The tomb of Ts'in
“The last thing I can do is to arrange to get out,” he answered
evasively. “What did you find?”
Talham hesitated.
“I found nothing, save that our friend T’si Soo has been here. Some of
his cigarette ends were in the fireplace; at least, they are Chinese,
and I gather----”
Tillizinni nodded.
“I didn’t need his cigarette ends to know that,” he said. “I saw him
come out.”
They left the house together, walking arm in arm, through the front
door, leaving the door ajar, and walked away under the very nose of a
policeman who stood at the corner of a street a hundred yards from the
house.
For a long time neither man spoke. Then Tillizinni burst into a fit of
uncontrollable laughter.
“You amuse me very much,” he said, “although you annoy me. Here is a
situation worthy of a comic opera. I go to burgle a house for my own
private ends. I meet another burglar, whom it is my duty, as an
officer of the law, to arrest.”
“Let’s go and talk it over!” said Talham.
* * * * *
“You’re a curious man,” said Tillizinni, and Captain Talham did not
consider it worth while to correct him, though “curious” was an
obvious misapplication of a word.
A bright, cheerful fire burnt in the big Adams’ fireplace, and the
shaded lamp on the table afforded enough light to the room. Outside,
day was breaking over the dull silver of the river and slow moving
tugs were passing up with the tide, drawing a trail of clumsy barges
in their wake.
Tillizinni’s rooms in Adelphi Terrace offered the finest view in
London, but never was London more attractive than in the early hours
of a frosty winter morning.
Neither of the two men had slept that night. A bundle of papers, each
giving a brief account of the tragedy, was at the detective’s elbow.
He looked across to Talham in his worn garments. You could not pity
the tall man. His confidence, his self-satisfaction--in the best sense
of the word--precluded pity. He sat now with a fragrant cigar between
his teeth, a steaming cup of coffee within reach on a little table by
his side, his legs crossed--a model of contentment.
“I gather, of course,” Tillizinni went on, “that you wanted to find
the Ts’in tomb, and I must confess that I regarded your search as
being little removed, in point of self-interest, from the efforts of
our Chinese friends.”
Talham shook his head.
“Accustomed as you are to the venal predilections----” he began.
Tillizinni put up his hands to his ears in mock despair.
“Do you forget that I am Italian?” he asked.
The great anthropologist was a man of quick likes and quicker
dislikes. Never before had he found one to whom he felt so warm and so
instant a regard as he did with this adventurer. Add the warm and
generous qualities of his southern nature, interest in the _rara
humanis_ which his science dictated, and there is every excuse for the
sudden friendship which has so often been the subject of criticism.
Tillizinni was at the zenith of his fame; he had handled the danger of
the Fourth Plague with rare courage and ingenuity, and his name at
this time was in all mouths. Even Scotland Yard, a cautious
institution which does not take the stranger to its bosom, however
brilliant he may be, had succumbed to his fascination, and Room 673E
was “Mr. Tillizinni’s Room,” just as surely and unalterably as Room 1
is the Chief Commissioner’s.
He leant forward to stir the fire, and to return an escaping coal to
its glowing inferno.
“Will your man do the work you require?” he asked.
“In the time?”
The detective nodded, and Talham pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“He has till eleven,” he said; “and a Chinese mechanic can do much in
seven hours.”
There was a restful little interval of silence, which Tillizinni
broke.
“It is most fantastic--the most bizarre idea I have ever heard,” he
said. “From no other human being in the world would I accept such a
story. Yet I believe you.”
“Of course you do,” retorted Talham simply.
Tillizinni stared; then an amused smile crossed his thin lips. The
other surveyed him with great earnestness, then leant forward.
“Signor Tillizinni,” he said, “the acquirement of wealth is a process
which too often dissipates the qualities of self-respect. I will be a
millionaire, not as the thief who robbed a tomb of dross”--he snapped
his fingers finely--“but as the genius who wrested from the dead ages
the secret and its attainments. I am satisfied that in the tomb of
Ts’in I shall have revealed to me that supreme mechanical wonder of
all time--perpetual motion.”
His face was tense; his eyes glossed with the splendour of the
thought. So the eyes of Christopher Columbus might have burnt as he
sighted, through the spray, the low, grey cloud of land upon his bow.
“All this story of mechanical devices,” Talham went on rapidly. “These
rivers of quicksilver which run for ever by some complexity of
machinery--it is all true. There may be little or no treasure; but
that device lies hidden as surely as the bones of the architects are
upon the floor of the chasm.”
He rose, and paced the room with short, quick, nervous steps.
“But suppose when you opened the tomb you found nothing?” asked
Tillizinni. “Suppose the device was non-existent and the quicksilver
rivers had disappeared, and there was nothing but the store of
treasure?”
Talham thought for a while.
“I should take the treasure,” he said impressively, “and afterwards I
should close the tomb reverently and come away.”
Tillizinni laughed. It was a long, rich, chuckling laugh of pure
enjoyment, which not even the reproachful eye of the other could
suppress.
“I like you,” said Tillizinni; “and if I do not consider it my duty to
hamper you, I shall find a pleasure in helping you in your search.”
Ten minutes later, the two men were dozing in their chairs, proof
enough of the ease which comes with friendship.
It was not until ten o’clock, with the bright, winter’s sunlight
flooding the room, that Tillizinni awoke with a sense of refreshment.
The big lamp upon the table still burnt, and he extinguished it.
His eyes fell upon Talham still fast asleep. His legs outstretched,
his hands thrust into trouser pockets, and his chin on his breast.
Tillizinni moved across the room noiselessly, and looked out into the
terrace below. There were two tradesmen’s carts delivering goods at a
neighbouring club. He closed the French windows of the room and
returned to Talham, and dropped his hand upon the other’s shoulder.
Talham was awake instantly.
“Anything wrong?” he asked, as he saw the other’s face.
Tillizinni shook his head.
“That we are both alive is evidence that nothing is wrong,” he said.
“Look at the mantelpiece!”
Talham raised his eyes.
On the shelf above the fireplace, between two Tanagra statuettes, was
a small, square, black box, as large as a small tea-caddy, and not
unlike one in its appearance. Dependent from the case, hung a length
of fuse some eight inches long, and the end was burnt black.
“Ashes in the fireplace--obviously fuse,” said Tillizinni, kneeling
down. “What made it stop burning, I wonder?”
He examined the little rope minutely, using a reading-glass.
“That’s blood!” He pointed with his finger to a stain near the burnt
end. “The man who placed this here had blood on his hands--probably
cut himself in making the entrance. Now, where?”
He walked to the door of the room and, opening it, crossed the broad
landing. Another room opened from here, and he entered. It was used as
a box-room, and should have been locked. For the matter of that, it
should have possessed a lock of more service than the twisted piece of
metal that lay on the floor.
“Wrenched off with a modern pocket-jack,” said Tillizinni approvingly.
“A neat piece of work. Don’t touch the lock; we’ll hunt for a
finger-print by and by. Window open! Humph!”
It was clear which way the thing had come.
“We’ve had a narrow escape,” said Tillizinni.
“So did he,” said Talham.
CHAPTER VII.
AN AFTERNOON CALL.
Talham was seized with the idea of making an afternoon call, and
waited on Tillizinni, to the detective’s embarrassment.
“Tillizinni,” he said, “one of the duties which civilisation imposes
upon its products, is the obligation under which we all rest, to
observe the social amenities.”
After which preamble he deigned to explain that he had accepted an
invitation for himself and for the detective, to what he termed “a
party.”
Tillizinni had visions of being called upon to sing, or do parlour
tricks, and he hastily excused himself.
“You must come,” said Talham gravely. “I did perhaps overstep the
conventions when, without consulting you, I accepted this invitation
on your behalf. But I think you will enjoy yourself. Mrs. Smith is a
lady of singular charm of manner, and has the gift which so few women,
and indeed so few men, possess, of appreciating scientific endeavour
at its true value.”
From which Tillizinni gathered that the lady had been engaged in
impressing upon Talham what a fine fellow he was.
The detective hesitated. He knew he would be horribly bored, but it
must be confessed he was possessed by a curiosity to know exactly how
Talham would behave in that nebulous sphere which is called “society.”
Mrs. Smith had a little house in Bayswater. It was in one of those
long roads which connect Bayswater with Mayfair, and where, at the
Mayfair end, the houses grow narrower and narrower, crowding against
one another as if in a panic lest they stray into the more
unfashionable end of the street.
She was a woman who had a passion for parties, and was never quite so
happy as when she was making two guests groan where one had groaned
before.
Since her entertaining area was severely restricted, it is not to be
wondered that her little social plot was somewhat overcrowded.
Habitués at Mrs. Smith’s “at homes” and functions were sufficiently
well acquainted with the lay of the house to tuck themselves into odd
corners and alcoves; but both Talham and his apprehensive companion
found themselves a little cramped for room in the tiny hall where six
men were endeavouring to find pegs for their coats at one and the same
time.
The drawing-room was on the first floor, and although the stairs
leading up to it were somewhat narrow, Mrs. Smith carried out the
illusion of a Foreign Office reception by receiving her guests on the
first landing with her back to the bathroom door, and handing them
over, as they squeezed past, to an ill-fitted butler, who conducted
them the three or four paces which separated the end of stairs from
the beginning of drawing-room.
She boasted that she never forgot names, and was wont to cite herself
and King Edward as twin souls in this respect.
Indeed, from time to time, she found many startling phases of
resemblance between herself and various members of the Royal Family.
The tiny drawing-room was uncomfortably crowded.
Tillizinni found himself wondering, as he pushed his way through the
press, by what extraordinary manœuvre Mrs. Smith held and attracted
such a large and representative body of good-looking young men.
He had a lurking suspicion that as fast as they entered the
drawing-room by the door they surreptitiously escaped through the
window.
There was that air of unreality which is frequently to be found in the
small drawing-rooms of the people bitten by the social bug.
“She called me Mr. Tinker,” said Talham’s voice in the other’s ear.
His words almost trembled with chagrin. Tillizinni tried to appease
him.
“She called me Phillips,” he said with a smile; “though that is not my
name as far as I know. You must allow for lapses in the memory of a
hostess who probably entertains thousands of people in a year.”
Talham was silent, but he was very annoyed indeed.