Grey Face/Chapter 38

EE here," said Teak, spreading his feet widely apart as though the floor of the cellar were the deck of a rolling ship, "I'll put it up to you another way. You don't trust me because I stiffed you; I was the party that laid you out. Good enough. I understand that. I should feel the same way myself. But, on the other hand, you never did trust me. Now I can mention two things which ought to make it look different. First thing"—he raised a stubby forefinger—"I did the same office for Mr. Krauss not so long ago, and I may as well mention that this little private suite, with chain, etc., was designed for his special use."

"What!" Michael exclaimed, watching the speaker contemptuously, "Krauss has been confined here—that fiend who came to torture me?"

"I said so," was the stolid reply. "He didn't stay as long as you, but then, he was more reasonable. Don't hold me responsible for his savagery. You passed your word not to set about me, and I unlocked the chain, I couldn't do more. You only have to pass your word to the old man to keep quiet, and the door will be unlocked as well."

"I decline to do so."

"I've heard you say it before. Listen, then—there's a second point. You have been working in the dark for years."

"Yes," Michael murmured, that strange look of vagueness creeping into his eyes, "in the dark. I am in the dark."

"You don't know what it's all about," Teak continued, "any more than I do. You are a man of tip-top education, that's plain-I know it. You are useful in the laboratory here, and the furnace work was just A B C."

The cloud disappeared from Michael's eyes; it was as though a veil had been raised. He leapt back, eager, imperious, into the present, and:

"Are those experiments still being carried on?" he asked.

"No." Teak shook his head stolidly. "Since the night the crucible burst there have been no furnace-room watches. Listen"-he extended his hand, pointing. "You had me wrong from the start. In Moscow I tried to get next to you but you froze me stiff; in Paris the same. Yet, out of all this crew, we are the only two in the same boat."

Michael stared at the speaker inflexibly, and:

"Perhaps I have misunderstood you," he said. "Perhaps I misunderstand you now. What do you mean? Are you disloyal to the man who employs you? If so, for what reason? Are you a spy?"

Teak cleared his throat noisily. The uncompromising frankness of Mr. Michael was an obstacle which he lacked the wit to surmount. His glance hardened and he squared his jaw.

"You make things kind of awkward," he said. "To talk to you isn't like dipping in a honey pot. Why ask damn silly questions! Are you a spy?"

Michael remained seated on the side of the bed, but his eyes blazed, and his delicate nostrils became slightly distended. He did not speak, however.

"You are not," Teak continued, watching him closely. "You have worked squarely at the job you were paid for and I have done the same. But if you feel happy about the treatment that's been handed out to you, then you're even a queerer brand of goods than you seem to be. I'll go a bit farther. I signed on here as a sort of bodyguard for the old man. How you started I don't know and I don't care. But when the old man gave me the order 'stiff him,' I stiffed you. You asked for it. I suppose you think that I have known all along what was in those crucibles? I suppose you think I know now what you had with you when you tried to make a getaway? You're wrong. I know it's a big game and I know it's crooked. But I don't know any more. Your angle I can't get. You're up against the old man and you're up against me. Yet I've tried to play the game with you as far as I dare go. But I'm here now to go one better at my own risk."

Michael's expression had changed slightly, and now:

"What do you want of me?" he asked. "You are a ruffian; why should I trust you?"

Teak's weather-beaten face hardened again.

"Don't make love to me," he growled; "I'm not used to it."

"Why should I trust you?" Michael repeated. "My God! If I had known!" He raised his clenched fists to his head. " I have been working for a gang of criminals. You are one of them. I do not compromise with criminals. This outrage"—he swept his hand around, indieating his narrow quarters—"absolves me from every obligation. I have promised not to resort to violence. But if I can escape, I shall immediately place all the facts before the proper authorities!"

Teak nodded grimly. He regarded himself as something of a reformed character and within certain limitations his overtures to Michael had been sincere enough. He turned, and walked out of the cellar, locking the door behind him.

Michael relapsed into that state of apathy in which the greater part of his life was spent. Flashes of energy he had, nervous, mental, and physical, during which he was possessed by a fierce pride> a pride of race, a sense of superiority which, after all, was unaccountable, since he was a nonentity who did not even know his real name. It was because of this, because he could not define his place in the world, that he wavered so much in his attitude toward these men which whom, latterly, he had become associated.

He had been almost starving when Fate had thrown him into the path of Doctor Weissler in Moscow. And in the employment which the doctor offered there had seemed to be nothing dishonourable. It was an easy life, he supposed, as life went for those compelled to work; but when these ideas came to him, bringing with them strange, elusive shadows of something which had been before that meeting with Doctor Weissler, the vacant expression crept over Michael's face. He drifted away into some dream-world where none might follow him, save that vulgarity or disrespect had power instantly to call him back, and to set flaming in his eyes an angry beacon; to lend to the curve of his nostrils, the poise of his head, something that was imperious, intolerant.

Always, day and night, whilst conscientiously he performed the task allotted to him, or whilst in his modest apartment he wearily counted the unoccupied hours—always he found his thoughts reverting to that dim past which defied him. There was glory in it, and pride, joy, catastrophe, and sorrow. It was vivid, widely different from the life which he lived now; so vivid, so bright, that sometimes, when it came to him in dreams, he awakened, crying a name, thinking he had regained the past. But in the moment of awakening the curtain always descended again, so that he could not even remember the name which he had cried, and could recall no incident of the vivid dream which had awakened him.

It was a woman's name, he thought, but his waking efforts to recover it were invariably fruitless. A taunting word would stir up something fierce and scornful in him, and at such moments the past drew very near to the present: the veil grew very thin.

Moscow had been one grey, dull monotony. Nothing in the city had struck any familiar chord; but in Paris, over and over again, he had stood suddenly still before a monument, a cafe, a theatre, only to pass on a moment later, wondering what had prompted his delay. Twice people had spoken to him: one, a fashionable Frenchman, and the other a poorly dressed woman who looked like a Russian. The man, finding no recognition in Michael's eyes, had turned, piqued, and walked away. The woman had looked frightened, mumbled something, and had stood looking after him as he passed on.

In London there had been no incident of this kind, no sudden stoppages before public buildings. Between his suburban rooms and the Limehouse factory he had passed daily with the regularity of an automaton, sunken in that dull apathy, performing his tasks conscientiously, but indifferent to the ultimate purpose of the work upon which he was engaged. The nature of the experiments in the furnace-room, which had so intrigued Teak, had not aroused the slightest interest in Michael, the more cultured man. Nothing interested him except that injustice, insult, could awaken strange fires in him, whilst the petty things of life he simply did not understand.

The bursting of the crucible in the furnace-room had all but effected, in its result, that which his weary mental efforts had failed to accomplish in years. When he had taken the necessary precautions to prevent an outbreak of fire and had found amid the steaming ashes that incredible stone, a thought had leapt to his mind which was a pain and a reproach.

Doctor Weissler's experiments were directed to the making of synthetic diamonds!

As the truth of his conjecture dawned upon his mind the other, slumbering, man awoke, contemplating those thousands to whom the commercializing of this process must bring ruin. Doubting, questioning, generously open to believe the best, but reluctantly compelled to assume the worst, he had matured a plan.

His watch ended at eight o'clock; and, waiting until Teak came into the office above, he had set out, taking the diamond with him, had had his bath at his rooms, had changed, and had proceeded to a jeweller's in Bond Street, of which he chanced to know the name. One plain object he held in view: that which he conceived to be his duty, not to his employer, but to himself and to the world. He wished to know if this gigantic brilliant, the like of which he had never seen, were a genuine diamond.

He had learned that it was so before the lapidary had spoken. The man's startled expression betrayed the truth, and a very brief conversation had satisfied Michael that his suspicions were well based. Returning along Burlington Arcade he had suddenly become aware of the figure of Teak, not thirty paces in his rear. His brain worked very slowly, very painfully. He had not yet determined upon his proper course of action. He needed time; ideas came to him so slowly, except for those brilliant flashes.

Such an inspiration had come, as, glancing back over his shoulder, he almost collided with two men on the point of parting, indeed just shaking hands immediately in front of him.

"Good-bye, Torrington," he heard. "I will look you up directly I return to town."

"You will find me in the 'phone book," said the other. "If ever you want to swop your job of ship's surgeon for a Mayfair practice, I'm your bird! "

"Good enough. Are you under T for Torrington or M for Muir?"

"T for Torrington. Good-bye, old man,"

One swift glance Michael had taken at the face of the last speaker and had determined upon his course. Whether he had done well or ill, he could not know. At least, the step which he had taken had opened his eyes to the true character of his employer and his associates. He might have gone on doubting; doubt now was impossible. He was associated with a group of criminals, had been associated with them since the earliest times he could remember; for beyond those days of hunger in Moscow his memory was impotent to penetrate.

It was a discovery which plunged him into black depths of despair. This humiliation was almost more than he could support. The physical violence he had suffered counted for little in comparison. Dimly, he divined that he must have known worse things in the way of bodily suffering.

So, sometimes, his spirit firing up volcanically, distant memories drew tauntingly near; but for many dull hours out of every twenty-four he was lost in that apathetic state which was only half-life.

These moods were growing more frequent and of longer duration. The visits of Teak to attend to his needs alone had broken the monotony of his imprisonment, save for that one maniacal intrusion of Krauss. Dully, he distrusted the American, which was no more than natural since Teak had been instrumental in confining him here. Yet, he experienced no fear of the future. He apprehended no violence to come. On the whole, he was pathetically passive. A sort of numbness would steal over his brain, and for hours he would sit contemplating some remote, undefinable sorrow.

Except for rumbling of distant traffic no sound penetrated to his cellar from the outer world until an hour, many hours-he could not judge-after Teak's departure, a sudden, piercing outcry reached his ears.

It awakened his brain electrically, and he leapt up as one galvanized, standing alert, lists clenched, listening intently. Words followed; broken, frightened words in a woman's voice, interrupted by a guttural babble which seemed to send a chill of horror through every nerve in his body.

Krauss, the ape-man, was somewhere in the building!

Again he heard that piteous woman voice, and the expression upon his face changed magically. A new light came into the widely opened eyes. It was as though the man known as Mr. Michael had melted from existence and another, a stronger, a finer man had taken his place. He uttered a great cry, wild, triumphant. He viewed his prison no longer with apathy, but critically, searchingly, as one set upon escape.

No daylight ever penetrated. He was dependent upon an electric lamp hanging from the ceiling. The inner room was similarly illuminated. One barred window there was, high in a plastered wall, and boarded up outside. No ray of light ever crept through the boards and no sound came from the place outside—a sort of well opening in a paved yard.

Again the appealing, pitiful voice reached his ears; and Mr. Michael acted.

A new and unsuspected physical strength came to him. He raised the heavy deal table upon which his meals were served and placed it beneath the boarded window. Upon it he erected his bed, as a ladder, and, mounting, began closely to examine the iron bars and the boarding.

The bars were rusty but strong: given time he might have displaced them. The boards defied him. (Apathetically, he had considered them before.) But, as he stood there, keenly testing every possibility, there came a loud rapping from outside!

"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "Who is there?"

"Listen, please," a soft Oriental voice replied. "I t'ink, take somet'ing-and push the wood—to help. If—a little way apart, I t'ink, can do. Perhaps. Quickly, please."

The suggestion was not too intelligible, but Michael, his wits now keenly alive, appreciated the speaker's point. He dropped down upon the table, thence to the floor, and looked about him.

A massive and dilapidated office chair, which, with the table and the bed, made up practically all the furniture of the room, promised to suit his purpose. He set it on the table, and then raised it until it rested on top of the bed. Displaying great agility, he mounted. Wedging the two front legs between an iron bar and the outer woodwork, he used the chair as a lever, leaning perilously backward so as to employ all his weight.

The woodwork creaked-creaked again. He became aware of helpful effort from outside. Then, with a tearing sound, one heavy plank broke away.

"Good! Good!" said the soft voice. "Now, please, the next one."

Michael moved his lever; and the second board was wrenched from its position. With its displacement, his unknown ally became visible in the yellow rays of the electric lamp—a stocky little Japanese, bright-eyed and alert, but immobile as an image.

"The other way, please, now," he directed, gently.

Michael nodded, changed position upon his unsteady perch, and, turning the chair around, aided the Japanese to remove the remaining two boards.

A frenzied shriek sounded from somewhere in the building—and Michael gnashed his teeth so that the sound was audible to Ecko in the well outside the window. But:

"Bars now," he said. "Easy to do. This way, like I show you."

And, as Michael set to work with the strength and purpose of a cool madman, he observed a deep cut above the right eye of the Japanese from which blood was streaming down his immobile face.