The Five Knots
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"I don't think so," he said. "It certainly was a most surprising thing to happen. But I have come across more extraordinary coincidences in my life, and, do you know, I rather like our friend. He seems to be a gentleman."
"I think so," Beatrice said doubtfully, "but I am frightened all the same. He was so like the man – "
"Who tried to get into Maldon Grange the other night. But you surely do not believe that a man like Mr. Uzali could be guilty of burglary. I am disposed to believe what he said. If I were you I should think no more of the matter."
"That is all very well," Beatrice protested, "but I am bound to tell my uncle."
"Then tell him," Wilfrid said, growing rather impatient. "It is clear that you have nothing to fear. When you mentioned your uncle's name, Mr. Uzali gave no sign that he had ever heard it before. Don't you think we are in the way of these people here?"
Beatrice glanced round her to see that most of the tables and chairs had disappeared and that the stage was nearly ready for dancing. The guests had increased considerably and the theatre appeared to be filled with visitors. They had overflowed into the auditorium and already many had gathered in stalls and boxes to watch the entertainment. As Beatrice moved away with her companion a man came up and accosted her.
"I think you are Miss Galloway," he said politely. "I don't suppose you remember me, though I have dined more than once at your house in town. Your uncle sent me to look for you. He is in one of the boxes. If you will allow me to show you the way. From what I understand he has not been very well. I don't think there is anything to be alarmed about; only he wanted you."
Beatrice waited for no more. She hurried off with her new companion until they came to a box at the back of the dress circle. Here one or two men were talking somewhat earnestly to Flower, but he dismissed them with a gesture as Beatrice came in. There were one or two shaded electric lights behind Flower's head, but subdued as they were Beatrice did not fail to notice the pallor of her uncle's face. There was a quick irritation in his manner which she had never noticed before.
"I have sent for you everywhere," he said. "Where have you been? And tell me, who was the man you were supping with? Now don't prevaricate. Tell me at once."
Beatrice's face flushed with indignation.
"There is no reason why I should not tell you," she said. "I went into supper with Mr. Mercer. He is a guest here as well as ourselves. Perhaps we stayed too long – "
Flower waived the suggestion aside impatiently.
"Oh, why do you waste my time like this?" he asked. "I don't mean Mercer at all. I want to know who was the other man who sat at the same table with you?"
Once again the old dread was closing in upon Beatrice. She glanced at her guardian with troubled eyes.
"I have never seen him before," she said. "It was no fault of mine that he sat at the same table. He came in with Miss Marcombe, the actress, who, as you know, has been a guest of ours at Maldon Grange. She introduced him as Mr. Uzali. He is not an Englishman, but I found him very entertaining, and a gentleman. Moreover, he surprised me by saying he had seen my moth brooch before. He declared he had a piece which would match the broken part and took it from his pocket. It seems almost incredible, but the match was perfect."
"You let him have it?" Flower asked hoarsely.
"What else could I do? He promised that he would return it in a day or two completely restored."
Flower said nothing for a moment or two. He sat looking gloomily at the glittering stage below. Beatrice could see that his hands were clenched so that the muscles stood out strong and blue. It was not for her to deduce anything from these signs, but she knew that Flower was moved to the very core of his being. He turned to the girl with an effort.
"Was my name mentioned between you?" he asked.
"Certainly, I told him who you were," Beatrice said, "but it did not strike him as familiar. You might have been perfect strangers from the way in which he spoke of you. But why all this mystery, uncle? What have I done that is wrong?"
Flower pulled himself together with an effort, but there was an unsteady smile on his thick lips. He tried to speak gaily, but Beatrice noted how forced his words were.
"Another romance!" he said. "I must make the acquaintance of your friend. No, I am not in the least angry; only one comes in contact with such strange people at this sort of an affair that you cannot be too careful. And now if you are ready I should like to go home. Somebody will call a carriage for us. I'll stay here till you come back."
For some reason the man was afraid to move as Beatrice could plainly see. She wondered at his want of strength, at his sudden display of cowardice. She had never seen him in this mood before. She had never known him to display anything that savoured of terror.
"Just as you like," she said coldly. "I daresay I can manage."
The carriage came at length and Flower moved reluctantly from the shadow of the box. The night was not cold, but he huddled himself in a big coat so that he might not be recognized. But as they walked through the hall to the portico Beatrice saw that Mercer was not far away. The latter waited until they had vanished, then he made his way back to the stage again. The first person he encountered in the wings was Russell.
"I have been looking for you everywhere," the latter said. "I saw you on the stage just now when you were having supper, but it was not policy to come near you. What has become of Flower and his niece? Have they left?"
"Some few moments ago," Mercer explained. "I think I shall have enough information even to satisfy you. If you were watching us at supper I suppose you saw whom we sat down with?"
"That was why I was looking for you," Russell said eagerly. "What a stroke of luck that our friend the Malay should take a seat at the same table. What was he doing with that ornament which Miss Galloway was wearing?"
By way of reply Mercer led the way to one of the refreshment-rooms. It would be much easier to talk the matter over a cigarette than stand chattering where they were in everybody's way. Russell was an attentive listener. He said nothing whilst Wilfrid poured out his story.
"Splendid!" he muttered under his breath. "Nothing could have happened better. I came here on the off-chance of picking up some information, but I never expected to gather as much as this. But I will explain all in good time. Now let us get as near that party by the alcove as we can. Unless I am mistaken Uzali is in the midst of them. We don't want to arouse his suspicions, but I am going to let him know that he has friends here. We can hear what is going on without appearing to listen."
There were four or five men in the alcove and room for as many more. Russell and his companion pushed their way in casually and lighted their cigarettes. Uzali appeared to be finishing some anecdote, for he stopped presently and smote emphatically with his fist on the table before him.
"Not a sign, gentlemen, I assure you," he said, "not so much as a single clue. But I am not the man to be rebuffed at the first disappointment. No, I would rather not go back to the stage if you don't mind. I will stay here till you are ready to go. I am not a dancing man."
The alcove speedily cleared, leaving Wilfrid and Russell opposite Uzali, who smoked his cigarette as placidly as if nothing had happened to upset the even tenor of his way. Russell reached out his hand to an empty chocolate box around which a silk string was still attached. He took the string in his hand and tied it into a variety of knots.
"That was a strange story you told just now, sir," he said coolly. "You will pardon my friend and myself if we listened."
Uzali looked up sharply with a challenge in his eyes.
"I was wondering," Russell went on, "if the clue was anything like this which I hold in my hand." With apparent carelessness he tossed the string across the table and waited for the Malay to speak.
"You have said too much," Uzali murmured, "or too little."
CHAPTER XIX
FENCING
Russell sat unmoved; he was not acting without due deliberation, though he realized that he had a dangerous foe to deal with. For some time Uzali played with the string, tying and untying the knots as if he were making up his mind what to do next. To Wilfrid Mercer, looking on, the incident reminded him of two chess masters bent over a table.
"You are a stranger to me," Uzali said.
"That, to a certain extent, I am prepared to admit," Russell replied. "I don't know whether you are a religious man or not, Mr. Uzali, but probably you will agree with me – "
"So you know my name at any rate," Uzali said.
Russell shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't want any credit for that," he said. "I could have learnt your name from a score of people since I have been here. Besides, it is no news to me seeing that I am under the impression that you are using it as a nom de guerre. On the other hand my name is Swan Russell, and this is my friend, Dr. Wilfrid Mercer. I have spent a great deal of time in Borneo seeking a fortune, which, until a short time ago, appeared to be within my grasp. Unfortunately, I had unscrupulous people to deal with, and am really hard up for a hundred pounds. My friend, Dr. Mercer, is even in worse case than myself. He had the misfortune to be a medical attendant on board a steamer which was wrecked in the East. I should not be surprised if you have heard of a boat called the Guelder Rose, which was owned by Mr. Samuel Flower, of the Flower Line of steamers. Believe me, I am not occupying your time merely to hear myself talk."
Uzali glanced keenly at the speaker. The look of suspicion had died from his face. Something like a smile lurked in the corners of his mouth.
"I may be mistaken," he said, "but I think you are a man after my own heart. Now tell me candidly – have you suffered any wrong at the hands of this Samuel Flower? Is your friend in the same predicament?"
"That is so," Russell said gravely. "But for Samuel Flower I should be a rich man. But for Samuel Flower my friend Mercer would not be so desperately situated as he is. I think I have given you enough evidence of my bona fides in the piece of string which you are holding in your hand."
"I am not going to deny it," Uzali said. "And I see the necessity for caution. I suppose you realize that Mr. Flower is in some danger?"
"Flower is in imminent peril of his life I know," Russell replied. "Upon my word, I hardly know how to go on. To all practical purposes, you are as good as an Englishman, Mr. Uzali, and you know our laws as well as I do. If anything happened to Flower now and the trouble were traced home to you, for instance, you would have considerable difficulty in saving your neck. In other words, I am going to accuse you of being concerned in a conspiracy to put an end to Samuel Flower. I know this is a bold assertion."
"Oh, we will grant it for the moment," Uzali said coolly. "I confess you startled me when you passed me that piece of string. I see you understand the significance of those five knots, and, indeed, you have already told me that you have spent a good deal of your time in North Borneo. You pay me the compliment of deeming me to be an antagonist worthy of his steel, and I have an equal respect for your courage and audacity. But you are wrong in asserting that Samuel Flower stands in danger from me at the present moment. Later, perhaps, circumstances may alter. In the meantime he is as safe as yourself."
The last words were uttered with a grimness which was not lost upon the listeners.
"I thank you for those words," Russell said gravely, "and none the less because they prove to me that you don't know everything. You are unaware, I suppose, that two of your fellow-countrymen were, until recently, engaged to a circus proprietor who is touring in Kent. It does not matter who this circus proprietor is. The main point is that he picked these men up in the Mediterranean and they have been a great draw to his show. A little time ago the circus was at a place called Castlebridge, which happens to be quite close to Maldon Grange, the country residence of our friend Mr. Samuel Flower."
Uzali nodded his lean yellow head restlessly. It was evident that this information was new to him. He looked at Russell rather searchingly, as if trying to read his inmost secrets. The company in the theatre was beginning to get smaller. Not more than a score or two of guests remained, and these were mostly men who had crowded into the refreshment-room.
"You cannot tell how vastly I am obliged to you," Uzali said. "But please go on. I give you my word of honour that I had not the least idea of this. I had not the remotest knowledge that one of my own clansmen was in England. But I still see you have something important to say. I am all attention."
"Well, how, I don't know," Russell resumed, "but these men found out that Samuel Flower was in the neighbourhood. They made one or two excursions to Maldon Grange, because my friend Mercer happened to see them himself. He will describe to you what incantations they were going through and the mysterious way in which they vanished when he interrupted them. Late that night an attack was made on the life of Mr. Flower, and, but for the intervention of Dr. Mercer, the ship-owner's troubles would have been at an end. But perhaps my friend had better tell the story in his own way."
"Incantations," Uzali muttered. "Oh, yes, I understand. There were brass crucibles, a peculiar smell, strange globes of light. Oh, yes, I have seen it all before. And, mind you, it is not the poor make-believe of magic such as you get in Europe. That was the real thing. But I am interrupting you, doctor. I shall be greatly obliged if you will tell me everything."
Nothing loth, Wilfrid proceeded to tell his story which Uzali followed with breathless attention.
"I assure you I knew nothing of this," he said, when at length Mercer had finished. "I never guessed anything of the kind. On the contrary, I would give more than half I possess to insure Samuel Flower's safety for the next few weeks. We are wasting time here. I shall be glad if you gentlemen will come with me as far as Castlebridge without delay so that I may interview these fellow-countrymen of mine. They will listen to me as they will listen to nobody else. When they have my commands they will obey them as well-trained hounds should do. It is perhaps fortunate that Samuel Flower is in town, but those men are so fearless, so reckless of life, that it is little – but we must be moving. I shall be glad if you will come with me as far as my house so that we can take the motor without delay and get to Chatham before daylight. It is the only way I can see."
"But I cannot leave town," Mercer protested. "I have some urgent business which will keep me here till Saturday at the least. You seem to have forgotten what I told you about those countrymen of yours. They were fetched back to the theatre at the end of a whip by the proprietor and his big negro, but by the morning they had vanished. It seemed so strange to see them return in that docile fashion. I am afraid you will have great trouble in finding them now."
"It is annoying," Uzali muttered. "I had forgotten that those fellows had given the circus proprietor the slip. At any rate, I shall not have to look for them in the country. If they are not already in London, they are on their way here. And now, gentlemen, will you do me the honour of coming with me as far as my house? There is still much to be said between us, much to explain, and I am sure that if you will only put out a hand to help me, I shall do everything in my power to assist you. Is that a bargain?"
The lights were going out one by one. The few late stayers were drifting away from the bar. It was not far short of three o'clock in the morning, but none of the trio were disposed to sleep. The air seemed to be charged with magnetic fluid; something like danger lingered in every nook.
"By all means," Russell said. "I should like to tell you my story, and then you can judge whether I am right or not in what I have resolved to do."
Without another word Uzali slipped into his overcoat and bade his companions follow. They entered a cab and were whirled westwards until they came to a tall block of flats at the corner of Oxford Street. Uzali put his key in the latch and opened the door. Then he stood back with a bow signifying that his companions might precede him.
CHAPTER XX
THE WATERFALL
The flat was not a large one, but the new-comers could see it was most luxuriously furnished and fitted with every modern convenience. Uzali led the way into a cosy dining-room where he switched on the electric lights. The walls were dark red, showing up the pictures and china to perfection, and the overmantel was fitted with a bookcase. With a wave of his hand Uzali bade his guests be seated.
"Oh, yes, it is fairly comfortable," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "I am getting to the time of life when one takes a philosophic view of things. After all, I have little more than I want. I have my many friends in London and I have my books. Still, I cannot forget that if I had my deserts I should be in a very different position. I ought to be a prince in my native country, with the control of some thousands of men, and there are times when the longing for the old life grips me and I could commit a thousand crimes to feel my feet on my native soil again. But all that is past and done with. I am waiting my time, and when one man pays the penalty for his crime I shall be free to go my own way again. But I did not bring you here to talk about myself. On the contrary, I am anxious to hear Mr. Russell's story."
"I am afraid there is very little story I have to tell," Russell replied. "I have been a rolling stone all my life, always seeing a fortune and never finding one. I have no doubt if I had stayed at home like the average man I should have done well enough, but from my earliest days the fever of adventure has been in my blood and I cannot settle down. I have been everywhere where gold is to be found. I have risked my life a score of times only to come out of each adventure a little poorer than I went in. Three years ago I was stranded at Key West penniless and without a notion how to get a night's shelter. There by great good fortune I found a man I had met years before, and to him I explained how I was situated. He had not much to offer me, save that he was going to Borneo orchid-hunting, and he wanted some one to accompany him. I jumped at the chance. Anything was better than the slow starvation that stared me in the face. To make a long story short, we landed five weeks later in North Borneo and proceeded to push our way inland. It was all right for a day or two, then we began to have some notion of the difficulties which surrounded us.
"The natives were bad, to begin with, and matters were made all the worse by the discovery that those people regarded certain flowers as sacred. They attacked us one night when we were quite unprepared for an assault, and in the morning I was the only one of our party who was left alive. My life was spared by accident. I happened to have in my possession a medicine-chest out of which I had given one of our native followers some quinine which cured him of ague. Of course I need not tell you that we were betrayed, and that my native patient was one of the traitors. I thought my time had come as I lay there before one of the camp fires, picking out words here and there from their jargon, a portion of which was familiar to me. After a day or two I gathered that I was going to be taken up country and brought into the presence of one of the chiefs who was suffering from some illness.
"Well, we jogged along for two or three weary days until we came to what, at one time, must have been a considerable town. I was surprised to find huge stone buildings divided into streets. I was amazed to see what must have been a magnificent circus. I saw scores of baths hewn out of the side and filled with most deliciously cool lake water. It was only afterwards that I learnt that the town was situated at the foot of a lake, and that hundreds of years ago a great dam had been built across the waters to keep them from flowing into the town. I have seen nothing so remarkable since I visited old towns in Mexico. One thing struck me as particularly strange. For all the town was so large, there could not have been more than five or six hundred inhabitants. Oh, you will pardon me, Mr. Uzali, but they were, for the most part, the image of yourself. The natives who had destroyed our expedition were a different class of men altogether. They were big, ugly black men. There were thousands of them up in the mountains, but they appeared to be terribly afraid of the people who occupied the town."
"A matter of civilization," Uzali muttered.
"Well, perhaps so," Russell went on. "At any rate, they made me comfortable. I was led to understand that they regarded me with a certain amount of reverence, and I felt safe so long as I made no attempt to escape. I was free to roam the mountains, and the valleys below the town, indeed, I was free to do everything I pleased so long as I showed up at twilight. By this time I had established my reputation as a doctor. I was well in with the chief of the tribe. I had learnt a great deal of their past history. I had learnt something on my own account, too, which I regarded as still more valuable. Below the town in one of the valleys I found traces of gold. I worked a place for weeks until I was certain that the gold was alluvial and that it had been washed down from the lake during hundreds of centuries. I calculated the amount of gold there. It was worth perhaps a couple of hundred thousand pounds, and when all that was extracted there would be nothing left. There was nothing for it but to bide my time and hope for the best. Sooner or later my store of drugs would be exhausted, and then it was possible that I might be allowed to go down to the coast and replenish the chest.
"There was another discovery I made about the same time and that was a large amount of treasure which was hidden away in the chief's palace, I found it out by accident, too, though I feared at one time that the accident was going to cost me my life. I don't think I have ever seen a man so majestically angry as the chief was when he caught me gloating over his treasures.
"'The cause of all our troubles,' he said. 'But for those accursed things I should be master of this island from one side to the other. They bred greed and murder amongst my followers, they caused the shedding of blood. Base treachery followed wherever they went. No one knows they are here but myself. No one shall ever know but myself, for after my death there shall be no more chiefs of the clan, and gradually we shall fade away and die, as our brethren perished across the seas in Mexico. I will make a bargain with you, if you like. If I die first you shall have your freedom, you shall take six of my mules and six of my ponies, and you shall load them up with everything here that you most desire. With my seal upon them they will be safe from all men until you reach the coast.'
"There was nothing more to be said or done after that, only to wait my time and trust to fortune for a means of escape. So far as the chieftain's offer was concerned I thought no more about it, for he was a man in the prime of life and likely to last as long as I should.
"But one never knows. A week or two later came rumours from the mountains that certain white men had penetrated there and that they meant to make a raid on the town, accompanied by a gang of desperadoes whom they had bought over by promises of reward. We thought nothing of it, though it occurred to me once or twice that the chief looked grave and that he did not go quite so far afield as usual. It was late one afternoon when he came limping back into camp, and a messenger came to me post-haste to say that he had poisoned his foot with a prickly cactus. No sooner had the attendants left us alone than the chief turned to me eagerly.
"'I have deceived them all,' he whispered. 'It is no cactus which is the cause of the trouble. I was attacked in the woods this afternoon by a handful of natives who have hitherto been faithful. I managed to escape under cover of darkness, but not before I received this wound in my heel, which will be fatal.'