The Big Book of Rogues and Villains Page 4

  Perfect peace reigned over his little face. He had resigned himself to me, his terrors were things of the past, and he was absolutely happy. Then once again that queer confusion of brain returned. I wondered what I was doing, and why I was anxious about the boy. Finally I sank upon the bed at the farther end of the room, for my limbs were tired and weighted with a heavy oppression. I would rest for a moment, but nothing would induce me to close my eyes. So I thought, and flung myself back on my pillow. But the next instant all present things were forgotten in dreamless and heavy slumber.

  I awoke long hours afterwards, to find the sunshine flooding the room, the window which led on to the balcony wide open, and Cecil’s bed empty. I sprang up with a cry; memory returned with a flash. What had happened? Had Fietta managed to get in by means of the window? I had noticed the balcony outside the window on the previous night. The balcony of the next room was but a few feet distant from mine. It would be easy for anyone to enter there, spring from one balcony to the other, and so obtain access to my room. Doubtless this had been done. Why had I slept? I had firmly resolved to stay awake all night. In an instant I had found the solution. Fietta’s letter had been a trap. The envelope which he sent me contained poison on the gum. I had licked it, and so received the fatal soporific. My heart beat wildly. I knew I had not an instant to lose. With hasty strides I went into Fietta’s sitting-room: there was no one there; into his bedroom, the door of which was open: it was also empty. I rushed into the hall.

  “The gentleman and the little boy went out about half an hour ago,” said the concierge, in answer to my inquiries. “They have gone to Vesuvius—a fine day for the trip.” The man smiled as he spoke.

  My heart almost stopped.

  “How did they go?” I asked.

  “A carriage, two horses—best way to go.”

  In a second I was out in the Piazza del Municipio. Hastily selecting a pair-horse carriage out of the group of importunate drivers, I jumped in.

  “Vesuvius,” I shouted, “as hard as you can go.”

  The man began to bargain. I thrust a roll of paper-money into his hand. On receiving it he waited no longer, and we were soon dashing at a furious speed along the crowded, ill-paved streets, scattering the pedestrians as we went. Down the Via Roma, and out on to the Santa Lucia Quay, away and away through endless labyrinths of noisome, narrow streets, till at length we got out into the more open country at the base of the burning mountain. Should I be in time to prevent the catastrophe which I dreaded? For I had been up that mountain before, and knew well the horrible danger at the crater’s mouth—a slip, a push, and one would never be seen again.

  The ascent began, and the exhausted horses were beginning to fail. I leapt out, and giving the driver a sum which I did not wait to count, ran up the winding road of cinders and pumice that curves round beneath the observatory. My breath had failed me, and my heart was beating so hard that I could scarcely speak when I reached the station where one takes ponies to go over the new, rough lava. In answer to my inquiries, Cook’s agent told me that Fietta and Cecil had gone on not a quarter of an hour ago.

  I shouted my orders, and flinging money right and left, I soon obtained a fleet pony, and was galloping recklessly over the broken lava. Throwing the reins over the pony’s head I presently jumped off, and ran up the little, narrow path to the funicular wire-laid railway that takes passengers up the steep cone to the crater.

  “Just gone on, sir,” said a Cook’s official, in answer to my question.

  “But I must follow at once,” I said excitedly, hurrying towards the little shed.

  The man stopped me.

  “We don’t take single passengers,” he answered.

  “I will, and must, go alone,” I said. “I’ll buy the car, and the railway, and you, and the mountain, if necessary, but go I will. How much do you want to take me alone?”

  “One hundred francs,” he answered impertinently, little thinking that I would agree to the bargain.

  “Done!” I replied.

  In astonishment he counted out the notes which I handed to him, and hurried at once into the shed. Here he rang an electric bell to have the car at the top started back, and getting into the empty car, I began to ascend—up, and up, and up. Soon I passed the empty car returning. How slowly we moved! My mouth was parched and dry, and I was in a fever of excitement. The smoke from the crater was close above me in great wreaths. At last we reached the top. I leapt out, and without waiting for a guide, made my way past, and rushed up the active cone, slipping in the shifting, loose, gritty soil. When I reached the top a gale was blowing, and the scenery below, with the Bay and Naples and Sorrento, lay before me, the most magnificent panorama in the world. I had no time to glance at it, but hurried forward past crags of hot rock, from which steam and sulphur were escaping. The wind was taking the huge volumes of smoke over to the farther side of the crater, and I could just catch sight of two figures as the smoke cleared for a moment. The figures were those of Fietta and the boy. They were evidently making a détour of the crater, and had just entered the smoke. I heard a guide behind shout something to me in Italian, but I took no notice, and plunged at once into the blinding, suffocating smoke that came belching forth from the crater.

  I was now close behind Fietta and the boy. They held their handkerchiefs up to their faces to keep off the choking sulphurous fumes, and had evidently not seen me. Their guide was ahead of them. Fietta was walking slowly; he was farthest away from the crater’s mouth. The boy’s hand was within his; the boy was nearest to the yawning gulf. A hot and choking blast of smoke blinded me for a moment, and hid the pair from view; the next instant it passed. I saw Fietta suddenly turn, seize the boy, and push him towards the edge. Through the rumbling thunder that came from below I heard a sharp cry of terror, and bounding forward I just caught the lad as he reeled, and hurled him away into safety.

  With a yell of baffled rage Fietta dashed through the smoke and flung himself upon me. I moved nimbly aside, and the doctor, carried on by the impetus of his rush, missed his footing in the crumbling ashes and fell headlong down through the reeking smoke and steam into the fathomless, seething cauldron below.

  What followed may be told in a few words. That evening I sailed for Malta with the boy. Dr. Benson administered the antitoxin in time, and the child’s life was saved. Within a fortnight I brought him back to his mother.

  It was reported that Dr. Fietta had gone mad at the edge of the crater, and in an excess of maniacal fury had first tried to destroy the boy and then flung himself in. I kept my secret.

  Rogue: Colonel Clay

  The Episode of the Mexican Seer

  GRANT ALLEN

  CHARLES GRANT BLAIRFINDIE ALLEN (1848–1899) was responsible for two literary breakthroughs. The first was his novel The Woman Who Did (1895), which created a sensation in Victorian England because of its candid discussion of sex, especially featuring the titular character—who did exactly what you think she did.

  The second book guaranteed Allen a lasting place in the annals of crime fiction. In An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay (1897), Allen created the first important series of stories about a rogue, the adventures of Colonel Clay preceding the immortal Raffles by two years. The African millionaire of the title refers to Sir Charles Vandrift, the colonel’s personal and repeated victim, who might have taken solace in the fact that he is the only character in the history of mystery fiction who gave his identity to a short story series as the victim. Vandrift is a fabulously wealthy man who made his fortune in Africa but is cheated, duped, robbed, bilked, and fooled again and again by Clay. Although Vandrift is wary of Clay, the colonel is such a master of disguise that he can almost instantly transform himself from a Mexican seer to a Scottish parson—neither of whom even slightly resembles Clay, whose fresh, clean face is the embodiment of innocence and honesty.

  Allen wrote numerous books in various fields, ranging from science, philosophy, travel, and natu
re, to fiction, including ghost stories, science fiction, mystery novels, and short stories—more than fifty books in all, even though he died at only fifty-one. On his deathbed, he wanted to be sure that his last book, an episodic novel titled Hilda Wade, would be published, so he asked his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to write the final chapter; it was published posthumously in 1900.

  “The Episode of the Mexican Seer” was originally published in the June 1896 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay (London, Grant Richards, 1897).

  THE EPISODE OF THE MEXICAN SEER

  Grant Allen

  MY NAME IS Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth. I am brother-in-law and secretary to Sir Charles Vandrift, the South African millionaire and famous financier. Many years ago, when Charlie Vandrift was a small lawyer in Cape Town, I had the (qualified) good fortune to marry his sister. Much later, when the Vandrift estate and farm near Kimberley developed by degrees into the Cloetedorp Golcondas, Limited, my brother-in-law offered me the not unremunerative post of secretary; in which capacity I have ever since been his constant and attached companion.

  He is not a man whom any common sharper can take in, is Charles Vandrift. Middle height, square build, firm mouth, keen eyes—the very picture of a sharp and successful business genius. I have only known one rogue impose upon Sir Charles, and that one rogue, as the Commissary of Police at Nice remarked, would doubtless have imposed upon a syndicate of Vidocq, Robert Houdin, and Cagliostro.

  We had run across to the Riviera for a few weeks in the season. Our object being strictly rest and recreation from the arduous duties of financial combination, we did not think it necessary to take our wives out with us. Indeed, Lady Vandrift is absolutely wedded to the joys of London, and does not appreciate the rural delights of the Mediterranean littoral. But Sir Charles and I, though immersed in affairs when at home, both thoroughly enjoy the complete change from the City to the charming vegetation and pellucid air on the terrace at Monte Carlo. We are so fond of scenery. That delicious view over the rocks of Monaco, with the Maritime Alps in the rear, and the blue sea in front, not to mention the imposing Casino in the foreground, appeals to me as one of the most beautiful prospects in all Europe. Sir Charles has a sentimental attachment for the place. He finds it restores and freshens him, after the turmoil of London, to win a few hundreds at roulette in the course of an afternoon among the palms and cactuses and pure breezes of Monte Carlo. The country, say I, for a jaded intellect! However, we never on any account actually stop in the Principality itself. Sir Charles thinks Monte Carlo is not a sound address for a financier’s letters. He prefers a comfortable hotel on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, where he recovers health and renovates his nervous system by taking daily excursions along the coast to the Casino.

  This particular season we were snugly ensconced at the Hôtel des Anglais. We had capital quarters on the first floor—salon, study, and bedrooms—and found on the spot a most agreeable cosmopolitan society. All Nice, just then, was ringing with talk about a curious impostor, known to his followers as the Great Mexican Seer, and supposed to be gifted with second sight, as well as with endless other supernatural powers. Now, it is a peculiarity of my able brother-in-law’s that, when he meets with a quack, he burns to expose him; he is so keen a man of business himself that it gives him, so to speak, a disinterested pleasure to unmask and detect imposture in others. Many ladies at the hotel, some of whom had met and conversed with the Mexican Seer, were constantly telling us strange stories of his doings. He had disclosed to one the present whereabouts of a runaway husband; he had pointed out to another the numbers that would win at roulette next evening; he had shown a third the image on a screen of the man she had for years adored without his knowledge. Of course, Sir Charles didn’t believe a word of it; but his curiosity was roused; he wished to see and judge for himself of the wonderful thought-reader.

  “What would be his terms, do you think, for a private séance?” he asked of Madame Picardet, the lady to whom the Seer had successfully predicted the winning numbers.

  “He does not work for money,” Madame Picardet answered, “but for the good of humanity. I’m sure he would gladly come and exhibit for nothing his miraculous faculties.”

  “Nonsense!” Sir Charles answered. “The man must live. I’d pay him five guineas, though, to see him alone. What hotel is he stopping at?”

  “The Cosmopolitan, I think,” the lady answered. “Oh no; I remember now, the Westminster.”

  Sir Charles turned to me quietly. “Look here, Seymour,” he whispered. “Go round to this fellow’s place immediately after dinner, and offer him five pounds to give a private séance at once in my rooms, without mentioning who I am to him; keep the name quite quiet. Bring him back with you, too, and come straight upstairs with him, so that there may be no collusion. We’ll see just how much the fellow can tell us.”

  I went as directed. I found the Seer a very remarkable and interesting person. He stood about Sir Charles’s own height, but was slimmer and straighter, with an aquiline nose, strangely piercing eyes, very large black pupils, and a finely chiselled close-shaven face, like the bust of Antinous in our hall in Mayfair. What gave him his most characteristic touch, however, was his odd head of hair, curly and wavy like Paderewski’s, standing out in a halo round his high white forehead and his delicate profile. I could see at a glance why he succeeded so well in impressing women; he had the look of a poet, a singer, a prophet.

  “I have come round,” I said, “to ask whether you will consent to give a séance at once in a friend’s rooms; and my principal wishes me to add that he is prepared to pay five pounds as the price of the entertainment.”

  Señor Antonio Herrera—that was what he called himself—bowed to me with impressive Spanish politeness. His dusky olive cheeks were wrinkled with a smile of gentle contempt as he answered gravely—

  “I do not sell my gifts; I bestow them freely. If your friend—your anonymous friend—desires to behold the cosmic wonders that are wrought through my hands, I am glad to show them to him. Fortunately, as often happens when it is necessary to convince and confound a sceptic (for that your friend is a sceptic I feel instinctively), I chance to have no engagements at all this evening.” He ran his hand through his fine, long hair reflectively. “Yes, I go,” he continued, as if addressing some unknown presence that hovered about the ceiling; “I go; come with me!” Then he put on his broad sombrero, with its crimson ribbon, wrapped a cloak round his shoulders, lighted a cigarette, and strode forth by my side towards the Hôtel des Anglais.

  He talked little by the way, and that little in curt sentences. He seemed buried in deep thought; indeed, when we reached the door and I turned in, he walked a step or two farther on, as if not noticing to what place I had brought him. Then he drew himself up short, and gazed around him for a moment. “Ha, the Anglais,” he said—and I may mention in passing that his English, in spite of a slight southern accent, was idiomatic and excellent. “It is here, then; it is here!” He was addressing once more the unseen presence.

  I smiled to think that these childish devices were intended to deceive Sir Charles Vandrift. Not quite the sort of man (as the City of London knows) to be taken in by hocus-pocus. And all this, I saw, was the cheapest and most commonplace conjurer’s patter.

  We went upstairs to our rooms. Charles had gathered together a few friends to watch the performance. The Seer entered, wrapt in thought. He was in evening dress, but a red sash round his waist gave a touch of picturesqueness and a dash of colour. He paused for a moment in the middle of the salon, without letting his eyes rest on anybody or anything. Then he walked straight up to Charles, and held out his dark hand.

  “Good-evening,” he said. “You are the host. My soul’s sight tells me so.”

  “Good shot,” Sir Charles answered. “These fellows have to be quick-witted, you know, Mrs. Mackenzie, or they’d never get on at it.”

  The
Seer gazed about him, and smiled blankly at a person or two whose faces he seemed to recognise from a previous existence. Then Charles began to ask him a few simple questions, not about himself, but about me, just to test him. He answered most of them with surprising correctness. “His name? His name begins with an S I think:—You call him Seymour.” He paused long between each clause, as if the facts were revealed to him slowly. “Seymour—Wilbraham—Earl of Strafford. No, not Earl of Strafford! Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth. There seems to be some connection in somebody’s mind now present between Wentworth and Strafford. I am not English. I do not know what it means. But they are somehow the same name, Wentworth and Strafford.”

  He gazed around, apparently for confirmation. A lady came to his rescue.

  “Wentworth was the surname of the great Earl of Strafford,” she murmured gently; “and I was wondering, as you spoke, whether Mr. Wentworth might possibly be descended from him.”

  “He is,” the Seer replied instantly, with a flash of those dark eyes. And I thought this curious; for though my father always maintained the reality of the relationship, there was one link wanting to complete the pedigree. He could not make sure that the Hon. Thomas Wilbraham Wentworth was the father of Jonathan Wentworth, the Bristol horse-dealer, from whom we are descended.

  “Where was I born?” Sir Charles interrupted, coming suddenly to his own case.

  The Seer clapped his two hands to his forehead and held it between them, as if to prevent it from bursting. “Africa,” he said slowly, as the facts narrowed down, so to speak. “South Africa; Cape of Good Hope; Jansenville; De Witt Street. 1840.”

  “By Jove, he’s correct,” Sir Charles muttered. “He seems really to do it. Still, he may have found me out. He may have known where he was coming.”