Red Masquerade - Louis Joseph Vance
Without a sign to show he shared or even was aware of Sturm's emotion,
Victor deliberately fished from beneath the table a telephone instrument,
unhooked the receiver, and pronounced a conventional phrase of greeting. To
this he added a short "Yes," and after listening quietly for some seconds,
"Very good--in twenty minutes, then." Wasting no more time on the author
of the call, he hung up, returned the telephone to its place of
concealment, and helped himself to a cigarette before deigning to
acknowledge Sturm's persistent stare.
Then, elevating his eyebrows in mild impatience, he made the laconic
announcement:
"Eleven."
Sturm's mouth twitched nervously, his eyes burned with a keener fire.
"Coming here? To-night?"
"Yes."
"Then"--a gaunt hand described a gesture of agitation--"the hour strikes!"
Victor looked bored.
"Who knows?" he replied, as who should say: "Does it matter?"
"But--Gott in Himmel--!"
"Sturm," Victor interposed, critically, "if you Bolsheviki were a trifle
more consistent, one might repose greater faith in your sincerity. But when
one hears you deny the Deity in one breath and call on him by name in the
next--!"
"A mere mode of speech," Sturm muttered.
"If you must invoke a spiritual patron, why not Satan? Or don't you believe
in the Powers of Darkness, either?"
"I believe in you."
"As temporal viceroy of Lucifer? Many thanks! But you were about to say--?"
"Nothing. That is--I was envying your poise, Excellency. You take things
so coolly."
"Why not?"
"With Eleven coming here to tell us when we are to strike?"
"Why not?" Victor repeated. "We are prepared to strike at any hour. What
matters whether to-night or a week from to-night--since we cannot fail?"
"If that were only certain!"
"It rests with you."
"That's just it," Sturm doubted moodily. "Suppose _I_ fail?"
"Why, then--I suppose--you will die."
"I know. And so will all of us, Excellency."
"Oh, no. Undeceive yourself, my friend. I shall survive. You will surely
die, and perhaps many others with you; but I would not be Number One if I
had turned my hand to this scheme without discounting failure first of all.
My way of escape is sure."
"I believe you," Sturm grumbled.
With a languid hand Victor found and pressed a button embedded in the table
near the edge.
"You have reason. Whatever my shortcomings, my good Sturm, they do not
include hypocrisy; I do not pretend, like your noble Bolsheviki, I am in
this business for the sake of humanity or anything but my own selfish
ends--power, plunder"--a slight wait prefaced one final word, spoken in a
key of sombre passion--"revenge."
"Revenge?" Sturm echoed, staring.
"I have more than one score to pay out before I can cry even with life ...
one above all!"
Studying intently that darkened face, and misled by its look of
abstraction, Sturm was guilty of the indiscretion of his malicious smile.
"The Lone Wolf?"
Victor turned weary eyes his way, and under their black and lustreless
regard the smile merged swiftly into a grin of nervous apology.
"You are shrewd," Victor observed, thoughtfully. "Be careful: it is a
dangerous gift."
The man Nogam gently opened the door and approached the table, stopping
just outside the area of illumination shed by the shaded lamp. But since
Victor continued to smoke absently, paying no attention, Nogam resigned
himself to wait with entire patience: the perfect pattern of a servant
tempered by long servitude to the erratic winds of employers' whims;
efficient, assiduous, mute unless required to speak, long-suffering.
Victor addressed him suddenly, in a sharp voice that drew from Sturm a
glitter of eager spite.
"Nogam!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Where is the Princess Sofia?"
"In 'er apartment, sir."
"And Mr. Karslake?"
"In 'is."
"Then be good enough to send Shaik Tsin to me."
"Yes, sir."
"And, Nogam!"--the servant checked in the act of turning--"I shan't need
you again to-night."
"'Nk you, sir."
When Nogam had left the room, Sturm, remarking the slight frown that
knitted Victor's brows, ventured an impertinence couched in a form of
respectful enquiry:
"Excellency, perhaps you trust that fellow too much, hein?"
"You think so?"
"He is too perfect, if you ask me--never makes a false move."
"Either he is what he seems, in which event a false move would be against
nature; or he is not, and knows one slip would mean his death."
"Still, I maintain you trust him too much."
"With what?"
"The freedom of your house, the opportunity to spy, to get to know who
comes to see you and when, to listen at doors."
"You have caught him listening at doors?"
"Not yet. But in time--"
"I think not. I don't think he has to."
"You mean," Sturm stammered, perturbed, "you think he knows--suspects?"
"I think he is one thing or the other: merely Nogam, or one of the greatest
of living actors. In either case he is flawless--thus far. But if not
merely Nogam, he will have a subtler means of eavesdropping than by
listening at doors."
"The dictograph?"
"Make your mind easy about that. This room is searched regularly by Shaik
Tsin. So is Nogam's. It is certain there is neither a dictograph installed
here nor any means at Nogam's disposal for connecting with a dictograph
installation. Indeed, so closely is Nogam watched, and by more cunning eyes
than mine--sometimes I begin to be afraid he is simply what he seems."
"Then you do suspect him!"
"My good Sturm, I suspect everybody."
Sturm pondered this before pressing his point again.
"Karslake found the fellow for you," he suggested at length.
"True."
"And Karslake--"
"Has been guilty of nothing more treacherous than falling in love with
Sofia."
"Your daughter, Excellency!"
"The young woman seems content to call herself that.... Can't say I blame
Karslake."
"But do you forgive him?"
"Ah, that is another matter. Mine is not a forgiving nature, Sturm--not
even toward excessive shrewdness."
Victor took up a docket of papers, and Sturm, mumbling an apology, gave
himself up to jealous brooding till he forgot the broad hint he had
received.
"If I can satisfy you that Nogam is untrustworthy--" he began, meaning to
continue: _Karslake will stand his proved accomplice_.
But Victor would not let him finish. "Nothing could please me more," he
interrupted. "Do so, by all means--if you can--and earn my everlasting
gratitude."
Sturm questioned him with puzzled eyes.
"I ask no greater service of any man," Victor elucidated with a smile that
made Sturm shiver, "than proof that Nogam is what I suspect him of being."
A hand extended upon the table unclosed and closed slowly, with fingers
tensed, like a murderous claw. "I want no greater favour of Heaven or
Hell--!"
He broke off abruptly. Having entered noiselessly in his padded shoes,
Shaik Tsin now stood before Victor, offering a low obeisance.
"You took your time," Victor grumbled. And Shaik Tsin smiled serenely. "I
want you to tend the door to-night," Victor pursued. "Eleven is expected at
any moment. You need not announce him, simply show him in."
"Hearing is obedience."
"Wait"--as the Chinaman began to bow himself out--"Karslake is still in his
room, I suppose?"
"Yes, master."
"And Nogam?"
"Has just gone to his."
"When did you last search their quarters?"
"During dinner."
"And of course found nothing?" Shaik Tsin bowed. "Make sure neither leaves
his room to-night. Set a watch outside each door."
"I have done so."
Victor gave a sign of dismissal.
XIII
THE TURNIP
In a spacious chamber beneath the eaves, hideously papered and furnished
with cheerless, massive relics of the early Victorian era, the man Nogam
pursued methodical preparations for bed.
Spying eyes, had there been any--and for all Nogam knew, there were--would
have seen him follow step by step a programme from whose order he had
departed by scarcely as much as a single gesture on any night since his
first installation in the house near Queen Anne's Gate.
Loosening the waistcoat of his evening livery, he freed the heavy silver
watchchain from its buttonhole, drew from its pocket an old-fashioned
silver watch of that obese style which first earned the portable timepiece
its nickname of "turnip," and opening its back inserted a key attached to
the other end of the chain. Its winding was a laborious process,
prodigiously noisy. Once finished, Nogam shut the back with a loud click,
and reverently deposited the watch on the marble slab of the black walnut
bureau.
Then he hung coat and waistcoat over the back of a chair which stood
between the foot of his bed and the door. Sheer chance may have decreed
selection of this chair for the purpose on Nogam's first night in the room;
whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this
precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped
chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of the room.
Notwithstanding, Nogam pursued his bedtime rites with precisely the same
deliberation and absence of perceptible self-consciousness as before. One
never knew: there might be other peepholes in the walls.
His trousers, neatly folded, he laid out on the seat of the chair. Then he
pulled off square-toed boots with elastic inserts in their uppers, put on a
pair of worn slippers, carried the boots to the door and set them outside,
closed the door, and turned the key in its lock.
If aware that, by so doing, he made his privacy just as secure as if he had
fastened the door with a bent hair-pin, he gave evidence of no uneasiness
in the knowledge. A clear conscience is the best of nerve tonics.
Throughout, his features preserved their mild, subdued, dull habit with
which the household was familiar. Nogam off duty was in no way different
from the unthinking creature of habit who performed belowstairs the
prescribed functions of his office.
Having donned a nightshirt of coarse cotton, he knelt for several minutes
in a devout attitude by the side of his bed, then rising opened the window,
took the turnip from the bureau, and snuggled it beneath his pillow,
inserted his bare shanks between the sheets, and opened at a marked place a
Bible bound in black cloth.
On the table by his shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed
cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell
out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, and
switched out the lamp.
Profound darkness now possessed the room, immaterially modified by the
light-struck sky beyond the windows. And in this grateful obscurity Nogam
permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly
flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence
transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered
Nogam's probable duration of life an interesting speculation.
Under cover of the darkness, furthermore, he did a number of things which
Nogam, qua Nogam, would never have dreamed of doing.
His first act was to withdraw from under his pillow the turnip, his next to
re-open the back of its silver case and then the inner lid--something which
a deft thumbnail accomplished without a sound.
From the roomy interior of the case--whose bulky ancient works had been
replaced by a wafer-thin modern movement, leaving much useful space back
of the dial--sensitive fingers extracted a metal disk about the size and
thickness of a silver dollar. One face of this disk was generously
perforated, the other, solid, boasted a short blunt post round which
several feet of extremely fine wire had been coiled.
Unwinding the wire and bending the free end into the form of a rude hook,
the man attached this last to the cord of his bedside lamp at a point,
located by sense of touch, where a minute section of electric light wire
had been left naked by defective insulation.
Direct connection now being established with a microphone secreted in the
base of the brass lamp on the study table, three floors below, and the
perforated side of the microphone detector serving as an earpiece, one
could hear every word uttered by the conspirators.
The man in bed contributed a broad smile to the kind darkness--sheer luxury
to facial muscles cramped and constrained to the cast of Nogam for eighteen
hours a day. He was now at last to reap the reward of three months of
preparation and three weeks of ingenious, but necessarily spasmodic, and at
all times desperately dangerous, tampering with the house wiring system.
He lay very still for a long time, listening ...
XIV
CONFERENCE OF THE DAMNED
An Irish voice was making the hush of the study musical with mellow
cadences.
"This week-end sure, your Excellency--within the next three nights--the
little Welshman will be after summoning the Cabinet to sit in secret in
Downing Street, with His Most Gracious Majesty attending in person; the
emergency extraordinary being thoughtfully provided by this shindig me
amiable but spirited fellow-countrymen are kicking up across the
Channel--God bless the work!"
The speaker laughed lightly, flashing white teeth at Prince Victor across
the width of the paper-strewn table.
"In more Parliamentary language, by the Irish Question. But we'll hear no
more of that, I'm thinking, once we've proclaimed the Soviet Government of
England."
Victor bowed in grave assent.
"You have my word as to that," he said; and after a moment of thoughtful
consideration: "You speak, no doubt, from the facts?"
"I do that. It's straight I've come from the House of Commons to bring you
the news without an hour's delay. There's more than one advantage in being
an Irish Member these days."
"On the other hand, Eleven"--Victor stressed the numeral as if to remind
the Irishman that even a Member of Parliament for Ireland held no higher
standing in his esteem than any other underling in his association of
anonymous conspirators--"even so, it appears you are uncertain as to the
night."
"I'm after telling you it'll be to-morrow night or more likely
Saturday--Sunday at the latest." A mildly impatient accent alone betrayed
resentment of the snub. "I'll know in good time, long before the hour
appointed; and that ought to do, providing you on your part are prepared."
"An hour's notice will be ample," Victor agreed. "We have been ready for
days, needing only the knowledge you bring us--or will, when you have it
definitely."
The Irishman chuckled.
"It's hard to believe. Not that I'd dream of doubting your statement,
sir--but yourself won't be denying you must have worked fast to organize
England for revolution in less than three weeks."
"I have been busy," Victor admitted. "But the work was not so difficult ...
Seeds of revolution are easily sown in land thoroughly tilled by forces of
discontent. And what land has been better tilled? To vary the figure:
England is all seething beneath a thin crust of custom and established
habit whose integrity a conservative and reactionary government has ever
since the war been struggling desperately to preserve. The blow we shall
strike within three days will shatter that crust in a hundred places."
"And let Hell loose!" the Irishman added with a nervous laugh.
In a dry voice Victor commented: "Precisely."
"Omelettes," Sturm interjected, assertively, "are not made without breaking
eggs."
"And all rivers, no doubt, flow to the sea? What a lot you know, Herr
Sturm! Is it the Portfolio of the Minister of Education you've picked out
for your very own, after the explosion comes off--if it's a fair question?"
"You Irish are all mad," the German complained, sourly--"mad about
laughing. Even me you will laugh at, while you trust your very life to me,
while you trust to my genius to make Soviet England possible and Ireland
free."
"Faith! you're away off there, me friend. If it was you and your genius I
had to trust, it's meself would turn violent reactionary and advise Ireland
to be a good dog and come to England's heel and lick England's hand and
live off England's leavings. I'll trust nobody in this black business but
himself--Number One."
"You have changed your tune since that night at the Red Moon," Sturm
reminded him, angrily.
"I had me lesson then and there," Eleven agreed, cheerfully. "And I don't
mind telling you, the next time I'm taken with a fancy to call me soul me
own, I'll be after asking himself first for a license."
Victor put a period to the passage with a dispassionate "By your leave,
gentlemen--that will do." To the Irishman he added: "You understand the
danger, I believe, of remaining within the condemned area--that is to say,
except in the open air?"
"Can't say I do, altogether."
"It is simple: no person in any house supplied by the mains of the
Westminster gas works will be safe for hours after the formula of Thirteen
has begun its work. My advice to you is to keep out of the district
entirely."
"Faith, and I'll do that! But how about yourself in this house?"
"I shall spend the week-end outside of London," Victor replied, "not too
far away, of course, and"--the shadow of his satiric smile was briefly
visible--"prepared at any moment to answer the call of my stricken
country.... The few who remain here will be provided with the essentials
for their protection. Furthermore, a general warning will be sent out to
all who can be trusted."
"And the others--?"
"With them it must be as Fate wills."
"Women and children, potential sympathizers and supporters of all classes?"
the Irishman persisted in incredulous horror--"all?"
"All," Victor affirmed, coldly. "We who deal in the elemental passions
that make revolutions, that is to say, in Life and Death, cannot afford
qualms and scruples. What are a few lives more or less in London? These
British breed like rabbits."
"I see," said Eleven, indistinctly. He stared a moment and swallowed hard,
then glanced hastily at his watch. "I'll be after bidding you good-night,"
he said, "and pleasant dreams. For meself, I'm a fool if I go to bed this
night sober enough to dream at all, at all!"
Victor rang for Shaik Tsin to show him out.
"One question more, if you won't take it amiss," Eleven suggested,
lingering. And Victor inclined a gracious head. "Have you thought of
failure?"
"I have thought of everything."
"Well, and if we do fail--?"
"How, for example?"
"How do I know what hellish accident may kick our plans into a cocked hat?
Anything might happen. There's your friend, the Lone Wolf, for
instance ..."
"Have you not forgotten him yet?" Victor enquired in simulated surprise.
"Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the
Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a
handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left us to our own
devices?"
"That's what makes me wonder what the divvle's up to. His sort are never so
dangerous as when apparently discouraged." "Be reassured. I promised you
three weeks ago his interference would not continue beyond that night. It
has not. Lanyard knows I have his daughter, that any blow aimed at me must
first strike her."
"Doubtless yourself knows best...."
With the Irishman gone, Prince Victor turned to Sturm.
"You will want a good night's sleep," he suggested with pointed solicitude.
"Who knows but that to-morrow will bring your night of nights, my friend?"
He lapsed immediately into remote abstraction, sitting with chin bent to
the tips of his joined fingers, his eyes downcast, motionless.
Disgruntled, but afraid to show it, the German cleared away the litter of
papers, assorting them into huge portfolios, and took himself off. Shaik
Tsin replaced him, moving noiselessly about the room, restoring the
reference books to the shelves and stowing the portfolios away in a massive
safe hidden behind a lacquered screen. This done, he stationed himself
before his master, awaiting his attention, a shape of affable placidity,
intelligent, at ease; his attitude not entirely lacking a suggestion of
familiarity.
Without changing his pose by so much as the lifting of an eyelash, Victor
spoke in Chinese:
"To-morrow afternoon, late, I shall motor down into the country with the
girl Sofia. I shall be gone three days--perhaps. I will leave a telephone
number with you, to be used only in emergency. As soon as I have left, you
will dismiss all the English servants, with a quarter's wage in advance in
lieu of notice. Karslake will provide the money."
"He does not accompany you?"
"No."
"And the man Nogam?"
Victor appeared to hesitate. "What do you think?" he enquired at length.
"What I have always thought."
"That he is a spy?"
"Yes."
"But with no tangible support for your suspicions?"
"None."
"You have not failed to watch him closely?"
"As a cat watches a mouse."
"But--nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Yet I agree with you entirely, Shaik Tsin. I smell treachery."
"And I."
"Nogam shall go with me as my bodyservant. Thus I shall be able to keep an
eye on him. Let Chou Nu be prepared to accompany us as maid to the girl
Sofia. In my absence you will be guided by such further instructions as I
may leave with you. These failing, consider the man Sturm, my personal
representative. In the contingency you know of, Sturm will warn you in time
to clear the house."
"Of everybody?"
"Of all servants except those whom you may need to guard the man Karslake.
These and yourself will be provided with means of self-protection by
Sturm."
"And Karslake?"
"I have not yet made up my mind."
"Hearing is obedience."
Victor relapsed into another reverie which lasted so long that even the
patience of Shaik Tsin bade fair to fail. In the end the silence was broken
by two words:
"The crystal."
From a cabinet at the end of the room Shaik Tsin brought a crystal ball
supported on the backs of three golden dragons standing tail to tail,
superbly wrought examples of Chinese goldsmithing. This he placed carefully
on the black teakwood surface at Victor's elbow.
"And now, inform the girl Sofia I wish to see her."
"And if she again sends her excuses?"
"Say, in that event, I shall be obliged to come to her room."
XV
INTUITION
She had not thought, of course, of going down to dinner; she had, instead,
sent Victor word simply that she begged to be excused from joining him for
that meal. Then, unable longer to endure Chou Nu's efforts to comfort or
distract her, Sofia had stepped out of her street frock and into a negligee
and, dismissing the maid, returned to the chaise-longue upon which, in vain
hope of being able to cry out the wretchedness of her heart, she had thrown
herself on first gaining the sanctuary of her room.
For hours, she did not guess how many, she scarcely stirred. Neither was
the blessed boon of tears granted unto her. Alone with her immense and
immitigable misery, she lay in darkness tempered only by the dim skyshine
that filtered through the window draperies; hating life, that had no mercy;
hating the duplicity that had led Karslake into making untrue love to her,
but inexplicably not hating Karslake himself, or the enshrined image that
wore his name; hating herself for her facile readiness to give love where
all but the guise of love was lacking, and for knowing this deep hurt
where she should have felt only scorn and anger; but hating, most of all,
or rather for the first time discovering how well she hated, him to whom
unerring intuition told her she owed this brimming measure of heartbreak
and humiliation, the man who called himself her father.
For if Karslake had done her a cruel wrong in winning her avowal of the
love that had been growing in her heart these many weeks, while he was
merely amusing himself or serving a secret purpose--whose was the initial
blame for that?
Who had egged Karslake on, as he had asserted, "to win her confidence,"
leaving to him the choice of means to that end?
And--_why_?
The formulation of this question marked the turning point in Sofia's
descent toward the nadir of shame and anguish; from the moment its
significance was clearly apprehended (but it took her long to reach this
stage) the complexion of her thoughts took on another colour, and the smart
of chagrin was soothed even as the irritation excited by critical
examination of Victor's conduct grew more acute.
Why should the self-styled author of her being have thought it necessary,
or even wise or kind, to commission a paid employee to win his daughter's
confidence?
What had rendered the conquest of her confidence so needful in his sight?
What had made him think Sofia would prove loath to resign it to him, or
more likely to give it to another?
Why had Victor hesitated to bid for her confidence with his own tongue, on
his own merits?
One would think that, if he were her father--
If!
_Was_ he?
Sofia sat up sharply, her young body as taut as her temper. Pulses and
breathing quickened, intent eyes probed the shadows as if she thought to
wrest from them a clue to the mystery of her status in the household of
Victor Vassilyevski.
What proof had she that he was her father?
None but his word.... Well, and Karslake's.... None that would stand the
test of skepticism, none that either sentiment or reason could offer and
support. Certainly she resembled Prince Victor in no respect that she could
think of, not in person, not in mould of character, not in ways of thought.
From the very first she had been perplexed, and indeed saddened, by her
failure, her sheer inability, to react emotionally to their alleged
relationship. And surely there must exist between parent and child some
sort of spiritual bond or affinity, something to draw them together--even
if neither had never known the other. Whereas she on her part had never
been conscious of any sense of sympathy with Victor, but only of timidity
and reluctance which had latterly manifested in unquestionable aversion.
And then there was his attitude toward her, raising a question so
repugnant to her understanding that never before to-night had Sofia
admitted its existence and given it the freedom of her thoughts.