The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
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white circle grew yellow; then it took on a taint of orange, bulging oddly at the sides into a clumsy oval. From the gardens below came a stir of voices and then the thrill of a girl’s laughter. She smiled as she listened, and, leaning from the window, the west wind blew to her the scent of flowers. She sat there for a long time, breathing deeply of the fragrance and noting all the curves of the lawn with a still, sad pleasure. The green changed from bright to dark; when she looked up the sun had set.
As she turned from the gay western sky, the room was doubly dim and the breeze of the evening set the curtains rustling and whispering. Silence she was prepared for, but not those ghostly voices, not the shift and sweep of the shadows. She turned the electric switch, closing her eyes to blur the shock of the sudden deluge of light. The switch clicked, but when she opened her eyes the room was still dark; they had cut the connecting wires.
Thereafter her mind went mercifully blank, for what she faced was, like birth and death, beyond comprehension. Noise at the windows roused her from the daze at last and she found that a number of workmen were sealing the room so that neither light nor sound could enter or escape. The only air would be from the ventilator. And still she could not realize what had happened, what was to happen, until the last sounds of the workmen ceased and the deep, dread silence began; silence that had a pulse in it—the beating of her heart.
She was standing in the middle of the room when the first shapes formed in the black night, and terror hovered about her suddenly, touching her as with cold fingers. She felt her way back to a corner and crouched there against the wall, waiting, waiting. They had seized the doomed man long before this. They must have bound and gagged him and carried him to the palace.
A thousand types of men passed before her inward eye—thin-faced clerks, men as pale as the belly of a dead fish; bearded monsters, gross and thick-lipped, with thunderous laughter; laborers, stamped with patient weariness—and all whom she saw carried the sign of the beast in their eyes. She tried to pray, but the voice of the prince rang in her ears: “Le Dieu, c’est moi!” and when she named God in her prayers, she visualized Alexander’s face, the pale, small eyes, the colorless hair, the lofty brow, the mouth whose tight lips could not be disguised by even the careful mustache. When a key turned in a door, she sprang to her feet with a cry of horror.
“It is I,” said the prince.
“I am dying; I cannot stay here; I will marry whom and when you will.”
“Ah, my dear, you should have spoken before sunset. I warned you, and I never change my mind. It is only for three days, remember. Also, it is in the interest of science. Beyond that, I have quite taken a fancy to playing God for you for three days. Do you understand?”
The even, mocking tones guided her to him. She fell at his feet and strained his thin knees against her breast.
“Come! Be reasonable, Bertha. This is justice.”
“Sire, I want no justice. For God’s sake, be merciful.”
She heard the shaken breath of his soundless laughter.
“Is it so? You should be grateful to me. Trust me, child, I am bringing you the love of which you have dreamed. Ha! Ha! Le Dieu, c’est moi!”
The clanking of the chain which he carried stilled her voice. It hushed even the thunder of her heart. She rose and waited patiently while the manacle was affixed to her wrist. The prince crossed the room and tapped on the door, which opened, and by a faint light from without Bertha discovered two men carrying a third into the room. She strained her eyes, but could make out no faces. The burden was laid on the floor; a metallic sound told her that she was fettered to the unknown.
The prince said: “You are a brave girl. All may yet be well. Then human nature is finer than I think. We shall see. As for your lover, your gift from God, he is sleeping soundly now. It may be an hour before the effects of the drug wear away. During that time you can think of love. Food will be placed three times a day within the door yonder. You can readily find it by feeling your way around the wall. Farewell.”
When the door closed she started to retreat to her corner, but the chain instantly drew taut with a rattle. Strangely enough, much of her fear left her now that she was face to face with the danger; temptation, the prince had called it. She smiled as she remembered. When the man awoke and learned their situation, she had no doubt as to how he would act. She had seen the sign of the beast in the eyes of many men, great and small; she had seen it and understood. The revolver might save her for a time, but what if she slept? She knew it would be almost impossible to remain awake during three days and nights.
The moment her eyes closed the end would come. It seemed better that she should fire the bullet now.
When he recovered his senses, it would be difficult to shoot effectively in the dark, for this was not the gloom of night—it was an absolute void, black, thick, impenetrable. She could not make out her hand at the slightest distance from her eyes. He might even attack her from behind and knock the revolver from her hand before she could shoot. Sooner or later the man must die. Even if she did not kill him it would be accomplished by the command of the prince at the end of the three days.
Far better that it should be done at once—that he should never awaken from his sleep. She reached the decision calmly and crept forward to him. Very lightly she passed her hand over his clothes. She had to move his arm to uncover the breast over his heart; the arm was a limp weight, but the muscles were firm, round, and solid. The first qualm troubled her as she realized that this must be a young man, at least a man in the prime of his physical strength.
Then it occurred to her that often bullets fired into the breast are deflected from the heart by bones; it would be far more certain to lay the muzzle against the temple—press the trigger—the soul would depart.
The soul! She paused with a thrill of wonder. A little touch would loose the swift spirit. The soul! For the first time she saw the tragedy from the viewpoint of the unknown man. His life was cut in the middle; truly a blind fate had reached out and chosen him from a whole city. Yet she was merely hastening the inevitable. She reached out and found his forehead.
It was broad and high. Tracing it lightly with the tips of her fingers she discovered two rather prominent lumps of bony structure over the eyes. Some one had told her that this represented a strong power of memory. She tried to visualize that feature alone, and very suddenly, as a face shows when a man lights his cigarette on the street at night, she saw in memory the figure of Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Young Painter.” He sits at his drawing board, his pencil poised, ready for the stroke which shall give vital character to his sketch. There is only one high light, falling on the lower part of the face. Inspiration has tightened the sensitive mouth; the questing eyes peer out from the shadow of the soft cap. She broke off from her vision to realize with a start that when she touched the trigger she would be stepping back through the centuries and killing her dream of the original of Rembrandt’s picture. A foolish fancy, truly, but in the dark a dream may be as true, as vivid as reality.
The unconscious man sighed. She leaned close and listened to his breathing, soft, hurried, irregular as if he struggled in his sleep, as if the subconscious mind were calling to the conscious: “Awake! Death is here!”
At least there was plenty of time. She need not fire the shot until he moved. She laid the revolver on her lap and absently allowed her hands to wander over his face, lingering lightly on each feature. She grew more alert after a moment. Every particle of her energy was concentrated on seeing that face—on seeing it through her sense of touch. The blind, she knew, grow so dextrous that the delicate nerves of their finger tips record faces almost as accurately as the eyes of the normal person.
Ah, for one moment of that power! She tried her best. The nose, she told herself, was straight and well modeled. The eyes, for she traced the bony structure around them, must be large; the cheek bones high, a sign of strength; the chin certainly square and prominent; the lips full and the mouth rather large; the hair waving and thick; the throat large. One by one she traced each detail and then, moving both hands rather swiftly over the face, she strove to build the mental picture of the whole—and she achieved one, but still it was always the