THE MASTER CARD.
We Visit Canvey Island.
The Jew had written to me, I say, and I had answered his letter. In a few brief sentences, worthy of the man and his story, he put me upon my honour and recited the compact between us.
“To Dr. Fabos, of London, from the Master of the Ship.
“At Canvey Island, to which you will come alone or with your servant at the most (such attendants as your launch brings being careful not to land), I will await you at sundown on the afternoon of the Fifth day of May. Fear nothing, as I am unafraid. The word is no less sacred to me than to you. I pass it and bid you come.”
Whence, then, had this strange letter been delivered, and how had I falsified the fine phrases of the police and communicated with the Jew? The truth shall be told with all the brevity I can command.
There is published thrice every month in Paris a pretendedly comic paper, called the Journal des Polissons. Ostensibly a journal pour rire, a poor man’s Punch and jester, it is, as I have long known, a sure means by which one thief may communicate with another, or any assassin make known his hiding place to his friends. This knowledge I employed directly it became plain to me that Valentine Imroth had escaped the meshes of the law’s clumsy net, and defied a police which vainly protested that there was no evidence against him. I advertised in the paper in the common cryptogram of the Polish societies. Making no effort to be clever, I intimated to the Master of the Ship that I could be of the greatest service to him if he, in his turn, were willing to be of some little service to me. This letter, so amazing and so many are the eyes which watch the Jew’s career, was answered before a week had run. In a sentence I learned that the so-called Master was in hiding on Canvey Island—that desolate marsh beyond Tilbury, familiar to all who go down to the Nore in ships. There he would see me and hear my news. There I must challenge him and be answered—ah, what would I not have given to know in what manner he would answer me!
It is not to be supposed that I claim any merit of this voyage or was unaware of its peculiar dangers. The Jew knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal, and I might reasonably argue that he would never be madman enough to attempt anything against me at a moment when I could render him a service of such magnitude as that I proposed. To be frank, I found the whole business not less humiliating than that former failure in mid-ocean, which will remain the supreme misfortune of my career. Here was I, who had set out to hunt this man down, about to say to him—“Go your way; I have done with you. The police say there is no evidence against you. It is their affair, and I will take no further part in it.” He, on his part, must guess that I came to him in some such mood. Canvey Island, I remembered, could be easily gained from the open sea, and just as easily from the shore of Essex. There would be a hundred eyes watching the coming of my launch, spies afloat and spies ashore, a launch of his own, perhaps, and certainly every expedient his subtle mind could contrive against any treachery that might be contemplated against him. He would trust me with a sword naked to his hand as it were. On my side, I might go safely while we agreed—but let us quarrel, and then heaven help me, I said.
Thus, in a word, the situation lay. I staked my life, not upon the honour of Valentine Imroth, but upon a human interest I believed powerful enough to protect me. And this step I took that I might return to Joan and say: “Here is the truth; here is the story which you and I will guard while we live.” The danger could be nothing to me in the face of that which success must mean. I was as a miner lifting his pick for the last time. What hopes and fears I carried to that lonely island, what a burden of doubt and dread!
I shall say nothing of my voyage down the Thames, nor of those scenes so often described, and with such feeling, by some of our later day novelists. To me the lower river is ever an echo of the voice of the agitated Pepys, or the more stately tones of the pious Evelyn. A changed river since the great ships deserted the wharves by London Bridge, none the less, she is, in a sense, still the great highway to the kingdoms of the world. Here is that water temple which the giant masts wall in; here all tongues are eloquent of the worship of the sea; here men of all nations commingle in that rare confraternity which has earned our wealth and established our greatness while the centuries have run. A river it is of curdling pools and racing tides, of towering stages and gabled houses; a river of mystery and of darkness, beloved of the city which has deserted her, inseparable from the story of its people. To her true disciples, then, be the keeping of the record. My launch carried me too speedily by creek and pool that I should claim to be of the elect.
Now, we had left St. Katherine’s wharf late in the afternoon, and it was almost dark when the great orb of the Chapman Light came to our view. A rough diagram on the back of the Jew’s letter had indicated to me where I must land upon the island, and at what point his servants would wait for me. Had I been in doubt, a green lantern swinging by the low wall of an ancient farmhouse—the first you see when the island comes to your view—would have called my attention to the place and invited me to go ashore there. I had by consent passed my word to take none but Okyada to the meeting, and faithful to the promise he alone followed me to the landing stage and prepared to go up to the house with me. The launch itself had been lent to me by Messrs. Yarrow, and was commanded by one of their engineers. I did not dare to ask even Captain Larry to be with me upon such a night—and as for my friend, the loquacious Timothy, it would have been madness to bring him. The Jew had told me in the plainest terms that my very life depended upon a faithful interpretation of the terms of the compact, and I knew my man too well to doubt his meaning. This lonely shore, I said again, would be watched by a hundred eyes. And what eyes! Truly a man might peer into those gloomy shadows and believe this to be the haven of ultimate Melancholy, the home of those unresting spirits the great river had carried out from the stress and storms of the city’s life. A chill hand of Nature’s death had touched it. Its very breath was as a pest.
An old negro stood on the landing stage as the launch came alongside, and he it was who carried the lantern. No one else appeared to be about, though I heard a whistle blown sharply, and answered by another toward the Essex shore. The negro himself hid his face as much as possible from me, nor did he utter a single word or betray the slightest emotion at my coming. I noticed, however, that he waited for the launch to cast a little way into the river before he moved from the stage; and when this was done and the whistle had been sounded a second time, he led the way up a narrow grassy path to the farmhouse, and quietly left me at its door. Night had quite come down by this time, and a dank white mist began to rise above the marshes. The farmhouse itself appeared to be a structure built by some honest Dutchman who had helped to save Canvey Island from the sea when Essex was still washed by the waters of the estuary. A single light burned in one of its windows, but elsewhere it was dark as the river which flowed so blackly before its gates.
I knocked three times upon an ancient door, and was answered immediately by a trim maidservant. Yes, she said, Mr. Imroth was at home and expecting me. And so she ushered me into the presence of that master criminal for whom the police had searched the cities of the world.
Seated in a low arm-chair in a little room at the front of the house—a poor, shabby apartment, furnished with no better taste than a Margate lodging house, I perceived that Valentine Imroth wore a green shade low over his eyes, but not so low as to impair his vision; while the chair he had placed for me and the lamp set upon the table would permit him to follow every passing thought of mine with the eyes of a human artist upon whom nothing is lost. Careless in his attitude, he smoked an immense cigar with evident satisfaction, and had by his side a black bottle, which, as I knew by its shape, should contain Hollands gin. In many ways a changed man from the Jew I had met upon the heights at Santa Maria, the ferocious aspect of him was but little abated; and as though to emphasise it, he had laid a great stick by the side of his chair while one of the ugliest boar hounds I have ever seen blinked at his feet, and lifted a savage head silently at my coming. These things I observed instantly, and drew my own conclusions from them, “He is not armed,” I said, “but somewhere near by his friends are concealed—the dog would hold me if he gave the word, and half a score of ruffians would do the rest.” A place of peril surely—and yet I had known that it must be so when I set out to meet him.
I put my hat upon the floor and drew the chair a little back from the table to which it had been drawn up.
“I am here,” I said shortly, “in answer to your letter. The conditions upon which we meet are faithfully observed between us. My servant is waiting for me at your door, and my launch is out in the river. Let us get to business at once. That, I hope, is your wish.”
He thrust the shade back upon his forehead, and showed me a pair of red-limned eyes, watery and blinking as the dog’s at his feet. The long thin hand which held the cigar seemed to be silver-backed like a brush, with nails as black as ebony. An immense diamond glittered upon his little finger. Like all his fellows, he had not conquered the love of personal display even at his age, which could not have been less than eighty years.
“It is my hope,” he repeated, not without dignity—which, however, he lost instantly in the manner of a broker of Houndsditch selling shabby furniture—“to see the great Dr. Fabos of London, to have him in my house; that is an honour for an humble old man. What have I done to deserve it?—how has this pleasure come into a poor old life?”
He tittered like some old witch making a peat fire by a roadside. But it was the laughter of a vanity not to be hushed, and I passed it by with a gesture.
“The pleasure came into your house at your own invitation,” I rejoined. “It will go again very shortly by the same road. Please give me your attention. I am here neither for mutual expressions of self-admiration nor the desire of your amiable company. In a word, I have come to ask you for the story of Joan Fordibras.”
He nodded his head, still tittering, and leaned back in his chair to survey me with a closer circumspection.
“The great Dr. Fabos of London,” he repeated, “here in the house of the poor old Jew! How I am complimented; how I am honoured! The great English doctor who has followed a poor old man all round the world, and has come here to beg a favour of him at last! Repeat your question, doctor—ask me many times. The words are music to me, I drink them in like wine—the words of my dear friend the doctor; how shall I ever forget them?”
It was horrible to hear him cackle; more horrible still to remember that a single word of his uttered aloud to the men who watched us (for I believe that we were watched) would have cost me my life upon the instant. How to continue I hardly knew. Long minutes passed and found him still worming and cackling in the chair as an old hag above a reddening fire. I had nothing further to say—it was for him to proceed.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” he continued presently, falling boldly into the language of his race. “Yes, yes; you are the great Dr. Fabos of London, and I am the poor old Jew. And you would know the story of the little Joan Fordibras! How small the world is that we should meet here in this shabby house—the poor old Jew and the rich doctor. And so you come to me after all for help! It is the Jew who must help you to your marriage; the Jew who shall save the little girl for her lover. Ah, my dear, what a thing is love, and what fools are men! The great rich doctor to leave his home, his friends, his country, to spend the half of his fortune upon a ship—all for love, and that he might see the poor old Jew again. I have never heard a better thing—God of my fathers, it is something to have lived for this!”
He repeated this many times as though the very words were meat and drink to him. I began to perceive that he was the victim of an inordinate vanity, and that my own failure was dearer to him than a gift of millions would have been.
“Do I want money?” he asked presently, turning upon me almost savagely. “Heaven hear me, it is as dirt beneath my feet. Do I want fine houses, halls of marble, and gowns of silk? Look at the room in which I live. Consider my circumstance, my fortune, my riches, the clothes upon my back, the servants who wait upon me! Money, no—but to see the great men humbled—to strike at their fortunes, at their hearts; ah, that is something the poor old Jew would die for!
“Here to-night my reward begins. The great Dr. Fabos comes to me upon his knees to beg me the gift of a woman’s heart. How many have so come since I was this doctor’s age—a young man, spurned by his people, a fool, living honestly, a worshipper in temples made by man? And to all, I have said as I say to him, no, a thousand times, no! Get you gone from me as they have gone. Admit that the Jew is your master after all. Live to remember him—bear the brand upon your heart, the curse which he has borne at your people’s will, at the bidding of their faith. So I answer you, Dr. Fabos. Such are my words to you—the last time we shall ever meet, who knows, perhaps the last day you may have to live.”
He leaned forward, and from his eyes there seemed to shine a light of all the fires of evil that ever burned in human breast. No man, I believe, has listened to such a threat as he uttered against me this night. The very tones of it could freeze the blood at the heart, the gestures were those of one who lusted for human blood with all the voracity of an animal. I will not deny that I shivered while I heard him. Remember the remote farmhouse, the lonely marsh, the silence of the night, the stake at issue between us. Who shall wonder if my words were slow to come?
“You thre............