Part 3

"Your speech belies you, sir," retorted Master Francis courteously, "for it proclaims a man of nice discrimination. I could swear you are a doctor of the law."

"Then would you be forsworn," replied the other, laughing, "for, by the grace of God, I am near kinsman to the dancing poodle of a country fair. Come any afternoon at three o'clock to the Curtain Play-house at Shoreditch, and there for sixpence you may see my antics."

"Ah, then you are a player!" Master Francis cried, well pleased.

"For the lack of a more honest calling," his companion answered with a gesture as who should say, "Tell me where can be found an honester?"

"Then we are in like case," laughed Master Francis. "_Fere totus mundus exercet histrionem_, says Phædrus; or as one might put it bluntly, 'All the world's a stage.'"

"Methinks our English hath the better jingle," commented the player. "Would that some wordsmith might e'en recoin these ancient mintages to fill the meager purses of our mouths!"

They had come now to the broad low archway leading to the courtyard of the Bull, and passing in beneath its shadow, Master Francis recalled the plays he had witnessed there in boyhood.

"Ah," said his companion, "'tis not so long since we poor players hung our single rag of curtain where we might. Now we have playhouses of our own, and when the servants of the Lord Chamberlain shall occupy the Globe at Bankside, you shall see how plays may be presented. But _Navita de ventis de tauris narrat orator_, as thy gossip Propertius hath it, though I like best the homely adage, 'A tinker will talk of his trade.'"

They found the seaman in the little room behind the tap, a veritable high priest of some mystic cult in dignity. He bowed a hearty welcome to the visitors and presently made clear to them the true relationship between his pot of dried tobacco and the earthen pipe bowls at the ends of hollow reeds. He cautioned them to have a care, when the coal of fire was applied, not to draw the smoke into their mouths too suddenly and fall to coughing. He was a swarthy man, with brass rings in his ears and long hair braided in a queue behind, and his account of the savage king held captive until the inner secrets of the art of smoking were revealed by way of ransom was in itself a yarn well worth his fee.

"I pray you, gentlemen, hold not the pipe too lightly lest it be overset and mar your garments," he instructed them. "And, by your leave, it must be grasped between the thumb and second finger, nicely balanced that the forearm grow not weary. Should the brain become afflicted by the vapor it is well to pause and inhale some breaths of common air. Extend the little finger carelessly and compose the face as though the flavor were agreeable, for to spit and grimace at the pipe were most inelegant."

"Out upon you for an arrant knave!" cried Master Francis, springing to his feet, exasperated by the solemn affectation of superior wisdom. "'Tis but an indifferent entertainment at the best, and as for the art, I know of none too great a fool to compass it."

He had grown a trifle pale about the lips and his nerves tingled.

"Nay, then," protested his fellow investigator, "were the taste less vile and the savor less like a smithy 'twould make an excellent good physic for one afflicted with too much health."

The sailor was a man of evil disposition, who had not only sailed with Raleigh's godless mariners but, had the truth been known, in other service still less creditable. Hearing his enterprise thus flouted, his anger rose, and with a mighty oath he turned upon his clients.

"A pest upon such horse boys!" he exclaimed. "Get back to the stables whose smells best suit you. Leave elegant accomplishments to your betters."

Master Francis, grown fearful lest his knees give way beneath him, and blinded by a film which swam before his eyes, moved unsteadily toward the door, half throwing, half dropping his pipe upon the oaken table, where the red clay bowl fell shattered in a dozen fragments.

"Hold!" cried the sailor. "Not another step, my gallant, till you have paid me ten shillings for my broken pipe."

He sprang upon the slighter man and, grasping him by the shoulders, would have done him violence had not the other smoker interposed a doubled sinewy fist beneath his irate nose and bade him let go his hold. As the command was not instantly obeyed, a sharp blow followed.

"Beshrew my blood!" the pirate roared, turning to strike at random.

"Gadslid!" returned the player, facing him and bringing both fists into action with such good effect that presently the table groaned beneath the weight of the struggling freebooter, while pipes, jug, and precious weed went flying.

The uproar brought the company from the taproom at a run, customers, servants, the drawer, the pot-boy, a brace of hostlers, until the small room filled to suffocation. Swords were drawn, cudgels brandished, above the din the seaman's oaths boomed like the cannon of a sloop of war in action.

"Good friends," the player bawled out, springing to a stool to command attention, "behold to what a pass the smoking of this weed will bring a man. I pray you bind this fellow fast and get him safe to Bedlam before some mischief happens."

Master Francis sank down into the corner of a high-backed seat, too ill for much concern with what passed about him, and it was not till some moments later, in the open air and propped against a wall, that consciousness returned. His champion in the late encounter stood beside him.

"Sir," said the student, "it is to you I owe my preservation, though, by my honor, I should have cut a better figure in the skirmish had not the vapors of that vile weed overpowered me. How made you our escape?"

"Even as Æneas with Anchises on his back," replied the other, laughing. "'Twas high time to take ourselves away, being but two against so many, though, by my faith, I've rarely seen a merrier opening for a game of skull cracking."

The player, whether actuated by humor or generosity, seemed disposed to make light of the whole affair. Grasping his companion's arm he supported that gentleman's still uncertain steps in the direction of the lodging-house of Mistress Hodges. He spoke of broils and frays as though such pastimes were of every-day occurrence with men of spirit, whether the sport were putting a pinnace crew of drunken sailors to their heels, or by some trickery outwitting the watch. At the door Master Francis could do no less in hospitality than invite so stanch an ally to enter.

"Come to my chambers and rest awhile," he said, adding regretfully, "though they be plain indeed, and offer no better entertainment than my poor company."

"Good cheer enough," replied the other, stepping back for a better view of the house. "By my estates in Chancery!" he cried, "yon bristling roof that sets its lance against the very buckler of the moon hath met mine eyes before. 'Twas here, unless my memory be a lying kitchen wench, our noble Christopher did lodge, the prince and potentate of pewter pots."

"And knew you Master Christopher?" asked Master Francis with increasing interest.

"Marry, I knew him well," replied the player. "Marry, a poet. Marry, a rimester to couple you a couplet while your Flemish fighter quaffs a mug of sack, and pay the reckoning with a sonnet to his landlord's honesty. 'The first line,' he would say, 'shall tell the weight of it.' And here he did set down a naught. 'So likewise with the second, which doth sing its breadth; the third proclaims its depth'--another naught, and thus until the measure of the verse was writ. 'Now add them for thyself,' he bids the rum-fed Malmsey monger, 'and by the thirst of Tantalus, the sum shall blazon both thine honor and my debt.'"

"Methinks 'twas but a scurvy trick," protested Master Francis, laughing tolerantly. "What said the host to it?"

"In faith," replied the player, "he found the meter falling short and clamored for money. 'Money!' quoth Kit. 'Think well on't! for if, as men of reason all agree, naught is better than money, you are overpaid in getting naught!'"

"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he urged with a gesture of hospitality.

"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with lyrics or--what is more fearful--pilloried in prose. And furthermore, this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and steel.

"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm that doth serve to make the darkness visible."

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing himself into a seat.

"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor."

"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend, had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds."

"One hundred pounds?" gasped Master Francis. "Believe me, it is not from inkwells that such miraculous drafts are made." He waved his hand toward the scattered papers on the table. "Look," he said, "it hath taken me a year to make that much fair paper valueless."

"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers, 'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so undone!'"

"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets, not for men of learning."

"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute."

"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned forward in the candle-light to catch the answer.

"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the very finger pricks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play."

"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented Master Francis.

"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth, there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a huckster's hat of rotten cherries."

"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me ambition gratified."

"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth considering?"

"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy."

"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your closet, unlock your treasure chest--" Here Master Francis gave a start, but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried."

He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher, and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale.

"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that last tobacco pipe?"

"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth that a play can be sold for so much money?"

"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written."

Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest.

"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with shrouded lanthorn and with muffled spade to force the moldering hinges of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play."

He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first manuscript that met his hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table.

"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame--"

"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read."

"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds; here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the title sheet. You are too modest."

"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back.

"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your offspring loose upon the world without parentage?"

"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis.

"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded the player.

"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you, say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed."

"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should the play find favor, may be at any time corrected."

And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the page:

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

"A proper title, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more cunningly than that of Francis Bacon."

THE CARHART MYSTERY

The conversation had grown reminiscent, as conversations will when old acquaintance stirs its coffee after dinner and the blue wreaths of good tobacco-smoke float ceilingward, like pleasant specters, in the subdued light of the shaded lamps.

Barton and I, in following back some winding paths of memory now well-nigh overgrown, were in danger of forgetting our good manners till Willoughby reminded us of his presence.

"I might as well embrace this opportunity for a nap," he said, stretching his long legs to the fire, and sinking back into one of Barton's most engaging armchairs. "Just wake me up when you fellows hit upon a subject I know something of. I happen to have been living in India during the time the thrilling tea-and-tennis episodes you recall so fondly were taking place, and, to tell the truth, they bore me."

Barton laughed.

"Oh, we have done with recollections, and now you shall have a chance to bore us with an Indian tale or so by way of recompense," he said, with the candor permissible only between men who know each other well. "Make clear to us the difference between a maharajah and a pongee pajama, and go ahead."

"At least, my stories do not deal with duels that ended in Delmonico's, and flirtations which fell flat," asserted Willoughby, blowing a cloud of fragrant incense into space. "I've no idea of wasting occult material on a brace of rank Philistines, but if I were so disposed----"

"Dear boy!" I put in, rather testily; for I dislike fatuous patronage even in fun. "Either Barton or I could relate to you an incident which occurred in this very room, within a yard of where you sit, remarkable enough to make your Kiplingest jungle-tale seem as tame as 'Mother Hubbard's Dog!'"

"Indeed!" he said, sinking still farther into his chair, with something very like a yawn; and Barton, as he arose and moved to the mantelpiece, cast a look of remonstrance toward me which I was careful not to recognize.

"Ah, here comes Nathan with fresh coffee," our host announced, clearly to change the subject, as the round-shouldered figure of his worthy valet appeared in the lamplight. "Pray let him fill your cups, and, if it is not strong enough, don't hesitate to tell him."

"It'th not the coffee gentlemen dethired when I wath young," commented Nathan, a trifle sadly, and with the amusing lisp which made him something of a character, albeit he was rather a dull man even for a valet.

"I never take a second cup," Willoughby declared, adding: "But, if it's all the same, I might be tempted by a sip of soda later, say in half an hour or so."

This struck me as an excellent suggestion, and Barton evidently thought the same.

"Bring soda in half an hour," he instructed the servant, "and mind you have it cold."

"It'th never any other way you've had your thoda a thingle night for fifteen yearth, thir," retorted Nathan, with quite sufficient truth, no doubt, to justify the protest; and as he shuffled from the room, "Jim" Barton's guests chuckled.

"I move we give the half-hour to your yarn," said Willoughby, crossing his legs. "That is, if it can be told in thirty minutes."

"It's not worth half that time if it were told at all," replied our host. "The story is not worth much at best, but to give old Joe here the chance to intimate a too-elaborate dinner."

My name is Joseph, by the way.

"Oh, if you will admit that explanation----" I began, to draw him on, for I was anxious Willoughby should understand that interesting things could happen elsewhere than in India.

"I don't admit it in the least!" cried Barton, interrupting. "I assure you, Willoughby, upon my word, as sure as I stand here, I had tasted nothing more potent than a glass or two of Burgundy that night."

"What night?" inquired Willoughby.

"The night young Carhart disappeared," I interposed impressively. "The night a fellow six feet high and heavier than any one of us vanished as completely from this room as a puff of smoke dissolves in air."

"I have seen a puff of smoke go flying through a window," Willoughby suggested, laughing, though his interest had evidently been aroused, for he glanced toward the bay of leaded glass which made one of the pleasantest features of Barton's cozy smoking-room.

"But no man ever went through this particular window," I replied, taking the burden of enlightenment upon myself, in spite of my host's very apparent disapproval. "This window looks out upon a neighbor's yard, and ever since the house was built it has been barred as heavily as you see it now."

I sprang up, and, when I had pressed a button which set a dozen electric bulbs aglow in the four corners of the room, drew the light curtains to one side.

"Examine for yourself!" I cried, much in the manner of a showman.

"I'll take your word for it the iron in that grille is genuine," said Willoughby, without rising. "And I will admit that no fasting Yogi could worm himself through interstices so small. But how about the door?"

"The door," I hastened to assure him, "was then just as you see it now, an opening three feet wide, and Barton himself stood before it in the hall, a single step beyond the threshold."

I should have gone on in my eagerness to call attention to the walls and ceiling and floor, all obviously free from secret openings, had not Barton interrupted.

Shifting uneasily on his feet before the mantelpiece, he said: "Our friend Joe has not explained that he knows nothing of the circumstances beyond what I have told him."

"But not in confidence," I protested.

"No," admitted Barton, "not in confidence." And to his other guest he said: "I have made no secret of this strange occurrence, Willoughby, and my reluctance to discuss it arises from a doubt that long familiarity with the circumstances has not made it impossible for me to give to each its proper weight. I am in constant fear of coming upon a weakness which I have overlooked in the chain, and yet it would be a relief to discover such a flaw. I should have called in an expert at once. I should have sought the counsel of detectives; and such would unquestionably have been my course had not those most interested dissuaded me, Young Carhart's father telegraphed me: 'Say nothing to authorities. Disappearance satisfactorily explained.' And, at the time, that was enough. It was not till some months later that I learned the family were theosophists, a sect to which nothing is so satisfactory as the inexplicable. I have, myself, no theory to advance. The man, my guest, was here one moment, and the next he had gone from a room where the only openings were a grilled window and a guarded door. His overcoat and hat are still in my possession; and, from all I have been able to learn, he has not been heard of since."

"I beg that you will not think it necessary to tell me more of the story if it distresses you," protested Willoughby, courteously; for Barton's face had grown grave, and I had begun to feel my introduction of the subject ill-timed. But our host was quick to reassure him with a gesture.

"On the contrary," he said, "you have but just returned from India, where, as I have heard, mysterious disappearances are not uncommon, and occult matters are better understood. Your opinion will be of the greatest service."

"In that case," Willoughby replied, becoming instantly, judicially alert, "let us begin at the beginning. Who was Carhart? How came he here? What was the manner of his going?"

"That's just the mystery," I interposed.

"Joe, please don't interrupt," said Barton, making an effort to collect his thoughts.

"Sit down, old man," Willoughby suggested. "We'll choke Joe if he speaks again. Now let us have the facts--I'm deeply interested. Do sit down."

Barton complied in so far as to perch himself upon the broad arm of a leather chair.

"I shan't be tragic," he began; "for, as I said, there may be--in fact, there must be--some purely natural explanation. Of course, you never met young Carhart; for he came here while you were away. He had but few acquaintances in New York; for, although he brought good letters from Boston, where his people lived, he had not chosen to present them. He was a most attractive sort--half-back at Harvard, stroke-oar and all the rest. Great fellow in the Hasty Pudding Club, and poet of his class, but just a trifle--shall I say--susceptible and--"

"Soft," I suggested.

"No," contradicted Barton; "though, to tell the truth, he never could resist a pretty face. That was his failing."

"Remarkable man!" Willoughby commented, with fervor.