CHAPTER XVI
For more than a minute neither of us moved. Valerie lay in my arms just as she had fallen, Pharos stood a foot or so inside the door, while I stood looking first at her and then at him without being able to utter a word. As far as my own feelings were concerned the end of the world had come, for I had made up my mind that Valerie was dying. If that were so, Pharos might do his worst.
"My friends, it would seem as if I have come only just in time," he said with sarcastic sweetness. "My dear Forrester, I must offer you my congratulations upon the neat manner in which you effected your escape. Unfortunately I was aware of it all along. Knowing what was in your heart, I laid my plans accordingly, and here I am. And pray, may I ask, what good have you done yourself by your impetuosity? You chase across Europe at express speed, hoping to get to England before I can catch you, only to find on arrival here that the plague has headed you off, and that it is impossible for you to reach your destination."
"Are you going to stand talking all day?" I said, forgetting caution and the need that existed for humouring him, everything in fact, in my anxiety. "Can not you see that she is ill? Good heavens, man, she may be dying!"
"What do you mean?" he asked quickly, with a change of voice as he crossed the room and came over to where I was standing. "Let me see her instantly!"
With a deftness, and at the same time a tenderness I had never noticed in him before, he took her from me and placed her upon a sofa. Having done so, he stooped over her and commenced his examination. Thirty seconds had not elapsed before he turned fiercely on me again.
"You fool!" he cried, "are you mad? Lock that door this instant. This is more serious than I imagined. Do you know what it is?"
"How should I?" I answered in agony. "Tell me, tell me, can not you see how much I am suffering?"
I clutched him by the arm so tightly that he winced under it and had to exert his strength to throw me off.
"It is the plague," he answered, "and but for your folly in running away from me she would never have caught it. If she dies the blame will rest entirely with you."
But I scarcely heard him. The knowledge that my darling was the victim of the scourge that was ravaging all Europe drove me back against the wall faint and speechless with terror. "If she dies," he had said, and the words rang in my ears like a funeral knell. But she should not die. If any power in the world could save her, it should be found.
"What can I do?" I whispered hoarsely. "For pity's sake let me help in some way. She must not die, she shall not die!"
"In that case you had better bestir yourself," he said. "There is but one remedy, and that we must employ. Had it not been for your folly I should have it with me now. As it is, you must go out and search the town for it. Give me writing materials."
These were on a neighbouring table, and when I had put them before him he seized the pen and scrawled something upon a sheet of notepaper, then folding it, he handed it to me.
"Take that with all speed to a chemist," he said. "Tell him to be particularly careful that the drugs are fresh, and bring it back with you as soon as you can. In all probability you will have a difficulty in procuring it, but you must do so somewhere. Rest assured of this, that if she does not receive it within an hour nothing can possibly save her."
"I will be back in less than half that time," I answered, and hastened from the room.
From a man in the street I inquired the address of the nearest chemist, and, as soon as he had directed me, hastened thither as fast as my legs could carry me. Entering the shop, I threw the prescription upon the counter, and in my impatience could have struck the man for his slowness in picking it up. If his life had depended upon his deciphering it properly he could not have taken longer to read it. Before he had got to the end of it my impatience had reached boiling heat.
"Come, come," I said, "are you going to make it up or not? It is for an urgent case, and I have wasted ten minutes already."
The man glanced at the paper again, smoothed it out between his fat fingers, and shook his head until I thought his glasses would have dropped from his nose.
"I can not do it," he said at length. "Two of the drugs I do not keep in stock. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw another prescription like it."
"Why did you not say so at once?" I cried angrily, and snatching the paper from his hand, I dashed madly out and along the pavement. At the end of the street was another shop, which I entered. On the door it was set forth that English, French and German were spoken there. I was not going to risk a waste of time on either of the two first, however, but opened upon the man in his own language. He was very small, with an unwholesome complexion, and was the possessor of a nose large enough to have entitled him to the warmest esteem of the great Napoleon. He took the prescription, read it through in a quarter of the time taken by the other man, and then retired behind his screen. Scarcely able to contain my delight at having at last been successful, I curbed my impatience as well as I could, examined all the articles displayed in the glass case upon the counter, fidgeted nervously with the india-rubber change mat, and when, at the end of several minutes, he had not made it up, was only prevented from going in search of him by his appearance before me once more.
"I am exceedingly sorry to say," he began, and directly he opened his mouth I knew that some fresh misfortune was in store for me, "that I can not make up the prescription for you at all. Of one of the drugs I remember once reading, but of the other I have never even heard. However, if – "
But before he could utter another word I had seized the paper and was out of the shop. This was the second time I had been fooled, and upward of half an hour, thirty precious minutes, had been wasted. Even then Valerie might be dying, and I was powerless to save her. Never in my life before had time seemed so precious. I stopped a passer-by and inquired the direction of the nearest chemist. He referred me to the shop I had just left; I stopped another, but he confessed himself a stranger in the city. At last, at my wit's end to know what to do, finding myself before the office of the steamship company I had visited that afternoon, I determined to go inside and make inquiries.
To my surprise, in place of the half dozen clerks who had stared at me only a few hours before, I found but one man, and before he had opened his lips I realized that he was drunk.
"Ha, ha!" he said, with a burst of tipsy laughter, "so you have come back again, my friend? Want to get a boat to take you to England, I suppose. Oh, of course you do. We know all about that. We're not as blind, I mean as blind drunk, as you suppose."
With that he lurched against the desk, and cannoned off it on to me. Then, having reached that stage of inebriation when music becomes a necessity, he leant against the wall and burst into song: —
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine,
Or leave a kiss within…
He had got no farther when I took him by the collar, and pushing him back against the wall, bumped his head against it until it is a wonder I did not fracture his skull.
"Hold your tongue, you drunken fool!" I said, feeling as if I could kill him where he stood, "and tell me where the man is who attended to me this afternoon."
The energy with which I had administered the punishment must have somewhat sobered the fellow, for he pulled himself together, and rubbing the back of his head with his hand asked me if I had heard the news.
"I have heard nothing," I cried. "What news do you mean?"
"Why, that the man you spoke to this afternoon is dead. He died of the plague within an hour after you were here, rolling on the floor, and making an awful mess of things. Then all the other fellows ran away. They didn't know there was a bottle and a half of brandy in the cupboard in the manager's room, but, bless your heart, I did, and now I'm not afraid of the plague. Don't you believe it!"
"Dead?" I cried, for I could scarcely credit that what he told me could be true. The man had seemed so well when I had seen him only a few hours before. However, I had no time to think of him.
"I want a chemist," I cried. "I must find one at once. Can you give me the address of one?"
"The first turning to the left," he cried, "and the third shop on the right; Dittmer is the name. But I say, you're looking precious white about the gills. Though you did treat me badly just now, I don't bear any malice, so you can have a drop of this if you like. There's enough here for two of us. You won't? Well, then, I will. A short life and a merry one's my motto, and here's to you, my buck."
Before he could have half filled his glass I had passed out of the office and was in the street he had mentioned. Drunk as he was, his information proved correct, and a chemist's shop, with the name of Dittmer over the door, was the third house on the right hand side. I entered and handed the prescription to the venerable-looking man I found behind the counter.
"I am afraid you will have some difficulty in getting this made up," he said after he had read it. "Two of the drugs are not in common use, and personally I do not keep them. Is the case an urgent one?"
"It's a matter of life and death," I answered. "All my happiness in life depends upon it. If you can not help me, can you direct me to any one who will? I assure you there is not a moment to be lost."
Evidently the man was touched by my anxiety. At any rate he went out of his way to do a kindly action, for which no amount of gratitude on my part will ever be able to repay him.
"I do not know anything about the merits of the prescription," he said, "but if these two drugs are necessary, I don't mind telling you that I think I know where I can procure them. I have an old friend, a quack, so the other chemists call him, who is always trying experiments. It is within the bounds of possibility he may have them. If you will wait here for a few minutes I'll run up to his house and see. It is only a few doors from here, and he is always at home at this hour."
"I will await only too willingly," I answered earnestly. "Heaven grant you may be successful!"
He said no more but ran out of the shop. While he was gone I paced up and down in a fever of impatience. Every minute seemed an hour, and as I looked at my watch and realized that if I wished to get back to the hotel within the time specified by Pharos I had only ten minutes in which to do it, I felt as if my heart would stop beating. In reality the man was not gone five minutes, and when he burst into the shop again he waved two bottles triumphantly above his head.
"There's not another man in Hamburg could have got them!" he cried with justifiable pride. "Now I can make it up for you."
Five minutes later he handed the prescription to me.
"I shall never be able to thank you sufficiently for your kindness," I said as I took it. "If I can get back with it in time you will have saved a life that I love more than my own. I do not know how to reward you, but if you will accept this and wear it as a souvenir of the service you have rendered me, I hope you will do so."
So saying, I took from my pocket my gold watch and chain and handed them across the counter to him. Then, without waiting for an expression of his gratitude, I passed into the street and, hailing a cab, bade the man drive me as fast as his horse could go to my hotel.
Reaching it, I paid him with the first coin I took from my pocket and ran upstairs. What my feelings were as I approached the room where I had left Pharos and Valerie together I must leave you to imagine. With a heart beating like a sledge-hammer I softly turned the handle of the door and stole in, scarcely daring to look in the direction of the sofa. However, I might have spared myself the pain, for neither Pharos nor Valerie were there, but just as I was wondering what could have become of them the former entered the room.
"Have you got it?" he inquired eagerly, his voice trembling with emotion.
"I have," I answered, and handed him the medicine. "Here it is. At one time I began to think I should have to come back without it."
"Another ten minutes and I can promise you you would have been too late," he answered. "I have carried her to her room and placed her upon her bed. You must remain here and endeavour to prevent any one suspecting what is the matter. If your medicine proves what I hope, she should be sleeping quietly in an hour's time, and on the high road to recovery in two. But remember this, if the people in this house receive any hint of what she is suffering from they will remove her to the hospital at once, and in that case, I pledge you my word, she will be dead before morning."
"You need have no fear on that score," I answered. "They shall hear nothing from me."
Thereupon he took his departure, and for the next hour I remained where I was, deriving what satisfaction I could from the assurance he had given me.
It was quite dark by the time Pharos returned.
"What news do you bring?" I inquired anxiously. "Why do you not tell me at once how she is? Can you not see how I am suffering?"
"The crisis is past," he replied, "and she will do now. But it was a very narrow escape. If I had not followed you by the next train, in what sort of position would you be at this minute?"
"I should not be alive," I answered. "If her life had been taken it would have killed me."
"You are very easily killed, I have no doubt," was his sneering rejoinder. "At the same time, take my advice and let this be a lesson to you not to try escaping from me again. You have been pretty severely punished. On another occasion your fate may be even worse."
I gazed at him in pretended surprise.
"I do not understand your meaning when you say that I escaped from you," I said, with an air of innocence that would not have deceived any one. "Why should I desire to do so? If you refer to my leaving Prague so suddenly, please remember that I warned you the night before that it would be necessary for me to leave at once for England. I presume I am at liberty to act as I please?"
"I am not in the humour just now to argue the question with you," he answered, "but if you will be advised by me, my dear Forrester, you will, for the future, consult me with regard to your movements. My ward has given you her experiences and has told you with what result, she, on two occasions, attempted to leave me. At your instigation she has tried a third time, and you see how that attempt has turned out. You little thought that when you were dining so comfortably in Herr Schuncke's restaurant in Berlin, last night, that I was watching your repast."
"I do not believe it," I answered angrily. "It is impossible that you could have been there, if only for the reason that there was no train to bring you."
He smiled pityingly upon me.
"I am beginning to think, my friend," he said, "that you are not so clever as I at first supposed you. I wonder what you would say if I were to tell you, that while Valerie was playing for Schuncke's entertainment, I, who was travelling along between Prague and Dresden, was an interested spectator of the whole scene. Shall I describe to you the arrangement of the room? Shall I tell you how Schuncke leant against the wall near the door, his hands folded before him, and his great head nodding? How you sat at the table near the fireplace, building castles in the air, upon which, by the way, I offer you my felicitations? while Valerie, standing on the other side of the room, made music for you all? It is strange that I should know all that, particularly as I did not do myself the honour of calling at the restaurant, is it not?"
I made no answer. To tell the truth, I did not know what to say. Pharos chuckled as he observed my embarrassment.
"You will learn wisdom before I have done with you," he continued. "However, that is enough on the subject just now. Let us talk about something else. There is much to be done to-night, and I shall require your assistance."
The variety of emotions to which I had been subjected that day had exercised such an effect upon me that, by this time, I was scarcely capable of even a show of resistance. In my own mind I felt morally certain that when he said there was much to do he meant the accomplishment of some new villainy, but what form it was destined to take I neither knew nor cared. He had got me so completely under his influence by this time that he could make me do exactly as he required.
"What is it you are going to do?" I inquired, more because I saw that he expected me to say something than for any other reason.
"I am going to get us all out of this place and back to England without loss of time," he answered, in a tone of triumph.
"To England?" I replied, and the hideous mockery of his speech made me laugh aloud; as bitter a laugh surely as was ever uttered by mortal man. "You accused me just now of not being as clever as you had at first supposed me. I return the compliment. You have evidently not heard that every route into England is blocked."
"No route is ever blocked to me," he answered. "I leave for London at midnight to-night, and Valerie accompanies me."
"You must be mad to think of such a thing!" I cried, Valerie's name producing a sudden change in my behaviour toward him. "How can she possibly do so? Remember how ill she is. It would be little short of murder to move her."
"It will be nothing of the kind," he replied. "When I want her she will rise from her bed and walk down stairs and go wherever I bid her, looking to all appearances as well and strong as any other woman in this town."
"By all means let us go to England then," I said, clutching eagerly at the hope he held out. "Though how you are going to manage it I do not know."
"You shall see," he said. "Remember, you have never known me fail. If you would bear that fact in mind a little oftener, you would come nearer a better appreciation of my character than that to which you have so far attained. However, while we are wasting time talking, it is getting late, and you have not dined yet. I suppose it is necessary for you to eat, otherwise you will be incapable of anything?"
"I could not touch a thing," I answered in reply to his gibe. "You will not therefore be hindered by me. But how can we go out and leave Valerie behind in her present condition?"
"I shall give her an opiate," he said, "which will keep her sleeping quietly for the next three or four hours. When she wakes she will be capable of anything."
He thereupon left the room, and upward of a quarter of an hour elapsed before he rejoined me. When he did, I noticed that he was dressed for going out. I immediately picked up my hat and stick and followed him down stairs. Once in the street, Pharos started off at a smart pace, and as soon as he reached the corner, near the first chemist's shop I had visited that afternoon, turned sharply to his left, crossed the road, and entered a bye lane. The remainder of the journey was of too tortuous a description for me to hope to give you any detailed account of it. Up one back street and down another, over innumerable canals, we made our way, until at last we reached a quarter of the town totally distinct from that in which our hotel was situated. During the walk Pharos scarcely spoke, but times out of number he threw angry glances at me over his shoulder when I dropped a little behind. Indeed, he walked at such a pace, old man though he was, that at times I found it extremely difficult to keep up with him. At last, entering a dirtier street than any we had so far encountered, he stopped short before a tall, austere building which from a variety of evidences had seen better days, and might a couple of centuries or so before have been the residence of some well-to-do merchant. Mounting the steps, he rapped sharply upon the door with his stick. A sound of laughter and the voice of a man singing reached us from within, and when Pharos knocked a second time the rapidity of the blows and the strength with which they were administered bore witness to his impatience. At last, however, the door was opened a few inches by a man who looked out and inquired with an oath what we wanted.
"I have come in search of Captain Wisemann," my companion answered. "If he is at home, tell him that if he does not receive Monsieur Pharos at once, he knows the penalty. Carry him that message and be quick about it. I have waited at this door quite long enough."
With an unintelligible grunt the man departed on his errand, and it was plain that the news he brought had a sobering effect upon the company within, for a sudden silence prevailed, and a few moments later he returned and begged us with comparative civility to enter. We did so, and followed our guide along a filthy passage to a room at the back of the dwelling, a magnificent chamber, panelled with old oak, every inch of which spoke of an age and an art long since dead. The dirt of the place, however, passes description. Under the régime of the present owner, it seemed doubtful whether any attempt had ever been made to clean it. The ceiling was begrimed with smoke and dirt, cobwebs not only decorated the cornices and the carved figures on the chimneypiece, but much of the panelling on the walls themselves was cracked and broken. On the table in the centre of the room was all that remained of a repast, and at this Pharos sniffed disdainfully.
"A pig he was when I first met him, and a pig he will remain to the day of his death," said Pharos, by way of introducing the man upon whom we were calling. "However, a pig is at all times a useful animal, and so is Wisemann."
At this moment the man of whom he had spoken in these scarcely complimentary terms entered the room.
I have elsewhere described the Arab who met Pharos at the Pyramids, on the occasion of my momentous visit, as being the biggest man I had ever beheld in my life, and so he was, for at that time I had not the pleasure of Herman Wisemann's acquaintance. Since I have seen him, however, the Arab has, as the Americans say, been compelled to take a back place. Wisemann must have stood six-foot nine if an inch, and in addition to his height his frame was correspondingly large. Though I am not short myself, he towered above me by fully a head. To add to the strangeness of his appearance, he was the possessor of a pair of enormous ears that stood out at right angles to his head. That he was afraid of Pharos was shown by the sheepish fashion in which he entered the room.
"Three years ago I called upon you," said Pharos, "and was kept waiting while you fuddled yourself with your country's abominable liquor. To-night I have been favoured with a repetition of that offence. On the third occasion I shall deal with you more summarily. Remember that! Now to business."
"If Herr Pharos will condescend to tell me what it is he requires of me," said the giant, "he may be sure I will do my best to please him."
"You had better not do otherwise, my friend," snapped Pharos with his usual acidity. "Perhaps you remember that on one occasion you made a mistake. Don't do so again. Now listen to me. I am anxious to be in London on Friday morning next. You will, therefore, find me a fast vessel, and she must leave to-night at midnight."
"But it is impossible to get into England," replied the man. "Since the outbreak of the plague the quarantine laws have been stricter even than they were before. Heinrich Clausen tried last week and had to return unsuccessful."
"How does Heinrich Clausen's failure affect me?" asked Pharos. "I shall not fail, whatever any one else may do. Your friend Clausen should have known better than to go to London. Land me on the coast of Norfolk and that will do."
"But it is eight o'clock now," the man replied, "and you say you wish to start at midnight. How am I to arrange it before then?"
"How you are to do it does not concern me," said Pharos. "All I know is that you must do it. Otherwise, well then the punishment will be the same as before, only on this occasion a little more severe. You can send me word in an hour's time, how, and where, we are to board her. I am staying at the Continental, and my number is eighty-three."
The man had evidently abandoned all thought of refusing.
"And the remuneration?" he inquired. "The risk will have to be taken into account."
"The price will be the same as on the last occasion, provided he lands us safely at the place which I shall name to him as soon as we are on board. But only half that amount, if, by any carelessness on his part, the scheme is unsuccessful. I shall expect to hear from you within an hour. Be careful, however, that your messenger does not arouse any suspicions at the hotel. We do not want the English authorities put upon their guard."
Wisemann accompanied us to the door, and bowed us out. After that we returned as quickly as possible to our hotel. My delight may be imagined on hearing from Pharos, who visited her as soon as he returned, that throughout the time we had been absent Valerie had been sleeping peacefully, and was now making as good progress toward recovery as he could desire.
At nine o'clock, almost punctual to the minute, a note was brought to Pharos. He opened it, and having read it, informed the man that there was no answer.
"Wisemann has arranged everything," he said. "The steamer Margrave of Brandenburg will be ready to pick us up in the river at the hour appointed, and in fifty hours from the first revolution of her screw we should be in England."
"And what would happen then?" I asked myself.