A Book o' Nine Tales Part 18

With this sentence still unfinished, the vision faded away in an instant, as if some unforeseen catastrophe in whatever region it came from had suddenly recalled the eidolon, or projected presence, or whatever the thing might be.

More confounded and disturbed than ever, my friend retired to bed, but he was too much excited to sleep. He had much the feeling that one fancies a prince to have over whose heritage distant armies are contending, while he in forced inaction awaits the result. No clue had been given which enabled him to reach a solution of the mystery that involved him, and nothing further transpired during the night to render matters any plainer.

On the following afternoon he was obliged to start for Boston on business. As he was elbowing his way through the crowd in the Grand Central station, he heard at his ear the well known voice of the "Great Mogul," speaking as usual in the unknown tongue which Vantine understood, yet the ident.i.ty of which he had never established. There was no visible appearance this time, and the voice, although distinctly audible, seemed to come from a great distance.

"Great Master," the voice said, "they are beheading me. All is lost."

"It would be some comfort," John Vantine said, rather irritably, when he confided this strange story to me, "to know what was lost. It would have been uncommonly civil of the 'Great Mogul' to be a little more definite in his information. If the poor fellow lost his head in my service I am profoundly grateful, of course; but precious little good does it do me. Do you think the Psychical Society would undertake the job of discovering in what part of the universe I am rightfully dubbed the Great Master and that young rascal in the nursery is a prince! Unless they can do something, I'm afraid I shall be a half-starved New York lawyer to the end of the chapter."

To which I had nothing satisfactory to answer.

Interlude Fourth.

THE RADIATOR.

THE RADIATOR.

A STUDY IN THE MODERN STYLE OF COLLOQUIAL FICTION.

[_Scene, the chamber of Mr. and Mrs. Ellston, in an apartment hotel.

Time, three A. M. The silence of the night is unbroken, save by the regular breathing of the sleepers, until suddenly, from the steam radiator, bursts a sound like the discharge of a battery of forty-pound guns._]

_Mrs. E._ (_springing up in bed_) Oh! eh? what is that?

[_Her husband moves uneasily in his sleep, but does not reply. The noise of the sledge-hammer score of the "Anvil Chorus" rings out from the radiator._]

_Mrs. E._ George! George! Something is going to happen! Do wake up, or we shall be murdered in our sleep!

_Mr. E._ (_with mingled ferocity and amus.e.m.e.nt_) There is small danger of anybody's being murdered in his sleep, my dear, where you are. It's only that confounded radiator; it's always making some sort of an infernal tumult. It can't do any harm.

_Mrs. E._ But it will wake baby.

_Mr. E._ Well, if it does, the nurse can get him to sleep again, I suppose.

[_From the room adjoining is heard a clattering din, as if all the kettles and pans in the house were being thrown violently across the floor._]

_Mrs. E._ There! The nursery radiator has begun. I must go and get baby.

_Mr. E._ Let baby alone. If the youngster will sleep, for heaven's sake let him. The steam-pipes make noise enough for this time of night, one would think, without your taking the trouble to wake baby.

_Mrs. E._ (_with volumes of reproach in her tone_) Your own little baby!

You never loved him as his mother does.

[_The disturbances now a.s.sume the likeness to a thoroughly inebriated drum corps practising upon sheet-iron air-tight stoves._]

_Mr. E._ Of all unendurable rackets--

[_A sudden and sharp boom interrupts him. Mrs. Ellston screams, while her husband indulges in language which, although somewhat inexcusably forcible, is yet to be regarded as not unnatural under the circ.u.mstances._]

_Mrs. E._ Oh, George, don't swear. It always seems so much worse to swear in danger; like tempting Providence; and I know there's going to be an explosion!

_Mr. E._ (_severely_) Don't talk nonsense! The engineer has gone to sleep and left the drafts open, that's all. Don't be so absurd.

[_There is another fusillade from the radiator, reinforced by the reverberations from the nursery, where a regiment of artillery seem to have begun target practice._]

_Mrs. E._ I _will_ go and get my baby! I know-- Oh, George, just hear it cras.h.!.+ Do get up and put the screen in front of it; that may turn off the pieces so they won't come this way.

_Mr. E._ (_scornfully_) Pieces of what? Noise?

_Mrs. E._ How can you make fun? If the engineer has gone to sleep, he's sure to blow up the whole hotel. I'm going to get up and dress myself, and take baby over to mother's!

_Mr. E._ (_with calm but cutting irony_) At three o'clock in the morning? Shall you walk, or call a carriage?

_Mrs. E._ (_beginning to sob in a dry and perfunctory fas.h.i.+on_) Oh, you are too cruel! You are perfectly heartless. I wonder you don't take that dear little innocent baby and hold him between you and the radiator for a s.h.i.+eld.

_Mr. E._ That might be a good scheme, my dear, only the little beggar would probably howl so that I haven't really the moral courage to wake him.

[_The indignant reply of Mrs. Ellston is lost in the confused sound of the brays of a drove of brazen donkeys, which appear to be disporting themselves in the radiator. The noise of mighty rus.h.i.+ng waters, the clanking of chains, the din of a political convention, the characteristic disturbances of a hundred factories and machine-shops, with the deafening whirr of all the elevated railways in the universe follow in turn._]

_Mrs. E._ I _will_ go and get my baby, and I will _go_ to mother's; and, what is more, we will never, never come back!

_Mr. E._ Oh, just as you please about going, my dear; only you know that if you desert my bed and board, the law gives the boy to me.

_Mrs. E._ I don't _believe_ it's any such thing; and if it is, it is because men made the law. Women wouldn't take a baby away from its mother.

_Mr. E._ Have what theories you choose, my dear; only please let me get a few crumbs of sleep, now the radiator has had the mercy to subside.

_Mrs. E._ You are a brute, and I won't ever speak to you again!

[_She firmly a.s.sumes a stony silence, and the radiator, after a few concluding e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and metallic objurgations, also relapses into comparative stillness. Mr. Ellston's breathing begins to give strong indications that slumber has re-descended upon his weary frame._]

_Mrs. E._ (_starting up with the inspiration of an entirely new and startling idea_) George! George! George!

_Mr. E._ (_with less good humor than might be desired_) Eh?

_Mrs. E._ Wasn't it wonderful for baby to sleep through it all?

_Mr. E._ (_drowsily_) Yes; droll little beggar. His mother wasn't in the nursery to wake him, though.