The City in the Clouds

"Very well," he said, perfectly calmly, and held out his hand. "Now come and have some supper and tell me all you know."

Then that astonishing man thrust his arm through mine and led me down the great library.

"What a marvelous intellect that fellow Pu-Yi has," he said confidentially. "He saw the situation in all its bearings, from all sides at once, and made an instant decision. I'll tell you now, Kirby, that he actually predicted every detail of what has just come to pass. He told me that he owed you his life and was perfectly ready to die for you, as of course for me and my daughter, but that it had occurred to him that his living for all three of us might be by far the wisest attitude to adopt under the circumstances. I quite agree with him."

Then again came the little dry, strange chuckle.

"But no more peddling poppy-juice to my Chinese, my boy. It plays the devil with their nerves in the end!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Morse and I sat at supper in a room which differed in no way from the ordinary study of a country gentleman. Except for the very slightest suggestion rather than sensation of vibration, which my host explained was the drag of the City on the three great towers which perpetually oscillated out of the perpendicular, and so insured the safety of the vast elastic structure, there was nothing to indicate that we were two thousand two hundred feet up in the air.

Our meal was of the simplest, and during it I told Morse, without reservation, all that I had heard from Arthur Winstanley.

"He has the outline very correctly. I'll fill it in later. How long has Lord Arthur been in London?"

"About five days, I believe."

"Time for many preparations to be made if they're going to strike quickly," he said, more to himself than to me, drumming his fingers on the tablecloth.

Then he looked up.

"And these two men who were seen to-day in the bar of your public house?"

"One, sir, was undoubtedly Midwinter. My very sharp-witted informant describes the other man as a swarthy person of just over middle height and apparently of great personal strength. He was bearded, sallow-faced, and had somewhat the appearance of a half-caste."

"Zorilla y Toro, as I expected," said Morse. "Zorilla the Bull, as he is known in half the Republics of South America."

"No doubt," I remarked, "a formidable pair of ruffians, but remember that I saw you deal with one of them at any rate, that night at the Ritz Hotel. The way he legged it out of the drawing-room wouldn't have inspired me with any particular fear of him."

Morse struck the table with his hand.

"I wish I'd sent a bullet through his heart instead of playing fancy fireworks round him. But I feared London and your colossal law and order. It's perfectly true, he didn't influence me in the least on that night. He came to sell his employers, to sell the Hermandad for a hundred thousand pounds."

"It would have been cheaper than this." I waved my hand to indicate the expensive crow's-nest of my future father-in-law.

Morse laughed.

"It wouldn't have made the least difference," he said. "The man couldn't hurt me at the time because he had to obey the orders of the villainous Society at his back. The old Marquis da Silva, who is simply a tool in their hands, insisted that I was not to be even interfered with in any way until the two years of grace from my first warning were up. Though their object was to get hold of half my fortune, and Midwinter's to revenge himself personally upon me, the Society and he didn't dare do anything until the moment struck. There were too many political issues still involved.

"That's why I made Mr. Mark Antony Midwinter dance out of the Ritz Hotel on that night."

"It's what Arthur Winstanley said."

"That young man will go far. Now, Kirby, I think you understand everything, and you've got to throw in your lot with Juanita and me, for a time at any rate, and never say you didn't know what you were up against."

I took a glass of claret and lit a cigarette.

"I understand the facts, as you say, but I don't understand you. Allowing for all your natural and deep anxiety about Juanita, I simply fail to understand why you regard this Midwinter and his companion or companions with such apprehension. Surely you could have the man locked up to-morrow, knowing what you know about him."

Morse sighed, with a sort of gentle patience.

"A few more facts," he said; "and do reflect that it's most improbable that a man of my intelligence and resources should act as he has done without being sure of what he was doing. In the first place, I've had Midwinter watched by the most famous detectives in America, watched for years. None of these people have ever been able quite to bowl him out – a simile from your English game of cricket. But three of the most trusted and acute agents have lost their lives during these investigations, and lost them in a singularly unpleasant manner."

He sighed again, this time wearily, and I saw that his face was old and without interest or hope.

"What on earth is the use," he went on, "of telling you all I know about this man? Sir" – his voice began to rise, and a light came into the dark depths of his eyes – "Sir, if I saw his corpse before me now, I wouldn't believe him dead or his power for evil ended until I had hacked his head from his shoulders with my own hand! You cannot, I say you simply cannot realize or understand the fiendish ingenuity, persistence, and icy cruelty of this being, for I will not insult our common humanity by calling it a man. If Juanita ever gets into his hands – "

His mouth, his whole face, was working, I thought he was going to have a fit, and truth to tell, something icy began to congeal around my own heart.

"Calm yourself, sir," I said, as authoritatively as I could. "Juanita is doubly safe now that I am here, and as for Midwinter, he'll never approach us here. It's beyond the wit of mortal man, and, meanwhile, I'll see that he's apprehended and removed from all power of doing harm. I am only a young man, Mr. Morse, but I'm rather a power in the land. You see I have an important newspaper at my back, and as for you, who have already made the Government feed out of your hand in the matter of these towers, you should have gone to the Home Secretary in the first instance. At any rate, we'll go together, and believe me, we shall be listened to."

"I thank you, my dear boy," he replied with an effort, "but there is such a thing as Fate, and Fate has whispered in my ear. I am not naturally a superstitious man, but during a life spent in strange places among strange people I have learnt to be very wary of a material interpretation of life. But this I will say, whatever I feel about myself, however my precautions might fail, I believe that my dear daughter will win to safety in the end, that the power of evil will be overcome, and that you will be her savior."

I could have sworn, as he shook hands and bade me good-night, there was a tear in the great man's eye, and I wondered how long it was since any one had seen that in this master of millions and of men.

A picturesque young Chinaman, a valet in flowing Oriental robes, who spoke English with the most appalling cockney accent you ever heard in your life, conducted me to a charming bedroom, provided me with everything necessary, and in five minutes I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A really full day, wasn't it?

When I woke up the next morning my room was flooded with sunshine from a dome in the ceiling.

Seated upon my bed, and balancing a cup of tea, was Master Bill Rolston. His hair was restored to its natural red, his nose normal, and his high cheek-bones were gone. On each side of his chubby face his transparent ears stood out at right angles, and his button of a mouth was wreathed in a genial smile.

"Good old Pu-Yi came for me about two o'clock this morning, Sir Thomas, and told me all that had happened. I say, sir, what a man to have on the staff of the Evening Special! What an intellect!" – I seemed to have heard that phrase before. "Why, we'd have him dictating to Cabinet Ministers within a year!"

I lay idly watching this brilliant and faithful boy; journalist once, I reflected, journalist forever. There's no getting it out of the blood, and here, if I'm not mistaken, when many of us have faded away from Fleet Street forever, will be the biggest of us all.

I was surprised to find that Bill was distinctly on the side of Gideon Morse in his anticipation of evil. We argued it out while I was dressing and I insisted that the City was impregnable.

"To all ordinary appearance, to all ordinary efforts, yes. But I shall never change my belief that there's nothing that human wit can invent that human wit cannot circumvent."

After breakfast, which I took alone, the servant led me to a great white house standing among conservatories, which I learned was almost an exact reproduction of the Palacete Mendoza, the residence of Gideon Morse at Rio. And there, in her own charming sitting-room, fragrant with flowers and stamped in a hundred ways with her personality, Juanita was waiting. She was radiant. Happiness lay about her like sunbeams. I never saw any one more changed than she was from the girl I had met the night before.

"Come, dearest," she said, "and I'll show you some of our wonders. I could not show you all of them in one day. Oh, Tom, isn't it all splendid, couldn't you sing and shout for joy!"

I helped her into a fur coat – for it was bitter cold outside, though the wind of the night before had dropped – and was provided with one myself as we left the house. Standing in the patio was a little two-seated automobile, a tiny toy of a thing run from electric storage batteries, which made no noise louder than the humming of a wasp. We got into this and Juanita was like a child as she pulled the starting lever and we rolled away.

I have said I woke to find my bedroom full of sunlight, but, as we glided down an arcade of conservatories, upon each side of the road, so that the illusion of passing among a palm grove was almost complete, I noticed that dark and angry clouds were gathering not far above our heads, and it was through one single aperture that the sunlight poured. The effect of this, when we ran through the tunneled archway and came out into a great square, was curious. A third of the buildings which towered up on every side were bathed in glory, the rest, gray, sullen, and throwing shadows of sable upon the lawns, gravel sweeps, and parquet flooring. We investigated a dozen marvels of which I shall not speak here. The whole experience was a dream of luxury so wonderful, and so fantastic also, that my readers must wait for William Rolston's book, now nearing completion. It was impossible to believe that we were actually walking, motoring, more than two thousand feet above London in a little world of our own which bore no relation whatever to ordinary human life.

This was especially borne in upon me with overwhelming force when we had ascended the steps of a tower and came out into a glass chamber on the roof, where an old Chinese gentleman with tortoise-shell spectacles showed us the great telescope which Morse had installed. Following the shifting path of sunlight, I got a dim glimpse of the English Channel over a far-flung champaign of fertile woods and downs, studded here and there with toy towns the size of threepenny-pieces. Once, but only for a moment, I made out the great towers of Canterbury Cathedral, but the sun shifted and the vision passed. London itself, brought immediately to our feet, was an astonishing sight, but as every one has seen the photographs taken from aeroplanes I will not dilate upon it, though it differed in many ways from these.

Perhaps the most pleasing sight of all was that of Richmond Park, where the winter Fair had just begun. We could see the roundabouts, the swings, and so forth, with great clearness, and even, as the wind freshened, catch a faint buzzing noise from the steam organs. Then a captive balloon rose up, I suppose a thousand feet, and some quarter of a mile away. With powerful field glasses we could see the big basket crammed with adventurous trippers, till she was hauled down again to make another ascent and add a few more pounds to the profits of her proprietors.

I was quite tired when we went back to the house to lunch.

During the meal, which was long and elaborate, Morse showed a side of his nature I had never before seen. He was not jovial or in high spirits – distinctly not that – but he was strangely tender and human. I realized the immense love he had for Juanita, and wondered how he could ever bear to see her love me. But he was kindness itself – like a father, to the interloper who had stormed his fortress, and I always like to think of him as he was on that afternoon, full of anecdotes about his youth, of Juanita's mother, of the old days in Brazil. It was my formal whole-hearted reception into his life. Henceforth I was to be – he said it once in well and delicately-chosen words – a son to him, who had never had a son.