Part 18 (1/2)

”It is a fabulous place,” Aubrey wrote of it, ”imbued with an old forlornness, and a waving of woods, and the pining of an alto wawl in the windpipe of its airs,” but certainly I felt rather foolish when I left it, for I had learned nothing, and what we were now to do I had no notion. At the entrance to the forest we met our old Lossow with his pipe, and he climbed with me back to the guest-court, Langler meanwhile striding well ahead of us, wrapped in silence.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FACE OF DEES

On going into my sitting-room at the guest-court I beheld Langler already there, with a busy pen in his hand and his hat still on his head; he said nothing, nor could I guess what he was at, till, getting up sharply, he handed me to read a note to Herr Tschudi in something like the following words:--”Sir, you have, to my certain knowledge, one Father Max Dees unlawfully confined in Schweinstein Castle, of which you are the governor, his dungeon being the cell at the bottom of the north-west tower. For such an act of flagrant unrighteousness there can be no excuse whatever, and I have to address to you, in the pretended absence of the castle-lord, the warning that, if within the next twenty-four hours your prisoner is not released, then my friend, Mr Templeton, and I will know how to coerce and duly punish you....”

I was never more surprised!--every word of it was surprising! My first words were: ”but by what means are we to coerce and duly punish him?”

”Oh, we shall find a way,” said Langler: ”I intend to be no longer tentative and tolerant; Dees must now be set at liberty, or I shall act with a certain rigour.”

”But, Aubrey----”

”No; Arthur, we have already been sluggish and patient, we have lost time--time. It is for us now to put our powers brusquely to the test.”

”I agree,” said I: ”let us put our powers to the test, let us act with a certain rigour. But how? I confess that I don't understand you. Tell me first how on earth you can know that Dees is not only still a prisoner, but in the north-west tower?”

”As to his being still a prisoner, that is on the surface of things,” he answered: ”the slightest criticism applied to the words and manner of Herr Tschudi would unveil the man's consciousness of that fact. He has even caught the contemptuous, frank trick of his master, and was hardly at the pains to be a hypocrite. When you said to him, 'but is Father Dees still a prisoner, if one may ask?' his answer was: 'surely one may ask; but all that was five long years ago, of course.' Very '_long_'

years--'of course.' No, he wouldn't have spoken at all like that if he had not had Dees' present captivity in his consciousness; he wouldn't have been stung to retort: 'surely one may _ask_,' but would have answered at once with a careless 'Oh no.' And all his manner and other words were in the same sense.”

”You are no doubt quite right,” said I.

”I am even sure of it,” said he: ”when I asked him as to the pieta, whether it was ancient, how off-hand was his answer, 'fifteenth-century, sir,' though he had previously called me a connoisseur, and might have known, if he had troubled to think, that I should see his statement to be untrue. The pieta is not at all in any of the moods of old Northern work, and it bears the initials of Max Dees, who most likely made it.

But Herr Tschudi did not wish Dees to be a topic, and shunned his name even at the cost of an untruth; nor would he have acted at all like that, Arthur, if Dees had gone out of his life and care five 'long'

years ago--unless, indeed, there were unseen ears listening somewhere to which Dees' name is ever a word forbidden in the castle.”

”Well,” said I, ”let it be taken as settled that Dees is still there in prison; but how can you know that he is in the north-west tower?”

”You didn't read the words in raised letters on the base of the pieta?”

he asked.

”No, I didn't read them.”

”In what language do you imagine that they are?”

”In Greek,” said I.

”No, in Hebrew,” said he, ”Hebrew words in Greek letters, and so put there by a most knowing mind, I gather, the same mind and hand which captured the wren, and sent her out with her message; and if you add to these proofs of wit the craftsmans.h.i.+p in the pieta, and Herr Tschudi's admission of Dees' oratory, you get an intelligence of many gifts, as 'brilliant' perhaps as 'Savonarola.' Dees apparently made the pieta some time shortly before his imprisonment, when he was not without bodings of his doom; and the Hebrew words in Greek letters were meant to baffle a half-cla.s.sic like the baron, in case it should ever occur to the baron to read what he would a.s.sume to be some pious motto in such a place.”

”But what are the words?” I asked.

”These, Arthur,” said he: ”'If I am killed, it will be the lord's doing; if imprisoned, at the bottom of the north-west tower.'”

”But that is nearly everything!” I cried: ”what luck! I wonder what was Dees' hope.... But do you mean to say, Aubrey, that you would betray to Herr Tschudi that we are in possession of this wonderful piece of knowledge?”

”It has seemed to me that we have dallied and been mild more than enough, Arthur.”