The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

"Yet it is true; and, since true, mark the luck of Emily in this matter. She said that the mere singularity of two such things as the strangers and the disappearance of Robinson was sufficient to make her think those things connected. Well, the singularity is not sufficient, she was not convincing: but we know that her guesses are of a quality not very common, and it will be some time, I promise, before I again permit myself to slight one of them."

"You have discovered, then, that she was right?"

"Not directly," he answered; "but I believe so by one of those processes of the mind which, if they be not reason, resemble it. You will understand me when I remind you of a third event among us about that time—the wren, namely, and its message. Now, by Emily's guess all the three should be interconnected; and if I tell you that two of them are, in fact, connected, I think you will jump to the conclusion that all are so."

"But which two are connected?" I asked.

"The wren and the strangers."

"Tell me."

"I rode out to-day with the object of making some inquiries about these strangers, and also of finding somewhere a list of Styrian barons. Well, then, I went first to the Calf's Head, and what I gathered there was this: that the strangers are now gone; that they were 'certainly' unknown to one another; and that at the hour when Robinson vanished one of the foreigners was sitting on the doorstep of the inn studying the county-map, one was sipping beer in the bar-parlour, while the third, the Englishman, was leaning against Lang's smithy-door: so that Brown, the landlord, had all these men under his eyes on that Thursday noon when poor Robinson was undergoing his mystery. However, I had no sooner heard of this tableau vivant than my own instinct of wrong, vague before, started into liveliness, the word which stirred my anger being Brown's 'certainly' in saying that the three were strangers to one another. He said it because he had never seen them speak together. Yet these men for days ate, smoked, etc., together, under which conditions men do exchange a word; so what could have kept these apart, except a wish to appear unacquainted?—a wish which argues that they were not so. But their pose at the moment of the tragedy! Brown says that 'they were like that most of the afternoon.' Imagine, therefore, the tale of sips taken by one of them, the countless interest of the second in the county-map, the resource in chat of the last at the smithy-door of Lang—all under the benign, remarking eye of Brown. One can almost assert that, if a wrong was then to their knowledge being accomplished, it would be in just such poses of statuesque guilelessness that they would parade themselves.... At all events, I left Brown with the expectation of finding that other foreigners than these had been in our midst on that mid-day of mystery.

"I then rode over to Goodford, and was told that three weeks previously two strangers had been there—one a foreigner. I went to Ayeling, Mins, St Peter's, Up Hatherley—all within eight miles of Ritching—and learned that the neighbourhood within the last months has been liable to quite a little epidemic of 'strangers,' foreign and English, who did not seem acquainted. I asked whether any of the strangers had been absent on the noon of mystery. In every case I gathered that they had gone for good before that day, or else on that day had remained conspicuously present in the villages.

"But at Mins a very odd accident brought into my way something of a character so wild that my eyes almost could not credit it. You know, Arthur, the unconsciousness of people when in a foreign land that anyone in it can understand their speech: I had this fact in my mind when at each of the villages I inquired whether the strangers had left behind no leaves, no fragments of paper. I pried into waste-paper baskets, even poked into dust-heaps, but could find nothing. However, I was leading the horse from the door of the Crown at Mins towards the gate when I saw a little stick, so to speak, of paper in the hedge. It had been crumpled up to be used as a pipe-light perhaps—you know the habitual frugality of foreigners as to matches—and was scorched at one end, smeared, too, with soap and atoms of hair, so that someone had used it to wipe his razor on. However, it had on it some German writing, still mostly legible, and I got six almost perfect lines. These were the words which I read: '... now—the 15th of June—I have been here three weeks, so I know him well. I am sure that he will do for England. He is another Max Dees, as arrogant as he is brilliant, a union of Becket and Savonarola. His name is Burton, and he is rector at a place called Ritching. Your Excellency should find some way of coming down here, for ...' and I can't tell you, Arthur, the queer feeling which chilled my veins at the instant when, in an inn-yard of Mins, I chanced upon those words: 'Max Dees.'"

"It is very astonishing," I breathed.