To my dear sister, then, be this well-earned tribute paid. Doubly fortunate, I might write down another name and spare no encomiums. Joan Fordibras, my little Joan of Dieppe and the sunshine, was with us in the hotel, and no less a slave of mine than the other. Every day, when I came down to breakfast, it was Joan who had been across to Covent Garden for the flowers I like best to have about me—it was Joan’s clever fingers which delved amidst the mass of littered papers and unfailingly extracted therefrom the erring document; Joan who told me at night what had happened during the day in this dismal world of politics and art—the world in which we amuse ourselves by calling those who differ from us knaves and decrying all merit save that which makes its own appeal to us. Rarely did I find her in that merry mood of girlhood in which I caught her—how long ago it seemed!—at the Fête at Kensington. If her face betrayed the sea’s dower of heightened colour and eyes unspeakably blue, she had become less the child and more the woman, and she lived as one tortured between two rivers of doubt—knowing the past and fearing the future, but unconscious of the present. Between us there stood the impassable barrier of the truce we arrived at upon the deck of my yacht, White Wings. I was never again to tell her what she was and must be to me—never to speak of a man’s love prevailing above all else, more precious to him than all else under God’s fair sky; never to speak of it until I could carry the secret to her and say—“This is your birthright, such were the days of your childhood.” I had pledged my word, and the bond was of honour. Time might redeem it or time might bring the ultimate misfortune upon me—I knew not nor had the courage to prophesy.
So London became the city of my desire, and in London my work began. I saw Joan every day, heard the music of her laughter, and was conscious of her presence about me as man is ever aware of the spirit of happiness which hovers so rarely about a busy life. The littered table in my private room bore witness to my activities, and the animation with which I had pursued them. Many ambitions have I set before me to worship in the years of the old time, but never such a task as this; whose achievement must bring a reward beyond price; whose failure, I was aware, would separate me finally and for ever from the woman I love.
To say that I laboured at it incessantly, indeed, is to do little justice to actuality. The mystery went with me wherever I turned. I wrestled with it through nights of bitter dreaming; it followed me to the streets, to the theatres, to the houses of my friends. It prevailed above every other occupation; it would start up even in the blue eyes which daily asked the unspoken question; it would envelop little Joan herself as a veil which hid her true self from me; it would stand out black and clear upon every page that I wrote—a sentence irrevocable, a very torture of the doubt. The secret, or the years of darkness, said the voice. I hid myself from the light and still I heard its message. It spoke to me above the city’s clamour and the hum of throngs. The secret, or the night! What an alternative was that!
I was to go to Joan and to say to her—You are the daughter of this man or that, but not of General Fordibras. I was to tell her that none of hers had part or lot in the great conspiracy of crime whose fringe I had touched, whose arch-priest I had named. Here was the task in a nutshell, so simple seemingly that any dunce might have entered upon it with confidence or any child sat down to master it. Yet, witness the uncertain steps I had followed, and judge then what kind of a task it was and what the peculiar nature of my difficulties. Judge then if I misrepresent the circumstance or claim for myself that which truth has not justified.
We had made a fair passage home from the Azores and come straight to London. Losing none of the precious hours, I went immediately to Scotland Yard, and from Scotland Yard to a friendly Minister’s room at Whitehall, and there I told this story as it is written in this book, and as time has not changed it. If I met with incredulity, I blame no one. My cables home had warned the police of much that I would tell them, and more that remained mere surmise. Murray himself—my old friend Murray, whose suppositions had sent me upon an errand as strange as any in his calendar—Murray assured me that the police of France, of Germany, of America, and of Portugal were already advised of that which had been done, and of the evidence upon which it was being done. But even he had begun to lose faith.
“We have searched the houses you named in Paris,” he said, “and there are half a dozen men under lock and key. They have arrested five in Berlin, and the world has read the story of the coup made in New York. To be frank with you, that is all we can do. This Jew of yours appears in none of these successes. He is not named anywhere. There is no trace of him—not a word, or a letter, or a trinket. The Governor of the Island of Santa Maria declares that the mines there are just what they pretend to be; that he has been over them with General Fordibras, and that he finds the General a very simple, soldierly gentleman. As to your Diamond Ship—they will believe in that when she comes to port. I have traced the various steamers you have named to me, and their papers are in all cases correct. To be candid, Dr. Fabos, if the Jew himself had come to this office, I should have had no evidence to offer against him. There is only one of his company threatened so far by your revelations, and she is Miss Fordibras.”
We laughed together, and I showed him at once that I was not disappointed.
“You are face to face with a master,” I exclaimed, “and you expect to find childs’ toys in his hands. If Valentine Imroth is to be hanged by any thieves’ den in Germany or in Paris—to say nothing of London—then he is a hundred miles from being the man I met at Santa Maria, or that brother Jew who commands the Diamond Ship. Do not believe it, Murray. The success of this organisation is a success of delegation. Nine out of ten men in Imroth’s employ have never heard his name, never seen him, or become aware of his existence. The greater rogues, who form his cabinet, are as little likely to be taken in any café des assassins as the Jew himself is likely to make a speech at Westminster. We have touched the fringe of a splendid fabric, but threads of it only are in our hands. To-day, at the Admiralty, Sir James Freeman tells me that a second cruiser will be despatched to the South Atlantic next week. If they discover the derelict, I shall be astounded. Ask me for a reason and I can give you none. It is mere premonition. Sitting here in London I can depict that sagging hulk as clearly as if I watched her from the deck of my own yacht. She is drifting there, peopled by devils, a ship of blood and death—drifting God knows where, without hope, or idea, or haven. She may so drift to the Day of Judgment, but man will never discover her. That is my belief. I have no reason for it—I admit freely that it is ridiculous.”
Murray did not quarrel with my point of view, but assuredly he could not help me. No trace of Imroth had been discovered; Fordibras had not been arrested, nor had any news of him come from Santa Maria. The house there, I understood, was shut up, and the so-called miners had left many weeks ago in a steamer for Europe. The most diligent search had revealed none of those caverns of treasure which I believed (and still believe) to exist. There were implements for drilling and blasting, forges, cranes, and cartridges, but of secret habitation, none. The Valley House was declared to be an American’s whim, the mountain passage one of old existence, and perfectly well known to every inhabitant. Such simplicity I judged to have been bought at a handsome price. Gold alone could have set these people’s tongues wagging so pleasantly.
“They are bought to a man, Murray,” I said; “and unless we care to pay a higher price, we may trouble them no more. In my view they are not the only recipients of this man’s oily bounty. I would venture to say that he has friends enough in some of the South American republics to save an army from the gallows. We will take it at that and leave it there. If the Park Lane people do not care to carry it further, I have no interest. You cannot arrest this man, you say, because there is no evidence against him. That must be told him when we meet—it shall be part of the price I pay for his secret. Such a secret I am determined to force from him if I lose my life in the venture. Nothing else concerns me now, Murray. Let a thousand criminals go down to the sea in ships, and I am unmoved. His secret—my task begins and ends with that.”