Read Ebook: The master criminal by Paternoster G Sidney Post Charles Johnson Illustrator

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Ebook has 1563 lines and 85579 words, and 32 pages

L'ENVOI 312

THE MASTER CRIMINAL

"LET THEM GET WHO HAVE THE POWER, AND LET THEM KEEP WHO CAN"

The night was of velvety blackness--one of those soft, warm, dark nights of June when the southwest wind rolls a cloud-curtain over the stars, when the air is heavy with unshed rain, when lamps burn dully, and when a nameless oppression broods over the face of the land.

Seated at an open casement looking out into the London night was a woman. Her hands grasped each other over her knee with a tense grip which gave the lie to the calm of her face. Hers was a face to which in repose Rossetti would have woven an adoring sonnet, though not as to another "lazy, laughing, languid Jenny, fond of a kiss, and fond of a guinea," but a sonnet of purity and peace. Yet if the sonnet had been written, and the woman had read, the full scarlet lips which seemed to have gathered into them all the colour from her face, would have parted in scornful laughter.

Her eyes, a part of the night into which they gazed, had dull shadows beneath them, painted there by weariness, yet she still sat motionless in a strained attitude of expectation.

Her sole companion, seated a few yards away in an easy chair, looked up at her occasionally from a book which he held in his hand and smiled.

Lynton Hora, the Commandatore, as he chose to be called by the members of his household, was in quite another way an equally interesting type of humanity. He was a man of seventy inches, broad shouldered and lean flanked, with well-poised head. His hair was grey at the sides, his face was clean-shaven. Seen lounging in the easy chair, with his face in the shadow, he appeared to be a man of not more than forty--an old-young student, perhaps, for there were thought lines on his brow and his cheeks were almost as pallid as those of the woman at the window. Such an impression would, however, have been speedily put to flight, immediately he looked up. Then there could be no mistaking the man of action. The keen, hard, grey eyes, the domineering nose, the firmly cut lips, labelled him definitely--conclusively.

Presently the woman altered her position. The in-drawing of her breath, as she turned from the window, might have been a sigh. She looked around at her companion.

He seemed conscious of the movement, as, without lifting his eyes, he asked lazily: "Tired, Myra?"

She strove to reproduce the quietude of his tone as she replied: "A little. What's the time now, Commandatore?" but there was a tremor in her voice, which showed clearly that she was not so indifferent as she wished to appear.

The man tossed down his book.

"Listen," he said.

Almost as if in answer to his summons the voice of Big Ben floated softly in through the window--one--two.

"He ought to be back by now," she said, and rising, she began to rearrange the roses in a bowl on a table near.

"I don't expect Guy for another hour at least," said the man carelessly, though he watched the woman keenly as he spoke. "After that--well, if we don't see him in an hour, we shall probably not see him for five years, at least."

The woman winced as from a blow.

The levity of his tone roused her again to passionate utterance.

Lynton Hora rose from his seat and viewed the woman, who shrank from his steady gaze.

"Have matters gone so far as that?" he asked, and his lips smiled cynically.

She made no reply.

"You never asked my permission," he continued dispassionately. "Guy has said nothing. I am afraid, Myra, I shall have to see that he is protected from your influence."

She looked at him appealingly, and her eyes were as the night, heavy with unshed rain.

"He--is--your--son," she said slowly. "I--I cannot do him the harm that you can do him, and yet--I am afraid for him. Perhaps you had better send me away, Commandatore. My fears may make a coward of him."

The man spoke as if musing aloud. "Where shall I send you? Back to the gutter from whence I picked you? Do you remember anything of your home, Myra?"

"I know. I know," she protested. "You have reminded me often enough."

He paid no heed to her appeal.

"Yesterday," he said, "I visited the place. No, it has not tumbled down yet, my dear--the very house where your mother sold you to me for half-a-crown and a bottle of gin, a dirty child of five. That was fifteen years ago--fifteen years ago to-day. You were unwanted, uncared for--I wanted you, I cared for you. Let me tell you how I found your mother, Myra?"

She lifted her hands with a gesture of appeal, but he disregarded the action.

"She occupies the same old room. There's but little light finds its way through the dirty window, though enough to show that your mother has not changed her habits--nor her rags. She sat there alone, like a dropsical spider and cried aloud for gin. Would you like to change this"--his hand directed attention to the apartment--"for a share of your mother's abode, Myra Norton?"

Myra had seated herself. She made no answer for a while. Her eyes wandered about the long apartment, with its shaded lights and its flowers and its luxurious furniture. Her hand dropped on the silken gauze of her dress. The man watching smiled as he saw the flash of the diamonds on her fingers and noted the caressing motion of her fingers upon the shimmering fabric. At last she raised her eyes to her questioner.

"You could not send me back," she said.

"I could send you to a worse place," he replied coldly. "You know my power."

She shuddered.

His tone changed completely.

"You little fool," he said roughly, but with a kindliness his speech had lacked hitherto. "You know very well that I could never let you go back to the stews from which I rescued you. But I wanted to remind you, Myra, that you belong to me--that, like myself, you are pledged to war--a merciless, devouring, devastating war with Society; that you, even as I myself, are outcast--one from whom the world would shrink--you have been in danger of forgetting lately, Myra."

"I have not forgotten," she answered with comparative quietness, "but I have been thinking of what is the use of it all, this eternal warfare against the world. You have won again and again. You have told me that you are the richer by what the world has lost. You lack nothing that money may buy. There must come a time when the warrior must rest."

"Not while his arm retains its strength to lift his sword," replied Hora, "and by that time he should have provided someone to take his place."

"But if that person is unequal to the task?" Myra queried timidly.

"He pays the penalty," answered Hora.

"Even if it is your own son?" she persisted.

"Or your lover," he added coldly.

"Your heart is iron," she murmured despairingly.

He laughed aloud. "Or non-existent," he said. "It was stolen from me years ago, and I have forgotten what it was like to be possessed of one. Now I have only my profession--and in that I am first. You admit that, Myra?"

"I admit that," she replied sullenly.

"Why should I not train my successor to take my place when my day comes?"

The woman in the listener cried out instinctively "Because he has what you lack--a heart."

He smiled grimly. "It is easily lost, Myra. What if I should say to you some day: Take it from him, toss it away, trample on it, break it, or store it away and treasure it with your trinkets--do as you like with it?"

"I am glad of it--glad," she cried exultantly.

Hora stood in a thoughtful attitude.

"Myra--Myrrha," he half-mused, turning the name about, "a good name for a love-potion, there's a foreshadowing of the bitterness of love in it."

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