The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
"It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."
"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it
closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the
commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."
"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he remarked.
"'L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to
Georges Sands."
Egerton Castle
_The Baron's Quarry_
"Oh, no, I assure you, you are not boring Mr. Marshfield," said this
personage himself in his gentle voice--that curious voice that could flow
on for hours, promulgating profound and startling theories on every
department of human knowledge or conducting paradoxical arguments without
a single inflection or pause of hesitation. "I am, on the contrary, much
interested in your hunting talk. To paraphrase a well-worn quotation
somewhat widely, _nihil humanum a me alienum est_. Even hunting stories
may have their point of biological interest; the philologist sometimes
pricks his ear to the jargon of the chase; moreover, I am not incapable of
appreciating the subject matter itself. This seems to excite some
derision. I admit I am not much of a sportsman to look at, nor, indeed, by
instinct, yet I have had some out-of-the-way experiences in that
line--generally when intent on other pursuits. I doubt, for instance, if
even you, Major Travers, notwithstanding your well-known exploits against
man and beast, notwithstanding that doubtful smile of yours, could match
the strangeness of a certain hunting adventure in which I played an
important part."
The speaker's small, deep-set, black eyes, that never warmed to anything
more human than a purely speculative scientific interest in his
surroundings, here wandered round the skeptical yet expectant circle with
bland amusement. He stretched out his bloodless fingers for another of his
host's superfine cigars and proceeded, with only such interruptions as
were occasioned by the lighting and careful smoking of the latter.
"I was returning home after my prolonged stay in Petersburg, intending to
linger on my way and test with mine own ears certain among the many
dialects of Eastern Europe--anent which there is a symmetrical little
cluster of philological knotty points it is my modest intention one day to
unravel. However, that is neither here nor there. On the road to Hungary I
bethought myself opportunely of proving the once pressingly offered
hospitality of the Baron Kossowski.
"You may have met the man, Major Travers; he was a tremendous sportsman,
if you like. I first came across him at McNeil's place in remote Ireland.
Now, being in Bukowina, within measurable distance of his Carpathian
abode, and curious to see a Polish lord at home, I remembered his
invitation. It was already of long standing, but it had been warm, born in
fact of a sudden fit of enthusiasm for me"--here a half-mocking smile
quivered an instant under the speaker's black mustache--"which, as it was
characteristic, I may as well tell you about.
"It was on the day of, or, rather, to be accurate, on the day after my
arrival, toward the small hours of the morning, in the smoking room at
Rathdrum. Our host was peacefully snoring over his empty pipe and his
seventh glass of whisky, also empty. The rest of the men had slunk off to
bed. The baron, who all unknown to himself had been a subject of most
interesting observation to me the whole evening, being now practically
alone with me, condescended to turn an eye, as wide awake as a fox's,
albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who
had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of
a glorious fire's warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in
the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of
the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered into
conversation with me.
"He would no doubt have been much surprised could he have known that he
was already mapped out, craniologically and physiognomically, catalogued
with care and neatly laid by in his proper ethnological box, in my private
type museum; that, as I sat and examined him from my different coigns of
vantage in library, in dining and smoking room that evening, not a look of
his, not a gesture went forth but had significance for me.
"You, I had thought, with your broad shoulders and deep chest; your
massive head that should have gone with a tall stature, not with those
short sturdy limbs; with your thick red hair, that should have been black
for that matter, as should your wide-set yellow eyes--you would be a real
puzzle to one who did not recognize in you equal mixtures of the fair,
stalwart and muscular Slav with the bilious-sanguine, thick-set, wiry
Turanian. Your pedigree would no doubt bear me out: there is as much of
the Magyar as of the Pole in your anatomy. Athlete, and yet a tangle of
nerves; a ferocious brute at bottom, I dare say, for your broad forehead
inclines to flatness; under your bristling beard your jaw must protrude,
and the base of your skull is ominously thick. And, with all that, capable
of ideal transports: when that girl played and sang to-night I saw the
swelling of your eyelid veins, and how that small, tenacious, claw-like
hand of yours twitched! You would be a fine leader of men--but God help
the wretches in your power!
"So had I mused upon him. Yet I confess that when we came in closer
contact with each other, even I was not proof against the singular
courtesy of his manner and his unaccountable personal charm.
"Our conversation soon grew interesting; to me as a matter of course, and
evidently to him also. A few general words led to interchange of remarks
upon the country we were both visitors in and so to national
characteristics--Pole and Irishman have not a few in common, both in their
nature and history. An observation which he made, not without a certain
flash in his light eyes and a transient uncovering of the teeth, on the
Irish type of female beauty suddenly suggested to me a stanza of an
ancient Polish ballad, very full of milk-and-blood imagery, of alternating
ferocity and voluptuousness. This I quoted to the astounded foreigner in
the vernacular, and this it was that metamorphosed his mere perfection of
civility into sudden warmth, and, in fact, procured me the invitation in
question.
"When I left Rathdrum the baron's last words to me were that if I ever
thought of visiting his country otherwise than in books, he held me bound
to make Yany, his Galician seat, my headquarters of study.
"From Czernowicz, therefore, where I stopped some time, I wrote, received
in due time a few lines of prettily worded reply, and ultimately entered
my sled in the nearest town to, yet at a most forbidding distance from,
Yany, and started on my journey thither.
"The undertaking meant many long hours of undulation and skidding over the
November snow, to the somniferous bell jangle of my dirty little horses,
the only impression of interest being a weird gypsy concert I came in for
at a miserable drinking-booth half buried in the snow where we halted for
the refreshment of man and beast. Here, I remember, I discovered a very
definite connection between the characteristic run of the tsimbol, the
peculiar bite of the Zigeuner's bow on his fiddle-string, and some
distinctive points of Turanian tongues. In other countries, in Spain, for
instance, your gypsy speaks differently on his instrument. But, oddly
enough, when I later attempted to put this observation on paper I could
find no word to express it."
A few of our company evinced signs of sleepiness, but most of us who knew
Marshfield, and that he could, unless he had something novel to say, be as
silent and retiring as he now evinced signs of being copious, awaited
further developments with patience. He has his own deliberate way of
speaking, which he evidently enjoys greatly, though it be occasionally
trying to his listeners.
"On the afternoon of my second day's drive, the snow, which till then had
fallen fine and continuous, ceased, and my Jehu, suddenly interrupting
himself in the midst of some exciting wolf story quite in keeping with the
time of year and the wild surroundings, pointed to a distant spot against
the gray sky to the northwest, between two wood-covered folds of
ground--the first eastern spurs of the great Carpathian chain.
"'There stands Yany,' said he. I looked at my far-off goal with interest.
As we drew nearer, the sinking sun, just dipping behind the hills, tinged
the now distinct frontage with a cold copper-like gleam, but it was only
for a minute; the next the building became nothing more to the eye than a
black irregular silhouette against the crimson sky.
"Before we entered the long, steep avenue of poplars, the early winter
darkness was upon us, rendered all the more depressing by gray mists which
gave a ghostly aspect to such objects as the sheen of the snow rendered
visible. Once or twice there were feeble flashes of light looming in
iridescent halos as we passed little clusters of hovels, but for which I
should have been induced to fancy that the great Hof stood alone in the
wilderness, such was the deathly stillness around. But even as the tall,
square building rose before us above the vapor, yellow lighted in various
stories, and mighty in height and breadth, there broke upon my ear a
deep-mouthed, menacing bay, which gave at once almost alarming reality to
the eerie surroundings. 'His lordship's boar and wolf hounds,' quoth my
charioteer calmly, unmindful of the regular pandemonium, of howls and
barks which ensued as he skillfully turned his horses through the gateway
and flogged the tired beasts into a sort of shambling canter that we might
land with glory before the house door: a weakness common, I believe, to
drivers of all nations.
"I alighted in the court of honor, and while awaiting an answer to my tug
at the bell, stood, broken with fatigue, depressed, chilled and aching,
questioning the wisdom of my proceedings and the amount of comfort,
physical and moral, that was likely to await me in a _tête-à-tête_ visit
with a well-mannered savage in his own home.
"The unkempt tribe of stable retainers who began to gather round me and my
rough vehicle in the gloom, with their evil-smelling sheepskins and their
resigned, battered visages, were not calculated to reassure me. Yet when
the door opened, there stood a smart chasseur and a solemn major-domo who
might but just have stepped out of Mayfair; and there was displayed a
spreading vista of warm, deep-colored halls, with here a statue and there
a stuffed bear, and under foot pile carpets strewn with rarest skins.
"Marveling, yet comforted withal, I followed the solemn butler, who
received me with the deference due to an expected guest and expressed the
master's regret for his enforced absence till dinner time. I traversed
vast rooms, each more sumptuous than the last, feeling the strangeness of
the contrast between the outer desolation and this sybaritic excess of
luxury growing ever more strongly upon me; caught a glimpse of a picture
gallery, where peculiar yet admirably executed latter-day French pictures
hung side by side with ferocious boar hunts of Snyder and such kin; and,
at length, was ushered into a most cheerful room, modern to excess in its
comfortable promise, where, in addition to the tall stove necessary for
warmth, there burned on an open hearth a vastly pleasant fire of resinous
logs, and where, on a low table, awaited me a dainty service of fragrant
Russian tea.
"My impression of utter novelty seemed somehow enhanced by this unexpected