The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER L

  WHOM THE GODS DESTROY

  There was one whose guilty eyes were closed to the red danger so near.In the house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley, under the green mosquitonetting, Phil lay in a log-like slumber. The soft light of the paper_andon_ flowed over the gay wadded _f'ton_, the handsome besotted facewith its mark of the satyr and, at one side, a little wooden pillow ofblack lacquer. There was no sound save the sweep of the wind outside andthe heavy breathing of the unconscious man.

  For three nights past, since his wild motor-ride from Nikko, he had notslept, save in illusory snatches, from which he had waked with the sweatbreaking on his forehead. Short as were these, they had held horridvisions, broken fragments of scenes that waved and clustered about thelilied altar in the Ts'kiji cathedral, echoing to the solemn service ofthe dead. Again and again there had started before him the stolid ringof blue-clad coolie women, swaying as they had swayed to the straw-ropesof the pile-driver in the moat-bottom with their weird chant--

  _"Yo--eeya--ko--ra!_ _Yo--eeya--ko--ra!"_

  And now they chanted a terrible refrain:

  _"Thou--shalt--not--kill!"_

  To-night, however, deeper potations had done their work. He wasdreaming--yellow dreams like the blackguard fancyings of thehalf-world--visions in which he moved, a Prince of Largesse, throughunending pleasures of self-indulgence. He was on an European Boulevard,riding with Haru by his side in silk and pearls, and people turned togaze as he went by.

  But now, with sinister topsyturvydom, the dream changed. The _cocher_drove faster and faster, into a mad gallop. He turned his head and Philsaw that the face under the glazed hat was the face of his dead brother.The staring pedestrians began to pursue the carriage. They showered blowafter blow on it, till the sound reverberated like thunder.

  Not the ghosts of his dream, but a hand of flesh and blood was knocking.It was on the outer _shoji_ and the frail dwelling shook beneath it. Theservant, sunk in bovine sleep, heard no sound, but the chauffeur in theautomobile that throbbed outside the wistaria gate, rose from his seat,and across a bamboo wattle a dog barked and scrambled venomously.

  Phil's eyes opened and he sat up giddily. He went unsteadily to the doorand unfastened the _shoji_, blinking at the great form that strode pasthim into the inner apartment.

  Bersonin's gaze swept the room. "The girl!" he said hoarsely. "Where isshe?"

  Phil looked about him dazedly--at the tumbled _f'ton_, the desertedwooden pillow. Haru gone? His senses, clouded by intoxication, took inthe fact dully, as a thing of no meaning.

  The expert grasped him by his shoulder and shook him till the thin silkof the _kimono_ tore under the enormous white fingers. The violence hadits effect. The daze fell away. Phil broke into loud imprecations.

  "Did you tell her anything?"

  Phil's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "What is--what makes youthink--" he stammered.

  Bersonin's face was a greenish hue. His great hands shook.

  "To-night," he said, in a whisper, "to-night--an hour ago--I saw her onthe street. I wasn't sure at first, but I know now it was she! A navalofficer was with her. _He took her into the house of the Minister ofMarine!_"

  The other gave a low cry. A chalky pallor overspread his features."Haru?--no, Bersonin! You're crazy, I say. She--she would never tell!"

  Fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. A sharp moancame from his lips.

  "So she _did_ know! You told her then! O, incredible fool!"

  For an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. Philquailed before him. A frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt thepassion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in aflame. His voice rose in a kind of scream:

  "Don't look at me like that!" he raved. "I was a fool to trust her, butit's done now. It's done, I tell you, and you can't undo it! What canthey do to us? They may find the machine, but what can they _prove_?We're foreigners! They can't touch us without proof!"

  He had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. Allthe grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic.He trembled excessively.

  "Proof!" sneered Bersonin savagely. "There would have been none if--_ithappened_! I had arranged that! In its operation _the machine destroysitself_! And neither of us is in Yokohama to-night."

  Phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "Whatis to be done? Can we still--"

  "Listen," said the doctor. "A single hour more, even with your cursedfolly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and allwires are down. I heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out oforder."

  "Then--then--they can not--" Phil's voice shook with a nauseouseagerness.

  "Wait! When I saw the girl there, I was suspicious. I watched. In alittle while your friend Daunt came from the gate. In some way hehappened to be there. The _betto_ was flogging the horses like a crazyman. He came in this direction!--Can't you understand? His aeroplane! Heis going to use it as a last chance. If he succeeds, we may spend ourlives in the copper mines. If he can be stopped, we may win yet! Therewill be nothing but the tale of a Japanese drab--that and nothing else!"

  Phil flung on his clothing in a madness of haste. The desperate dreadthat had raged in him was become now a single fixed idea, frosted overby a cold, demented fury. Unhealthy spots of red sprang in his whitecheeks; his eyes dilated to the mania of the paranoiac.

  Hatless, he rushed through the little garden, cleared the rear hedge ata bound, and fled, like a runaway from hell, toward the darkness of thevast parade-ground.