CHAPTER XXVII

LIKE THE WHISPER OF A BATS' WINGS

On the other side of Tokyo that night Doctor Bersonin sat with Phil in his great laboratory. Dinner had been laid on a round table at one end of the room. This was now pushed into a corner; they sat in deep leather chairs with slim liqueur glasses of green _crême de menthe_ on a stand between them, with a methyl lamp and cigars.

Phil had more than once refilled his glass from the straw-braided, long-necked vessel at his elbow. He was restless and ill at ease. The tense excitement that had followed his hour with Bersonin at the Club had been allayed by the lights and movement of the cherry-festival; but in that cool, bare room, under the continuous, slow scrutiny of the expert's pallid, mask-like face, the sense of half-fearful elation had returned, reinforced by a feverish expectation.

During the dinner, served at ten, conversation had been desultory, full of lapses broken only by the plaintive chirp of the _hiwa_ from its corner. When the cigars and cordial had been brought by the silent-footed Ishida, Bersonin had risen to draw the curtain closely over the window and to lock the door. When he came back he stood before the mantelpiece, his arm laid along it, looking down from his towering height on the other's unquiet hand playing with the chain of the spirit-lamp. His face was very white. Phil drew a long, slow breath and looked up.

Bersonin spoke. His voice was cold and measured; the only sign of agitation was in the slow, spasmodic working of the great white fingers against the dark wood.

"I have brought you here to-night," he said, "to make you a proposition. I have need of help--of a kind--that you can give me. It will require certain qualities which I think you possess--which we possess in common. I have chosen you because you have daring and because you are not troubled by what the coward calls conscience--that fool's name for fear!"

Phil touched his dry lips with his tongue. "I have as little of that as the next man," he replied. "I never found I needed much."

Bersonin continued:

"What I have to say I can say without misgiving. For if you told it before the fact there is possibly but one man in Japan who would think you sane; and if you told it after--well, for your own safety, you will not tell it then! Your acceptance of my proposition will have a definite effect on your prospects, which, I believe, can scarcely be looked on as bright."

Phil muttered an oath. "You needn't remind me of that," he said with surly emphasis. "I've got about as much prospects as a coolie stevedore. Well, what of it?"

The cold voice went on, and now it had gathered a sneer:

"You are twenty-three, educated, good-looking, with the best of life before you--but dependent on the niggardly charity of a rich brother for the very bread you eat. Even here, on this skirt of the world where pleasures are cheap, it is only by dint of debt that you keep your head above water. Now your sedate relative has come to sit in judgment on your past year. What does he care for your private tastes? What will he do when he hears of the _geisha_ suppers and the bar-chits at the Club and the roulette table at the bungalow? Increase that generous stipend of yours? I fancy not."

Phil lit a cigar with a hand that shook. The doctor's contemptuous words had roused a tingling anger that raced with the alcohol in his blood. He, with the tastes of a gentleman, as poor as a temple-rat, while his brother sailed around the globe in his steam-yacht! He saw his allowance cut off--saw himself driven to the cheap expedients of the Bund beach-comber, cringing for a _yen_ from men who had won his hundreds at the Roost--or perhaps sitting on an under-clerk's stool in some Settlement counting-house, shabby-genteel, adding figures from eight in the morning to five at night. No more moon-light cherry-parties on the Sumida River, or plum-blossom picnics, or high jinks in the Inland Sea. No more pony-races at Omori, or cat-boat sailing at Kamakura, or philandering at the Maple-Leaf Tea-House. No more laughing Japanese faces and tinted fingers--no more stolen kisses in bamboo lanes--no more Haru!

He struck the stand with his fist. "And if--I agree?" he said thickly. "What then?"

Bersonin leaned forward, his hands on the stand. It rocked under his weight. "I have talked of money. I will show you a quick way to gain it--not by years, but by _days_!--wealth such as you have never dreamed, enough to make your brother poor beside you! Not only money, but power and place and honors. Is the stake big enough to play for?"

Phil stared at him, fascinated. It was not madness back of those dappled, yellowish eyes. They were full of a knowledge, cold and measured and implacable.

"What do you--want me to do?" He almost gasped the words.

The expert looked him in the eye a full moment in silence, his fingers crawling and twitching. Then, with a quick, leopard-like movement, he went to the wall-safe, opened it and took out what seemed a square metal box. In its top was set an indicator, like the range-finder of a camera. Its very touch seemed to melt his icy control. His paleness flushed; his hand trembled as he set it upon the desk.

"Wait!" he said. "Wait!"

He looked swiftly about the room. His eye rested on the bamboo cage and a quick gleam shot across his face. He opened the wire door and the little bird hopped to his finger. He moved a metal pen-rack to the very center of the desk and perched the tiny creature on it. It burst into song, warbling full-throated, packed with melody. Bersonin set the metal case a little distance away and adjusted it with minutest care.

"Sing, Dick!" he cried loudly; "sing! sing!--"

The song stopped. There had come a thrill in the air--a puff of icy wind on Phil's face--a thin chiming like a fairy cymbal. Phil sprang up with a cry. The fluffy ball, with its metal perch, had utterly disappeared; only in the center of the desk was a pinch of reddish-brown powder like the dust of an emery-wheel, laid in feathery whorls.

He stared transfixed. "What does it mean?" he asked hoarsely.

The doctor's voice was no longer toneless. It leaped now with an evil exultation. "It means that I--Bersonin--have found what physicists have dreamed of for fifty years! I have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms! That box is the harness of a force beside which the engines of modern war are children's toys."

He grasped Phil's arm with a force that made him wince. The amber eyes glittered.

"At first I planned to sell it to the highest bidder among the powers. I was a fool to think of that! The nation that buys it, to guard the secret for itself, must wall me in a fortress! That would be the reward of Bersonin--the great Bersonin, who had wrested from nature the most subtle of her secrets! But I am too clever for that! It must be _I_--_I alone_--who holds the key! It shall bring me many things, but the first of these is money. I must have funds--unlimited funds. The money I despise, except as a stepping-stone, but the money _you love_ and must have! Well, I offer it to you!"

Phil's heart was beating hard. The tension of the room had increased; a hundred suffocating atmospheres seemed pressing on it. "How--how--" he stammered.

Bersonin took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the stand. It was a chart of Yokohama harbor. A red square was drawn in the margin, and from this a fine, needle-like ray pointed out across the anchorage. With his pencil the Doctor wrote two words on the red square--"The Roost."

Phil shrank trembling into his chair. He seemed to see the other looking at him over clinking glasses at the Club, while voices spoke from the next room. "_What if one of those Dreadnaughts should go down in this friendly harbor!_" It came from his lips in a thin whisper, almost without his volition--the answer to the question that had haunted him that day.

A gleam like the fire of unholy altars came in Bersonin's eyes.

"Not one--_two_! A bolt from a blue sky, that will echo over Europe! And what then? A fury of popular passion in one country; suspicion and alarm in all. Rumors of war, fanned by the yellow press. The bottom dropping out of the market! It means millions at a single _coup_, for, in spite of diplomatic quibbles, the market is like a cork. The Paris bourse is soaring. Wall Street will make a new record to-morrow. In London, Consols are at Ninety-two. My agents are awaiting my word. I have many, for that is safer. I shall spread selling orders over five countries--British bonds in Vienna and New York, and steel and American railroads in London. I risk all and you--nothing. Yet if you join hands with me in this we shall share alike--you and I! And with the winnings we get now we shall get more. Trust me to know the way! Money shall be dirt to you. The pleasure-cities of every continent shall be your playgrounds. You shall have your pretty little Japanese _peri_, and fifty more besides."

Phil's face had flushed and paled by turns. He looked at the expert with a shivering fascination: "But there are--there will be--men aboard those ships...." He shuddered and wrenched his gaze away.

Bersonin put out his great hand and laid it on the other's shoulder--its weight seemed to be pressing him down into the chair.

"Well?" he said, in a low intense voice. "What if there are?"

There was a long silence. Then slowly Phil lifted a face as white as paper. A look slinking and devilish lay in it now.

The doctor bent down and began to speak in a low tone. The sound passed around the room, sibilant, like the sound of a bat's wings in the dark.

* * * * *

It was an hour before midnight when Phil opened the gate of the expert's house and passed down the moon-lighted street. He walked stumblingly, cowering at the tree-shadows, peering nervously over his shoulder like one who feels the presence of a ghastly familiar.

In the great room he had left, Bersonin stood by the fireplace. The nervous strain and exaltation were still on him. He poured out a glass of the liqueur which he had not yet tasted and drank it off. The hot pungent mint sent a glow along his nerves. Behind him Ishida was methodically removing the dinner service. The doctor crossed the room and stood before the bamboo cage. He drew back the spring-door and whistling, held out his finger.

"Here, Dick!" he called. "Here, boy!"

There was no response.

He started. His face turned a gray-green. He drew back and stealthily turned his head.

But the Japanese did not seem to have noticed the silence. With the tray in his hands, he was looking fixedly at the feathery sprays of reddish-yellow dust on the polished top of the desk.