was right,” said the man with the glass, as if to himself.
“Come! Come!” said young Mr. Merriwether. “How much am I to give? You know, I never carry much cash with me.”
“We, dear Mr. Merriwether,” said the pale-faced man in an amazingly deferential voice, “propose to be the donors. If you will kindly permit us we shall give you what is more costly than rubies.”
“Yes?” Tom's voice was perhaps less skeptical than sarcastic.
“Yes, sir. Would you be kind enough to accept our invitation—the fourth, dear Mr. Merriwether—to join us at 777 Fifth Avenue—right here, sir—and answer one question? Please listen carefully to what I am saying: You don't have to go. Moreover, if you should go you don't have to answer any question. We would not, for worlds, compel you. But, for your own sake, for the sake of your father's peace of mind and of the Merriwether fortune, for the sake of your happiness in this world and in the next; for all that all the Merriwethers hold most dear—come with me and, if you are very wise, answer the question that will be asked you by the wisest man in all the world.”
“He must be a regular Solomon—” began Tom, but the man held up the glass and went on, very earnestly:
“Listen, please! If you decide to accept our invitation I shall spill this acid in the street and I shall give you this revolver. I repeat, you do not have to answer the question. You will not be harmed or molested. I pledge you my word. Will you, in return, give me yours to follow me at once into 777, and that you will not shoot unless you sincerely think you are in danger?”
Tom Merriwether looked at the pale-faced man a moment. He was willing to take his chances with that face. Also, he could not otherwise find the solution of this puzzling affair. Therefore he said: “Yes. I give you my word.”
Instantly the pale-faced man with the high forehead laid the revolver on the seat beside young Mr. Merriwether and withdrew from the cab. Tom saw him spill the fuming acid into the gutter. The burly javelin-man took himself off. The temptation to use the butt of the revolver on the clerical-garbed man with the earnest eyes came to Tom, but he saw in a flash that if he should do such a thing he would be compelled in self-defense to tell a story utterly unbelievable.
Moreover, the pale-faced man was a slender little chap of middle age and no match for big Tom Merriwether. So, assuring himself that the revolver was in truth loaded and that it worked, he put it in his pocket, kept his grasp on it there, and got out of the taxicab. His one impelling motive now was curiosity. Afraid? With the pistol and his muscles and his youth, on Fifth Avenue, at two-thirty in the afternoon?
The pale-faced man, the empty glass in one hand, walked toward the door of 777 without so much as turning his head. Tom followed.
The door was opened by a man in livery who took Mr. Merriwether's hat and cane. Tom saw in the furnishings of the house—complete with that curious unhuman completeness of a modern hotel—the kind of furnishings that interior decorators usually sell to first-generation rich on their arrival at Fifth Avenue residenceship. The furniture had every qualification possessed by furniture in order not to suggest a home to live in. Wherefore Tom, whose mind always worked quickly, reasoned to himself:
“Rented for the occasion to the man who has made me come to him.”
Also Tom noticed four men-servants, all of them well built and all of them owning faces that somehow were not servant faces. The revolver, which had seemed amply sufficient outside, seemed less so within the house. Supposing he killed one—or even two—the other two would down him in an affray. He tightened his grip on the revolver and planned and rehearsed a shooting affair in which four men in livery were disabled with four shots. A great pity E. H. Merriwether was such a very rich man—a great pity for his son Tom.
At a door, on the center panel of which was a monogram in black, red, and gold the last of the footmen knocked gently. The door was thereupon opened from within.
“Mr. Thomas Thome Merriwether, 7-7-77!” announced the intelligent-looking footman, with a very pronounced English accent.
Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether entered. It was a nouveau-riche library. The Circassian-walnut bookcases and center-table were over-elaborately carved, and the hangings of rich red velvet were over-elaborately embroidered. The bronzes on the over-elaborate mantel looked as though they had been placed there by somebody who was coming back in a minute to take them away again.
Altogether the apartment suggested a salesroom, and there was a note of incongruity in a golden-oak filing-cabinet of the Grand Rapids school.
At one end of the room in an arm-chair, with his back to a terrible stained-glass window, sat a man of about forty. He had a calm, remarkably steady gaze, with a sort of leisureliness about it that made you think of a drawling voice. Also, an assurance—a self-consciousness of knowledge—that was compelling. His chin was firm and there was a suggestion of power and of control over power that reminded Tom of a very competent engineer in charge of a fifty-thousand-horse-power machine.
“Kindly be seated, sir,” said the man in a tone that subtly suggested weariness.
Tom sat down and looked curiously at the man, who went on:
“Sir, I have a question to ask you. If you see fit to answer, be good enough to answer it spontaneously and in good faith. Do not, I beg you, in turn, ask me questions—such as, for example, why I wish to know what I ask. If you decide not to answer you will leave this house unharmed, accompanied by our profound regret that you should be so unintelligent at your life's crisis.” The man looked at Tom with a meditative expression, then nodded to himself almost sorrowfully.
Tom, though young, was a Merriwether. He said, politely, “Let me hear the question, sir.”
He himself was thinking in questions: What can the question be? Who is this man? What is the game? What will be the end of it all?
“One question, sir,” repeated the stranger.
“I am listening, sir,” Tom assured him, with a quiet, but quite impressive, earnestness.
“Where did you spend your vacation at the end of your Freshman year?”
Tom was so surprised, and even disappointed, that he hesitated. Then he answered:
“In Oleander Point, Long Island, in the cottage of Dr. Charles W. Bonner, who was tutoring me. I had a couple of conditions and I stayed until the third of September!”
“Thank you! Thank you! That is all—unless, Mr. Merriwether, you wish to do me and yourself three very great favors. Three!”
He looked at Tom with a sort of intelligent curiosity, as of a chemist conducting an experiment.
“Let's hear what they are,” said young Mr. Merriwether, calmly.
It was at times like these that he showed whose son he was—alert, his imagination active, his nerves under control, and his courage steady and at par. He had, moreover, made up his mind that he would do some questioning later on.
“First favor: Concentrate your mind on how you used to spend your bright, sunshiny days in Oleander Point and your beautiful moonlight nights. Recall the pleasant people you were friendly with during those happy weeks. Visualize that summer! Make an effort! Think!”
It was a command, and Tom Merriwether found himself thinking of that summer. He closed his eyes. His grip on the revolver in his pocket relaxed.... He saw his friends. Some of them he had not seen in years. Others he saw almost daily. And somehow it seemed to him that all the girls were pretty and kindly; and in particular—well, there were in particular three. But the affairs had come to nothing.
He could not have told how long his reverie lasted—the mind traverses long stretches of time, as of space, in seconds.
“Well?” said Tom at length.
“Thank you,” said the man, with the matter-of-fact gratitude a man feels toward a servant for some attention.
He took from his pocket a small black-velvet bag, opened it, and spread on the table before Tom Merriwether a dozen pearls, ranging in size from a pea to a filbert. They were all of a beautiful orient.
“I beg you to select one of these. You need not use it. You may give it to your valet if you wish, or throw it out of the window. Only accept it as a souvenir of our meeting. That, Mr. Merriwether, would be favor number two.”
He pointed toward the pearls. Tom picked one—pear-shaped, white, beautiful—and put it in his waistcoat pocket. The man swept the rest into one of the drawers of the long library table.
“I thank you very much,” said Tom. He was not sure the pearls were not genuine.
“No; please don't,” said the man. There was a pause. Presently he asked, “Do you know anything about pearls, sir?”
“I am no expert,” answered Tom. “Characteristic. You Merriwethers are brave enough to be truthful, and wise enough to be cautious. Have you any opinions?”
“I think they are beautiful,” said Tom.
“They are more than that. They represent, Mr. Merriwether, the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven. The pearl is the symbol of purity, humility, and innocence. Do you know the legend of the mild maid of God—Saint Margaret of Antioch?”
“No.”
“Margaret is from Margarites—Greek for pearl. And the reason why faith—But I beg your pardon. Men who live alone talk too much when they are no longer alone. I beg you to forgive me. Tell me, Mr. Merriwether, did you ever hear of Apollonius of Tyana?”
“Not until this minute,” answered Tom.
He felt almost tempted to ask whether the poor man was dead, but refrained because he was honest enough to admit to himself that the question would savor of bravado. Tom was consumed by curiosity as to what would be the end of it all. To think of it—on Fifth Avenue, New York, in broad daylight—all this!
How money was to be made out of him he could not yet see.
“I will show his talisman to you—the Dispeller of Darkness!” The man clapped his hands twice. At the summons a negro walked in. He was dressed in plain black and wore a fez. The man spoke some guttural words and the negro salaamed and left the room. Presently he returned with a silver tray on which were seven gold or gilt candlesticks and candles, and seven gold or gilt small trays or plates, on each of which was a pastil.
He arranged the seven candlesticks in some deliberate design, carefully measuring the distance of each from the other, and of all from a point in the center. He arranged the plates and pastils about the candlesticks. Then he left the room, to return with a lighted taper, with which he lit the seven candles and the seven pastils. Tiny spirals of fragrant smoke rose languidly in the still air.
Again the negro left the room and returned with a small parcel wrapped in a piece of raw silk which he gave to his master. He then went away for good.
The man began to mutter something to himself and very carefully took off the silk cover, revealing a wonderfully carved ivory box. He opened the gold-hinged lid and took out a silver case. He opened that and from it took a gold box elaborately though crudely chased. He opened the gold box and within it, oh a little white-velvet pad, was a cross of dull gold curiously engraved. He put the pad, with the cross on it, in the middle of the seven lights. On the arms of the cross and at the intersection Tom saw seven wonderful emeralds remarkable as to size, beautiful as to color.
“Look at it, Mr. Merriwether. It is priceless. The gems alone are worth a king's ransom. If you consider it merely as a piece of ancient art there is no telling what a man like Mr. W. H. Garrettson would not give for it. And as a talisman, with its tried wonder-working powers, there is, of course, not enough money in all the world to pay for it.”
Tom stretched his hand toward it.
“Please! Do not touch it, I beg,” said the man, in a voice in which the alarm was so evident that Tom drew his hand back as though he had seen a cobra on the table. “Not yet! Not yet!” said the man. “It is the most wonderful object in existence. It is a cross that antedates Christ!”
“Really?”
“It is obviously of a much earlier period than the Messiah. Great scholars have thought it a legend, but here it is before you. It belonged to Apollonius of Tyana, the wonder-worker. Philostratus, who wrote the life of that great man, does not mention this talisman; he dared not! Apollonius, who to this day is not known ever to have died, gave it to a disciple, who gave it to a friend.”
Tom looked interested.
“We know who has owned it. It was worn by Arcadius in the fifth century. The Goths took it and Alaric gave it to the daughter of his most trusted captain, who commanded his citadel of Carcassonne. Clovis, a hundred years later, secured it at the sack of Toulouse. We have records of its having been praised by Eligius, the famous jeweler of Dagobert, in the seventh century. It was included in the famous treasures of Charlemagne. It went to Palestine during the first and third crusades—the first time carried by a maid who loved a knight who did not love her. She went as his squire, he not suspecting her sex until they were safely back in France, when he married her. It is a wonderful talisman. The emeralds came from Mount Zabara. They have the power to drive away the evil spirits and also to preserve the chastity of the wearer. Moreover, they give the power to foretell events. Apollonius did—time and again. This is historically true. But alone he, of all the men who have owned it, never had a love-affair; hence his clairvoyance. I have bored you. Forgive me!”
“Not at all. I was interested. It is all so—er—so—”
“Incredible—yes! There is no reason why you should believe it. It is of no consequence whether you think me a lunatic or a charlatan.”
He said this with a cold indifference that made Tom look incuriously at the man, whose obvious desire was to excite curiosity. Then the man said, with an earnestness that in spite of himself impressed the heir of the Merriwether railroads:
“Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether, classified in our books as 7-7-77, you are the man I need for this job!”
“Indeed?” said Tom, politely.
“Yes, you are.” Tom bowed his head and looked resigned. He deliberately intended to look that way. The man went on, “The reason I am so sure is because I know both who and what you are.”
“Ah, you know me pretty well, then.” Tom could not help the mild sarcasm.
“I have known you, young man, for eighty-five years, perhaps longer.” The man spoke calmly.
“Indeed!” said Tom. He was twenty-eight.
“Yes. On top of that cabinet is a book. After the name Thomas Thorne Merriwether you will find 7-7-77. In the cabinet—seventh section, seventh drawer, card Number 77—you will find clinical data, physiological and psychological details, anecdotes, and so on, about you and your father, E. H. Merriwether, and your mother, Josephine Thorne; your grandfathers, Lyman Grant Merriwether and Thomas Conkling Thorne, and of your grandmothers, Malvina Sykes Thorne and Lydia Weston Merriwether. Indeed I know about your great-grandfathers and three of your great-great-grandparents; but the data in their case are of little value save as to Ephraim Merriwether, who in seventeen sixty-three killed in one duel three army officers who laughed at his twisted nose, bitten and disfigured for life by a wolf-cub he had tried to tame. Facts not generally known, but, for all that, facts, young Mr. Thomas Thome Merriwether, which enable me to say that I have known you these hundred and fifty years—if there is anything in heredity, environment, and education! And now, shall I tell you what favor number three is?”
“If you please,” said Tom.
For the first time he felt that the usual suspicions as to a merrymaking game could not be justified in this particular instance. It was much too elaborate for a practical joke. He did not know how the matter would end; but he did not care. In New York, on Fifth Avenue, on Tuesday afternoon, he was having what, indeed, was an experience!
“I beg that you will listen attentively. You will take the Dispeller of Darkness with you. Do not open the gold box under any circumstances. Tonight go to 7 East Seventy-seventh Street so as to be there at eight o'clock sharp. The door will not be locked. Don't ring. Walk in. Go up one flight of stairs to the front room—there is only one. You will stand in the middle of the room, with the talisman resting on the palm of your hand—thus! Do nothing! Say nothing! Wait there! The talisman will be taken from you by a person. Do not try to detain her—this person. After the talisman is taken from you count a hundred—not too fast! At the end of your count leave the room and come back here and tell me whether you have carried out my instructions. Now, young sir, let me say to you that you don't have to do what I am asking you to do. There is no compulsion whatever. There is no crime in contemplation—no attempt is to be made against your life, your fortune, or your morals. I pledge you my word, sir!”
The man looked straight into Tom's eyes. Tom bowed gravely. This man must be crazy—and yet he certainly was not. This interested Tom by perplexing him as he had never been perplexed in his eight-and-twenty years.
“Mr. Merriwether, this will be the most important step of your life. Its bearing on your happiness is vital—also on the success of your great father's vast plans. I give you my personal word that this is so.” There was a pause. Tom had nothing to say. The man went on:
“If you care to take reasonable precautions against attack do so. Thus, keep the revolver you now have in your pocket—it is excellent. Try it and make certain. You may write a detailed account of what has happened and leave it with your valet; but mark on it that it is not to be opened unless you fail to return by 10 p.m. Also you may, if you wish, station ten private detectives across the way from 7 East Seventy-seventh Street, and instruct them to go into the house at a single shout from you or at the sound of a shot. Believe me, it is not your life that is in danger, sir!”
“I believe you,” said Tom, reassuringly.
“Will you do me favor number three?” The man looked at Tom with a steady, unblinking, earnest—one might even say honest—stare.
Tom considered. His mind worked not only quickly, but Merriwether-fashion. He saw all the possibilities of danger, but he saw the unknown—and the lust of adventure won. He looked the man in the eyes and said, quietly:
“I will.”
“Thank you. There is the talisman. Each of the seven emeralds is flawless—the only seven flawless emeralds of that size in existence. Two of them have been in great kings' crowns, and the center stone was in the tiara of seven popes; after which, the Great Green Prophecy having been fulfilled, it came back to its place on the Cross. Apollonius raised people from the dead, according to eyewitnesses. The pagans tried to confute the believers in Christian miracles by bringing forward the miracles of the sage of Tyana—and they did not know that Apollonius wrought marvels by the Sign of the Son of Man—the Cross! This cross! I pray that you will be careful with it. Show it to nobody. You have understood your instructions?”
Tom repeated them.
“Precisely! I did not make a mistake, you see. In spite of your father's millions you will be what your destiny wills. Young man, good luck to you!” The man rose and walked toward the door. Tom Merriwether followed him and was politely bowed out of the room. From there to the street entrance the four athletic footmen, with the over-intelligent faces, took him in tow, one at a time. And it was not until he was out on the Avenue, headed north, walking toward his own house, that Thomas Thorne Merriwether, clean-living miltimillionaire idler, shook himself, as if to scatter the remnants of a dream, felt the butt of the revolver, hefted the silk-wrapped parcel in which was the talisman, and said, aloud, so that a couple of pedestrians turned and smiled sympathetically at the young man, who must be in love, since he talked to himself:
“What in blazes is it all about?”