Checkmate

“Ha! Monsieur,” growls the baron, “stone walls have ears, you say if only they had tongues; what tales these could tell! This house was one of Madame du Barry's, and was sacked in the great Revolution. The mirrors were let into the plaster in the walls. In some of the rooms there are large fragments still stuck in the wall so fast, you would need a hammer and chisel to dislodge and break them up. This room was an ante-room, and admitted to the lady's bed-room by two doors, this and that. The panels of that other, by which you entered from the stair, were of mirror. They were quite smashed. The furniture, I suppose, flew out of the window; everything was broken up in small bits, and torn to rags, or carried off to the broker after the first fury, and sansculotte families came in and took possession of the wrecked apartments. You will say then, what was left? The bricks, the stones, hardly the plaster on the walls. Yet, Monsieur Arden, I have discovered some of the best treasures the house contained, and they are at present in this room. Are you a collector, Monsieur Arden?”

Uncle David disclaimed the honourable imputation. He was thinking of cutting all this short, and bringing the baron to the point. The old man was at the period when the egotism of age asserts itself, and was garrulous, and being, perhaps, despotic and fierce (he looked both), he might easily take fire and become impracticable. Therefore, on second thoughts, he was cautious.

“You can now see more plainly,” said the baron. “Will you approach? Concealed by a double covering of strong paper pasted over it, and painted and gilded, each of these two doors on its six panels contains six distinct master-pieces of Watteau's. I have known that for ten years, and have postponed removing them. Twelve Watteaus, as fine as any in the world! I would not trust their removal to any other hand, and so, the panel comes out without a shake. Come here, Monsieur, if you please. This candle affords a light sufficient to see, at least, some of the beauties of these incomparable works.”

“Thanks, Baron, a glance will suffice, for I am nothing of an artist.”

He approached. It was true that his sight had grown accustomed to the obscurity, for he could now see the baron's features much more distinctly. His large waxen face was shorn smooth, except on the upper lip, where a short moustache still bristled; short black eyebrows contrasted also with the bald massive forehead, and round the eyes was a complication of mean and cunning wrinkles. Some peculiar lines between these contracted brows gave a character of ferocity to this forbidding and sensual face.

“Now! See there! Those four pictures – I would not sell those four Watteaus for one hundred thousand francs. And the other door is worth the same. Ha!”

“You are lucky, Baron.”

“I think so. I do not wish to part with them: I don't think of selling them. See the folds of that brocade! See the ease and grace of the lady in the sacque, who sits on the bank there, under the myrtles, with the guitar on her lap! and see the animation and elegance of that dancing boy with the tambourine! This is a chef-d'œuvre. I ought not to part with that, on any terms – no, never! You no doubt know many collectors, wealthy men, in England. Look at that shot silk, green and purple; and whom do you take that to be a portrait of, that lady with the castanets?”

He was pointing out each object, on which he descanted, with his stumpy finger, his hands being, I am bound to admit, by no means clean.

“If you do happen to know such people, nevertheless, I should not object to your telling them where this treasure may be seen, I've no objection. I should not like to part with them, that is true. No, no, no; but every man may be tempted, it is possible – possible, just possible.”

“I shall certainly mention them to some friends.”

“Wealthy men, of course,” said the baron.

“It is an expensive taste, Baron, and none but wealthy people can indulge it.”

“True, and these would be very expensive. They are unique; that lady there is the Du Barry– a portrait worth, alone, six thousand francs. Ha! he! Yes, when I take zese out and place zem, as I mean before I go, to be seen, they will bring all Europe together. Mit speck fangt man mause– with bacon one catches mice!”

“No doubt they will excite attention, Baron. But I feel I am wasting your time and abusing your courtesy in permitting my visit, the immediate object of which was to earnestly beg from you some information which, I think, no one else can give me.”

“Information? Oh! ah! Pray resume your chair, Sir. Information? yes, it is quite possible I may have information such as you need, Heaven knows! But knowledge, they say, is power, and if I do you a service I expect as much from you. Eine hand wascht die and're– one hand, Monsieur, washes ze ozer. No man parts wis zat which is valuable, to strangers, wisout a proper honorarium. I receive no more patients here; but you understand, I may be induced to attend a patient: I may be tempted, you understand.”

“But this is not a case of attending a patient, Baron,” said David Arden, a little haughtily.

“And what ze devil is it, then?” said the baron, turning on him suddenly. “Monsieur will pardon me, but we professional men must turn our time and knowledge to account, do you see? And we don't give eizer wizout being paid, and well paid for them, eh?”

“Of course. I meant nothing else,” said David Arden.

“Then, Sir, we understand one another so far, and that saves time. Now, what information can the Baron Vanboeren give to Monsieur David Arden?”

“I think you would prefer my putting my questions quite straight.”

“Straight as a sword-thrust, Sir.”

“Then, Baron, I want to know whether you were acquainted with two persons, Yelland Mace and Walter Longcluse.”

“Yes, I knew zem bos, slightly and yet intimately – intimately and yet but slightly. You wish, perhaps, to learn particulars about those gentlemen?”

“I do.”

“Go on: interrogate.”

“Do you perfectly recollect the features of these persons?”

“I ought.”

“Can you give me an accurate description of Yelland Mace?”

“I can bring you face to face with both.”

“By Jove! Sir, are you serious?”

“Mr. Longcluse is in London.”

“But you talk of bringing me face to face with them; how soon?”

“In five minutes.”

“Oh, you mean a photograph, or a picture?”

“No, in the solid. Here is the key of the catacombs.” And he took a key that hung from a nail on the wall.

“Bah, ha, yah!” exploded the baron, in a ferocious sneer, rather than a laugh, and shrugging his great shoulders to his ears, he shook them in barbarous glee, crying – “What clever fellow you are, Monsieur Arden! you see so well srough ze millstone! Ich bin klug und weise– you sing zat song. I am intelligent and wise, eh, he! gra-a, ha, ha!”

He seized the candlestick in one hand, and shaking the key in the other by the side of his huge forehead, he nodded once or twice to David Arden.

“Not much life where we are going; but you shall see zem bose.”

“You speak riddles, Baron; but by all means bring me, as you say, face to face with them.”

“Very good, Monsieur; you'll follow me,” said the baron. And he opened a door that admitted to the gallery, and, with the candle and the keys, he led the way, by this corridor, to an iron door that had a singular appearance, being sunk two feet back in a deep wooden frame, that threw it into shadow. This he unlocked, and with an exertion of his weight and strength, swung slowly open.

CHAPTER LXXIX

RESURRECTIONS

David Arden entered this door, and found himself under a vaulted roof of brick. These were the chambers, for there was at least two, which the baron termed his catacombs. Along both walls of the narrow apartment were iron doors, in deep recesses, that looked like the huge ovens of an ogre, sunk deep in the wall, and the baron looked himself not an unworthy proprietor. The baron had the General's faculty of remembering faces and names.

“Monsieur Yelland Mace? Yes, I will show you him; he is among ze dead.”

“Dead?”

“Ay, zis right side is dead– all zese.”

“Do you mean,” says David Arden, “literally that Yelland Mace is no longer living?”

“A, B, C, D, E, F, G,” mutters the baron, slowly pointing his finger along the right wall.

“I beg your pardon, Baron, but I don't think you heard me,” said David Arden.

“Perfectly, excuse me: H, I, J, K, L, M – M. I will show you now, if you desire it, Yelland Mace; you shall see him now, and never behold him more. Do you wish very much?”

“Intensely —most intensely!” said Uncle David earnestly.

The baron turned full upon him, and leaned his shoulders against the iron door of the recess. He had taken from his pocket a bunch of heavy keys, which he dangled from his clenched fingers, and they made a faint jingle in the silence that followed, for a few seconds.

“Permit me to ask,” said the baron, “are your inquiries directed to a legal object?”

“I have no difficulty in saying yes,” answered he; “a legal object, strictly.”

“A legal object, by which you gain considerably?” he asked slowly.

“By which I gain the satisfaction of seeing justice done upon a villain.”

“That is fine, Monsieur. Eternal justice! I have thought and said that very often: Vive la justice eternelle! especially when her sword shears off the head of my enemy, and her scale is laden with napoleons for my purse.”

“Monsieur le Baron mistakes, in my case; I have absolutely nothing to gain by the procedure I propose; it is strictly criminal,” said David Arden drily.

“Not an estate? not a slice of an estate? Come, come! Thorheit! That is foolish talk.”

“I have told you already, nothing,” repeated David Arden.

“Then you don't care, in truth, a single napoleon, whether you win or lose. We have been wasting our time, Sir. I have no time to bestow for nothing; my minutes count by the crown, while I remain in Paris. I shall soon depart, and practise no more; and my time will become my own – still my own, by no means yours. I am candid, Sir, and I think you cannot misunderstand me; I must be paid for my time and opportunities.”

“I never meant anything else,” said Mr. Arden sturdily; “I shall pay you liberally for any service you render me.”

“That, Sir, is equally frank; we understand now the principle on which I assist you. You wish to see Yelland Mace, so you shall.”

He turned about, and struck the key sharply on the iron door.

“There he waits,” said the baron, “and – did you ever see him?”

“No.”

“Bah! what a wise man. Then I may show you whom I please, and you know nothing. Have you heard him described?”

“Accurately.”

“Well, there is some little sense in it, after all. You shall see.”

He unlocked the safe, opened the door, and displayed shelves, laden with rudely-made deal boxes, each of a little more than a foot square. On these were marks and characters in red, some, and some in black, and others in blue.

“Hé! you see,” said the baron, pointing with his key, “my mummies are cased in hieroglyphics. Come! Here is the number, the date, and the man.”

And lifting them carefully one off the other, he took out a deal box that had stood in the lowest stratum. The cover was loose, except for a string tied about it. He laid it upon the floor, and took out a plaster mask, and brushing and blowing off the saw-dust, held it up.

David Arden saw a face with large eyes closed, a very high and thin nose, a good forehead, a delicately chiselled mouth; the upper lip, though well formed after the Greek model, projected a little, and gave to the chin the effect of receding in proportion. This slight defect showed itself in profile; but the face, looked at full front, was on the whole handsome, and in some degree even interesting.

“You are quite sure of the identity of this?” asked Uncle David earnestly.

There was a square bit of parchment, with two or three short lines, in a character which he did not know, glued to the concave reverse of the mask. The baron took it, and holding the light near, read, “Yelland Mace, suspect for his politics, May 2nd, 1844.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Arden, having renewed his examination, “it very exactly tallies with the description; the nose aquiline, but very delicately formed. Is that writing in cypher?”

“Yes, in cypher.”

“And in what language?”

“German.”

David Arden looked at it.

“You will make nothing of it. In these inscriptions, I have employed eight languages – five European, and three Asiatic – I am, you see, something of a linguist – and four distinct cyphers; so having that skill, I gave the benefit of it to my friends; this being secret.”

“Secret? – oh!” said Uncle David.

“Yes, secret; and you will please to say nothing of it to any living creature until the twenty-first of October next, when I retire. You understand commerce, Mr. Arden. My practice is confidential, and I should lose perhaps eighty thousand francs in the short space that intervenes, if I were thought to have played a patient such a trick. It is but twenty days of reserve, and then I go and laugh at them, every one. Piff, puff, paff! ha! ha!”

“Yes, I promise that also,” said Uncle David dryly, and to himself he thought, “What a consummate old scoundrel!”

“Very good, Sir; we shall want this of Yelland Mace again, just now; his face and coffin, ha! ha! can rest there for the present.” He had replaced the mask in its box, and that lay on the floor. The door of the iron press he shut and locked. “Next, I will show you Mr. Longcluse: those are dead.”

He waved his short hand toward the row of iron doors which he had just visited.

“Please, Sir, walk with me into this room. Ay, so. Here are the resurrections. Will you be good enough – L, Longcluse, M, one, two, three, four; three, yes, to hold this candlestick for a moment?”

The baron unlocked this door, and, after some rummaging, he took forth a box similar to that he had taken out before.

“Yes, right, Walter Longcluse. I tell you how you will see it best: there is brilliant moonlight, stand there.”

Through a circular hole in the wall there streamed a beam of moonlight, that fell upon the plaster-wall opposite with the distinctness of the circle of a magic-lantern.

“You see it – you know it! Ha! ha! His pretty face!”

He held the mask up in the moonlight, and the lineaments, sinister enough, of Mr. Longcluse stood, sharply defined in every line and feature, in intense white and black, against the vacant shadow behind. There was the flat nose, the projecting underjaw, the oblique, sarcastic eyebrow, even the line of the slight but long scar, than ran nearly from his eye to his nostril. The same, but younger.

“There is no doubt about that. But when was it taken? Will you read what is written upon it?”

Uncle David had taken out the candle, and he held it beside the mask. The baron turned it round, and read, “Walter Longcluse, 15th October, 1844.”

“The same year in which Mace's was taken?”

“So it is, 1844.”

“But there is a great deal more than you have read, written upon the parchment in this one.”

“It looks more.”

“And is more. Why, count the words, one, two, four, six, eight. There must be thirty, or upwards.”

“Well, suppose there are, Sir: I have read, nevertheless, all I mean to read for the present. Suppose we bring these three masks together. We can talk a little then, and I will perhaps tell you more, and disclose to you some secrets of nature and art, of which perhaps you suspect nothing. Come, come, Monsieur! kindly take the candle.”

The baron shut the iron door with a clang, and locked it, and, taking up the box, marched into the next room, and placing the boxes one on top of the other, carried them in silence out upon the gallery, accompanied by David Arden.

How desolate seemed the silence of the vast house, in all which, by this time, perhaps, there did not burn another light!

They now re-entered the large and strangely-littered chamber in which he had talked with the baron; they stop among the chips and sawdust with which his work has strewn the floor.

“Set the candle on this table,” says he. “I'll light another for a time. See all the trouble and time you cost me!”

He placed the two boxes on the table.

“I am extremely sorry – ”

“Not on my account, you needn't. You'll pay me well for it.”

“So I will, Baron.”

“Sit you down on that, Monsieur.”

He placed a clumsy old chair, with a balloon-back, for his visitor, and, seating himself upon another, he struck his hand on the table, and said, arresting for a moment the restless movement of his eyes, and fixing on him a savage stare —

“You shall see wonders and hear marvels, if only you are willing to pay what they are worth.” The baron laughed when he had said this.

CHAPTER LXXX

ANOTHER

“You shall sit here, Mr. Arden,” said the baron, placing a chair for him. “You shall be comfortable. I grow in confidence with you. I feel inwardly an intuition when I speak wis a man of honour; my demon, as it were, whispers ‘Trust him, honour him, make much of him.’ Will you take a pipe, or a mug of beer?”

This abrupt invitation Mr. Arden civilly declined.

“Well, I shall have my pipe and beer. See, there is ze barrel – not far to go.” He raised the candle, and David Arden saw for the first time the outline of a veritable beer-barrel in the corner, on tressels, such as might have regaled a party of boors in the clear shadow of a Teniers.

“There is the comely beer-cask, not often seen in Paris, in the corner of our boudoir, resting against the only remaining rags of the sky-blue and gold silk – it is rotten now – with which the room was hung, and a gilded cornice – it is black now – over its head; and now, instead of beautiful women and graceful youths, in gold lace and cut velvets and perfumed powder, there are but one rheumatic and crooked old woman, and one old Prussian doctor, in his shirt-sleeves, ha! ha! mutat terra vices! Come, we shall look at these again, and you shall hear more.”

He placed the two masks upon the chimney-piece, leaning against the wall.

“And we will illuminate them,” says he; and he takes, one after the other, half a dozen pieces of wax candle, and dripping the melting wax on the chimney-piece, he sticks each candle in turn in a little pool of its own wax.

“I spare nothing, you see, to make all plain. Those two faces present a marked contrast. Do you, Mr. Arden, know anything, ever so little, of the fate of Yelland Mace?”

“Nothing. Is he living?”

“Suppose he is dead, what then?”

“In that case, of course, I take my leave of the inquiry, and of you, asking you simply one question, whether there was any correspondence between Yelland Mace and Walter Longcluse?”

“A very intimate correspondence,” said the baron.

“Of what nature?”

“Ha! They have been combined in business, in pleasures, in crimes,” said the baron. “Look at them. Can you believe it? So dissimilar! They are opposites in form and character, as if fashioned in expression and in feature each to contradict the other; yet so united!”

“And in crime, you say?”

“Ay, in crime – in all things.”

“Is Yelland Mace still living?” urged David Arden.

“Those features, in life, you will never behold, Sir.”

“He is dead. You said that you took that mask from among the dead. Is he dead?”

“No, Sir; not actually dead, but under a strange condition. Bah; Don't you see I have a secret? Do you prize very highly learning where he is?”

“Very highly, provided he may be secured and brought to trial; and you, Baron, must arrange to give your testimony to prove his identity.”

“Yes; that would be indispensible,” said the baron, whose eyes were sweeping the room from corner to corner, fiercely and swiftly. “Without me you can never lift the veil; without me you can never unearth your stiff and pale Yelland Mace, nor without me identify and hang him.”

“I rely upon your aid, Baron,” said Mr. Arden, who was becoming agitated. “Your trouble shall be recompensed; you may depend upon my honour.”

“I am running a certain risk. I am not a fool, though, like little Lebas. I am not to be made away with like a kitten; and once I move in this matter, I burn my ships behind me, and return to my splendid practice, under no circumstances, ever again.”

The baron's pallid face looked more bloodless, his accent was fiercer, and his countenance more ruffianly as he uttered all this.

“I understood, Baron, that you had quite made up your mind to retire within a very few weeks,” said David Arden.

“Does any man who has lived as long as you or I quite trust his own resolution? No one likes to be nailed to a plan of action an hour before he need be. I find my practice more lucrative every day. I may be tempted to postpone my retirement, and for a while longer to continue to gather the golden harvest that ripens round me. But once I take this step, all is up with that. You see – you understand. Bah! you are no fool; it is plain, all I sacrifice.”

“Of course, Baron, you shall take no trouble, and make no sacrifice, without ample compensation. But are you aware of the nature of the crime committed by that man?”

“I never trouble my head about details; it is enough, the man is a political refugee, and his object concealment.”

“But he was no political refugee; he had nothing to do with politics – he was simply a murderer and a robber.”

“What a little rogue! Will you excuse my smoking a pipe and drinking a little beer? Now, he never hinted that, although I knew him very intimately, for he was my patient for some months; never hinted it, he was so sly.”

“And Mr. Longcluse, was he your patient also?”

“Ha! to be sure he was. You won't drink some beer? No; well, in a moment.”

He drew a little jugful from the cask, and placed it, and a pewter goblet, on the table, and then filled, lighted, and smoked his pipe as he proceeded.

“I will tell you something concerning those gentlemen, Mr. Longcluse and Mr. Mace, which may amuse you. Listen.”

CHAPTER LXXXI

BROKEN

“My hands were very full,” said the baron, displaying his stumpy fingers. “I received patients in this house; I had what you call many irons in ze fire. I was making napoleons then, I don't mind telling you, as fast as a man could run bullets. My minutes counted by the crown. It was in the month of May, 1844, late at night, a man called here, wanting to consult me. He called himself Herr von Konigsmark. I went down and saw him in my audience room. He knew I was to be depended upon. Such people tell one another who may be trusted. He told me he was an Austrian proscribed: very good. He proposed to place himself in my hands: very well. I looked him in the face – you have there exactly what I saw.”

He extended his hand toward the mask of Yelland Mace.

“‘You are an Austrian,’ I said, ‘a native subject of the empire?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Italian?’

“‘No.’

“‘Hungarian?’

“‘No.’

“‘Well, you are not German– ha, ha! – I can swear to that.’

“He was speaking to me in German.

“‘Your accent is foreign. Come, confidence. You must be no impostor. I must make no mistake, and blunder into a national type of features, all wrong; if I make your mask, it must do us credit. I know many gentlemen's secrets, and as many ladies' secrets. A man of honour! What are you afraid of?’”

“You were not a statuary?” said Uncle David, astonished at his versatility.

“Oh, yes! A statuary, but only in grotesque, you understand. I will show you some of my work by-and-by.”

“And I shall perhaps understand.”

“You shall, perfectly. With some reluctance, then, he admitted that what I positively asserted was true; for I told him I knew from his accent he was an Englishman. Then, with some little pressure, I invited him to tell his name. He did – it was Yelland Mace. That is Yelland Mace.”

He had now finished his pipe: he went over to the chimney-piece, and having knocked out the ashes, and with his pipe pointing to the tip of the long thin plaster nose, he said, “Look well at him. Look till you know all his features by rote. Look till you fix them for the rest of your days well in memory, and then say what in the devil's name you could make of them. Look at that high nose, as thin as a fish-knife. Look at the line of the mouth and chin; see the mild gentlemanlike contour. If you find a fellow with a flat nose, and a pair of upper tusks sticking out an inch, and a squint that turns out one eye like the white of an egg, you pull out the tusks, you raise the skin of the nose, slice a bit out of the cheek, and make a false bridge, as high as you please; heal the cheek with a stitch or two, and operate with the lancet for the squint, and your bust is complete. Bravo! you understand?”