CHAPTER LI
THE LAUGH
As Bersonin stood by the wistaria gate beside the pulsing motor,confused thoughts rushed through his mind into an eddyingphantasmagoria. The fear and agitation which he had kept under onlyby an immense self-control returned with double weight.
All was known--thanks to the brainless fool in whom he had relied! TheGovernment knew. The wild tale the Japanese girl had told had beenbelieved! Had there been suspicions before? He thought of the espionagehe had fancied had been kept of late on his movements, of the silent,saturnine faces he had imagined dogged his footsteps. Even his servants,even Ishida, with his blank visage and fantastic English, might be--
He looked sharply at the chauffeur. He was lighting a cigarette in thehollow of his hands; the ruddy flare of the match lit the brown placidface, the narrow, secret-keeping eyes.
He tried to _force_ his mind to a measure of control, to look thesituation in the face.
If Phil failed. If the aeroplane won against darkness and wind--if thebungalow was reached in time, and the machine made harmless. Nothingwould happen. Who, then, would believe the girl's wild story? Who couldshow that he had made it? He had worked at night, alone in his lockedlaboratory. Besides, it would tell nothing. It would yield its secretonly to the master mind. And if its presence on the roof damned anybody,it would not be him! _He_ had not put it there. _He had not been inYokohama in three days!_
If the aeroplane did not start--he remembered the look on Phil's facewhen he rushed away!--or if it failed. With its own deadly ray, the verymachine would vanish. Phil had not known this--could not have told. Thesearchers would find nothing! The news would have flashed along thecables that must roll up for him vast sums in the panic of markets. Andthere would be nothing to bring the deed home to him!
Nothing? The warning had been given _before the fact_. The Governmenthad taken alarm. Bureaus were buzzing already. Sooner or later theaccusation would be running through the street, swiftly and stealthily,from noble to merchant, from coolie to beggar, from end to end of thisseething oriental city--wherein he was a marked man! What mattered itwhether there were evidence on which a court would condemn him? Thestory of his huge _coup_ in the bourses would be told--would rise upagainst him. He remembered suddenly a tale he had heard--of a traitor toJapan cut to pieces in a tea-house. An icy sweat broke out on his limbs.
Where was there any refuge? On a foreign ship? There were many in thebay. He longed with a desperate longing for the touch of a deck beneathhis feet, a bulwark of blue water between him and possible vengeance. AtKisaraz' on the Chiba Road, a dozen miles to the north in the curve ofthe bay, was his summer villa, his frequent resort for week-end. Hisnaphtha launch lay there, always ready for use. He could reach it in anhour.
"Get into the tonneau," he said to the chauffeur. "I'll drive, myself."
He took the wheel the other resigned, threw on the clutch, and theclamorous monster moved off down the quiet lane. Past ranks of darkened_shoji_, with here and there a barred yellow square; by lanternedtea-houses, alight and tinkling, past stolid, pacing watchmen in whiteduck clothing, and sauntering groups of night-hawk students chantinglugubrious songs--faster and faster, till the chauffeur clutched theseat with uneasiness.
The fever of flight was on his master now. He began to imagine voiceswere calling after him. From a police-box ahead a man stepped into theroadway waving a hand. It was no more than a warning against over-speed,but the gesture sent a thrill of terror through the big man at thewheel. He swerved sharply around a corner, skidding on two wheels.
Bersonin muttered a curse as he peered before him, for the stretch wasbrilliantly illuminated. He was on the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods,which to-night seemed strangely alive with hubbub.
That afternoon, with the passing of the rain, there had been held aneighborhood _hanami_, a "flower-viewing-excursion." A score offamilies, with picnic paraphernalia, had trooped to the wistaria arborsof far-distant Kameido, to return in the small hours laden with emptybaskets and somnolent babies. To-morrow, like to-day, would be holiday,when school and work alike should be forgotten. The cavalcade had justreturned--afoot, since the trams had ceased running at midnight--the menmerry with _sake_, the women chattering. A few children, still wakeful,scampered here and there.
The chauffeur leaned forward with an exclamation--they had all but rundown a hobbling figure.
"Keep your hands off!" snarled Bersonin. "Let them get out of the way!"The automobile dashed on, the people scattering before it.
There was a small figure in the roadway, however, of whom no one tookaccount--a six year old. Ishikichi had not gone to the _hanami_ thatday. For many hours that long afternoon, while his mother cared for thesick father, he had beat the tiny drum that soothed a baby's fret,comforted by the promise that he should be waked in the great hour whenthe crowd came home. Stretched on his worn _f'ton_ that night, he hadpuzzled over the situation--the hard, blank fact that because they hadno money, they must give up the shop, which was the only home he knew.When they took his father away to the _byo-in_, the sick-house, whatwould he and his mother and the baby-_San_ do? Would they stand, likethe _kadots'ke_, playing a _samisen_ at people's doors? It was nothonorably pleasant to be a _kadots'ke_! Only men could earn money, andit would be so long before he became a man. So he had been ponderingwhen he went to sleep. Now, standing in the road, he heard the hum ofthe rushing motor, and a quick thought,--born of that instinct ofsacrifice for the parent, that is woven, a golden thread, in the woof ofthe Japanese soul--darted into his baby brain. One of the bigfire-wagons of the _seiyo-jin_ was coming! When the carriage killedToru, his playmate, the foreigner had sent much money to Toru's house.He was not sorry any more, because the white-faced man whom he liked,who lived in the temple, had told him what a fine thing it had been. ForToru's honorable father had been fighting with the _Gaki_, theno-rice-devils--it was almost like a war--and Toru had died just as thebrave soldiers did in battle. A great purpose flooded the little soul.Was he not brave, too?
So, as Bersonin, with a snarl, shook off the hand of the chauffeur andthrew the throttle wide open, Ishikichi did not scamper with the rest.With his hands tightly clenched in his patched _kimono_, his huge clogsclattering on the roadway, he ran straight into the path of the hurtlingmass of steel.
There was a sudden, sickening jolt. The car leaped forward, draggingsomething beneath it that made no sound. The chauffeur hurled himselfacross the seat on the gear, and the automobile stopped with a grindingdiscord of screeching pistons. A surge of people came around it--a wavewithout outcry, but holding a hushed murmur like the sea. _Shoji_ wereopening, doorways filling the street with light. A man bent and drewsomething gently from between the wheels.
With a writhing oath the expert wrenched at the clutch.
"Go on!" he said savagely. "How dare you stop without my orders?"
The Japanese made no reply, but the arms that braced the wheel wererigid as steel.
Bersonin sank back in his seat, his massive frame quivering, his eyesglittering like flakes of mica. But for this, in ten minutes he wouldhave been clear of the city, flying along the Chiba Road! What if hewere detained? He felt strange, chilly tendrils plucking at his flesh,and a hundred fiery needles seemed pricking through his brain.
Peering over his shoulder, with his horrible fear on him, he saw thecrowd part to admit a woman who, quite silently, but with haste, cameforward and knelt on the ground. There was no movement from the crowd.
In a hush like that of death, the mother rose with Ishikichi in herarms. The white, still face looked pitifully small. One clog swayed fromits thong between the bare toes. The faded _kimono_ was stained withred. She spoke no word. There was no tear on her face. But in thedreadful silence, she turned slowly with her burden and looked steadilyat the twitching face in the car--looked and looked. The chauffeur swunghimself from the seat into the crowd.
An insane desire had been creeping stealt
hily on Bersonin. He had feltit coming when he faced the truth in Phil's cringing admission. Thehorrible compulsion to laughter was on him. The damnable man-hysteriahad him by the throat. He fought it desperately, as one fights a wildbeast in the dark.
In vain.
His jaws opened. He laughed--a dreadful peal of merriment that echoed upand down the latticed street. And as he laughed, he knew that he raiseda peril nearer, more fearful even than that from which he had beenflying.
There was an instant's shocked calm, like the silence which follows thedistant spurt of blue flame from the muzzle of a Krupp gun. Then, likeits answering detonation--in such a menacing roar as might arise fromthe brink of an Inferno--the silence of the quiet street burst intoawful sound.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later but a single lighted _shoji_ glimmered on the darkenedthoroughfare. The roadway was deserted save for a soldierly figure inpoliceman's uniform who stood thoughtfully looking at a huddle in thedim roadway--a mixture of wrenched and battered iron and glass, in themidst of which lay an inert, shapeless something that might have been abundle of old clothes fallen from a scavenger's cart.