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Page 12
We went into the superintendent's room, and sat down by a
smoldering fire of coals in the gate. I handed Marquis the roll
of vellum. It was in one of the Shan dialects. He read it
aloud. With the addition of certain formal expressions, it
contained precisely the Oriental's testimony before the court,
and no more.
"Ah!" he said in his curiously inflected Oxford voice.
And he held the scroll out to the heat of the fire. The vellum
baked slowly, and as it baked, the black Chinese characters faded
out and faint blue ones began to appear.
Marquis read the secret message in his emotionless drawl:
"`The American is destroyed, and his accursed work is destroyed
with him. Send the news to Bangkok and west to Burma. The
treasures of India are saved."'
I cried out in astonishment.
"An assassin! The creature was an assassin! He killed Rodman
simply by crushing him in his arms!"
Sir Henry's drawl lengthened.
"It's Lal Gupta," he said, "the cleverest Oriental in the whole of
Asia. The jewel-traders sent him to watch Rodman, and to kill
him if he was ever able to get his formulae worked out. They
must have paid him an incredible sum."
"And that is why the creature attached himself to Rodman!" I
said.
"Surely," replied Sir Henry. "He brought that bronze Romulus
carrying off the Sabine woman and staged the supernatural to work
out his plan and to save his life. I knew the bronze as soon as
I got my eye on it - old Franz Josef gave it as a present to
Mahadal in Bombay for matching up some rubies."
I swore bitterly.
"And we took him for a lunatic!"
"Ah, yes!" replied Sir Henry. "What was it you said as I came
in? `The human mind is capable of any absurdity!'"
II. The Reward
I was before one of those difficult positions unavoidable to a
visitor in a foreign country.
I had to meet the obligations of professional courtesy. Captain
Walker had asked me to go over the manuscript of his memoirs; and
now he had called at the house in which I was a guest, for my
opinion. We had long been friends; associated in innumerable
cases, and I wished to suggest the difficulty rather than to
express it. It was the twilight of an early Washington winter.
The lights in the great library, softened with delicate shades,
had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost a thing
of beauty in its vague outlines; even the squat, ridiculous
bronze horse had a certain dignity in the blue shadow.
If one had been speculating on the man, from his physical aspect
one would have taken Walker for an engineer of some sort, rather
than the head of the United States Secret Service. His lean face
and his angular manner gaffe that impression. Even now,
motionless in the big chair beyond the table, he seemed - how
shall I say it? - mechanical.
And that was the very defect in his memoir. He had cut the great
cases into a dry recital. There was no longer in them any
pressure of a human impulse. The glow of inspired detail had
been dissected out. Everything startling and wonderful had been
devitalized.
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