The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles.”
The young man laughed delightedly.
“Wasn’t it a rag?” he said. “Such a simple idea—not my own. I haven’t
got the brains. You see, I wanted to go into the detective service,
especially the anti-dynamite business. But for that purpose they wanted
someone to dress up as a dynamiter; and they all swore by blazes that I
could never look like a dynamiter. They said my very walk was
respectable, and that seen from behind I looked like the British
Constitution. They said I looked too healthy and too optimistic, and
too reliable and benevolent; they called me all sorts of names at
Scotland Yard. They said that if I had been a criminal, I might have
made my fortune by looking so like an honest man; but as I had the
misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even the remotest chance
of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But at last I was
brought before some old josser who was high up in the force, and who
seemed to have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others
all talked hopelessly. One asked whether a bushy beard would hide my
nice smile; another said that if they blacked my face I might look like
a negro anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most
extraordinary remark. ‘A pair of smoked spectacles will do it,’ he said
positively. ‘Look at him now; he looks like an angelic office boy. Put
him on a pair of smoked spectacles, and children will scream at the
sight of him.’ And so it was, by George! When once my eyes were
covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and short hair, made me
look a perfect little devil. As I say, it was simple enough when it was
done, like miracles; but that wasn’t the really miraculous part of it.
There was one really staggering thing about the business, and my head
still turns at it.”
“What was that?” asked Syme.
“I’ll tell you,” answered the man in spectacles. “This big pot in the
police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go with my
hair and socks—by God, he never saw me at all!”
Syme’s eyes suddenly flashed on him.
“How was that?” he asked. “I thought you talked to him.”
“So I did,” said Bull brightly; “but we talked in a pitch-dark room
like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that.”
“I could not have conceived it,” said Syme gravely.
“It is indeed a new idea,” said the Professor.
Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind. At the inquiry
office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover.
Having got his information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put
them and himself inside a railway carriage before they had properly
realised the breathless process. They were already on the Calais boat
before conversation flowed freely.
“I had already arranged,” he explained, “to go to France for my lunch;
but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me. You see, I had to
send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President
had his eye on me, though God knows how. I’ll tell you the story some
day. It was perfectly choking. Whenever I tried to slip out of it I saw
the President somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or
taking off his hat to me from the top of an omnibus. I tell you, you
can say what you like, that fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be
in six places at once.”
“So you sent the Marquis off, I understand,” asked the Professor. “Was
it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?”
“Yes,” answered the new guide, “I’ve timed it all. He’ll still be at
Calais when we arrive.”
“But when we do catch him at Calais,” said the Professor, “what are we
going to do?”
At this question the countenance of Dr. Bull fell for the first time.
He reflected a little, and then said—
“Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police.”
“Not I,” said Syme. “Theoretically I ought to drown myself first. I
promised a poor fellow, who was a real modern pessimist, on my word of
honour not to tell the police. I’m no hand at casuistry, but I can’t
break my word to a modern pessimist. It’s like breaking one’s word to a
child.”
“I’m in the same boat,” said the Professor. “I tried to tell the police
and I couldn’t, because of some silly oath I took. You see, when I was
an actor I was a sort of all-round beast. Perjury or treason is the
only crime I haven’t committed. If I did that I shouldn’t know the
difference between right and wrong.”
“I’ve been through all that,” said Dr. Bull, “and I’ve made up my mind.
I gave my promise to the Secretary—you know him, man who smiles upside
down. My friends, that man is the most utterly unhappy man that was
ever human. It may be his digestion, or his conscience, or his nerves,
or his philosophy of the universe, but he’s damned, he’s in hell! Well,
I can’t turn on a man like that, and hunt him down. It’s like whipping
a leper. I may be mad, but that’s how I feel; and there’s jolly well
the end of it.”
“I don’t think you’re mad,” said Syme. “I knew you would decide like
that when first you—”
“Eh?” said Dr. Bull.
“When first you took off your spectacles.”
Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to look at the
sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly,
and a companionable silence fell between the three men.
“Well,” said Syme, “it seems that we have all the same kind of morality
or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of it.”
“Yes,” assented the Professor, “you’re quite right; and we must hurry
up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France.”
“The fact that comes of it,” said Syme seriously, “is this, that we
three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where;
perhaps the President has smashed him like a fly. On the Council we are
three men against three, like the Romans who held the bridge. But we
are worse off than that, first because they can appeal to their
organization and we cannot appeal to ours, and second because—”
“Because one of those other three men,” said the Professor, “is not a
man.”
Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said—
“My idea is this. We must do something to keep the Marquis in Calais
till tomorrow midday. I have turned over twenty schemes in my head. We
cannot denounce him as a dynamiter; that is agreed. We cannot get him
detained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he knows
us, and he would smell a rat. We cannot pretend to keep him on
anarchist business; he might swallow much in that way, but not the
notion of stopping in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris.
We might try to kidnap him, and lock him up ourselves; but he is a
well-known man here. He has a whole bodyguard of friends; he is very
strong and brave, and the event is doubtful. The only thing I can see
to do is actually to take advantage of the very things that are in the
Marquis’s favour. I am going to profit by the fact that he is a highly
respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the fact that he has many
friends and moves in the best society.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the Professor.
“The Symes are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,” said Syme;
“but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at
Bannockburn. Since 1350 the tree is quite clear.”
“He’s gone off his head,” said the little Doctor, staring.
“Our bearings,” continued Syme calmly, “are ‘argent a chevron gules
charged with three cross crosslets of the field.’ The motto varies.”
The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat.
“We are just inshore,” he said. “Are you seasick or joking in the wrong
place?”
“My remarks are almost painfully practical,” answered Syme, in an
unhurried manner. “The house of St. Eustache also is very ancient. The
Marquis cannot deny that he is a gentleman. He cannot deny that I am a
gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite
beyond a doubt, I propose at the earliest opportunity to knock his hat
off. But here we are in the harbour.”
They went on shore under the strong sun in a sort of daze. Syme, who
had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a
kind of marine parade until he came to some cafés, embowered in a bulk
of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step
was slightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was
making apparently for the extreme end of the line of cafés, but he
stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but
he pointed with one gloved finger to a café table under a bank of
flowering foliage at which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth
shining in his thick, black beard, and his bold, brown face shadowed by
a light yellow straw hat and outlined against the violet sea.
CHAPTER X.
THE DUEL
Syme sat down at a café table with his companions, his blue eyes
sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur
with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of
curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose
as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent of
nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the conversation
which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He
jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed
catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an
extraordinary rapidity of utterance.
“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own.
I shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say,
‘The celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most exquisite
French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most exquisite Cockney,
‘Oh, just the Syme—’”
“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself together, and
chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to do?”
“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do let me
read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of
the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my
enemy.”
“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in exasperation.
“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, beaming. “When
the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs—”
“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a
ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three
things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own
epigrams may appear somewhat more forced.”
Syme struck the table with a radiant face.
“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never thought of it. Sir, you
have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.”
“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor.
“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to adopt some
other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between
myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue
cannot be predicted by one of its parties alone (as you have pointed
out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose,
is for the one party, as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by
himself. And so I will, by George!” And he stood up suddenly, his
yellow hair blowing in the slight sea breeze.
A band was playing in a _café chantant_ hidden somewhere among the
trees, and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme’s heated head the
bray of the brass band seemed like the jar and jingle of that
barrel-organ in Leicester Square, to the tune of which he had once
stood up to die. He looked across to the little table where the Marquis
sat. The man had two companions now, solemn Frenchmen in frock-coats