The Son of Clemenceau. Александр Дюма-сын
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and an hour after!"
Claudius knew what those knobs and the instructions portended in this adjunct to the charnel house. The public mortuary was at the other end of the wires from those bells; the custom was to attach them to the dead so that, if their slumbers were not that knowing no waking and they stirred even so little as a finger, the electric transmitter which they agitated would sound the appeal.
And now the watcher, on whom perhaps depended the duration of a worthier life than his, had paltered with his trust, while drinking at the beer-house or chattering with a sweetheart, the bell might ring unheeded, and the unhappy creature, falling with the last tremor of vitality, to obtain a desperate succor, would become indeed the corpse like which he had been laid out in the morgue.
Claudius smiled grimly and sadly. On what flimsy bases the best plant of wise men too often rest! The latest power of nature had been harnessed to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man. The bell would tinkle—the watcher would be laughing out of earshot—and the life would sink back into Lethe after swimming to the shore!
The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed with the sexton, the undertaker's men and the hearse-coachman.
If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most uselessly? The resuscitated man would not be "of his parish," since he was a wanderer from afar. Let the natives bury their own dead!
At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very loudly. It sounded in his ear like the last trump. Could he doubt that this appeal was to him exclusively? The removal of the custodian, his own miraculous escape—all pointed to this conclusion.
But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his road, repeat to him the alarm? Not much time would be lost, for the gong still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor's in such a crisis.
But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer. On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth, to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.
He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose verge it was balanced.
It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted that his goal was there.
He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it, but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was no agreeable sight.
A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement; all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads—sluggishly swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted—their clothes were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the pauper's hell.
Which had rung the bell?
Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there, his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.
But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.
The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung on the slab in the public dead-house.
Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?
But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief flush ran over the icy skin.
If his enemy did not extend relief to him immediately, he would never recover strength to ring the death-bell to which ran the wires appended to his fingers and toes.
With three or four rapid strokes and twistings, Claudius broke them. He looked round; this waif of the gutter had no clothes, but a torn and shapeless garment dangled over his head; it was the old cloak of the student. The pockets had been torn bodily away to save time; it was the mere integument of the garment.
But it sufficed to retain the scanty heat lingering in the unfortunate man, when wrapped about him. With a surprising spell of strength, Claudius lifted him upon his breast when so enveloped, and crossed the grounds for the third time.
The warder had returned but he had left the gate open to close its sliding grate by mechanism worked within his little house. To his amazed eyes, Claudius presented himself with the burden.
"Help him! revive him! he is living!" he said. "I will go fetch the police surgeon! it is my officer—Major von Sendlingen!"
After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would want for nothing. He let the body fall into the large armchair and, taking advantage of the warder's consternation at seeing the dead-like body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow space between the sliding rails and disappeared.
The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder, added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to reach the Jew's hotel before morning.
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