CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES
BURGUNDY is a jolly thing, said the Professor sadly, as he set hisglass down.
You don't look as if it were, said Syme; you drink it as if it weremedicine.
You must excuse my manner, said the Professor dismally, my positionis rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyishmerriment; but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can'tleave off. So that when I am among friends, and have no need at allto disguise myself, I still can't help speaking slow and wrinkling myforehead--just as if it were my forehead. I can be quite happy, youunderstand, but only in a paralytic sort of way. The most buoyantexclamations leap up in my heart, but they come out of my mouth quitedifferent. You should hear me say, 'Buck up, old cock!' It would bringtears to your eyes.
It does, said Syme; but I cannot help thinking that apart from allthat you are really a bit worried.
The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily.
You are a very clever fellow, he said, it is a pleasure to workwith you. Yes, I have rather a heavy cloud in my head. There is a greatproblem to face, and he sank his bald brow in his two hands.
Then he said in a low voice--
Can you play the piano?
Yes, said Syme in simple wonder, I'm supposed to have a good touch.
Then, as the other did not speak, he added--
I trust the great cloud is lifted.
After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow ofhis hands--
It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter.
Thank you, said Syme, you flatter me.
Listen to me, said the other, and remember whom we have to seetomorrow. You and I are going tomorrow to attempt something which isvery much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown Jewels outof the Tower. We are trying to steal a secret from a very sharp, verystrong, and very wicked man. I believe there is no man, except thePresident, of course, who is so seriously startling and formidable asthat little grinning fellow in goggles. He has not perhaps the white-hotenthusiasm unto death, the mad martyrdom for anarchy, which marks theSecretary. But then that very fanaticism in the Secretary has a humanpathos, and is almost a redeeming trait. But the little Doctor has abrutal sanity that is more shocking than the Secretary's disease. Don'tyou notice his detestable virility and vitality. He bounces like anindia-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not asleep (I wonder if heever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this outrage in theround, black head of Dr. Bull.
And you think, said Syme, that this unique monster will be soothed ifI play the piano to him?
Don't be an ass, said his mentor. I mentioned the piano because itgives one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go throughthis interview and come out sane or alive, we must have some code ofsignals between us that this brute will not see. I have made a roughalphabetical cypher corresponding to the five fingers--like this, see,and he rippled with his fingers on the wooden table--B A D, bad, a wordwe may frequently require.
Syme poured himself out another glass of wine, and began to study thescheme. He was abnormally quick with his brains at puzzles, and with hishands at conjuring, and it did not take him long to learn how he mightconvey simple messages by what would seem to be idle taps upon a tableor knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of inspiringhim to a farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found himselfstruggling with the too vast energy of the new language, as it passedthrough the heated brain of Syme.
We must have several word-signs, said Syme seriously--words thatwe are likely to want, fine shades of meaning. My favourite word is'coeval'. What's yours?
Do stop playing the goat, said the Professor plaintively. You don'tknow how serious this is.
'Lush' too, said Syme, shaking his head sagaciously, we must have'lush'--word applied to grass, don't you know?
Do you imagine, asked the Professor furiously, that we are going totalk to Dr. Bull about grass?
There are several ways in which the subject could be approached, saidSyme reflectively, and the word introduced without appearing forced.We might say, 'Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a tyrantonce advised us to eat grass; and indeed many of us, looking on thefresh lush grass of summer...'
Do you understand, said the other, that this is a tragedy?
Perfectly, replied Syme; always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuceelse can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider scope. Isuppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That wouldinvolve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, whichhowever unobtrusively performed--
Syme, said his friend with a stern simplicity, go to bed!
Syme, however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the newcode. He was awakened next morning while the east was still sealed withdarkness, and found his grey-bearded ally standing like a ghost besidehis bed.
Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected his thoughts, threwoff the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious waythat all the safety and sociability of the night before fell with thebedclothes off him, and he stood up in an air of cold danger. He stillfelt an entire trust and loyalty towards his companion; but it was thetrust between two men going to the scaffold.
Well, said Syme with a forced cheerfulness as he pulled on histrousers, I dreamt of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long tomake it up?
The Professor made no answer, but gazed in front of him with eyes thecolour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question.
I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I'm considered good atthese things, and it was a good hour's grind. Did you learn it all onthe spot?
The Professor was silent; his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixedbut very small smile.
How long did it take you?
The Professor did not move.
Confound you, can't you answer? called out Syme, in a sudden angerthat had something like fear underneath. Whether or no the Professorcould answer, he did not.
Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank,blue eyes. His first thought was that the Professor had gone mad, buthis second thought was more frightful. After all, what did he know aboutthis queer creature whom he had heedlessly accepted as a friend? Whatdid he know, except that the man had been at the anarchist breakfast andhad told him a ridiculous tale? How improbable it was that thereshould be another friend there beside Gogol! Was this man's silence asensational way of declaring war? Was this adamantine stare after allonly the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, who had turned for thelast time? He stood and strained his ears in this heartless silence.He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to capture him shiftingsoftly in the corridor outside.
Then his eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though theProfessor himself stood there as voiceless as a statue, his fivedumb fingers were dancing alive upon the dead table. Syme watched thetwinkling movements of the talking hand, and read clearly the message--
I will only talk like this. We must get used to it.
He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief--
All right. Let's get out to breakfast.
They took their hats and sticks in silence; but as Syme took hissword-stick, he held it hard.
They paused for a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thicksandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river,which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron.They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they hadseen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the naked andnumberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make short remarkson the rail of the banisters. At about every other flight they passeda window; each window showed them a pale and tragic dawn lifting itselflaboriously over London. From each the innumerable roofs of slate lookedlike the leaden surges of a grey, troubled sea after rain. Syme wasincreasingly conscious that his new adventure had somehow a quality ofcold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past. Last night, forinstance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in a dream.As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted andbewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hothorror of a dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion.Their infinity was more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, somethingunthinkable, yet necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunningstatements of astronomy about the distance of the fixed stars. Hewas ascending the house of reason, a thing more hideous than unreasonitself.
By the time they reached Dr. Bull's landing, a last window showed thema harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more likered clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull's bare garret itwas full of light.
Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with theseempty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the garretand Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memorywas--the French Revolution. There should have been the black outline ofa guillotine against that heavy red and white of the morning. Dr. Bullwas in his white shirt and black breeches only; his cropped, dark headmight well have just come out of its wig; he might have been Marat or amore slipshod Robespierre.
Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobinswere idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. Hisposition gave him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light ofmorning coming from one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem bothmore pale and more angular than he had looked at the breakfast on thebalcony. Thus the two black glasses that encased his eyes mightreally have been black cavities in his skull, making him look like adeath's-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself sat writing at a woodentable, it might have been he.
He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rosewith the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He setchairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceededto put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it upneatly, and came back to sit down at his table.
The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. Itwas with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence andbegan, I'm sorry to disturb you so early, comrade, said he, with acareful resumption of the slow de Worms manner. You have no doubt madeall the arrangements for the Paris affair? Then he added with infiniteslowness, We have information which renders intolerable anything in thenature of a moment's delay.
Dr. Bull smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking.The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word--
Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but I advise you to alterthose plans, or if it is too late for that, to follow your agent withall the support you can get for him. Comrade Syme and I have had anexperience which it would take more time to recount than we can afford,if we are to act on it. I will, however, relate the occurrence indetail, even at the risk of losing time, if you really feel that it isessential to the understanding of the problem we have to discuss.
He was spinning out his sentences, making them intolerably long andlingering, in the hope of maddening the practical little Doctor into anexplosion of impatience which might show his hand. But the little Doctorcontinued only to stare and smile, and the monologue was uphill work.Syme began to feel a new sickness and despair. The Doctor's smile andsilence were not at all like the cataleptic stare and horrible silencewhich he had confronted in the Professor half an hour before. About theProfessor's makeup and all his antics there was always something merelygrotesque, like a gollywog. Syme remembered those wild woes of yesterdayas one remembers being afraid of Bogy in childhood. But here wasdaylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in tweeds, not oddsave for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring or grinning atall, but smiling steadily and not saying a word. The whole had a senseof unbearable reality. Under the increasing sunlight the colours ofthe Doctor's complexion, the pattern of his tweeds, grew and expandedoutrageously, as such things grow too important in a realistic novel.But his smile was quite slight, the pose of his head polite; the onlyuncanny thing was his silence.
As I say, resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavysand, the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask forinformation about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better tohave narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather thanme--
His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; butSyme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edgeof the crazy table. He read the message, You must go on. This devil hassucked me dry!
Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation whichalways came to him when he was alarmed.
Yes, the thing really happened to me, he said hastily. I had the goodfortune to fall into conversation with a detective who took me, thanksto my hat, for a respectable person. Wishing to clinch my reputation forrespectability, I took him and made him very drunk at the Savoy. Underthis influence he became friendly, and told me in so many words thatwithin a day or two they hope to arrest the Marquis in France.
So unless you or I can get on his track--
The Doctor was still smiling in the most friendly way, and his protectedeyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme that hewould resume his explanation, and he began again with the same elaboratecalm.
Syme immediately brought this information to me, and we came heretogether to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seemsto me unquestionably urgent that--
All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadilyas the Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. Thenerves of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain ofmotionless amiability, when Syme suddenly leant forward and idlytapped the edge of the table. His message to his ally ran, I have anintuition.
The Professor, with scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back,Then sit on it.
Syme telegraphed, It is quite extraordinary.
The other answered, Extraordinary rot!
Syme said, I am a poet.
The other retorted, You are a dead man.
Syme had gone quite red up to his yellow hair, and his eyes were burningfeverishly. As he said he had an intuition, and it had risen to a sortof lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps, he signalled tohis friend, You scarcely realise how poetic my intuition is. It hasthat sudden quality we sometimes feel in the coming of spring.
He then studied the answer on his friend's fingers. The answer was, Goto hell!
The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to theDoctor.
Perhaps I should rather say, said Syme on his fingers, that itresembles that sudden smell of the sea which may be found in the heartof lush woods.
His companion disdained to reply.
Or yet again, tapped Syme, it is positive, as is the passionate redhair of a beautiful woman.
The Professor was continuing his speech, but in the middle of it Symedecided to act. He leant across the table, and said in a voice thatcould not be neglected--
Dr. Bull!
The Doctor's sleek and smiling head did not move, but they could havesworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme.
Dr. Bull, said Syme, in a voice peculiarly precise and courteous,would you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take offyour spectacles?
The Professor swung round on his seat, and stared at Syme with a sortof frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his lifeand fortune on the table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The Doctordid not move.
For a few seconds there was a silence in which one could hear a pindrop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames.Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles.
Syme sprang to his feet, stepping backwards a little, like a chemicallecturer from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars, and foran instant he could only point without speaking.
The Professor had also started to his feet, forgetful of his supposedparalysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully atDr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes.And indeed it was almost as great a transformation scene.
The two detectives saw sitting in the chair before them a veryboyish-looking young man, with very frank and happy hazel eyes, anopen expression, cockney clothes like those of a city clerk, andan unquestionable breath about him of being very good and rathercommonplace. The smile was still there, but it might have been the firstsmile of a baby.
I knew I was a poet, cried Syme in a sort of ecstasy. I knew myintuition was as infallible as the Pope. It was the spectacles that didit! It was all the spectacles. Given those beastly black eyes, and allthe rest of him his health and his jolly looks, made him a live devilamong dead ones.
It certainly does make a queer difference, said the Professor shakily.But as regards the project of Dr. Bull--
Project be damned! roared Syme, beside himself. Look at him! Lookat his face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You don'tsuppose, do you, that that thing's an anarchist?
Syme! cried the other in an apprehensive agony.
Why, by God, said Syme, I'll take the risk of that myself! Dr. Bull,I am a police officer. There's my card, and he flung down the blue cardupon the table.
The Professor still feared that all was lost; but he was loyal. Hepulled out his own official card and put it beside his friend's. Thenthe third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that morningthey heard his voice.
I'm awfully glad you chaps have come so early, he said, with a sort ofschoolboy flippancy, for we can all start for France together. Yes,I'm in the force right enough, and he flicked a blue card towards themlightly as a matter of form.
Clapping a brisk bowler on his head and resuming his goblin glasses, theDoctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the others instinctivelyfollowed him. Syme seemed a little distrait, and as he passed under thedoorway he suddenly struck his stick on the stone passage so that itrang.
But Lord God Almighty, he cried out, if this is all right, there weremore damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the damnedCouncil!
We might have fought easily, said Bull; we were four against three.
The Professor was descending the stairs, but his voice came up frombelow.
No, said the voice, we were not four against three--we were not solucky. We were four against One.
The others went down the stairs in silence.
The young man called Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic ofhim, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there hisown robust rapidity asserted itself unconsciously, and he walked quicklyon ahead towards a railway inquiry office, talking to the others overhis shoulder.
It is jolly to get some pals, he said. I've been half dead withthe jumps, being quite alone. I nearly flung my arms round Gogol andembraced him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won't despiseme for having been in a blue funk.
All the blue devils in blue hell, said Syme, contributed to my bluefunk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.
The young man laughed delightedly.
Wasn't it a rag? he said. Such a simple idea--not my own. I haven'tgot the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective service,especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that purpose they wantedsomeone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by blazes thatI could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk wasrespectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the BritishConstitution. They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and tooreliable and benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at ScotlandYard. They said that if I had been a criminal, I might have made myfortune by looking so like an honest man; but as I had the misfortune tobe an honest man, there was not even the remotest chance of my assistingthem by ever looking like a criminal. But at last I was brought beforesome old josser who was high up in the force, and who seemed to haveno end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others all talkedhopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my nice smile;another said that if they blacked my face I might look like a negroanarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most extraordinaryremark. 'A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,' he said positively.'Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put him on a pairof smoked spectacles, and children will scream at the sight of him.'And so it was, by George! When once my eyes were covered, all the rest,smile and big shoulders and short hair, made me look a perfect littledevil. As I say, it was simple enough when it was done, like miracles;but that wasn't the really miraculous part of it. There was one reallystaggering thing about the business, and my head still turns at it.
What was that? asked Syme.
I'll tell you, answered the man in spectacles. This big pot in thepolice who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go with myhair and socks--by God, he never saw me at all!
Syme's eyes suddenly flashed on him.
How was that? he asked. I thought you talked to him.
So I did, said Bull brightly; but we talked in a pitch-dark room likea coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that.
I could not have conceived it, said Syme gravely.
It is indeed a new idea, said the Professor.
Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiryoffice he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover.Having got his information, he bundled the company into a cab, and putthem and himself inside a railway carriage before they had properlyrealised the breathless process. They were already on the Calais boatbefore conversation flowed freely.
I had already arranged, he explained, to go to France for my lunch;but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had tosend that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the Presidenthad his eye on me, though God knows how. I'll tell you the story someday. It was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I sawthe President somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, ortaking off his hat to me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you cansay what you like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be insix places at once.
So you sent the Marquis off, I understand, asked the Professor. Wasit long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?
Yes, answered the new guide, I've timed it all. He'll still be atCalais when we arrive.
But when we do catch him at Calais, said the Professor, what are wegoing to do?
At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time. Hereflected a little, and then said--
Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.
Not I, said Syme. Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. Ipromised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word ofhonour not to tell the police. I'm no hand at casuistry, but I can'tbreak my word to a modern pessimist. It's like breaking one's word to achild.
I'm in the same boat, said the Professor. I tried to tell the policeand I couldn't, because of some silly oath I took. You see, when I wasan actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is the onlycrime I haven't committed. If I did that I shouldn't know the differencebetween right and wrong.
I've been through all that, said Dr. Bull, and I've made up my mind.I gave my promise to the Secretary--you know him, man who smiles upsidedown. My friends, that man is the most utterly unhappy man that was everhuman. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or his nerves, or hisphilosophy of the universe, but he's damned, he's in hell! Well, I can'tturn on a man like that, and hunt him down. It's like whipping a leper.I may be mad, but that's how I feel; and there's jolly well the end ofit.
I don't think you're mad, said Syme. I knew you would decide likethat when first you--
Eh? said Dr. Bull.
When first you took off your spectacles.
Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at thesunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly,and a companionable silence fell between the three men.
Well, said Syme, it seems that we have all the same kind of moralityor immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of it.
Yes, assented the Professor, you're quite right; and we must hurryup, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.
The fact that comes of it, said Syme seriously, is this, that wethree are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; perhapsthe President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are threemen against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we are worseoff than that, first because they can appeal to their organization andwe cannot appeal to ours, and second because--
Because one of those other three men, said the Professor, is not aman.
Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said--
My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calaistill tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. Wecannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get himdetained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knowsus, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on anarchistbusiness; he might swallow much in that way, but not the notion ofstopping in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris. We mighttry to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; but he is a well-known manhere. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is very strong and brave,and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see to do is actually totake advantage of the very things that are in the Marquis's favour. I amgoing to profit by the fact that he is a highly respected nobleman. Iam going to profit by the fact that he has many friends and moves in thebest society.
What the devil are you talking about? asked the Professor.
The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century, saidSyme; but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce atBannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.
He's gone off his head, said the little Doctor, staring.
Our bearings, continued Syme calmly, are 'argent a chevron gulescharged with three cross crosslets of the field.' The motto varies.
The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat.
We are just inshore, he said. Are you seasick or joking in the wrongplace?
My remarks are almost painfully practical, answered Syme, in anunhurried manner. The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. TheMarquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am agentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quitebeyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hatoff. But here we are in the harbour.
They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who hadnow taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kindof marine parade until he came to some cafes, embowered in a bulk ofgreenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step wasslightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was makingapparently for the extreme end of the line of cafes, but he stoppedabruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but hepointed with one gloved finger to a cafe table under a bank of floweringfoliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth shining inhis thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by a lightyellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea.