The valley of eyes unseen
thirty-six years; he was, moreover, of that "hard-bitten" type which,
if it dies young, does so only by a violent or unnatural death.
I was still pondering the melancholy problem a week later when I
received from a firm of solicitors in Shanghai a letter stating that in
pursuance of the request made to them some days before by their client,
the late Ronald Mirlees, they were forwarding to me, separately, a
parcel which he had left in their charge. The lawyers added that while
respecting the promise Mirlees had extracted from them not to reveal
this matter to any third party, they relied on my honour to make public
any evidence the parcel might contain which would help the authorities
to arrive at some conclusion regarding Mr. Mirlees' mysterious death.
Of the contents of the package they themselves were totally ignorant.
A day after that the parcel arrived. I tore off the outer covering and
found inside it a bundle wrapped in stout oilskin, sealed at every
point and so enmeshed in cords that I could scarcely read the legend
on the two labels. They were addressed to me in a curiously scrawled
writing, and when I had taken off this cover, there dropped out a
small fat envelope in the same hand, but more recognisable to my eye.
It was, so far as I could remember, the writing of Ronald Mirlees.
"Dear Hugh Jevons" (ran the missive)--
"It becomes necessary that you should step in to help me a second
time--and a last time--in my life. I have not forgotten how you helped
me before. You were a solid man to me then, and it is proof enough.
I believe you a solid man still that I have picked upon you to be
custodian of my confidences now that I can no longer hold them myself.
You will understand what I mean, as you read on.
"In the first place, my number is up. I see death approaching as
clearly as you look to the rise of to-morrow's sun. But I do not intend
that my secret shall die with me. Some other human being must carry
on the knowledge I have gained during the past year, for I feel there
is more in my experience than mere marvel and mystery and adventure.
I feel, I _know_, that there is a purpose at work behind it all: that
the Great Artificer who planted us, bickering insects, upon this planet
never willed that such truths as I have unearthed should sink back
into oblivion after a man of the real, outer world has penetrated to
them--and sacrificed his life in the doing. It wouldn't square with my
idea of the Great Artificer.
"Not for your scholarship or your knowledge of the East have I chosen
you to be legatee of my secrets--you would hardly flatter yourself that
far. I was under no illusion as to your qualifications for partnering
me before--but you partnered me handsomely, for all that. You were
ready to listen to my theories at a time when men with far bigger
pretensions pooh-poohed them; you were intelligent enough to let my
brains do duty for the pair of us. The orthodox oriental societies were
not always that intelligent. For them, those pretty stones we picked
out from under the ruin of Lao Tien Ssu would be there now, and the
book which is my chief claim to be remembered would languish still in
manuscript. I must have told you that was how I utilised the bulk of
my share in the loot? Anyway, it was. _You_ helped me to the ownerless
gems, comrade. _You_ had a hand in financing _Treasure of Asia_. _You_,
therefore, have assisted materially in throwing light on this dim-lit
quarter of the globe. I've known respected God-fearing professional
orientalists who couldn't say as much--without a lie.
"Now I claim a bigger service of you. I've instructed my lawyers to
send you this packet only after my death. It was a pretty blistering
oath I collected from the senior partner of the firm, and I think he'll
respect it. What I want done with the manuscript is another story.
I will be perfectly frank with you. I consider it to be a dangerous
thing--unless rightfully used. You wouldn't carry fulminate of mercury
about in your pocket, would you? Well, I regard this manuscript as more
deadly than fulminate of mercury. I solemnly assure you that I believe
death began to close in upon me from the moment I resolved to make
a record of the events with which this manuscript deals. It sounds
fantastic, does it not? Perhaps you will alter your opinion as you read
on.
"But, you may ask, since I am convinced I am to die in any event, why
do I not publish the manuscript now? I answer that it is in the nature
of an act of submission. I swore to keep these matters secret from the
world. In intention, I broke my oath. The punishment at once gathered
over my head. I acquiesce in the justice of it. It is the difference
between the criminal who confesses on the scaffold and the coward
who professes innocence to the end, between dying contrite and dying
in revolt. I have chosen the former course. It still sounds wild and
incredible? That view, too, I think you will come to abandon.
"But, you say again, was it a comradely act to pass the narrative on
to you? I reply, not uncomradely. The detonator is harmless enough in
a situation where it cannot be touched off. So with this manuscript.
I am convinced, nay, certain, that no danger threatens you so long as
you hold the secret close in your own bosom. It is no blind unreasoning
malignance we have to deal with, but a sentient power, and as I now
see, a just one, meting out punishment only where there is guilt. I
have been guilty: therefore I am doomed. You, so long as you keep the
secret, are guiltless: you will be unharmed. Why, then, have I not
destroyed the manuscript and with it the risk of betrayal? Because, as
I have written before, I do not believe it was intended that the secret
should perish utterly for the outer world. Perhaps, in years to come,
the powers which forbade me to reveal these matters will lift the veto.
Should that occur, have no doubt that they will find means to convey
their will to you, they, who have found no difficulty in making known
to me, over a distance of untold miles, that I must die.
"Till then, comrade, lock this secret in the innermost recesses of
your soul. Hold the manuscript safe. Leave nothing to chance. Deposit
it under seal with your bankers or your lawyers, with instructions
that nothing is to be done with it without your express command, and
that should you die without giving that command, the package is to be
destroyed unopened. For I say again that there is a doom in it, a doom
which I now see approach me as clearly as I see from the window of this
hotel the big, butt-ended freighters swinging on the tide of Whangpu
River.
"As to the manuscript, every word in it is as true as our finite human
brains can know aught to be true. Nothing is written but what I have
seen with my own eyes or heard with my own ears. The narrative will
amaze you, doubtless, but I give you credit for the intelligence not
to meet it with a stupid unreasoning denial. Let me appeal to you to
put aside all your preconceived notions as to what is and what is not
in this queer, half-known quarter of the earth. Above all, banish
from your mind the least shadow of suspicion that I am either mad or
insincere. I am as sane as you are, and in dead earnest. Consider
the probabilities. Is it for one instant to be supposed that I, who
see death hard upon me, should write a monstrous hoax?--that I, who
came East when I was little more than a boy and have given my whole
working life to the search for hard facts regarding the East, should
now fritter my last hours on mere romance of the imagination?--that I,
who have boldly stated the truth as I found it, even though this often
exposed me to hostility and derision from the orthodox, timid-minded
scholars of this land, should abandon truth for falsehood at a moment
when I am due to appear before a Higher Tribunal which knows nothing
but eternal truth?
"I take my leave of you with every warm wish for your happiness. I am,
I may say, without kin of my own, and at about the time this package
arrives you will receive from the same firm of lawyers a notification
that I have named you my heir to such small parcels of this world's
goods as I possess. The property consists almost wholly of personal
effects, trophies, curios--some of them valuable, by the way--and
the copyright of my published works. The more precious part of my
belongings goes with this letter. I offer it to you not as proof of
the truth of my narrative, but as a gift made in good fellowship to a
comrade who risked his life with me in a quest few men in the world
would have taken on. But there is a condition attaching to the legacy.
I charge you that if at any future date it becomes possible, in the
manner I have hinted, for you to publish this manuscript, you should
do so, using what may be necessary of the proceeds from sale of the
contents of the accompanying box. Even should you print the narrative
on gold leaf and bind it in choicest silk, there will still be left
money enough to maintain you in luxury to the end of your days.
"Good-bye.
"Ronald Mirlees, known as Ran Mirlees, Master of Arts in the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland, and now resident in the Marco Polo Hotel,
Shanghai, China, this first day of January in the year of Our Lord
19--."
Enclosed in the package was a heavy skin box, about eight inches square
by four high. I opened this with a small key hanging by silk thread
from the lid, and at once sat back in my chair gasping and blinking
with astonishment. The casket was full to the brim with large uncut
diamonds, not one of them smaller than a marble and all apparently of
very fine quality. My skill in gems was not professional, but I could
see at a glance that these stones must be worth many thousands of
pounds sterling; and if I had been curious to read Mirlees' manuscript
before, now my eagerness was whipped to the point of fever. I tore off
the wrappings from the close-writ ten quarto sheets and began to peruse
them.
The house boy came in with a note from Randegger (my partner at the
office) inquiring rather acidly if I was ill. I looked up at the
clock. It was two in the afternoon. I then remembered that the boy
had entered the room some time before but that I had ordered him out
without hearing what he had to say. That must have been at tiffin
time: I had been reading for four hours solid, lost to all else in the
world. I sent a note to Randegger pleading urgent private affairs,
and resumed the reading of Mirlees' narrative. It was dark before I
had finished, for the manuscript, though not of an inordinate length,
was written, till quite near the end, in Mirlees' crabbed, scholarly,
meticulously fashioned hand, and did not admit of a rapid perusal. Nor
was the subject matter of a sort to encourage skipping. As I worked
from phase to phase of the amazing story it seemed to me that never
before in the history of written words could so strange, so incredible,
yet withal so convincing a record of events have been placed on paper.
Time after time I flung down the manuscript almost in anger--only to
pick it up a moment later and find the precise spot where I had left
off. Now I felt that I was in the grip of a tale of such force as only
the hall-mark of truth can give, now I seemed to be listening to the
ingenious but wild fancies of a madman. Here was human experience set
at naught, the history which has passed as certainty for two thousand
years brusquely picked up and thrown down gutted like cod under the
fishmonger's knife--and on what evidence? The statements of one man,
unsupported by a single witness. It was monstrous, unthinkable! No sane
person could have offered such testimony. It is a commonplace saying
that genius may come near to insanity. Mirlees possessed the brilliant,