SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN. Abraham Merritt
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had undoubtedly left one of my guards with a broken neck and another with a head that would not do much thinking for another month or so. Then there had been the second attempt when the auto in which I was rushing to the steamer had been held up between Paris and the Havre. That might have been successful had not the plaques been tucked among the baggage of an acquaintance who was going to the boat by the regular train, thinking, by the way, that he was carrying for me some moderately rare old dishes that I did not want to trust to the possible shocks of fast automobile travel, to which the mythical engagement on the day of sailing had condemned me.
Were the watchers this same gang? They must know that the jades were now out of my hands and safe in the museum. I could be of no further value to these disappointed gentlemen, unless, of course, they were after revenge. Yet that would hardly explain this constant, furtive, patient watching. And why hadn’t they struck long before? Surely there had been plenty of opportunities.
Well, whoever the watchers were, I had determined to give them the most open of chances to get at me. I had paid all my bills. The sixty-six dollars and ninety-five cents in my pocket comprised all my worldly goods, but no one else had any claim on it. Whatever unknown port I was clearing for with severely bare sticks and decks, it was with no debts left behind.
Yes, I had determined to decoy my enemies, if enemies they were, out into the open. I had even made up my mind as to where it should be.
In all New York the loneliest spot at eight o’clock of an October night, or any night for that matter, is the one which by day is the most crowded on all the globe. Lower Broadway, empty then of all its hordes and its canyon-like cleft silent, its intersecting minor canyons emptier and quieter even than their desert kin. It was there that I would go.
As I turned down Fifth Avenue from the Discoverers’ Club a man passed me, a man whose gait and carriage, figure and clothing, were oddly familiar.
I stood stock still, looking after him as he strolled leisurely up the steps and into the Club.
Then, queerly disturbed, I resumed my walk. There had been something peculiarly familiar, indeed disquietingly familiar, about that man. What was it? Making my way over to Broadway, I went down that street, always aware of the watchers.
But it was not until I was opposite City Hall that I realized what that truly weird familiarity had been. The realization came to me with a distinct shock.
In gait and carriage, in figure and clothing, from light brown overcoat, gray soft hat, to strong Malacca cane that man had been— Myself!
CHAPTER 2
I stopped short. The natural assumption was, of course, that the resemblance had been a coincidence, extraordinary enough, but still— coincidence. Without doubt there were at least fifty men in New York who might easily be mistaken for me at casual glance. The chance, however, that one of them would be dressed precisely like me at any precise moment was almost nil. Yet it could be. What else could it be? What reason had any one to impersonate me?
But then, for that matter, what reason had any one to put a watch on me?
I hesitated, of half a mind to call a taxi, and return to the Club. Reason whispered to me that the glimpse I had gotten had been brief, that perhaps I had been deceived by the play of light and shadow, the resemblance been only an illusion. I cursed my jumpy nerves and went on.
Fewer and fewer became the people I passed as I left Cortlandt Street behind me. Trinity was like a country church at midnight. As the cliffs of the silent office buildings hemmed me I felt a smothering oppression, as though they were asleep and swaying in on me; their countless windows were like blind eyes. But if they were blind, those other eyes, that I had never for an instant felt leave me, were not. They seemed to become more intent, more watchful.
And now I met no one. Not a policeman, not even a watchman. The latter were, I knew, inside these huge stone forts of capital. I loitered at corners, giving every opportunity for the lurkers to step out, the invisible to become visible. And still I saw no one. And still the eyes never left me.
It was with a certain sense of disappointment that I reached the end of Broadway and looked out over Battery Park. It was deserted. I walked down to the Harbor wall and sat upon a bench. A ferryboat gliding toward Staten Island was like some great golden water bug. The full moon poured a rivulet of rippling silver fire upon the waves. It was very still—so still that I could faintly hear Trinity’s bells chiming nine o’clock.
I had heard no one approach, but suddenly I was aware of a man sitting beside me and a pleasant voice asking me for a match. As the flame flared up to meet his cigarette, I saw a dark, ascetic face, smooth-shaven, the mouth and eyes kindly and the latter a bit weary, as though from study. The hand that held the match was long and slender and beautifully kept. It gave the impression of unusual strength—a surgeon’s hand or a sculptor’s. A professional man certainly, I conjectured. The thought was strengthened by his Inverness coat and his soft, dark hat. In the broad shoulders under the cloak of the coat was further suggestion of a muscular power much beyond the ordinary.
“A beautiful night, sir,” he tossed the match from him. “A night for adventure. And behind us a city in which any adventure is possible.”
I looked at him more closely. It was an odd remark, considering that I had unquestionably started out that night for adventure. But was it so odd after all? Perhaps it was only my overstimulated suspicion that made it seem so. He could not possibly have known what had drawn me to this silent place. And the kindly eyes and the face made me almost instantly dismiss the thought. Some scholar this, perhaps, grateful for the quietness of the Park.
“That ferryboat yonder,” he pointed, seemingly unaware of my scrutiny. “It is an argosy of potential adventure. Within it are mute Alexanders, inglorious Caesars and Napoleons, incomplete Jasons each almost able to retrieve some Golden Fleece—yes, and incomplete Helens and Cleopatras, all lacking only one thing to round them out and send them forth to conquer.”
“Lucky for the world they’re incomplete, then,” I laughed. “How long would it be before all these Napoleons and Caesars and Cleopatras and all the rest of them were at each other’s throats—and the whole world on fire?”
“Never,” he said, very seriously. “Never, that is, if they were under the control of a will and an intellect greater than the sum total of all their wills and intellects. A mind greater than all of them to plan for all of them, a will more powerful than all their wills to force them to carry out those plans exactly as the greater mind had conceived them.”
“The result, sir,” I objected, “would seem to me to be not the super- pirates, super-thieves and super-courtesans you have cited, but super- slaves.”
“Less slaves than at any time in history,” he replied. “The personages I have suggested as types were always under control of Destiny—or God, if you prefer the term. The will and intellect I have in mind would profit, since its house would be a human brain, by the mistakes of blind, mechanistic Destiny or of a God who surely, if he exists, has too many varying worlds to look after to give minute attention to individuals of the countless species that crawl over them. No, it would use the talents of its servants to the utmost, not waste them. It would suitably and justly reward them, and when it punished—its punishments would be just. It would not scatter a thousand seeds haphazardly on the chance that a few would find fertile ground and grow. It would select the few, and see that they fell on fertile ground and that nothing prevented their growing.”
“Such a mind would have to be greater than Destiny, or, if you prefer the term, God,” I said. “I repeat that it seems to me a super-slavery and that it’s mighty lucky for the world that no such mind exists.”
“Ah!” he drew at his cigarette, thoughtfully, “but, you see—it does.”
“Yes?” I stared at him, wondering if he were joking. “Where?”
“That,”