The Complete Simon Iff (47 page)

"Hell!" said Prince Joachim, solidly and emphatically, "Hell!"

"True," said Iff.

"Berkeley," said the Prince, in swift incisive tones, "Mr. Iff made no attempt to communicate with anybody?"

"None. I can swear to it."

"And you were not followed?"

"Bauerkeller is your own man. Can't you trust him?"

"I give you my word of honour as a gentleman that I took no precautions of any sort. If anybody knows where I am, it is you, not I, who have told. I was particularly careful for a very special reason, which you may learn later, to leave absolutely no clue to my movements." The Prince knew enough not to doubt for a second that Iff was speaking the truth.

"Well, then, well. Perhaps Mr. Iff has learnt the bluff of these idiotic Yankees. It will not go with us. I have perhaps a little surprise for you, Mr. Magician. A little atropine in your veins, and a little ether and nitrous oxide in your nostriles, and with my will-power and my soul-science you shall tell me in your delirium what I want to know."

"Why trouble yourself?" said Simple Simon. "I can't answer for the Wilhelmstrasse, but I have certainly no secrets from you. Come; how can I enlighten you?"

"There is something very wrong," mused the other; "very wrong. But we must just try it out. Please step to this side!"

He began his examination in a low voice. He was answered simply, fluently, convincingly, without the least attempt at concealment or equivocation. The magician revealed a dozen secrets, any one of them enough to shake the world. Prince Joachim positively gasped. Simon Iff, in twenty minutes' conversation, had made him one of the fifty most powerful statesmen in the world. But once again his scepticism stopped him.

"There is something wrong," he repeated ponderously, "there is something behind all this. Why do you so willingly tell me these things, Mr. Iff?"

"It is the Way of the Tao, Prince. You ask me, and I tell you. What can be more simple? Surely you can see that all the trouble in this world arises from not being natural, from raising artificial obstacles where none need exist!"

"Ah well, if it is mysticism, very good. Very good. That and the so much alcohol - and the drugs also - they have made the brain soft. I understand. Well, I know all now. What is the combination of your safe, please?"

"The word is Water. The strongest thing in the world, Prince, because it doesn't resist."

"And will you write me a letter, so that I may visit your bank? I must have that little paper, Mr. Iff."

"Certainly, with pleasure. I am always delighted to oblige."

He wrote the desired authorization, and handed it to the Prince with a low bow.

"It is ended, then," said the latter, with a change in his voice. "I suppose you think, Mr. Iff," he continued impressively, "that I am deceived by your foolish talk about the Tao. A fig! Rubbish! Rubbish! You say it to save your face. No, you knew that you were in my power, and hoped to buy your life by servile obedience. But, Mr. Iff, it will not do. I tell you that it will not do. If I let you go you might become dangerous again."

"Let me enlighten you on one more point before I die. I was never dangerous to you. The defect of such minds as your own is that you always look for danger in the wrong place."

"There is something very wrong," reiterated the Prince. "But it can do no harm to hurry with our programme. Mr. Berkeley, you will please kill these good people, and we will go away and leave them to Mother Meakins to clean up."

"I'm damned if I do," answered Berkeley. "Mr. Iff has behaved like a gentleman. He has told you all you wanted to know, and I won't do your butcher's work. A girl into the bargain as well. No, I'm through."

"You see where you go wrong," said Simple Simon to the astounded Prince, who had expected anything rather than that such a well-tried tool should break in his hand. "A broken gentleman is still a gentleman, if you know how to remind him of it."

The Prince found his voice. "I must break my rule," he said hesitatingly, "and do it myself. And I shall include you, Mr. Berkeley, in the butcher's work. Keep them covered, von Weibheim; I will do what is necessary without noise."

The momentary silence that followed was broken by a resounding knock upon the door. The Prince sprang to the situation.

"Throw away those silly guns, Fritz, you fool. We must open. I knew there was something wrong. Open, Mr. Berkeley. Will you try one of my cigars, Mr. Iff?"

"Thank you," said Simon, "I am sure they are better than mine."

As Berkeley lifted the latch the door was thrust violently inwards, and Mr. Commissioner Teake with six armed detectives burst into the stable.

Behind them, particularly cool and supercilious, sailed Dolores Cass.

The three conspirators made no resistance to the police.

"Ah, Dolores!" smiled Simon, "you must really let me introduce Prince Joachim von Arnberg."

"I feel already as if he were an old friend. My father used often to speak to me of him."

"So!" growled the captive.

"But that doesn't explain it at all," interjected Simon. "And I'm quite as anxious to know as the Prince is."

"Know what?" came the sinister voice.

"How this lady got here, of course."

"Why," said Dolores, "it was really very exciting. I had no idea whatever where to look for you. But I reasoned that if you had been lured away to be murdered by this very highly organized gang, it was probably to be a place carefully prepared, with all the latest improvements for getting rid of bodies. But who knew where that was? The Prince was kind enough to provide me with a guide - the man who had just confessed to the shootings which I knew he didn't do. So he must have been a member of the gang. I went to Mr. Teake, who has been very kind in every way, and gave me a free hand."

"So that swine squealed!"

"No, that swine did not squeal. I told him how we were on to the whole business; Mr. Teake promised to send him to the chair on his confession unless he came across; we tried everything. But he was absolutely confident in the power of these people to save him.

"So I just sat in Mr. Teake's car with him, and held his hand. His muscles told me when I was 'getting hot' or 'cold', as they say in the old game. At first it was rather difficult; but, when he saw that I was gradually getting nearer all the time, his nerves gave out, and he reacted splendidly."

"Magnificent," said Simon Iff.

"And so say I," cried Teake heartily. "But I guess I had better take these men; see you later."

"Don't take Berkeley!" begged the mystic. "He's all right; I want him to stay for a bit in a colony I founded for reformed Oxford men."

"Quite your old form!" cried Dolores, delighted.

For the first time the Prince uttered a protest. "What am I charged with?" he asked, a gleam of cunning in his eyes.

"It hardly matters, does it? Just a lot of tedious formalities - a terrible fuss to make over electrocuting anybody!"

"What are you talking about?" roared von Arnberg. "Is this more of your follery? What have I done?"

"Well, there's one thing I know of, myself. You listened to all that I told you. Curiosity killed the cat, don't you know?"

The man's face broke into a cold sweat.

"My God, it's true," he cried in agony. "I wouldn't let any one live, myself, who knew all that." His head fell hopelessly on his breast. They led him and von Weibheim away. Berkeley followed. "I'll call to-night," he said to the magician humbly and gratefully. Iff shook his hand, and he went out.

At that moment Mollie gave way; the reaction took her. She fell trembling on Simon's shoulder. He put an arm about her to support her. "Take it easy," he said, smiling. "Cephas means rock, doesn't it?"

"Mr. Iff," said Dolores severely, "I am exceedingly angry with you. If I had not turned up, you would most certainly have been killed."

"But you did turn up," he protested mildly.

Something in his tone caught her ear. She shot a quick inquiring gaze, which grew fixed.

"She held him with her glittering eye, The wedding guest was still," laughed he. "It's very simple. As I told you before, the way to manage this business was just not to interfere, to let everything happen quite quite naturally."

"Dig on!"

"Yes, my child, I judged that it would be in your nature to want to follow me, and to be able to do so. I felt perfectly safe, thank you."

"You are a perfect Beast!" she cried angrily. "If I'd guessed that!"

"I thought you might guess at least that as it was your case originally, I should not want to rob you of the glory of it. It was the natural thing to do."

"Indeed, indeed, you are adorable!"

"Also, I am leaving America next week, and I wanted a final proof that the continent was in competent hands."

Mollie woke up. "What! you are going away?"

"On the Deutschland. It's the safest boat, by a strange paradox; it would never never do for me to have an accident just now. Crasingens iterabimus aequor."

"You're going away! You're going away!"

"The Deutschland is quite a large boat."

Dolores broke into a musical laugh. Mollie could only wail, "You're going away!"

"We're going away." He put his other arm about her and held her tightly. "This little bunch of red mischief offered her life for mine just now, Dolores!" he said softly. "I'm really and truly puzzled for once; so we had better go away for a little, and find out what it all means."

"You silly man," smiled Mollie demurely, perfectly herself again. "It's no puzzle at all to me. It's the natural thing to do."

"Perhaps it is," said Simon Iff.

The sun broke violent over a harsh blue-grey line of hills, and his beam shot through a ragged gap to strike the face of Lord Juventius Mellor. “Damnation!” cried the boy. He had overslept himself again. He might be the son of a duke, but he was also the disciple of Simon Iff; and there was Simon Iff quietly rising from the posture of meditation to greet the dawn. “Hail!” he cried, in those great words that have come down to us from countless centuries of Egyptian kings and priests. “Hail unto Thee who art Ra in thy rising, even unto Thee who art Ra in they strength, that travellest over the heavens in thy bark at the uprising of the Sun! Tahuti standeth in his splendor at the prow, and Ra Hoor abideth at the helm; hail unto Thee from the abodes of night!”

And Simon Iff had bidden him to be most particular not to neglect the dawn-meditation. Now it was already hot. Damnation!

But Simon Iff was busy kindling the fire. It was a great meal. The old man had got a gazelle on the previous evening, and there were steaks. There were dried dates, and Garibaldi biscuits, and fried rice; and there was real Turkish coffee such as no millionaires can buy. Moreover there was the best sauce, the best sauce of the proverb, for Simon Iff and his disciple had come eighty miles across the desert in two days. They had no attendants; Simon was just about to start on what he called a Great Magical Retirement, which involved finding a place where there was absolutely nobody at all, and that is not easy, even if you go to the Sahara. However, another twenty miles would bring them to Ouled Djellal, from which village they could probably find the road to Nowhere.

Breakfast was not a tedious festival; there were no newspapers to read. Only, while smoking ‘the earliest pipe of half-awakened birds’ as he sometimes called it, when feeling not so good, he traced various signs in the sand with a curious carved walking stick which he was wont to carry. “It will be a hot day, Ju,” he prophesied cheerfully; “We meet a horse and an ass, we find a house. There is a woman; the day ends with trouble.”

“Already,” said Juventius, who had eyes like a hawk or an Arab, “I see the horse and the ass.” Indeed, on the horizon appeared a cloud of dust, with a speck in front of it which might have been anything. Simon Iff looked. “There’s a man on a horse,” he said. “Probably,” remarked Lord Juventius quietly, “the man is an ass.”

“Oh, discredit to your puff-adder mother, and shame to the burnt bones of your unknown father,” replied Simon with asperity, “you can make a fool of the aged adept, but you cannot fool the Lord’s Overseers who inspect the punch-clocks of young brethren. What, may I be permitted to ask, was the subject of the dawn-meditation?”

They were already well on their way. Simon Iff, as his vow bade him, recited continuously the Chapter of the Unity from the Qu’ran: “Say thou, Allah is One; Allah is eternal; nor hath He Son, Equal, or Companion.” And after every recitation he bowed himself to the earth. He had to do this 1001 times a day, in 11 series of 91, because 91 is the numeration of the Great Name Amen, and is seven times thirteen; the eleven series made it efficacious, because Eleven is the Number of True Magick. This was merely his practice, medicine-ball stuff; when he settled down he would use what Mohammedan Sheikhs declare to be “A Great Word to become mad and run about naked.” And when he had cried this without intermission day and night until the desired result had occurred, his disciple would look after him with unusual care till he came out of the trance, which was usually a matter of a week or two; and then they would go back swiftly to syphilization, and plunge into secret diplomacy, with crime-detection as a diversion.

His first series was over. “But who is this,” he cried, “that cometh forth in the wilderness from the tents of Kedar? Is it the Sultan of the Ivory City, or the Lord of the Mountains of Bronze?”

“It is certainly a considerable cavalcade,” returned the boy, “but the man on horseback looks to me like a missionary.”

“Another series should elucidate our bewilderment.”

“And alarm.”

But Simon had already started his eternal Qol Hua Allahu Achad and the rest of it.

“The world’s all rose and blue and yellow,” mused the boy, “except ourselves, in white, and yonder rider in black. The universe needs its shadows, I suppose; let me see. Letter in Defence of the Clergy. How should I start? H’m. Analogy from Whistler, who used black as a harmonizer—black but comely—the Black Prince. Yes, by Jove, it is a missionary—and the Queen of Sheba, to judge by the camels.”