The Sleuth of St. James Street | Page 4

protect him. The test was to be permitted."
He made a vague gesture.
"The Master was indicated - but the peril antecedent to his elevation
remained . . . . It was to be permitted, and at its leisure and in its choice
of time."

He turned sharply toward me, the folds of his face unsteady.
"Excellency!" he cried. "I would have saved the Master, I would have
saved him with my soul's damnation, but it was not permitted. On that
first night in the Italian's tent I said all I could."
His voice went into a higher note.
"Twice, for the Master, I have been checked and reduced in merit. For
that bias I was myself encircled. I was in an agony of spirit when I
knew that the thing was beginning to advance, but my very will to aid
was at the time environed."
His voice descended.
He sat motionless, as though the whole bulk of him were devitalized,
and maintained its outline only by the inclosing frame of the chair.
"It began, Excellency, on an August night. There is a chill in these
mountains at sunset. I had put wood into the fireplace, and lighted it,
and was about the house. The Master, as I have said, had worked out
his formulae. He was at leisure. I could not see him, for the door was
closed, but the odor of his cigar escaped from the room. It was very
silent. I was placing the Master's bed-candle on the table in the hall,
when I heard his voice. . . . You have read it, Excellency, as the
scriveners wrote it down before the judge."
He paused.
"It was an exclamation of surprise, of astonishment. Then I heard the
Master get up softly and go over to the fireplace. . . Presently he
returned. He got a new cigar, Excellency, clipped it and lighted it. I
could hear the blade of the knife on the fiber of the tobacco, and of
course, clearly the rasp of the match. A moment later I knew that he
was in the chair again. The odor of ignited tobacco returned. It was
some time before there was another sound in the room; then suddenly I
heard the Master swear. His voice was sharp and astonished. This time,
Excellency, he got up swiftly and crossed the room to the fireplace. . . I

could hear him distinctly. There was the sound of one tapping on metal,
thumping it, as with the fingers."
He stopped again, for a brief moment, as in reflection.
"It was then that the Master unlocked the door and asked for the
liquor." He indicated the court record in my pocket. "I brought it, a
goblet of brandy, with some carbonated water. He drank it all without
putting down the glass . . . . His face was strange, Excellency . . . . Then
he looked at me.
"`Put a log on the fire,' he said.
"I went in and added wood to the fire and came out.
"The Master remained in the doorway; he reentered when I came out,
and closed the door behind him . . . . There was a long silence after that;
them I heard the voice, permitted to the devocation thin, metallic,
offering the barter to the Master. It began and ceased because the
Master was on his feet and before the fireplace. I heard him swear
again, and presently return to his place by the table."
The big Oriental lifted his face and looked out at the sweep of country
before the window.
"The thing went on, Excellency, the voice offering its lure, and
presenting it in brief flashes of materialization, and the Master
endeavoring to seize and detain the visitations, which ceased instantly
at his approach to the hearth."
The man paused.
"I knew the Master contended in vain against the thing; if he would
acquire possession of what it offered, he must destroy what the creative
forces of the spirit had released to him."
Again he paused.
"Toward morning he went out of the house. I could hear him walking

on the gravel before the door. He would walk the full length of the
house and return. The night was clear; there was a chill in it, and every
sound was audible.
"That was all, Excellency. The Master returned a little later and
ascended to his bedroom as usual."
Then he added:
"It was when I went in to put wood on the fire that I saw the footprint
on the hearth."
There was a force, compelling and vivid, in these meager details, the
severe suppression of things, big and tragic. No elaboration could have
equaled, in effect, the virtue of this restraint.
The man was going on, directly, with the story,
"The