CHAPTER L

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY

There was one whose guilty eyes were closed to the red danger so near. In the house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley, under the green mosquito netting, Phil lay in a log-like slumber. The soft light of the paper _andon_ flowed over the gay wadded _f'ton_, the handsome besotted face with its mark of the satyr and, at one side, a little wooden pillow of black lacquer. There was no sound save the sweep of the wind outside and the heavy breathing of the unconscious man.

For three nights past, since his wild motor-ride from Nikko, he had not slept, save in illusory snatches, from which he had waked with the sweat breaking on his forehead. Short as were these, they had held horrid visions, broken fragments of scenes that waved and clustered about the lilied altar in the Ts'kiji cathedral, echoing to the solemn service of the dead. Again and again there had started before him the stolid ring of blue-clad coolie women, swaying as they had swayed to the straw-ropes of the pile-driver in the moat-bottom with their weird chant--

_"Yó--eeya--kó--ra!_ _Yó--eeya--kó--ra!"_

And now they chanted a terrible refrain:

_"Thou--shalt--not--kill!"_

To-night, however, deeper potations had done their work. He was dreaming--yellow dreams like the blackguard fancyings of the half-world--visions in which he moved, a Prince of Largesse, through unending pleasures of self-indulgence. He was on an European Boulevard, riding with Haru by his side in silk and pearls, and people turned to gaze as he went by.

But now, with sinister topsyturvydom, the dream changed. The _cocher_ drove faster and faster, into a mad gallop. He turned his head and Phil saw that the face under the glazed hat was the face of his dead brother. The staring pedestrians began to pursue the carriage. They showered blow after blow on it, till the sound reverberated like thunder.

Not the ghosts of his dream, but a hand of flesh and blood was knocking. It was on the outer _shoji_ and the frail dwelling shook beneath it. The servant, sunk in bovine sleep, heard no sound, but the chauffeur in the automobile that throbbed outside the wistaria gate, rose from his seat, and across a bamboo wattle a dog barked and scrambled venomously.

Phil's eyes opened and he sat up giddily. He went unsteadily to the door and unfastened the _shoji_, blinking at the great form that strode past him into the inner apartment.

Bersonin's gaze swept the room. "The girl!" he said hoarsely. "Where is she?"

Phil looked about him dazedly--at the tumbled _f'ton_, the deserted wooden pillow. Haru gone? His senses, clouded by intoxication, took in the fact dully, as a thing of no meaning.

The expert grasped him by his shoulder and shook him till the thin silk of the _kimono_ tore under the enormous white fingers. The violence had its effect. The daze fell away. Phil broke into loud imprecations.

"Did you tell her anything?"

Phil's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "What is--what makes you think--" he stammered.

Bersonin's face was a greenish hue. His great hands shook.

"To-night," he said, in a whisper, "to-night--an hour ago--I saw her on the street. I wasn't sure at first, but I know now it was she! A naval officer was with her. _He took her into the house of the Minister of Marine!_"

The other gave a low cry. A chalky pallor overspread his features. "Haru?--no, Bersonin! You're crazy, I say. She--she would never tell!"

Fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. A sharp moan came from his lips.

"So she _did_ know! You told her then! O, incredible fool!"

For an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. Phil quailed before him. A frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt the passion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in a flame. His voice rose in a kind of scream:

"Don't look at me like that!" he raved. "I was a fool to trust her, but it's done now. It's done, I tell you, and you can't undo it! What can they do to us? They may find the machine, but what can they _prove_? We're foreigners! They can't touch us without proof!"

He had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. All the grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic. He trembled excessively.

"Proof!" sneered Bersonin savagely. "There would have been none if--_it happened_! I had arranged that! In its operation _the machine destroys itself_! And neither of us is in Yokohama to-night."

Phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "What is to be done? Can we still--"

"Listen," said the doctor. "A single hour more, even with your cursed folly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and all wires are down. I heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out of order."

"Then--then--they can not--" Phil's voice shook with a nauseous eagerness.

"Wait! When I saw the girl there, I was suspicious. I watched. In a little while your friend Daunt came from the gate. In some way he happened to be there. The _betto_ was flogging the horses like a crazy man. He came in this direction!--Can't you understand? His aëroplane! He is going to use it as a last chance. If he succeeds, we may spend our lives in the copper mines. If he can be stopped, we may win yet! There will be nothing but the tale of a Japanese drab--that and nothing else!"

Phil flung on his clothing in a madness of haste. The desperate dread that had raged in him was become now a single fixed idea, frosted over by a cold, demented fury. Unhealthy spots of red sprang in his white cheeks; his eyes dilated to the mania of the paranoiac.

Hatless, he rushed through the little garden, cleared the rear hedge at a bound, and fled, like a runaway from hell, toward the darkness of the vast parade-ground.