Grey Face/Chapter 33

EAK, newly returned from Limehouse, came in from the bathroom, and, crossing to a chest of drawers, opened it in quest of a clean collar. Then, remembering that he had broken his stud, he took out a cardboard box in order to look for a spare stud which he believed he possessed. He found himself staring with unfamiliar curiosity at a small tarnished silver crucifix which lay among the odds and ends contained by the box. His rugged face became a mask of perplexity.

Slowly he turned, looking toward his open window through which sunlight streamed into the room. An uncanny memory had come to him—the memory, he determined, of some forgotten nightmare. It was that of a grey face, the face of a dead man, except that the eyes were alive and stared out like two points of light.

Teak raised his hand to his close-cropped skull and then sat down on the side of the bed to consider this matter. He was not an orderly thinker, and for a long time he wrestled with a series of confusing ideas which suddenly had presented themselves to his mind. One of them was suggested by the open window; another, in some way, by the little crucifix; there was a third which had to do with a pair of old rubber-soled shoes which he had not worn for a long time. And all of them were linked mysteriously with that uncanny memory of the grey face.

Doggedly he stuck to his task. When had he dreamed of the grey face? He went back in watches, as was his sailorly habit, seeking to account for his movements during the preceding forty-eight hours. In this way he blundered upon a strange thing.

One whole night was a blank which defied his memory!

He could recall nothing of it except that the crucifix was associated in some way with the hiatus—rubber shoes, and the deathly grey face. His open window, too, had a part in it. He became aware of a curious chill somewhere deep within him, and he found himself reviewing the past almost fearfully. He found himself thinking of that extraordinary human document in his own handwriting which was possessed by Trepniak.

What had he done in those lost hours? To what had he now committed himself? Life was sufficiently complex without this added doubt.

Teak experienced a sudden desire for the open seas, for racing clouds above him with no land in sight; for the taste of salt on his lips and the sting in his eyes of a wind from the Western Ocean. Such were his tangled thoughts when the telephone bell rang. He aroused himself, stood up, and, crossing to the instrument:

"Yes?" he said.

Trepniak's voice answered:

"Will you please come down to the library, Teak, at once?"

"Yes," said Teak again, and hung up the receiver.

He hastened through the rest of his toilet, and going down to the library, found Trepniak seated at the big table there, awaiting him.

"What news, Teak?" he asked.

"Well," Teak reported, "I don't like the look of things at all. A blasted Scotland Yard man has been prowling around down there."

"Do you mean he has been to the works?"

"No, not actually," Teak replied, "but he's got a line on us, right enough. It wouldn't have mattered a week ago, but as Michael is locked up in the cellar, it's more than a trifle awkward. Regarding said Michael, I should be glad of instructions. It was in accordance with your orders that I put him to sleep, but I should like to point out that he can't stay there for ever. In the first place, I am tired of acting as his nurse-maid, and in the second place, with the police around, it's asking for trouble."

Trepniak fixed his peculiar regard upon the speaker and:

"You are quite right, Teak," he admitted, "but if I had felt in need of your advice I should have asked for it. Have you anything further to report?"

"Yes," Teak answered sharply. "I have seen the same Scotland Yard man here in Park Lane. I saw him twice this afternoon."

Trepniak nodded. "Very good," he said. "Now, Teak, you hold a shipmaster's certificate, I believe?"

"I did," Teak corrected, "although I never sailed as skipper. But"—he smiled grimly—"I haven't got it now!"

Possibly not," Trepniak continued, "but you have your knowledge. I have decided to leave London. As I wish to take a number of people with me, it is my intention to buy a sea-going yacht. I want you to proceed to Southampton to-morrow in order to open negotiations with a firm who have such a vessel for disposal."

"Oh!" said Teak, "that's good hearing. Will it be a long cruise?"

"Not very long," the other replied. "I have decided to visit America."

As he spoke the last word Trepniak started up from his chair, his eyes fixed glassily upon the opposite wall in which that door was concealed which communicated with the secret study. He uttered a horrifying cry which seemed to tell of sudden agony. Then, falling back, his jaws clenched, he sat staring fixedly before him.

Teak sprang forward.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Are you ill?"

Trepniak did not stir a muscle, but sat there like a carven man, staring—staring unmovedly.

"Mr. de Trepniak!" said Teak urgently.

He bent over the table, grasping his employer's shoulder; and, as he did so, a horrible doubt leapt to his mind. He looked into the glaring sightless eyes—he touched the white face.

Trepniak was rigid.

"My God!" Teak groaned. "He's dead!"

Trepniak experienced a deathly chill, with instantaneous rigour; the fire of life died out of him, and it seemed that ice flowed into his veins. He knew all the pangs of dissolution—he recognized them; realized what had happened. Teak's frightened cry, "My God! He's dead!" was the last thing he sentiently knew.

A voice called his name, and he swept up, as if borne upon a breeze, through every solid obstacle into his secret laboratory in the tower. There was a new, strange joy in this freedom. An urgent longing came to him to pass beyond the confines of the world, but something trammelled him—a tenuous cord, invisible, delicate, yet competent to enchain his straining spirit.

Hermon el Bâhari stood with folded arms awaiting him.

In his expression there was no anger. His classically beautiful face resembled a mask of gentle melancholy. The power of his eyes dismissed the chimera of the world, and these two were alone in boundless space; not the accused and his accuser, but the tardy penitent and the spiritual father.

"My brother, you tamper with that which is immortal. You build for yourself a house of dreadful doom. You threaten with ignominy those who are worthy. Your great accomplishments entitle you to a high place, but pride of will has brought you low. The power you seek is not within mortal grasp. The path you follow is a forbidden path. That moral laws are but instruments of government we know; yet only the pure may break them, under the highest guidance.

"Three times you have seen me in the flesh. In Cairo I came to you as a friend; you rejected me. A second time I sought you out in a place in Persia which I need not name; but you were deaf to my counsels. At great personal inconvenience I followed you to Moscow—but my journey was fruitless. Yet, because the highest law is that of compassion, it was decided to appeal to your second self, and upon me the task again was laid.

"You were warned, super-sensually, in Paris. But your lower nature, dominated by pride of will, conquered, and the seed never developed. A second time you passed through the gates of death, and here, on this spot, you were shown your end, the only end which can be to a conflict with God. You were watched; and the result is that a third time I come to you.

"It is the last time.

"The lower man, the creation of your own immense knowledge, will return again to the world you seek to remodel. Pursue your former path, and the science which you think you command will destroy you, as well as the unhappy creature who shares your fate, and whose existence is offensive to Heaven. This is your last warning, of which, when you live again, your brain will know nothing, but your spirit—knowing—can win freedom if it be strong enough."

A great agony, an agony almost unendurable, claimed Trepniak. A remorseless cord tightened about his heart. He fought with this torture; foam rose to his lips. He threw off something which restrained him—and staggered upright.

He began to babble incoherently. A series of purple veils seemed to be raised one after another before his eyes; and, panting, shaken, he fell back again into the chair in the library, looking up to the quivering face of Dimitri who stood at his right, and thence to the pale terror-stricken countenance of Teak, who had sought to grasp him when in that agonized return from death to life he had leapt upright.

Then both these were forgotten, and he stared across the big table at one who stood there watching him. Slowly, recognition came. It was Doctor Muir Torrington.

Torrington spoke.

"Good," he said, nodding his head slowly; "don't distress yourself. You have made an astonishing recovery. I have to warn you, however: the next attack of this kind will be the last."