The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole
walked into the Café d’Italie, which, as everyone knows, is next to Mouton’s, the pork shop, on the left-hand side of the Boul’ Miche, as you go from the Seine; called for a boc, and then plunged into a game of dominoes with an art student in a magenta necktie, whom he had never met before, and whom, after the game, he would, a million to one, never meet again.
That night, when he had blown out his candle, he reviewed Thénard’s proposition in the dark. The more he looked at it the more attraction it had for him, and—“Whatever comes of it,” said he to himself, “I will go and see this Captain Berselius to-morrow. The animal seems worth the trouble of inspection.”
CHAPTER III
CAPTAIN BERSELIUS
Next morning was chill and a white Seine mist wrapped Paris in its folds. It clung to the trees of the Avenue Champs Elysées, and it half veiled the Avenue Malakoff as Adams’s fiacre turned into that thoroughfare and drew up at No. 14, a house with a carriage drive, a porter’s lodge, and wrought-iron gates.
The American paid off his cab, rang at the porter’s lodge, was instantly admitted, and found himself in an enormous courtyard domed in with glass. He noted the orange and aloe trees growing in tubs of porcelain, as the porter led him to the big double glass doors giving entrance to the house.
“He’s got the money,” thought Adams, as the glass swing-door was opened by a flunkey as magnificent as a Lord Mayor’s footman, who took the visitor’s card and the card of M. Thénard and presented them to a functionary with a large pale face, who was seated at a table close to the door.
This personage, who was as soberly dressed as an archbishop, and had altogether a pontifical air, raised himself to his feet and approached the visitor.
“Has monsieur an appointment——”
“No,” said Adams. “I have come to see your master on business. You can take him my card—yes, that one—Dr. Adams, introduced by Dr. Thénard.”
The functionary seemed perplexed; the early hour, the size of the visitor, his decided manner, all taken together, were out of routine. Only for a moment he hesitated, then leading the way across the warm and flower-scented hall, he opened a door and said, “Will monsieur take a seat?” Adams entered a big room, half library, half museum; the door closed behind him, and he found himself alone.
The four walls of the room showed a few books, but were mostly covered with arms and trophies of the chase. Japanese swords in solid ivory scabbards, swords of the old Samurai so keen that a touch of the edge would divide a suspended hair. Malay krisses, double-handed Chinese execution swords; old pepper-pot revolvers, such as may still be found on the African coast; knob-kerries, assegais, steel-spiked balls swinging from whips of raw hide; weapons wild and savage and primitive as those with which Attila drove before him the hordes of the Huns, and modern weapons of to-day and yesterday; the big elephant gun which has been supplanted by the express rifle; the deadly magazine rifle, the latest products of Schaunard of the Rue de la Paix and Westley Richards of London.
Adams forgot time as he stood examining these things; then he turned his attention to the trophies, mounted by Borchard of Berlin, that prince of taxidermists. Here stood a great ape, six feet and over—monstrum horrendum—head flung back, mouth open, shouting aloud to the imagination of the gazer in the language that was spoken ere the earliest man lifted his face to the chill mystery of the stars. In the right fist was clutched the branch of a M’bina tree, ready lifted to dash your brains out—the whole thing a miracle of the taxidermist’s art. Here crawled an alligator on a slab of granitic rock; an alligator—that is to say, the despair of the taxidermist—for you can make nothing out of an alligator; alive and not in motion he looks stuffed, stuffed, he looks just the same. Hartbeest, reedbuck, the maned and huge-eared roan antelope, gazelle, and bush-buck, all were here, skull or mask, dominated by the vast head of the wildebeest, with ponderous sickle-curved horns.
Adams had half completed the tour of the walls when the door of the library opened and Captain Berselius came in. Tall, black-bearded and ferocious looking—that was the description of man Adams was prepared to meet. But Captain Berselius was a little man in a frock-coat, rather worn, and slippers. He had evidently been in négligé and, to meet the visitor, slipped into the frock-coat, or possibly he was careless, taken up with abstractions, dreams, business affairs, plans. He was rather stout, with an oval, egg-shaped face; his beard, sparse and pointed and tinged with gray, had originally been light of hue; he had pale blue eyes, and he had a perpetual smile.
It is to be understood by this that Captain Berselius’s smile was, so to speak, hung on a hair-trigger; there was always a trace of it on his face round the lips, and in conversation it became accentuated.
At first sight, during your first moments of meeting with Captain Berselius, you would have said, “What a happy-faced and jolly little man!”
Adams, completely taken aback by the apparition before him, bowed.
“I have the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Adams, introduced by Dr. Thénard?” said Captain Berselius, motioning the visitor to a chair. “Pray take a seat, take a seat—yes——” He took a seat opposite the American, crossed his legs in a comfortable manner, caressed his chin, and whilst chatting on general subjects stared full at the newcomer, as though Adams had been a statue, examining him, without the least insolence, but in that thorough manner with which a purchaser examines the horse he is about to buy or the physician of an insurance company a proposer.
It was now that Adams felt he had to deal with no common man in Captain Berselius.
Never before had he conversed with a person so calmly authoritative, so perfectly at ease, and so commanding. This little commonplace-looking, negligently dressed man, talking easily in his armchair, made the spacious Adams feel small and of little account in the world. Captain Berselius filled all the space. He was the person in that room; Adams, though he had personality enough, was nowhere. And now he noticed that the perpetual smile of the Captain had no relation to mirth or kindliness, it was not worn as a mask, for Captain Berselius had no need for masks; it was a mysterious and unaccountable thing that was there.
“You know M. Thénard intimately?” said Captain Berselius, turning suddenly from some remarks he was making on the United States.
“Oh, no,” said Adams. “I have attended his clinics; beyond that——”
“Just so,” said the other. “Are you a good shot?”
“Fair, with the rifle.”
“You have had to do with big game?”
“I have shot bear.”
“These are some of my trophies,” said the Captain, rising to his feet. He took his stand before the great ape and contemplated it for a moment. “I shot him near M’Bassa on the West Coast two years ago. The natives at the village where we were camping said there was a big monkey in a tree near by. They seemed very much frightened, but they led me to the tree. He knew what a gun was; he knew what a man was, too. He knew that his hour of death had arrived, and he came roaring out of the tree to meet me. But when he was on the ground, with the muzzle of my Mannlicher two yards from his head, all his rage vanished. He saw death, and to shut out the sight he put his big hands before his face——”
“And you?”
“I shot him through the heart. This room does not represent all my work. The billiard room and the hall contain many of my trophies; they are interesting to me, for each has a history. That tiger skin there in front of the fireplace once covered a thing very much alive. He was a full-sized brute,