I saw no reason why I should inform either Mrs. Gordon or Jacqueline of my little trip to St. Petersburg. I greeted them both as if I had just come from Venice, and had duly received Mrs. Gordon’s invitation. It may be readily imagined that I was curious to know why Jacqueline had added her urgent telegram in addition to her aunt’s note.
But Jacqueline was never a primer to be spelled out with simplicity and accuracy. She met my anxious and significant glance-and I took care not to ask questions-with smiling and open-eyed composure. She was evidently relieved to see me, but she made no effort to see me alone. Rather, she seemed to avoid me; at least, until my visit drew to a close. That close was sudden and startling. My departure from the Hotel Grande Bretagne was nothing less than a dismissal.
It was not until after dinner that Mrs. Gordon gave me any clue as to why she had asked me to spend a few days with Jacqueline and herself at Lake Como. Just how long my visit was to 115last I was in dubious ignorance. I was smoking my postprandial cigar on the terrace, wondering how I might tactfully sound the formidable Mrs. Gordon for this information, when she appeared with her niece. Jacqueline was reading a letter from home. Mrs. Gordon held up a jeweled hand impressively, and waved it significantly toward her.
“My dear, will you fetch me my shawl? Pray do not throw away your cigar, Mr. Hume. Be seated. I am anxious to have a talk with you.”
My heart thumped ridiculously. Had Jacqueline confessed to her aunt her love for me?
I professed myself properly at her disposal. She cleared her throat and folded her arms across her ample person. Unconsciously she was assuming the airs of one of the Council of Ten. But that was Mrs. Gordon’s way, and I waited expectantly.
“It is a great pleasure to have you with us, Mr. Hume,” she began with ponderous cordiality.
I hastened to assure her that there was no place more beautiful than Como in April, and looked wistfully after Jacqueline, who had brought the shawl, and was now strolling about the shrubbery.
“You are the only person to whom I can turn in perplexity, that is, while we are here in Italy. 116It so happens that I am sadly in need of advice and information.”
I assured her that I would do all in my power to help her.
“It is with regard to Jacqueline.”
I was careful to show nothing more than a friendly interest. One needed to be wary with the worldly Mrs. Gordon.
“Or, rather, it is with regard to Duke da Sestos.”
“The Duke da Sestos!” I exclaimed, startled. “I can not see, Mrs. Gordon, how a matter touching the Duke da Sestos can affect your niece,” I said after a pause.
“No?” She looked after her niece thoughtfully. “But if I tell you that the duke is in love with her, Mr. Hume?”
“And-and, her feeling toward the duke?”
“I have reason to believe that Jacqueline’s wishes will coincide with mine,” she answered complacently.
Jacqueline’s wishes would coincide with hers! There was little doubt as to what her wishes were. So the worst had really come. I looked out toward the lake, hardly trusting myself to speak. The tender blue of the still waters; the purple mountains; the song of birds; the cries of children; the toll of a church-bell; and Jacqueline, 117in white, slipping through the green trees-everything had charmed me only a moment ago. But now I saw only Jacqueline-not the laughing Jacqueline, my Jacqueline, who waved her hand back at me smiling, but the Duchess da Sestos, neglected wife, scorning her husband, and hating him, doomed to a slow and wretched death in life, sacrificed by this miserable old worldling.
“I could imagine nothing more unfortunate than that she should feel any interest in Duke da Sestos,” I said with feeling.
She looked at me anxiously.
“Do you know anything derogatory to him, Mr. Hume?”
“No,” I answered bluntly, “I know nothing of him.”
She sighed out her relief.
A large person, with an English accent carefully modulated, Mrs. Gordon was not easily moved to anxiety. Her nerves were padded in leather. One could not prick them with anything less formidable than a pitchfork. But my remarks had ruffled her complacency for the moment, that colossal complacency as immense as her wardrobe, and silly and moveless as her pride. But even she would hesitate to encourage the duke’s suit if I could show her it was quite 118impossible. Could I do that? At least, I intended to try.
She pondered a moment. “So you know nothing. But it would not be difficult for you to make inquiries. Understanding Italian life, as you do, living in Venice so long--”
“Make inquiries, Mrs. Gordon?” I interrupted coldly. I should have thought my cool stare would have disconcerted her somewhat.
“And,” she continued frostily (evidently the stare had been wholly in vain, then), “it seems to me that my appeal to you should be received in the light of a duty. You are one of our oldest friends. You ought to have Jacqueline’s interests at heart.”
“God knows I have her interests at heart,” I cried bitterly. “But I fail to see--”
“Of his rank and station,” she continued, waving my protest aside, “I can judge for myself. I am told he is a personal friend of the king. His family antedates the very founding of Venice. I know not how many quarterings his coat of arms may boast. As to his finances, that, naturally, is a serious question. I could not, as a matter of duty, permit myself to ignore that important phase of the case. Still, Jacqueline’s dot, if she has due regard to my wishes, will not make his lack of means an insurmountable 119obstacle. But, Mr. Hume, his character, that is of importance.”
“Yes,” I said significantly, “it is.”
“I do not mean,” she hastened to add, “that-er-he-er-may not have been guilty of some of the indiscretions of youth. That is to be expected of a nobleman of his rank.”
“Then, Mrs. Gordon, may I ask just what you do mean?” I inquired suavely.
“That at least there must have been no scandal, Mr. Hume, no open scandal. I could not permit dear Jacqueline’s position to be in any way equivocal.”
“Your concern as to that is most sensible,” I said sarcastically. “Still, I am in ignorance as to just how I may help you.”
“Really, Mr. Hume, you are strangely heedless of my words. Did I not say a moment ago that I looked to you to make certain inquiries for me?”
“In other words, Mrs. Gordon,” I said coldly, “you are asking me to be your private detective, are you not?”
She held up her hands in horror.
“An office that I can not undertake, even for you or your niece. I can think of no marriage for Jacqueline that could possibly be more distasteful or more disastrous.”
120“If you know nothing about Duke da Sestos, how can you say that his possible marriage with my niece could be a misfortune? I may be very dense, but I fail to follow your reasoning, Mr. Hume.”
“But, Mrs. Gordon,” I said earnestly, “can you not guess something of a man’s character without knowing all about him?”
“If I could,” she answered slowly, “I should say that you do not appear to me to be quite disinterested in your statements.”
“And if that is true, Mrs. Gordon?” I flung away my cigar and my caution. “If I confess that I am not disinterested, as you call it? What then? Say that I love your niece, and I suppose it is right that you should know that. My love for Jacqueline is great enough not to grudge her happiness, even if that happiness is to be with another man. But to see her persuaded into a marriage that every instinct tells me is wrong, that I know must prove unhappy-I can not allow that to be done without a protest, though in making that protest I have betrayed my own love for her. Mrs. Gordon, if I know nothing of Duke da Sestos, I do know something of his class. Can I say nothing that will influence you?”
She gathered her shawl about her, and looked 121at me with stony indifference. I might as well have appealed to the little waves that lapped the shore. But I continued desperately:
“I can not help it that you misjudge me. I must speak. I must plead Jacqueline’s cause for her, even though she should resent my doing that, for I am pleading for her happiness. You lay emphasis on the rank of this Duke da Sestos. He is a duke. But, Mrs. Gordon, there are seventy ducal houses in Sicily alone. There is no law of primogeniture in Italy. Titles carry no distinction with them. Princes, dukes, marquises, counts, they are infinitely more numerous in Italy than decent men.
“As to the character of this aristocracy-you ask me of the duke’s, I will tell you the characteristics of most. He is an officer in the cavalry, therefore he lives beyond his pay. He is a gambler, a spendthrift. His property is mortgaged to the hilt. A rich marriage is his only hope. He hunts, shoots, wears English clothes, and that is as far as he approximates the manly habits of the Englishman. The Italian’s idea of a sportsman is to ride to the meet in a dog-cart with a fat poodle at his side. The smaller the pony, the fatter the poodle, the more of a sportsman he is. Cards, gossip, his mistress-they make up his life, his real life.”
122“And supposing that all this is true, I do not forget that you are speaking of a class and not of an individual, Mr. Hume.”
“I am only imploring you to be very careful.”
“After you have refused to make inquiries? You are inconsistent.”
She rose and confronted me with a placidity as obstinate as if I had not spoken.
“All that you have said I will try to put to the best of motives, but you have not shown a generous spirit. In my turn I must appear ungenerous, I fear. I must protect Jacqueline, and unfortunately, in my opinion, her marriage with you would be quite as disastrous as you pretend hers would be with the duke.”
“I did not mean to speak ungenerously, Mrs. Gordon,” I said humbly.
“And, as I was about to say, though it may appear ungracious, I am compelled to withdraw my invitation that you remain our guest here. Unless, of course, you will give me your promise that in no way--”
“I understand,” I said stiffly. “I should not feel happy to stay under those circumstances. I shall leave to-night.”
I bowed. Then I turned to her for a last appeal.
123“Mrs. Gordon, it is natural that you should listen to me with suspicion, but try to believe that I speak disinterestedly. Do all you can to discourage Jacqueline. She is very young. She is romantic, like so many girls. It is so easy for her to make a mistake, if there is no one to guide, to advise. Take her away from Italy, at least for the present. Will you?” I held out my hand.
“Mr. Hume,” she retorted spitefully, “in these affairs of the heart each must decide for oneself.”
“Yes, yes,” I cried eagerly. Then something in her strange smile made the words die on my lips, and I faltered, “Jacqueline has already decided that-that she loves the duke?”
“I have reason to believe so. The duke himself assures me that she has given him encouragement. More than that, Jacqueline herself does not deny it.”
“Thank you,” I said miserably, and went into the hotel to pack my things. The worst had come, then, for, much as I disliked Mrs. Gordon, I did not do her the injustice to suppose that she was lying.
Perhaps I ought to have trusted Jacqueline more. I should have known that no good woman listens lightly to a man’s declaration of love; and 124she had listened to mine. But, again, Jacqueline had given me no assurance whatever that she returned my love. She had found it difficult to make up her mind, not only as to whether she really loved me, but whether I were really in earnest in declaring my love for her. And so that evening I walked very soberly toward the steamboat-landing, followed by the porter with my bag.
The little steamer had given its warning toot, my bag was aboard, I was about to follow, when I turned, hoping for one last glimpse of Jacqueline. To my surprise, she was running toward me. She was in distress. In an instant I was at her side.
“What, what does it mean, you going away like this?” she panted.
“I am going back to Venice, Jacqueline,” I answered her gravely.
“To Venice!” she cried, dismayed. “To Venice this evening, and without saying good-by to me? Why?”
“I have had a tiff, dear Jacqueline, with your aunt, and she has ordered me off. I leave the field,” I added a little bitterly, “to a handsomer, and I wish I could say to a better, man.”
She withdrew the hand she had given me, and flushed angrily. Then her face became very pale.
125“Forgive me, Jacqueline, I did not mean to hurt you.”
“And what has my aunt told you?” she almost whispered.
“She has told me, Jacqueline, that Duke da Sestos has asked you to be his wife. She wishes you to consent. She believes that you have not refused him.”
Her color came and went. She drew in a little breath, and her brown eyes looked over at the mountains beyond Cadenabbia. Tears gathered in them and began to fall slowly down her cheeks.
“But it is not true,” I cried, and seized her hand. “It is impossible that you should have done that.”
“It is quite true,” she said almost impassively. “He has asked me to be his wife. I have encouraged him.”
“Then there is nothing more to be said. Good-by, dear Jacqueline.”
She caught my coat in her eagerness.
“Listen, Dick. It is because of that I telegraphed you. You must help me. I need you. Would you do something for me that was quite useless-that would give you infinite trouble-that would bring you no reward except my thanks?”
126“I think it quite possible,” I said, smiling. “What is it?”
“It is so difficult to make you understand,” she cried, distressed.
“I will wait till to-morrow.”
“No, no; if you are to help me in this, you can not do it too quickly.”
We began to walk toward the boat, which had emitted another piercing wail.
“I told you that Duke da Sestos has asked me to marry him, and that I encouraged him. I did. But, oh, so unconsciously.”
“You encouraged him unconsciously? Impossible!”
“It is true, Dick,” she insisted tearfully. “I wished to show him how impossible it was that I could ever care for him-that nothing but a miracle could make me love him. It happened that the steel chest he gave me from the Palazzo stood on the drawing-room table. Quite impulsively I said: ‘When you bring me the casket that fitted into that steel box, I will listen to you.’ I said it lightly, Dick, as a bitter jest. I thought I was asking him to do something quite impossible. To my surprise, to my dismay, instead of being indignant or angry, he took my words quite seriously. He refused to see that I had asked him to accomplish an impossibility. In that intense 127foreign way of his, he kissed my hand, bidding me good-by for the present, but he promised me that, sooner or later, he would return with the casket. I was so astonished I could say nothing. Before I could recover myself he had gone. And if he should find it! Oh, Dick, if he should!”
I laughed joyously-happily. “He shall not,” I cried, “because I am going to find it myself. And if I do find it, Jacqueline?”
“I shall be so glad,” she said shyly.
“But my book of legends,” I said with affected seriousness. “Am I to give up writing the legend of the clock? I thought I was to persist in my task. Nothing was to turn me from it.”
“But I am giving you this new task, Dick,” she said, laughing happily.
“Yes, yes,” I said, as I leapt aboard at the last moment. “I think I may find time to do this new task for you, and my legend of the clock as well.”
Not until the boat touched the farther shores of Lake Como did it occur to me that Jacqueline would think this promise but a half-hearted one. That there was any connection between the clock and the casket she had, of course, no idea.
I reached Venice by the midnight express. St. Hilary was waiting for me on the platform.
“St. Hilary!” I cried with affected gaiety, “what brings you here at two o’clock in the morning?”
“Ah, what!” he grumbled. “Have you no imagination? But wait till we are in my gondola. You are going to your rooms, I suppose?”
We were scarcely seated when he turned eagerly toward me. His yellow face was haggard for want of sleep and lined like an old carved ivory, but in the pale light of the lamps of the landing I saw his eyes gleam.
“You are in good enough spirits to have good news. Come, no one can hear us now. Tell me of your little trip to Russia.”
I recounted to him the story of my fruitless journey. He listened to me in silence. When I had finished, he drew aside the curtains of the gondola and looked out.
“I might have known that you would have just such ill luck,” he said bitterly, and did not again speak until we had reached the Giudecca.
129We entered the Grand Canal. One thinks of the Grand Canal as a mise en scène for endless processions of tourists. Your true flaneur shuns it. He keeps, as far as possible, to the cool blue shadows of the little canals.
But to-night this majestic waterway laid a fresh spell on me. It awed me. This silent stream, black as death, was full of mystery. A menace lurked in the deep shadows of the great palaces, pallid and ghostlike in the darkness. The steel prow of our gondola, curving upward proudly, dipped and glided through the inky waters. Is there in the whole world anything inanimate so graceful, so almost alive, so light and so cruelly sharp and strong as the prow of a gondola? It is the very incarnation of the spirit of the Venetians of the Renaissance.
To-night, as we penetrated the gloom that was absolute, except for the light of a tiny lantern on the deck forward, I could put myself back in the middle ages. I could see the black barge of the Fante, the captain of the inquisitorial guard, swiftly rowed with muffled oars to the palazzo of the unhappy wretch who had offended against the laws of Venice. The barge stops at his door; the bolts are slipped by a spy within; the messenger of torture and imprisonment, somber as the night, makes his way to the bedside 130of the doomed man. He starts from his deep sleep; he is beckoned silently down the echoing stairs; he seats himself in the black barge; and so, shivering, he goes to his end.
We shot into one of the narrow, crooked little canals. And now our gondola scraped the very walls of the window-barred store-houses that once overflowed with the wealth of the Orient. It was impossible to think of myself as a simple gentleman with a letter of credit at my bankers. St. Hilary and I were marauders, adventurers, brawlers, and this prosaic umbrella between my knees was a long, keen blade, ready for a lively bout with the watch.
We were in the Giudecca now, dodging this chain and that of the shipping moored along the Fondamenta della Zattere. As we made for the shore opposite, the rain, which had been coming down in a gentle drizzle, fell smartly, and St. Hilary shouted to the gondolier to row faster.
Giudecca quarter is anything but fashionable. Gondoliers repeat the word twice with scorn when the tourist expresses a wish to go there. Steamers from Greece and America, laden with corn, are anchored along its quay. From early dawn to night, hundreds of barefooted stevedores, each with his sack on his shoulder, patter up the narrow plank that spans ship and shore. 131An instant they poise their burden on the scale that stands at the doorway of the magazines, while an official from the customs-house jealously notes that it is full weight. Then shouldering it again, they are swallowed up in the cavernous interiors.
Most of the old palaces of the Giudecca have degenerated into these store-houses. But here and there, as a thing so insignificant that it is overlooked, one finds a low-ceiled trattoria, where at the noon hour the stevedores drink the strong wines of Chioggia and shout out their lusty songs; or it may be an infinitesimal shop, where sharp-faced old women sell fish and cheese and cherries.
All day long children sprawl and quarrel and play on the sun-baked pavement; and artists paint endless pictures of the red and orange sails drifting slowly by, with the Salute and Ducal Palace for a background. Yes, the Giudecca quarter is the quarter of the people. But to me the stevedores, the children, and the haggling old women have a charm all their own. And here, at the Casa Frollo where I lived, no red-booked tourist sets foot.
Our gondolier, winded with his long pull against wind and tide, steered for some steps a hundred feet this side the Casa Frollo. I called 132to him to row farther up the quay, but St. Hilary irritably declared it easier for us to walk the distance than for him to row.
“But why walk in the rain?” I expostulated. “And how are you going to return to your hotel on the Riva if you dismiss your gondolier? Gondoliers hereabouts at two o’clock in the morning are as rare as horses on the Piazza.”
“It happens that I don’t intend to return to-night to my hotel. As a matter of fact there will be no bed for you, my dear Hume.”
“No bed? It is not possible that you have already brought back our clock?”
“It is not only possible, it is true. I returned this evening in time to get your telegram and to meet you.”
“You have had it repaired in a week?”
“Yes; so far as it could be repaired.”
“Then there could not have been much the matter with it.”
“As it happened, there was not.”
“Then it seems to me that your trip to Amsterdam was not so very remarkable after all?” I grumbled.
“Sometimes,” quietly replied St. Hilary, “one has to go to a great deal of trouble and expense to get a merely negative result. Sometimes it is necessary to find out simply what a thing is not.”
133“And have you found out that it is not, after all, an automaton clock?”
“My dear fellow, be reasonable. In the first place, this clock had to be set going. It was too intricate a piece of mechanism to entrust to any blundering workman. Are you going to find fault because it has been set going without any trouble or delay? Every wheel of its works had to be taken apart.”
“And the object of that?”
“It was absolutely necessary that we should be certain that the secret of the clock, provided it has a secret, is told by the automata, and that this secret was not hidden in its works. Now, at least, we know what not to look for.”
“The automata themselves, then, hold the secret?”
“So far as we can tell at present. The fact is, I have heard only two of the hours strike.”
“And were the automata of the hours that you saw in working order?”
“One of them at least was, though, I confess, the result was slightly disappointing. However, I certainly did not expect the secret of the clock to be on the surface.”
We walked up the quay in silence. Suddenly, as we were crossing a bridge, St. Hilary seized my arm, his familiar gesture always for silence 134and caution. He looked over the parapet. Half a dozen black gondolas, swaying in the wind, were tied to rings in the wall. In one of them sat a man. A piece of tarpaulin protected him from the rain. As we looked at him he struck a match to light his pipe, and I saw his face.
“Did you ever happen to see that gondolier before?” demanded St. Hilary as we walked on.
“Never, so far as I know,” I answered idly, peering through the rain for the landmark of Palazzo Frollo, two ridiculously small marble lions on the rail of the balcony of the second story.
“Hum, then perhaps I was mistaken. By the way, I met the duke on the Riva as I was going to the station to meet you.”
“Indeed?” I said indifferently. I was fumbling for my night-key. I had insisted on that essentially Anglo-Saxon convenience, and the door had been fitted with a lock at my expense. I glanced up carelessly at the windows of my sitting-room, after the manner of one who has been away from home for a few days. A light was shining through the chink of the shutters. I pointed it out to St. Hilary.
“I remember you told me that you had brought the clock to my rooms. You left the lamp burning, I see.”
135“I? No.”
“Then who can have been in my rooms?”
I heard St. Hilary chuckle in the darkness.
“Rather, say, who is in your room? Pianissimo, mio caro. It will be amusing to surprise this midnight guest. No, no; not a light, and silence.”
My rooms were on the second floor. We had to pass through the sala, a huge apartment, at least forty feet long, a T-square in shape, and it extended from the canal to the garden at the rear, the smaller part of the T-square running along the side of the canal. The ceiling of immense beams stretched from wall to wall. Once these beams had been gaily decorated with geometrical designs; now they were dingy with a faded coat of whitewash. The room was lighted by the feeble rays of a night-lamp in a niche of the wall.
We tiptoed across the cold floor. Softly, very softly, I pushed down the straight handle of the door leading into my room. I drew this door cautiously toward me. A second door still hid us from the intruder, if intruder there was. Cautiously I pushed it ajar, and looked through the crack, St. Hilary squinting over my shoulder.
Duke da Sestos was seated in my room, and on a table immediately in front of him ticked the 136clock. A lighted candle stood on either side of it. He sat huddled in the deep armchair, his head sunk on his breast. But he was not asleep. His elbows rested on the arms of the chair; his legs were comfortably crossed. A box of cigarettes was at his elbow, and at his elbow, too, a decanter of brandy-my brandy.
I closed the door, and at that moment we heard very faintly from within an exquisite chime of silver bells. Then the hour of one was struck.
“By Jove, St. Hilary,” I said savagely, “is that brute to amuse himself all night, drinking my liquors, listening to the chimes of our clock, unmolested?”
“Not unmolested,” chuckled St. Hilary softly.
“Ah, then, we stop his little game!”
“With all the pleasure in the world.”
He took off his cloak. It was very thick and dripping with moisture. He nodded at me, smiling.
“Yes, yes, you get the idea? Could a troublesome guest cry out indignantly if this fine cloak kept his head warm, do you think?”
He spread out the cloak on one outstretched arm, and tiptoed to the door again. I followed at his heels.
“But is this necessary?” I expostulated. “Why not throw him out without any ado?”
137St. Hilary looked at me with contempt.
“Do you forget the fourteen pages? We must see them. The chances are they are in his pocket. We are to be burglars for the nonce, dear Hume, and this cloak is to go over his head so that he won’t be too noisy.”
I nodded. “And the program?”
“It is very simple. His back is toward the door. When the next quarter chimes, I push open the door softly. I give a twist to my good cloak, and, voila, we shall have caught our prey. Blow out the candles, then help me. We shall wrap the cloak comfortably about his head, so that he can not see or hear. Then I go through his pockets. If the stolen pages are there, very good. If not, his keys may be useful. Have you a rope? We must fasten his arms and legs.”
“Yes, a trunk-strap.”
“Good. En garde, then. I am extremely thirsty. My poor lips ache for a smack of that good liqueur.”
The clock chimed the half-hour sweetly. St. Hilary, holding the dripping cloak before him like a shield, pushed open the door.
St. Hilary did not bungle; and the cloak served admirably. The duke was no mean antagonist. As I placed my knee on his spine and twisted his arms back, while St. Hilary adjusted the bonds and the gag, I made up my mind that I should have to train down a little.
“And now?” I whispered, when we had trussed him up, for all the world like a fat fowl. It seemed to me rather useless and silly, all this fuss, and yet, I confess, I found it exciting.
St. Hilary shook his head for silence. One of the duke’s cigarettes drooping at the corner of his mouth, he deliberately went through da Sestos’s pockets. As I watched him, I shook with silent laughter. St. Hilary played his part with such boyish gusto. They made a picture, those two: the duke straining frantically at his bonds; St. Hilary, deft and cool, quite to the manner born, tapping this pocket and that, and emptying the contents of each in a little heap on the table-money, keys, letters. When he had glanced through the last, he conscientiously returned each 139article to its respective pocket. Except the keys and the copy of a telegram. The keys he calmly transferred to his own pocket; the telegram he handed to me. I read it curiously:
“Please tell Mr. Hume that he is by all means to give you the clock at once.”
It was signed by Mrs. Gordon, and was directed to the duke. I looked at it thoughtfully.
“Supposing, St. Hilary, that while reading this telegram the candle’s flame happened to catch it. Naturally, I should let it go-like this,” I whispered, and stamped on the burning paper.
“Wise young man,” commented St. Hilary. “And now I am going to return the call of the duke. We are going to play our little game of tit for tat.”
He put on his cloak, then, drawing its folds about him, he beckoned me out into the sala.
“Yes, I am off to our comedian’s apartment. We must have those fourteen pages, if possible. Do you keep your eye on the duke there until four o’clock. Then let yourself down-stairs softly, very softly. Return noisily, very noisily. Imagine you have been dining, as the poet says, not wisely but too well. You will then be horrified to discover that our lord duke is blindfolded, strapped, and gagged. You release him with 140cries of concern. You are all sympathy. We have done our work skilfully enough so that he can not know we are the aggressors. It is true, he may guess. I shall return here to-morrow morning, probably not before noon. We shall need a few hours’ sleep. I hope I shall bring those fourteen pages with me, then we can amuse ourselves with our clock.”
“But our beast of prey in there. Though he can not see or move, don’t forget he can hear. Keeping still until four o’clock in the morning does not appeal to me in the least. Why not shut him up in my coat-closet until it is time to release him?”
“Excellent.”
We entered my room again, and, in spite of his struggles, stood the duke upright in the narrow closet. Then, leaving him standing there like a mummy, we turned the key on him and left him to his reflections.
“Now I’m off,” whispered St. Hilary.
When he had closed the door behind him, I took the seat in front of the clock. I waited for the clock to strike the hour of two.
The silver bell struck the three-quarter-hour. The minutes dragged on. As I sat there, staring at the clock, my eyes on its face, it seemed a thing sinister, half alive. Its yellow face took on a 141look that was half human. It made faces at me. It mocked me.
And then at last a spring whirred. The little silver bells, sweet as an elfin chime in fairyland, shocked me into rigid attention. It was two o’clock. I watched the doors eagerly.
At first I thought none of the twelve doors had opened. I forgot for the moment that the door of the second hour was at the side of the clock. I moved the candle to the side. Yes, the door was wide open. I thrust the rays of the candle at the little doorway, and I saw-what?
A circular platform was being pushed slowly forward. On this platform was a tiny throne in silver. At the foot of this throne a bronze figure crouched abjectly. Another figure stood upright at the base of the throne. In his two hands the upright figure clutched a sword. As the clock struck twice, the sword was raised high above his head, with a droll, mechanical jerk. It descended twice on the neck of the crouching figure. Then, very slowly, the platform retreated into the doorway. The door closed.
That was all. A dollar cuckoo clock is hardly less impressive or more ridiculous. A figure hacks with a sword at a figure complacently kneeling to receive the blow-that was all! But was it all? Was there not, behind the little 142figure, a background of bronze, a drop-curtain, so to speak? And on the background was there not something in bas-relief? I felt quite sure that there was, though the two automata must be the principal actors in the foolish scene. I jotted down as much as I could remember, and waited for three o’clock to strike.
But if the previous hour was disappointing, this was maddeningly so. This time I had the two lighted candles standing at the third door, that not a fraction of a second might be wasted.
Again the whirr of the spring and the chime of bells. The third door opened slowly. The circular platform was pushed out again. A single figure this time. I watched it, breathless, and it did-nothing. It stood there motionless. But at the second glance I saw that it was designedly motionless. It was not an automaton. It was simply a piece of bronze cast in the shape of an old man in a flowing robe. The Doge’s cap was on his head. His right arm was lifted as if gesticulating. And as the hours struck, there appeared from the rear of the platform, in quick succession, tiny round disks. They sprang into line from within one after the other. Before the door closed I counted ten of them. They stood in a row, facing the immovable figure. There was again a bronze plate at the back. At first 143I thought it was ornamented with a geometrical design. But as I looked at it more closely, I saw that it was a gate. This scene was more tantalizing than the last. When the clock had been in perfect repair the ten disks must have been the basis for ten automata, much after the fashion of the Noah’s Ark men of our childhood. Naturally, the ten figures suggested the Council of Ten, and the single figure the Doge. But one would need some imagination to guess their significance. The clock might have a wonderful secret to tell, but it would take a genius or extraordinary luck to puzzle it out.
The clock ticked complacently. It seemed to jeer at me with its clacking rhythm. I lighted one of the duke’s excellent cigarettes. My nerves had been spurred to an ecstasy of excitement. I had expected wonderful things to happen. Nothing had happened. Nothing, I said to myself, was going to happen. I was very sleepy. The irritating tick-tock sounded far away. I nodded in my chair.
The whirr of the spring and the silver chime aroused me. I leaned forward languidly, cynically, rubbing my eyes. The first of the six doors in front opened. This time no automaton appeared. In the background I made out some monster, a well-curb, and a tree. The door 144closed slowly. I laughed aloud. St. Hilary and myself had been mad to dream that after almost five centuries the clock could tell its secret, if indeed it had a secret to tell.
I yawned, blew out the candles, put on my overcoat and hat, and slipped down-stairs. It was time to let the duke out of his box.
I walked a few rods from the house, hugging the wall. Returning noisily, I pulled the bell half a dozen times. True, I had my key in my pocket, but just now it would have been as well to have left it at home. All the world must know I had just returned from my journey.
I had to wait five minutes before the frowsy head of my housekeeper peered over the balcony. In the meanwhile, I discovered another head looking at me from over the edge of the quay. By the rays of the lantern at my door I recognized the face staring at me intently as that of the man whom we had seen smoking under the bridge. He was the duke’s gondolier. He was waiting for his master.
Then he knew the duke was in my rooms. That was awkward. Had he seen me come out of the house? Nothing was more likely. What if his master should question him, presently, if he had seen any suspicious characters about? What if the man told his master that he had seen me come sneaking out of the house one minute, to return noisily the next? When he described 146me, what would the duke naturally infer? And if, still later, the duke discovered that St. Hilary had paid this midnight visit to his room? Well, at any rate, he would be assured that we were really in earnest. He would know that if the casket was to be found, he was not the only one who was looking for it.
I stepped into the hall and banged the door after me. I stumbled up the stairs. I clattered across the sala. I sang. I lurched into a table. I fell with a crash against the closet-door in which the duke was imprisoned. There was no doubt about my having come home this time. Even the duke in his narrow box must have heard me. I lighted a candle, and taking off my coat and waistcoat, I held them in front of me with one hand and flung open the closet-door with the other. I was prepared to express surprise. I had an exclamation conveniently on my lips. It so happened that my surprise was genuine. As I opened the door the duke toppled over limply into my arms. He had fainted.
I let him slip to the floor. I unbound his wrists and legs. I tore off the gag. I chafed his hands. I poured water over his face. Upon my word, between us we had well-nigh smothered the chap.
He opened his eyes presently. Sitting up, he 147blinked at me. Slowly the pallor left his face. He glanced about the room; he shook himself together, rose to his feet, laughed lightly, and, walking over to the table where his cigarettes lay, he lighted one, and inhaled it deeply.
“Ah, my friend Hume, that was not a pleasant half-hour. I must thank you, my deliverer.”
I shook hands rather guiltily. I noticed that he was curiously examining his cigarettes.
“The thief has been helping himself,” he said carelessly.
“Thief?” I cried, alarmed, and rushed to my bedroom. I threw out the contents of a drawer or two, and came back into the sitting-room, the picture of despair.
“Yes, thieves,” I said feebly, as I sank into a chair. “A diamond scarf-pin, a watch, a few hundred lire-all stolen.”
“Mio caro,” he cried hypocritically, seizing my hands.
“But how did you get into my closet?” I demanded.
“My dear Mr. Hume, do you think I walked in there?”
“I suppose not,” I answered dryly; “but I suppose you walked into my sitting-room?”
He was voluble in his excuses. He had come on a little errand. He must have fallen asleep. 148He remembered nothing till he was seized and bound and robbed.
“So they have robbed you, these thieves?” I asked indiscreetly.
“Yes; they have taken my keys,” and he looked at me keenly.
“Your keys!” I expostulated. “What would they do with your keys? You must have left them at home.”
“Perhaps. Eh bien, Mr. Hume, I must bid you good night. I must walk, I suppose, to the Tragetto Ponte del Piccolo for a gondolier. Why, my friend, do you dwell in this barbarous Giudecca?” Then his eyes fell on the table, where the clock ticked loudly. “Ah ha, my old clock, and it goes. Capital! I had quite forgotten my errand.”
“And that is?”
“To deprive you of my clock, my friend. Do you forget that we were to telegraph Madame Gordon in St. Petersburg? Oh, la, la, you did not wait for me at the bureau, I remember. That was not the act of a sportsman.” He shook his head reproachfully.
“I thought it was you who did not wait for me,” I said dryly. “And have you yet received an answer to your telegram?”
“But yes. Behold!” He fumbled in his 149breast-pocket, and sorted rapidly a package of letters and papers. “Accidenti!” he cried, “it is not here.”
“No doubt you left it at home with the keys,” I said coolly.
“Eh? At home with the keys?” He looked at me with half-shut eyes.
“Why not?” I asked, yawning, and casting a longing eye toward my bedroom.
He began to laugh boisterously. “It is a matter to laugh over that thieves should rob one of a telegram and one’s keys, hein?”
“Decidedly,” I said uneasily.
“But it will be the simplest thing in the world for me to get another telegram,” he cried mockingly. “The thieves will not inconvenience me in the slightest. And as to their going to my rooms, bah, I am not so big a fool as to leave anything of interest there for an intruder to gaze at. No, Mr. Hume, not so big a fool as that. By the way, did you find your bibelot, that rare bibelot in the Imperial Library, interesting?”
“I did not take the trouble to go back for it,” I lied carelessly. “A telegram from Miss Quintard recalled me to Bellagio.”
I startled him as I had intended to. His face darkened. He looked at the clock again.
He had heard the spring whirr metallically. 150The bells began to strike. Instinctively we both turned, and watched the fourth door open slowly. Again the figure on the platform had been broken off. What the background was I could not see. I dared not show too great curiosity before the duke.
The door closed. The duke and I looked at each other.
“It is interesting, all the same, my droll old clock.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I see that you have had it repaired.”
“I was wondering if that fact would dawn on you,” I said.
“Am I to understand that because you have had the clock repaired, my right to it is the less real?” he inquired, an ugly gleam in his blue eyes.
“You are to understand precisely that,” I replied. “And permit me to remind you, first of all, that this clock is not yours. It is now Mrs. Gordon’s. She has asked me to keep it for her. I shall take whatever steps I may think necessary for its safe keeping. I am beginning to think that it is valuable when people break into my rooms to observe it.”
“Break into your rooms?” He looked at me angrily.
151“I beg your pardon,” I said suavely. “I was thinking, of course, of the thieves.”
He bowed. “A very natural mistake. Felice noce.”
“Good night, duke.” We pressed each other’s hands warmly.
But at the door he turned.
“Mr. Hume, do you not think that when people resort to the extreme measures of binding one and shutting one up in closets they must be decidedly anxious that one shall not see things?”
“Without a doubt,” I retorted airily. “As, for instance, when they tear leaves out of library-books.”
Again we bowed. So we understood each other.
I threw open my shutters and looked out. The duke was stepping into his gondola. Evidently he saw it was useless to sail longer under false colors. He waved to me familiarly.
It was a superb morning. The rain had been blown away. Venice had robed herself in glory, and proudly enthroned herself as the great enchantress, the magician of the seas.
I threw myself wearily on my bed for a few hours’ sleep. The clock might strike as it would. I was disgusted with its antics.
It was long past noon when I was awakened by St. Hilary.
“Well,” I asked sleepily, “have you had any luck?”
“None whatever. The duke’s belongings were packed. His rooms were dismantled. If you remember, he has been living at Bellagio the past few days. He has a villa there.”
“So you have no trace of the missing papers?”
“No trace,” he replied gloomily. “But tell me of your own adventures with the duke.”
“It appears,” he said ruefully, when I had finished, “that the duke has had the advantage of us after all. But at least we have the clock.”
“Yes,” I echoed sarcastically, “we have the clock. But it seems to me that the childish contrivances one sees sold on the boulevards of Paris for ten sous are as ingenious. I have heard it strike four of the hours, and each hour’s results were more disappointing than the last.”
“Did you expect to find its secret on the surface, like the pebbles on the sea-shore? There 153are pebbles on the shore, yes. But, my friend, a poet has said we must dive for the pearls.”
“The automata are all more or less broken,” I grumbled. “We gained precious little by our trips to Holland and Russia, I think.”
“I don’t call my trip a failure.”
“But your Dutch clock-maker didn’t repair the automata,” I insisted.
“Very true. But he was able to assure me what I had already guessed and hoped might be true-that the antics of the automata, even when the clock was in perfect order, could never have amounted to much. Their various movements, however droll and amusing, were too simple to have much significance.”
“The automata have no significance!” I repeated testily. “Why, I thought the fact that the clock as an automaton clock was precisely the significant point. If the automata amount to no more than a row of pins, how the devil is the clock to tell its secret?”
“My dear Hume,” returned St. Hilary quietly, “they may amount in the end to a row of diamonds. I did not say that the automata have no significance whatever. On the contrary, they are perhaps the principal actors of each scene. But the chorus of each scene is to be found in the bas-reliefs that appear on the bronze plates forming 154the backgrounds. If we grant that, the office of the automaton figures is chiefly to identify the twelve scenes in the bas-relief.”
“But if that is true, shall we be able to identify the scenes in the backgrounds when the automatic figures are missing?”
“It will be difficult to do so, certainly. But I believe these automata have a purpose more subtle than that. If my theory is correct, the mad goldsmith would not tell his secret by the uncertain means of a lot of dancing and gesticulating figures. The mechanism would be too intricate and delicate to stand the test of wear and time. It is most probable that the automatic figures, while serving the subsidiary purpose of identifying the various scenes in the backgrounds, are really a bluff. They are a blind to rob the backgrounds of their significance. They are designed to catch the attention of the unwary. The unthinking man, held by the movements of the figures themselves, would look no farther.”
“That is a really ingenious theory, St. Hilary,” I said admiringly.
“Be sure of this,” replied the dealer complacently, “the riddle that man has been ingenious enough to devise, man is ingenious enough to solve.”
155“Granting always that it is a consistent riddle.”
“And I have enough faith in my goldsmith to believe that,” said St. Hilary obstinately. “But it is three minutes to one. The clock is about to strike.”
We watched the first of the doors open, the circular platform pushed out. A headless figure stood motionless, its right hand resting on a lion’s head. At the stroke of the hour, the beast lifted its paw and dropped it again. The headless figure wiggled its left hand. Then the platform solemnly retreated, and the door was noiselessly shut.
“Doesn’t that simply cap the climax for exquisite inanity?” I cried.
“It is silly enough to bear out my theory. The raising of that lion’s paw, the ludicrous wiggling of the solemn figure’s hand, can not possibly have any meaning.”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“Because the gestures were made but once. But you observed the background?”
“It was simply the Ducal Palace,” I said indifferently, “which of itself may mean much or nothing.”
“Precisely. It is the figure and the lion that give the scene its vital touch. Any schoolboy 156could have recognized them. They stand, of course, for San Marco, the patron saint of Venice, and his lion. And now, let us get to work. Our first step must be to make ourselves familiar with every detail of each scene of the hours.”
“Since the automata are useless, and, in most of the hours, are missing entirely, why should we not take flashlight snap-shots of the twelve backgrounds? We could then study them at our leisure.”
“Excellent. But the camera?”
“I have a very good one with an admirable lens. I can take the pictures myself. These photos we can always carry about with us on our person. There will be no danger of the duke’s stealing those. But the clock, we can’t keep guard over it all the time. The duke will surely insist on its being given up to him sooner or later. If necessary, he will call in the police.”
“Hume, you are an inspiration. What’s your idea for getting rid of it?”
“If I shipped it to America for Mrs. Gordon, ought she not to be grateful to me for saving her that bother!”
“But the duke could readily prevail on her to cable to America to have it sent back to her. The ruse would give us a month’s start, it is true; but what if we shouldn’t find the casket in a month?”
157“I have thought of that. If it were sent to a wrong address, by mistake, or to your shop, for example? And if you sent instructions that the box was to be put carefully away until your return?”
“My dear fellow, you are a jewel of thoughtfulness. Take your flash-lights immediately; and when you have made twelve perfect pictures, we will pack the clock, and see ourselves that it is safely started on its long journey to America. Until then, one or the other of us must guard it day and night.”
I took the twelve flash-lights. They were a perfect success. Two days later the clock was boxed, labeled “Glass, with care,” and on its way to Genoa, whence it was to be shipped to New York.
On the same steamer was a letter from the dealer to his partner, advising him that a box containing an article of value had been shipped that day, and instructing him to have it stored away carefully until further orders. All information concerning it was to be absolutely withheld.
We acted not a day too soon. Our duke appeared again; this time armed with legal authority. I expressed the profoundest regret, but how could I dare to keep so valuable an antique 158longer in my possession, since I had reason to know that thieves had already forced their way into my rooms to steal it? The duke stormed and threatened. I smiled at him blandly. When he asked me where I had sent it, I informed him that I had despatched it to New York, in the care of St. Hilary’s partner. As to the instructions St. Hilary had given his partner, the dealer in antiques would doubtless tell him what they were, since he had written them. St. Hilary lied, cheerfully and absolutely, asserting that he had sent orders to his partner promptly to surrender the clock to any person bearing a signed note from Mrs. Gordon.
For a week St. Hilary scarcely left my room. He ate little; he smoked boxes of cigarettes; he consumed pots of black coffee. Such sleep as he had he snatched for an hour at a time in my armchair. And always in front of him were the photographs of the backgrounds of the twelve hours.
As for me, I waited on him hand and foot. I was a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. Now I went to Rosen’s to buy some volume, now to Organia’s to borrow a collection of rare prints, now to the Museo Civico to consult the director. The archives of the Frari, the Academy of Arts, each of them saw me often. In the morning, perhaps I looked at a picture of Carpaccio or Bellini; in the afternoon I explored an obscure canaletto.
I was content to take the humbler position. St. Hilary had a right to command. His had been the discovery that made the search possible. Again, it seemed fit that his quicker brain 160should catch the fire, the inspiration. I did not doubt but that sooner or later from the mass of lifeless evidence, which he was heaping about him, he would surely draw forth the secret.
But now, after a week of fruitless searching, his chin a reproach, his hands trembling, and his temper a thing to be respected, he leaned back in the chair and despaired.
“It is useless,” he sighed. “The thing is not to be done in a day or a week. I have not the art of divination. Sometimes I feel that I am on the right track. I grope; I touch something; I clutch at it, but it eludes me, always. There stands the ticking, mocking braggart. It laughs at us with its brazen wheels; it mocks us with its silver tongue. I believe that the spirit of the mad goldsmith actually dwells in its hollow sides.”
And yet, in spite of St. Hilary’s despair, we had accomplished something.
Of the original automata of the twelve hours we had found four only to be in actual working order. In three of the hours, some of the figures were intact, and some were broken. In the five remaining hours, the figures were completely lacking.
To consider the four hours with the figures intact, namely, 1, 2, 6, 7:
1611.-A robed figure and a lion. The lion nods once.
2.-A figure standing over a kneeling slave in an attitude of menace, twice strikes the neck of the slave with a sword.
6.-A dancing figure advances ten steps forward and retreats ten steps.
7.-A dove appears at the window of a tower.
In hours 3, 8, 9, some of the figures were intact, some broken:
3.-A robed figure seated in a chair. Before this figure, designedly motionless, ten disks appear in succession, and are ranged in a row. The figures are broken off the disks.
8.-A crowned figure standing on a dais before a throne. A second figure at the foot of the throne is broken off.
9.-A seated figure with a scepter.
In hours 4, 5, 10, 11, 12 there was not the slightest fragment of the figures remaining.
So much for the automata.
The scenes of the bas-reliefs of the backgrounds were as follows:
1.-A palace, plainly the Doge’s palace. Seven arches of the palace are seen. Beneath six of these arches groups of men are standing-ten figures in each group, or sixty in all.
2.-A hanging.
1623.-A gate.
4.-Three trees; a beast of burden, probably a camel; a well.
5.-Badly mutilated.
6.-Two figures seated on the balcony over the doorway of San Marco. One figure wears the Doge’s cap; the other is crowned with a wreath of laurel.
7.-A barge on a stormy sea.
8.-An empty room in a palace. The door is open; no figures are seen.
9.-Thirteen kneeling figures with outstretched hands.
10.-Six gondolas in procession; tritons spouting.
11.-Mutilated.
12.-Three figures holding out bags.
Such were the automata and the bas-reliefs in the backgrounds of the twelve hours.
As to the scenes they represented, St. Hilary had made a rough guess at most of them. Four or five of the scenes he thought he had identified unmistakably. All twelve of them were scenes out of Venetian history. When I urged him for the results he had gained so far, he declared at first that they were too meager to be suggestive. But I was not to be balked.
“I have been running your errands for a week, 163St. Hilary,” I reminded him. “I have been your obedient messenger-an intelligent messenger, if you will-and I have left you to do the piecing together of the different parts of the puzzle. Now I want to know what you have accomplished.”
“There is very little to tell,” he said sulkily. “Scene one represents St. Mark and his lion, the tutelary saint of Venice. As to the second scene, the story is in every guide-book. The artist Gentile Bellini visited the Sultan of Turkey, and painted for him a picture of the daughter of Herodias bringing in the head of St. John the Baptist on a charger. The Sultan objected that the neck was not rightly drawn-that when a man was beheaded, no neck appeared at all, in fact. The artist disputed the point. To prove himself in the right, the Sultan struck off a slave’s head.”
“And the third hour-the ten disks arranged in a row?”
“The Council of Ten, I suppose.”
“Well, well, the fourth, St. Hilary?” I cried sharply.
“Perhaps you know its significance. I don’t. The camel doesn’t figure in Venetian history, so far as I know. It is true, Marco Polo traveled to the Great Khan of Cathay. The scene might 164have been a chapter out of his life. But after wading through his travels I have failed to find it.”
“And the next, I suppose, is too badly mutilated to be identified?”
“Absolutely,” he grumbled.
“And the background of the sixth hour?” I asked, studying the photograph through a powerful magnifying-glass. “Have you been able to identify either of the two figures seated on the balcony?”
“Both,” he replied with more animation. “The figure with the Doge’s cap is Dandolo. The figure crowned with a wreath of laurel by his side represents the poet Petrarch, who was his guest. The automatic figure that dances the ten steps forward and backward symbolizes a festival held on the Piazza after Venice had subdued her enemy Crete.”
“The seventh hour represents,” I ventured, “the legend of the Doge receiving news of victory by a carrier-pigeon. Every child who feeds the creatures on the Piazza knows that story. The tower must be the Campanile.”
“Quite right. The scene of the eighth hour,” continued St. Hilary, “you discovered for yourself in the Academy this morning. The room of the palace in the background is an exact reproduction 165of the palace seen in the painting of Carpaccio.”
“And the ninth?” I demanded, feeling that our information was meager indeed.
“Here, again, we can only guess. The broken figure may be Carmagnola, the soldier of fortune. The thirteen figures kneeling in the background no doubt typify his conquered enemies. The procession of the gondolas and the spouting tritons in the tenth probably represent the going of the Doge in his bucentaur to wed the Adriatic.”
“And the eleventh hour must be quite hopeless. The automaton is missing and the plate at the back is battered beyond all recognition,” I said moodily.
“The twelfth is almost as obscure,” concluded St. Hilary. “The figures holding out the bags are perhaps conquered Genoese offering ransom.”
“It is not very promising,” I confessed, “Have you any theory whatever as to the meaning of these scenes?”
“I have a dozen. But they are all equally impossible.”
“Let me hear one of them, at least,” I urged.
“Well, then, if I repeat to you the numbers 10, 4, 7, 21, 1, 10, 3, 40, of what do you at once think?”
166“A cipher,” I cried eagerly.
“That is the theory that seems to me the most hopeful at present. The numbers I have mentioned are the figures of the different successive scenes. It is barely possible that these numbers, either alone or combined with other numbers, might bring us to the hiding-place of the casket. The trouble is that not every scene has figures in the background. The eighth, for instance. And in hours five and eleven, the backgrounds are so mutilated that, even if this theory were true, we should lack those numbers to make our cipher complete.”
“And yet the existence of a cipher seems the only possible way by which the riddle may be solved.”
“I believe that is true. There are twelve hours, that is, there are twelve different steps-twelve different links to the whole chain. Beginning at hour one, so many steps, paces, or what not, ought to bring us to hour two. There, beginning afresh, so many steps, paces, and so forth, again ought to bring us to hour three, and so on. Do you get the idea?”
“It sounds reasonable,” I replied thoughtfully. “But since two or three scenes are missing, I can not see much promise in this theory.”
“I told you that they were all impossible,” 167growled the dealer. “So far we are quite at sea. To-morrow, perhaps-” he sighed wearily.
“To-morrow perhaps we shall have better luck,” I said cheerfully. “It is always darkest before the dawn.”
“Pas de banalités. I am not a Sunday-school scholar to be preached at. Come, let’s to dinner.”
Three weeks passed before we made any further progress. A clue, but always an imaginary clue, would prick us into feverish activity, which invariably led us nowhere.
But toward the end of the third week of our search, St. Hilary came to my rooms one afternoon, triumphant. He had actually made a discovery. And this discovery proved, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, not only that the clock had a story to tell, not only that the twelve hours actually did constitute twelve links of a chain, but that somewhere, in the background of each hour, there was some mark corresponding to a like mark in some part of Venice.
“It is only a little clue,” he said with affected modesty, “a very little one. But who knows that it may not be the wedge that shall pry open our treasure-box?”
“Produce this wedge by all means,” I said skeptically.
“This morning, about half past ten, I found 169myself in the Campo San Salvatore-you know it, the little square with the house of the gaily painted balcony and the roses on the north side. At the left of the square, going toward San Marco, perhaps you remember, there is a boys’ school. You may have observed a respectable old servant who walks solemnly up to the big bell on the left of the door, leading a little boy by the hand. He always rings the bell at eight o’clock in the morning. When the door is opened he hands the school-books to his charge, shakes his finger at him, and toddles off to the seller of sweetened water at the corner for a drink.”
“Has this respectable old man anything to do with your precious discovery?” I asked impatiently.
“A great deal to do with it. This morning, as I was saying, I caught sight of my old man and the young gentleman. My eyes dwelt on them affectionately while the servant rang the big bell, and shook his forefinger at the smiling boy. Now observe, my dear Hume; if I hadn’t met my old man, I should have hurried through the square. In that case I should have missed the boy with the fish.”
“Oh, there is a boy with a fish, is there?” I remarked.
“Yes,” he said severely, “there is a boy with 170a fish. While I stood watching the old man, a stream of curses and abuse in the Venetian dialect disturbed my pleasant reflections. I turned, and there, at the open door of a large house, stood a barefooted boy with a flat basket of fish. Two servants were shrieking at him like the very devil. The fish was bad, perhaps, or the boy had given the wrong change. I do not know. The point is that the old servant, the seller of sweetened water, who left his stand, and the dark-eyed gipsies at the well, who left their buckets, came to look on. The bad little boy with the fish didn’t like this publicity. Especially when a majestic policeman with a long feather in his round hat--”
I groaned. “Is the majestic policeman with the long feather in his round hat absolutely essential?”
“The majestic policeman with the long feather in his round hat is absolutely essential”, said St. Hilary with an amused drawl.
“Even the long feather in the round hat!” I could not resist asking.
“Especially the long feather in the round hat, as you will see if you are patient For this majestic policeman came on the bad little boy quite unawares, and, seizing his ear, he made him a prisoner. Then the youngster wrenched himself 171free, only to run headlong into another policeman who was coming from the Calle San Rosario. The spighetti, compelled to double on his tracks, plunged recklessly into the first opening that offered. This happened to be the gate leading into the school garden, that chanced to be wide open. Now, we thought, the youngster will surely be caught, and when the policeman with the long feather in his hat languidly strolled after his prey, the rest of the square pressed respectfully after to see the fun. But the young ragamuffin had the policeman now quite at his mercy, for he lost himself immediately among threescore of boys at play. So that presently, while the policeman was vainly searching the garden for him, the bad little boy regained the entrance. He cast one cautious eye into the square to be sure that the second policeman had disappeared, and then, after the manner of small boys the world over, he held his thumb and fingers extended at the majestic policeman, and called him naughty names.”
“A beautiful little sketch of low life in Venice,” I said sarcastically. “But I fail to see even yet the pertinency of the long feather in the round hat.”
“Patience, my friend. When he had sufficiently insulted the majestic policeman in this 172manner, he took one of his mullets, and hurling it with precision---”
“Struck the round hat with the long feather.”
“-Missed the round hat with the long feather,” corrected St. Hilary with calm precision, “but struck the long feather on the round hat. It hung pitifully, a draggled and wobegone bit of finery; and those of us who had followed him into the court naturally regarded it with respectful sympathy. And then my heart came into my mouth. The broken feather was pointing, as it were a human hand, straight to a round--”
“Not another round hat!” I cried in despair.
“-Straight to a round stone let into the wall. And on this round stone was carved a camel’s head, the precise image of the camel’s head in this photograph of the background of the fourth hour.”
St. Hilary looked at me in triumph, and, picking up the photograph, thrust it into my hand.
“The precise image of the camel’s head in this photograph,” I repeated, trying to grasp the significance of that statement. “But why should you think that the clock-maker copied the head of that particular camel in the background of the fourth hour? My dear St. Hilary, your introduction 173was too elaborate for your news to be striking. I expected something more startling.”
“But, idiot,” cried the dealer, exasperated, “look at the photograph. Do you see nothing peculiar about that camel’s head?”
I took the magnifying-glass and studied the photograph carefully.
“Nothing-unless it be the eye. Perhaps it is a defect in the workmanship. But it looks-yes, it certainly does look as if the camel was blind.”
“The camel carved on the stone let into the wall of the house is blind also.”
“This is news, if it is not the merest chance,” I cried.
“And before the house was used as a school, it was called the House of the Blind Camel.”
“The House of the Blind Camel!” I repeated excitedly. “By Jove, St. Hilary, does that mean you have stumbled on one of the twelve landmarks?”
“Patience. Look at your photograph again. What else do you see in the background of the fourth hour?”
“A well,” I answered promptly. “If you have found the well, there can be no doubt.”
“And I have found the well. Look at the 174photograph. What is the design of the beading round the curb?”
“A looped wreath with pomegranates between each loop.”
“The well in the school garden has a beading of the same design. But study the photograph a moment-look carefully at the second and third pomegranates from the left. Do you notice anything peculiar?”
“No, I see nothing peculiar about them.”
“The more we study the history of this clock, Hume, the more I am impressed with the fact that the eye is a most unreliable organ. We rarely see a thing as it actually is; we see it as we expect it to be. Take the magnifying-glass and look at those second and third pomegranates carefully.”
“I see now,” I cried. “They are not pomegranates; they are two rosettes.”
“And there are two rosettes between two of the loops of the well in the garden. You grasp the importance of the discovery, I hope. It means that we have to study the photographs from quite a different point of view. All we have to do now is to find in the various backgrounds some significant mark that is paralleled in the various landmarks about Venice that lead to the casket.”
175“Are you not a little too sanguine, St. Hilary? These twelve marks are often most obscure. In the fifth and the eleventh hours there are no marks whatever.”
“That is true,” replied St. Hilary thoughtfully. “This discovery by itself is quite useless. If we could have found the mark of the fifth hour we could have begun at this fourth hour. But since that is missing--”
“And I suppose it is useless for us to think of beginning with the landmarks of the last hours, even if we could find them in the background. The last of the landmarks would be almost certainly found not in the open air, but in the interior of some palace.”
“There is another difficulty that has just occurred to me,” continued St. Hilary. “We have been taking it for granted that we start from the Pillar of San Marco in the Piazzetta. I still think that it is reasonable that the search begins there. If that be true, we find ourselves in the fourth hour at the Campo San Salvatore, but the landmark of the sixth hour brings us back to the balcony of San Marco in the Piazza again. In the next hour we simply stroll a few feet away to the Campanile. In that case the mad clock-maker has been leading us about in a senseless circle. He may have been mad, but he was not as mad as that.”
176“Then you think the wisest thing is for us to search for the second landmark? It does not seem particularly promising. So far as I can see, it is merely a curtain, with a conventional decoration of what appears to be more like two husks of corn than anything else I can think of. One of these husks is perpendicular; the other horizontal.”
“I see no reason why we should not begin with the sixth hour,” asserted St. Hilary.
“I think we may begin at any one of them with an equal chance of success,” I said hopelessly. “This search of ours is like nothing so much as hunting for twelve needles in twenty thousand haystacks.”
And it turned out that I was right. For several days we made no farther progress. We became so utterly fatigued and weary of looking for we knew not what that we saw nothing. We took to wandering vaguely about the canals and the streets. A restlessness urged us out at all hours in search of these vague landmarks. Every morning after breakfast we set out somewhere. Every evening we returned discouraged. And so a month passed, and we were no nearer to the da Sestos casket.
Jacqueline and I had not written to each other for nearly three weeks.
When I first returned from Bellagio I had intended to explain the apparent flippancy of my last words to her-that I could write the legend of the da Sestos clock, as well as search for the casket. For Jacqueline was, as I have said, quite ignorant that the casket and the clock were in any way connected.
But I had not done so. Partly because I wished to surprise her with that fact, and partly because success had not crowned our efforts as soon as I had hoped. I regretted that I had not told her everything; and yet each day I put off doing so. And so three weeks passed, and still I had not told her.
The fact is, this search for the casket had in some subtle way raised a barrier between Jacqueline and myself. At first I had entered into the quest with enthusiasm. Jacqueline’s entreaty had given the task a dignity and a certain sacredness. But, gradually, my motive for finding it was lost sight of. The madness of St. Hilary 178had also entered my veins. I became more and more eager for success purely for its own sake, and not for Jacqueline’s. The quest had become almost a mania-just such a restless, haunting, cruel longing as tempts the miner to drag his aching feet one more burning mile for the gold he covets. That Jacqueline had asked me to find the casket for her redeemed the search from folly. But as soon as I cared for the thing itself it became a degrading passion.
It was Sunday morning. St. Hilary had insisted upon my going once more to the Academy of Arts to compare the photograph of the eighth hour with Carpaccio’s picture, the Dismissal of the Ambassadors, in the series of paintings known as the Martyrdom of St. Ursula. I was still in search, of course, of the ever-baffling landmark.
The bell of the English church was solemnly tolling in the Campo San Agnese. The doors of the Academy were not yet open, and I began to watch listlessly the well-dressed throng of English and American tourists crossing the big iron bridge on their way to divine service. To my great surprise I saw Jacqueline among them.
There was a pensive look on her lovely face that touched me. I realized, now that I saw her, how great had been my folly. My eyes had been 179bent on the mire, while the goddess herself was passing by. I sprang up the steps of the bridge, and met her half-way across.
“Jacqueline,” I cried, “when did you come to Venice?”
She looked at me with a sort of gentle wonder. I put up my hand guiltily to my chin. St. Hilary and myself had grown so absorbed in our search that we had given little thought to what we ate or drank or what we wore or how we looked. But Jacqueline, it seemed, was observing my face and not my scrubby beard.
“We arrived last night. But you look a ghost, a shadow of yourself.”
“The hunt for the casket, Jacqueline, is an excellent preventive against obesity,” I said lightly.
At this reference to the casket the color slowly left her cheeks, and her eyes looked into mine wistfully.
“You-you are still searching for it?”
“Of course I am!” I answered almost gruffly.
“I did not know. You have not written,” she said quietly.
“If I have not written,” I answered, “it is because there was nothing to write about.”
“Nothing to write about, Dick?” She smiled dreamily.
180“Not worth mentioning, Jacqueline.”
“Then you are still in the dark?”
“Absolutely.”
“And-and you have little hope?”
“Almost no hope.”
Absorbed though I was in my own selfish feeling, I could not but notice the disappointment of her tone. We were at the church door now. She held out her hand. To see her pass thus out of my sight, to know that my own obstinacy was raising this barrier between us, that I had wounded her-I could not let her go like that, even for a few hours.
“Jacqueline,” I said firmly, “I wish to tell you about this search. I know a half street, half campo near here, delightfully shaded with mulberry trees. There are benches, and one may sit there and talk quietly. Will you go with me? I will not keep you long.”
“Well, Dick, what is it?” she asked when she was seated.
Her hands were clasped loosely in her lap. Her gaze passed me by, and dwelt on the cage of a thrush hanging on a nail in a doorway. The feathered prisoner was singing in ecstasy.
“This mad quest that you have sent me on,” I broke out impetuously, “I want you to release me from it.”
181She was silent a moment, then drew herself up with a certain hauteur.
“I release you from it, of course, since you wish it,” she answered with dignity.
“No, no, Jacqueline. Not in that way. Do not misunderstand me. I call it a mad quest not because it seems a hopeless one. It is mad, because it is useless. The most rigid sense of honor could not hold you to your lightly spoken word. You love the duke, or you do not. You love me, or you do not. Surely you do not pit us against each other. This is not a test of love. And so, I say, this quest is mad. It is leading me surely away from you. I am beginning to care for it for its own sake. I want you to release me from it.”
“It is leading you from me?” she repeated wonderingly. “But you are doing this for me. Does not that keep me in your thoughts? You say this is not a test of love. Why should it not be? And if the lover is weary already of his task-if-” Her lip trembled.
“Dear Jacqueline, how can I make you understand? I ask you to release me from this search, not because I am tired, not merely because I think the casket can not be found. It is the principle of the thing. Supposing that the duke should bring you this casket, could that possibly 182alter your feeling toward him? Could that make you love him more than you do at present?”
“Why should it not?” she answered, a little defiantly. “In a sense he has shown himself a truer lover than you. He is keeping up the search, cheerfully and patiently. And yet every day he finds time to write me of his failures and his successes. Apparently, I asked him to remove mountains. He attempts the impossible gladly, and sometimes I think he will accomplish it.”
“The duke has been searching for the casket? Here, in Venice?”
“Yes, and without a moment’s rest, so he assures me. More than that, he declares he is on its track-that he will bring it to me soon.”
I was stupefied. Neither St. Hilary nor I had once seen the duke since he left my rooms. It seemed incredible that he should have been in Venice these past three weeks and that we should not know it.
“He will bring you the casket soon?” I repeated blankly. “And if he brings it to you, you are going to listen to him? Because I have said nothing, Jacqueline, have you thought me idle and indifferent? Do you trust him more than you trust me? If he has the luck to stumble on this casket, will that prove that he is more worthy 183of your regard than I? Will you marry him for that?”
Jacqueline looked at me a moment in silence. She laid her hand gently on my arm.
“Has this quest troubled you so much? I begin to think it a very childish one. I begin to realize my folly, and yet--”
She rose from the bench, and shaking out her skirts daintily, opened her parasol.
“You are going, Jacqueline? There is no more to be said?”
“I told my aunt that I was going to church. I think I had better go. But afterward, if you will walk to the hotel with me, you may stay to luncheon, and in the afternoon you may take me out on the lagoon again. Then you shall tell me everything-just what you have done, and just what you have failed to do. And perhaps-perhaps, I may recall you from the task that you have undertaken for me.”
“Jacqueline,” I stammered with joy, “you mean-you mean that you may marry me without regard to this foolish promise of yours to the duke?”
“I mean,” she answered slowly, “that I must know everything-everything. Then I may be better able to judge just what I ought to do, what I wish to do.”
184“I shall wait for you at the church door. I must first go to my rooms to make myself presentable. Heavens, Jacqueline, if you could know the relief I feel at abandoning this mad search. It has been a nightmare; but now we shall go out into the blessed sunshine again.”
“But, Dick,” she said wistfully, “you will need to plead very eloquently this afternoon to convince me that I may withdraw my word to Duke da Sestos. If only it had been possible to find that wretched casket! I shall look for you after church.”
I watched her disappear within the doorway. In half an hour I had been to my rooms and returned. I slipped into a pew at the rear of the church. I wished to think-to dream. It seemed incredible that the search was ended. What would St. Hilary say when he knew that I had abandoned it? And, strange as it may seem, already I was vaguely sorry. Could I watch St. Hilary steadily going on with the search and be quite indifferent as to his success or failure? Should I never have regrets that I had not kept at it a little longer? Then I looked at Jacqueline, kneeling devoutly a few pews in front of me, and I smiled joyfully. No, with Jacqueline as my wife, I had no need of the excitement of a fool’s errand.
185Out of the stillness of my thoughts, as if from afar off, the text of the preacher fell on my ears, unheeding and yet strangely receptive. The text was twice repeated. It was sufficiently fantastic in itself, but to me it was the finger of fate.
It was pointing to the hiding-place of the da Sestos casket.
This was the text:
Moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid the arms of it with fine gold.
The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind, and there were stays on either side of the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays.
At first, as I have said, the words fell quite idly on my ears. Then, without any effort on my part, a throne made of ivory, its arms overlaid with fine gold, seemed to flash before my eyes. I tried to resume the thread of my thought again, but the vision of the throne of ivory with the two lions at the side haunted my excited brain. All at once, with a shock of surprise, I knew why it stood before me with such startling distinctness. The throne of the automaton of the eighth hour was of ivory, its arms were of gold, it had six steps, and two lions crouched on either side.
At first I was merely astonished at the similarity of the throne of the Bible and the throne of the da Sestos clock. But other scenes of the hours sprang before my mind in review. I remembered 187the hour of St. Mark and the lion; the Council of Ten before the Gate; the Sultan and the kneeling slave. The scenes stopped abruptly there. In a flash, almost without thought, certainly without deliberate reasoning, I had fathomed the secret of the clock:
The scenes of the twelve hours were not Venetian scenes. They were Bible scenes disguised in an environment that was Venetian.
I could parallel each of the three hours that had occurred to me with familiar stories of the Bible. The scene of the first hour, the figure of St. Mark and the lion, as we had thought, was really Samson and the lion; the Sultan and the kneeling slave were David and the prostrate giant, Goliath. The Doge receiving the news of victory from the dove in the Campanile became Noah and the dove. But the other scenes-would they be equally clear?
I took the first scene that occurred to me, that in which the ten disks appear in succession, with the gate in the background. I took a Bible from the rack of the pew and opened it eagerly at the Book of Genesis. My knowledge of the Old Testament was not profound. I turned the leaves over quickly, scanning each page. I had to look simply for a passage in which a gate and ten men figured. I became unconscious of the reverent 188worshipers about me. I was heedless even of good form. For half an hour I patiently turned page after page. I had reached the Book of Judges, and began to despair. Was this theory that promised so well to be discarded in its turn like a dozen others? No; I found the passage. It proved my theory to be a fact beyond peradventure. The passage was in the Book of Ruth:
Then went Boaz to the gate and sat him there, and behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spoke, came by, unto whom he said, Ho, such a one, turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside and sat down.
And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit down here. And they sat down.
Nothing could be more clear. The Doge became Boaz; the ten disks, representing, as we had thought, the Council of Ten, were the elders of the city.
I read the story of Samson and the lion. It was indisputably the scene of the first hour. The very words were a challenge-a clear statement in black and white-that he who should solve the riddle of the clock would have his reward. And he who failed should have his penalty to pay-the forfeiture of peace of mind and content-a bitter enough wage for failure:
And Samson said unto them, I will now put 189forth a riddle unto you: If ye shall certainly solve it within seven days of the feast, and find it out, then will I give you thirty sheets and thirty changes of raiment.
But if ye solve it not within seven days, then shall ye give to me thirty sheets and thirty changes of raiment.
“I will put forth a riddle unto you!” And a brave riddle it had been. The mad goldsmith had taken these old Bible stories for his key-a key that he knew was as imperishable as time itself, and yet a key that would guard his secret well. To the Catholic of that day the Bible was a sealed book.
But if this were true-if these stories were indeed the key-was the riddle easier of solution? Would the Bible stories be more readily understood than the Venetian stories?
The theory of St. Hilary flashed across my mind. The cipher-that was the clue. In each of the scenes of the background a certain number had been mentioned. Thirty changes of raiment. Seven days. Six steps to the throne. Two lions. Thus was my second great discovery made.
Each scene from the Bible involved certain numbers.
I read the story of David and Goliath:
And there went a champion out of the camp of 190the Philistines named Goliath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
There were the numbers again; six cubits and a span.
I could no longer doubt. And now, having wrested so much of the madman’s secret, having surprised from him the key, I should, I felt confident, solve the rest. I was to cut the last thread that bound this secret to the grave.
Suddenly I became conscious of faces turned frowningly in my direction. In my excitement I had, I suppose, rustled the leaves. It was an unusual sight to see a man of discretion frantically turning over the leaves of his Bible during a sermon.
To sit through the sermon was impossible. I must get a breath of fresh air. I would wait for Jacqueline outside.
I walked to the quay of the Grand Canal. I scanned the sweep of the palaces, from the Salute to the Rialto Bridge. To which of them would these new clues lead?
I walked back to the church. The sermon was droning slumberously on. I wandered restlessly down the Calle San Rio. I found myself at the steamboat landing. The little steamer was discharging its quota of passengers. I leaped aboard. My desire to look on the photographs 191was intense. I wished to verify the other scenes. I wished to confound St. Hilary with my discovery.
Not until the steamer was half-way across the Giudecca did I remember, with a shock of dismay, my appointment with Jacqueline.
I persuaded myself that I had time to look at the photographs just once; I could hurriedly recount my wonderful discovery to St. Hilary; I could be rowed across to the Molo in three minutes, and be at the church in another ten. If I failed Jacqueline, she would forgive me when she knew the extraordinary circumstances under which I had deserted her. Had she not regretted, with a hint of reproach in her words that still rankled, that my search for the casket had been so fruitless of results? And had she not said that the duke was hunting for it without a moment’s rest? Then there was no time to be lost.
I did fail Jacqueline. St. Hilary was not in my rooms, and I waited for him. The temptation to triumph over him proved too sweet. I was not the first man to risk his precious birthright of love for a mess of pottage.
Two hours had passed since I left the church. St. Hilary and I had spent the time in a diligent study of the Bible. The result confirmed my theory beyond a doubt. With the exception of the scenes of the fifth and tenth hours, we had identified them all as Bible scenes. We had also found that in each story certain numbers were mentioned.
“To tell which are the significant numbers, that is the question,” said St. Hilary. “In two or three of the stories, at least, more than one set are mentioned. How can we be sure which numbers count, and which do not?”
“We can not be sure, I suppose,” I replied thoughtfully. “We can only guess. But at least we may make a reasonable guess. The goldsmith had some method in choosing them. What would be the most obvious?”
“That he should select the numbers that really counted in the various stories,” replied St. Hilary.
“I have observed that the important numbers are invariably mentioned in the first part of the 193story. We may go on that assumption to begin with, at any rate. Our search for the landmark of the second hour ought to begin from the Piazzetta, where the first landmark stands-that is, the lion of San Marco. Now our first numbers are 7, 30, 30. If we interpret those rightly, we shall find ourselves at the second landmark. Thence we may start for the third.”
“But the meaning of those numbers,” grumbled St. Hilary, “is extremely doubtful. They may be added to, or subtracted from, or divided or multiplied by others, and the landmark of the second hour is veiled in complete obscurity. If it were the landmark of the fourth hour, the House of the Camel, we should know what to look for.”
“But it is not,” I said impatiently. “Your precious landmark is quite useless by itself, because we have not been able to identify the Bible story of the fifth hour, and so we are ignorant of the numbers that will lead us to the landmark of the sixth. We are compelled to start at the first hour. From that point we go on to the second, and from the second to the third. As to the gap in the fifth hour, we won’t attempt to jump that until we come to it.”
The little man yawned. His dogged skepticism was maddening. The fact is, he resented my 194having been so fortunate as to make the great discovery. Because he had not made it himself, or helped to make it, he sulked and made endless objections.
“How do you propose to interpret the first numbers, 7, 30, 30?” he asked.
“Well,” I answered patiently, “say that they represent blocks of buildings. We go down the Grand Canal until seven blocks are passed. If we took the seventh canal to our left, and continued up that canal until thirty blocks had been passed--”
“We should find ourselves somewhere out in the lagoon,” sneered St. Hilary.
“If we passed seven blocks on our right, then, proceeding up the seventh canal until thirty blocks were passed, took the junction of the two canals at this point for a new start until thirty more blocks were passed, where should we find ourselves?”
St. Hilary consulted the map of Venice that lay before him.
“You are a little obscure, my dear Hume. But, so far as I can make it out, after you had passed your sixty little canals, if you turned to the left you would find yourself in the Jewish quarter. If you turned to the right, in the fishermen’s quarter. You may be sure that da Sestos 195was not quite so mad as to hide his casket in a part of the city that would be subject to demolition. You will have to try again.”
“Thirty changes of raiment and thirty sheets,” I mused. “Thirty plus thirty; why not the sixtieth palace down the Grand Canal, either left or right?”
“Within seven days,” quoted St. Hilary, closing his eyes.
“I had forgotten the seven days,” I admitted. “Well, then, why not the fifty-third palace?”
“Why the fifty-third?” demanded St. Hilary in a bored tone.
“Within seven of sixty ought to mean fifty-three,” I said quickly.
St. Hilary opened his eyes. A look of interest dawned in them. He drew toward him an old map of Venice, La Nuova Pianta di Venezia, it was called, and was published in 1689. It contained an interesting chart on which were marked all the palaces of Venice existing at that time. He began to count these palaces carefully, going down the Grand Canal toward the Rialto Bridge.
“The fifty-third palace is the Palazzo Chettechi. Look in that French monograph, Les Palais de Venise Moderne. See if it is mentioned there.”
196I turned hurriedly to the index.
“Yes, it is mentioned. But, confound it, the palace was torn down and rebuilt in 1805.”
“And down with it tumbles your cunning little house of cards,” commented the dealer cynically.
“After all, that solution was too obvious to be reasonable,” I retorted cheerfully, though I felt the disappointment keenly. “But look here, St. Hilary”-I was consulting the Bible again-“there are four thirties mentioned. Perhaps the second couple of thirties has some significance. Does the fifty-third palace bring us to a corner of the Grand Canal, or should we find ourselves in the middle of the block?”
“We should find ourselves at the junction of the Grand Canal and the Rio di Lucca.”
“Good! And if you counted sixty palaces up the Rio di Lucca, will that old chart tell the palace you would arrive at?”
“The Palazzo Giuliano.”
“The Palazzo Giuliano might contain our landmark on its wall just as well as any other.”
“It might,” he cried, consulting the monograph on the palaces of modern Venice again, “only it happens that the fa?ade of that palace was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Again your little 197house of cards crumbles about your ears, my dear Hume.”
I stared down at the table. In what other way might I read a meaning into the numbers? I picked up an envelope and began to toy with it unconsciously. It was addressed to St. Hilary. It was literally covered with erasures and directions, and had followed him half around the world. But it had found him at last, though some of the directions were of the vaguest. We ought to be as clever as a postmaster. Aside from the extraneous aids of the directory, what methods would a postmaster use?
Mechanically I began to trace the ordinary and palpable clues to the destination of any letter. First of all, there is the state or country. That is as vague as the earth itself. But the state is narrowed down to the city in the state, and the city to the street--
“I believe I have found a solution that will hold water at last, St. Hilary!” I cried.
He blinked at me skeptically.
“Let us hear it by all means.”
“Take the address on the envelope. It has suggested a possible solution to the numbers. First of all, there is the country. The country is narrowed down to the city of the country. Next comes the number of the street in the city. After 198that the house in the street. In other words, the direction of an envelope is narrowed to more and more defined limits.”
“An extremely accurate but not a startlingly original presentation of facts, dear boy. The connection between this envelope, for instance, and the da Sestos casket?”
“Call Venice the state; the city, the Grand Canal. Your street will then be the seventh canal; the number of the street will be the house of the landmark.”
St. Hilary’s dark eyes snapped. He was thoroughly interested at last. He drew toward him the map of Venice again. He pushed it away with an exclamation of disgust.
“Ingenious again, but not conclusive. The seventh canal flowing into the Grand Canal is a cul-de-sac. Its length is not a hundred yards, and it leads merely to the Campo San Stefano.”
“You are mistaken,” I said calmly. “You are counting the ditch that surrounds the Giardino Reale. The seventh canaletto is the Rio di Bocca. And the sixtieth palace from the junction of the Rio di Bocca and the Grand Canal will be the house of the landmark. What palace is that? Don’t tell me that that is torn down.”
“No, this one exists. It is called the Palazzo Fortunato. Come, it is time for us to do something 199more strenuous than talking. We will test your theory, and I think it a fairly reasonable one at last. But first of all, a bite at Florian’s. It is three o’clock. We may get no dinner.”
I had unconsciously taken the lead since my great discovery. Now I hesitated. Though I had broken my tryst with Jacqueline, I had intended seeing her this afternoon before we actually began our search. But I could not let St. Hilary begin his explorations without me. A few hours sooner or later, I persuaded myself, would not make much difference.
I know now how specious were my arguments. A woman’s love is not to be treated lightly. It is the most sacred and precious thing in the world, and she knows that it is. It does not come and go at one’s beck and call. It burns brightly so long as the flame is fed; to quench that flame is dangerous, and it is not always easy to revive it.
“I am quite ready to go with you,” I said soberly. “My gondolier is waiting below. We will let him take us to the Molo and then dismiss him. We want no witnesses or possible spies.”
“Excellent,” he murmured. “And bring along your Bible; that must be our chart and compass in our voyage of discovery.”