III
Harkness followed, conscious only of one thing, his sudden marvellous and happy deliverance from fear. He could not analyse it—he did not wish to. He did not consider the probable length of its duration. Enough that for the present Crispin might cut him into small pieces, skin him alive, boil him in a large pot like a lobster, and he would not care. He followed the sleek servants like a schoolboy.
The Tower? Then at last he was to see the interior of this mysterious place. It had exercised, all through this adventure, a strange influence over him, standing up in his imagination white and pure and apart, washed by the sea, guarded by the woods behind it, having a spirit altogether of its own and quite separate from the man who for the moment occupied it. This would be perhaps the last building on this world that would see his bones move and have their being, he had a sense that it knew and sympathised with him and wished him luck.
Meanwhile he walked quietly. His chance would still come and with Dunbar beside him. Or was he never to see Dunbar again? Some of his newfound courage trembled. The worst of this present moment was his loneliness. Was the final crisis to be fought out by himself with no friends at hand? Was he never to see Hesther again? He had an impulse to throw himself forward, attack the servants, and let come what will. The silence of the house was terrible—only their footsteps soft on the thick carpet—and if he could wring a cry or two from his enemies that would be something. No, he must wait. The happiness of others was involved with his own.
The men stopped before a dark-wooded door.
They went through and were met by a white circular staircase. Up this they passed, paused before another door, and crossed the threshold into a high circular brilliantly-lit room. For the moment Harkness, his eyes dimmed a little by the shadows of the staircase, could see nothing but the gayness, brightness of the place papered with a wonderful Chinese pattern of green and purple birds, cherry-coloured pagodas and crimson temples. The carpet was a soft heavy purple, and there was a number of little gilt chairs, and, in front of the narrow barred window, a gilt cage with a green and crimson macaw.
All this, standing by the door shading his eyes from the dazzling crystal candelabra, he took in. Then suddenly saw something that swept away the rest—Hesther and Dunbar standing together, hand in hand, by the window. He gave a cry of joy, hurrying towards them. It was as though he had not seen them for years; they caught his hand in theirs; Crispin was there watching them like a benevolent father with his beloved children.
"That's right," he said. "Make the most of your time together. I want you to have a last talk."
He sat down on one of the gilt chairs.
"Won't you sit down? In a moment I shall leave you alone together for a little while. In case you have any last words. . . ." Then he leaned forward in that fashion so familiar now to Harkness, huddled together, his red hair and little eyes and pale white soft hands alone alive. "Well, and so—in my power, are you not? The three of you. You can laugh at my ugliness and my stupidity and my bad character, but now you are in my hands completely. I can do whatever I like with you. Whatever . . . the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain. I, ludicrous creature that I am, have absolute power over three fine young things like you, so strong, so beautiful. And then more power and then more and then more. And over many finer, grander, more beautiful than you. I can say crawl and you will crawl, dance and you will dance. . . . I who am so ugly that every one has always laughed at me. I am a little God, and perhaps not so little, and soon God Himself. . . ."
He broke off, making the movement of music in the air with his hands.
"You a little overestimate the situation," said Harkness, quietly. "For the moment you can do what you like with our bodies because you happen to have two servants who, with their Jiu-Jitsu and the rest of their tricks, are stronger than we are. It is not you who are stronger, but your servants whom your money is able to buy. I guess if I had you tied to a pillar and myself with a gun in my hand I could make you look pretty small. And in any case it is only our bodies that you can do anything with. Ourselves—our real selves—you can't touch."
"Is that so?" said Crispin. "But I have not begun. The fun is all to come. We will see whether I can touch you or no. And for my daughter-in-law"—he looked at Hesther—"there is plenty of time—many years perhaps."
Nothing in all his life would ever appeal more to Harkness than Hesther then. From the first moment of his sight of her what had attracted him had been the exquisite mingling of the child and of the woman. She had been for him at first some sort of deserted waif who had experienced all the cruelty and harshness of life so desperately early that she had known life upside down, and this had given her a woman's endurance and fortitude. She was like a child who has dressed up in her mother's clothes for a party and then finds that she must take her mother's place.
And now when she must, after this terrible night, be physically beyond all her resources she seemed, in her shabby ill-made dress, her hair disordered, her face pale, her eyes ringed with grey, to have a new courage that must be similar to that which he had himself been given. She kept her hand in Dunbar's, and with a strange dim unexpected pain Harkness realised that new relation between the two of which he had made the foundation had grown through danger and anxiety the one for another already to a fine height. Then he was conscious that Hesther was speaking. She had come forward quite close to Crispin and stood in front of him looking him calmly and clearly in the eyes.
"Please let me say something. After all I am the principal person in this. If it hadn't been for me there would not have been any of this trouble. I married your son. I married him, not because I loved him, but because I wanted things that I thought that you could give me. I see now how wrong that was and that I must pay for doing such a thing. I am ready to do right by your son. I never would have tried to run away if it had not been for you—the other night. After that I was right to do everything I could to get away. I begged your son first—and he refused. You have had me watched during the last three weeks—every step that I have taken. What could I do but try to escape?
"We've failed, and because we've failed and because it has been all my fault I want you to punish me in any way you like but to let my two friends go. I was not wrong to try to escape." She threw up her head proudly, "I was right after the way you had behaved to me, but now it is different. I have brought them into this. They have done nothing wrong. You must let them go."
"You must let all of us go." Dunbar broke in hotly, starting forward to Hesther's side. "Do you think we're afraid of you, you old play-acting red-haired monkey? You just let us free or it will be the worse for you. Do you know where you'll be this time to-morrow? Beating your fancy coloured hair against a padded cell, and that's where you should have been years ago."
"No, no," Hesther broke in. "No, no, David. That's not the way. You don't understand. Don't listen to him. I'm the only one in this, I tell you—can't you hear me?—that I will stay. I won't try to run away, you can do anything to me you like. I'll obey you—I will indeed. Please, please— Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand. But I do. Let them go. They've done no harm. They only wanted to help me. They didn't mean anything against you. They didn't truly. Oh! let them go! Let them go!"
In spite of her struggle for self-control her terror was rising, her terror never for herself but now only for them. She knew, more than they, of what he was. She saw perhaps in his face more than they would ever see.
But Harkness saw enough. He saw rising into Crispin's eyes the soul of that strange hairy fetid-smelling animal between whose paws Crispin's own soul was now lying. That animal looked out of Crispin's eyes. And behind that gaze was Crispin's own terror.
Crispin said:
"This is very comforting for me. I have waited for this moment." Then Harkness came over to him and stood very close to him.
"Crispin, listen to me. It isn't the three of us who matter in this, it is yourself. Whatever you do to us we are safe. Whatever you think or hope you can't touch the real part of us, but for yourself to-night this is a matter of life or death.
"I may know nothing about medicine and yet know enough to tell you that you're a sick man—badly sick—and if you let this animal that has his grip on you get the better of you in the next two hours you're finished, you're dead. You know that as well as I. You know that you're possessed of an evil spirit as surely as the man with the spirits that cleared the Gadarene swine into the sea. It isn't for our sakes that I ask you to let us go to-night. Let us go. You'll never hear from any of us again. In the morning, in the decent daylight, you'll know that you've won a victory more important than any you've ever won in your life.
"You talk about mastering us, man. Master your own evil spirit. You know that you loathe it, that you've loathed it for years, that you are miserable and wretched under it. It is life or death for you to-night, I tell you. You know that as well as I."
For one moment, a brief flashing moment, Harkness met for the first and for the last time the real Crispin. No one else saw that meeting. Straight into the eyes, gazing out of them exactly as a prisoner gazes from behind iron bars, jumped the real Crispin, something sad, starved and dying. One instant of recognition and he was gone.
"That is very kind of you, Mr. Harkness," Crispin said. "I knew that I should enjoy this quarter of an hour's chat with you all and truly I am enjoying it. My friend Dunbar shows himself to be quite frankly the young ruffian he is. It will be interesting to see whether in—say an hour's time from now—he is still in the same mind. I doubt it; quite frankly I doubt it very much. It is these robust natures that break the easiest. But you other two—really how charming. All altruism and unselfishness. This lady has no thought for anything but her friends, and Mr. Harkness, like all Americans, is full of fine idealism. And you are all standing round me as though you were my children listening to a fairy story. Such a pretty picture!
"And when you come to think of it here I am quite alone, all defenceless, one to three. Why don't you attack me? Such an admirable opportunity! Can it be fear? Fear of an old fat ugly man like me, a man at whom every one laughs!"
Dunbar made a movement. Harkness cried: "Don't move, Dunbar. Don't touch him. That's what he wants."
Crispin got up. They were now all standing in a little group close together. Crispin gathered his dressing-gown around him.
"The time is nearly up," he said. "I am going to leave you alone together for a little last talk. You'll never see one another again after this, so you had best make the most of it. You see that I am not really unkind."
"It is hopeless." Harkness turned round to the window. "God help us all."
"Yes, it is hopeless," Crispin said gently. "At last my time has come. Do you know how long I have waited for it? Do you know what you represent to me? You have done me wrong, the two of you, broken my hospitality, betrayed my bread and salt, invaded my home. I have justice if I punish you for that. But you stand also for all the others, for all who have insulted me and laughed at me and mocked at me. I have power at last. I shall prick you and you shall bleed. I shall spit on you and you shall bow your heads, and then when you are at my feet stung with a thousand wounds I will raise you and care for you and love you, and you shall share my power——"
He jumped suddenly from his gilt chair and stuttered, waving his hands as though he were commanding an army, towards the macaw who was asleep with his head under his crimson wing. "I shall be king in my own right, king of men, emperor of mankind, then one with the gods, and at the last I will shower my gifts. . . ."
He broke off, looking up at a red lacquer clock that stood on a little round gilt table. "Time—time—time nearly up!" He swung round upon the three of them.
Dunbar burst out:
"Don't flatter yourself that you'll get away to-morrow. When we're missed——"
"You won't be missed," Crispin answered with a sigh, as though he deeply regretted the fact. "The hotel will receive a note in the morning saying that Mr. Harkness has gone for a coast walk, will return in a week, and will the hotel kindly keep his things until his return? Of course the hotel most kindly will. For Mr. Dunbar—well, I believe there is only an aunt in Gloucester, is there not? It will be, I imagine, a month at least before she makes any inquiry. Possibly a year. Possibly never. Who knows? Aunts are often extraordinarily careless about their nephew's safety. And in a week. Where can one not be in a week in these modern days? Very far indeed. Then there is the sea. Anything dropped from the garden over the cliff so completely vanishes, and their faces are so often—well, spoilt beyond recognition. . . ."
"If you do this," Hesther cried, "I will——"
"I regret to say," interrupted Crispin, "that after eight this morning you will not see your father-in-law of whom you are so fond for six months at least. Ah, that is good news for you, I am sure. That is not to say you will never see him again. Dear me, no. But not immediately. Not immediately!"
Harkness caught Hesther's hand. He saw that she was about to make some desperate movement. "Wait," he said; "wait. We can do nothing now."
For answer she drew him to her and flung out her hand to Dunbar. "We three. We love one another," she cried. "Do your worst."
Crispin looked once more at the clock. "Melodrama," he said. "I, too, will be melodramatic. I give you twenty minutes by that clock—a situation familiar to every theatre-goer. When that clock strikes six I shall, I'm afraid, want the company of both of you gentlemen. Make your adieus then to the lady. Your eternal adieus."
He smiled and gently tip-toed from the room.