L. Frank Baum

The next two days were busy ones for Sheard, who, from a variety of causes—the chief being his intimacy with the little circle which, whether it would or not, gathered around Mr. Julius Rohscheimer—found himself involved in the mystery of SÉverac Bablon. He had interviewed this man and that, endeavouring to obtain some coherent story of the great "hold up," but with little success. Everything was a mysterious maze, and Scotland Yard was without any clue that might lead to the solution. All the Fleet Street crime specialists had advanced theories, and now, on the night of the third day after the audacious robbery, Sheard was contributing his theory to the Sunday newspaper for which he worked.

The subject of his article was the identity of SÉverac Bablon, whom Sheard was endeavouring to prove to be not an individual, but a society; a society, so he argued, formed for the immolation of Capital upon the altars of Demos.

The course of reasoning that he had taken up proved more elusive than he had anticipated.

His bundle of notes lay before him on the table. The news of the latest outrage, the burning of the great Runek Mills in Ontario, had served to convince him that his solution was the right one; yet he could make no headway, and the labours of the last day or so had left him tired and drowsy.

He left his table and sank into an arm-chair by the study fire, knocking out his briar on a coal and carefully refilling and lighting that invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with facile reasoning. Then the drowsiness which he could not altogether shake off crept upon him again, and staring at the words "Such societies have existed in fiction, now we have one existing in fact," he dropped into a doze—as the clock in the hall struck one.

When he awoke, with his chin on his breast, it was to observe, firstly, that the MS. no longer lay on the pad, and, secondly, on looking up, that a stranger sat in the arm-chair, opposite, reading it!

"Who——" began Sheard, starting to his feet.

Whereupon the stranger raised a white, protesting hand.

"Give me but one moment's grace, Mr. Sheard," he said quietly, "and I will at once apologise and explain!"

"What do you mean?" rapped the journalist. "How dare you enter my house in this way, and——" He broke off from sheer lack of words, for this calm, scrupulously dressed intruder was something outside the zone of things comprehensible.

In person he was slender, but of his height it was impossible to judge accurately whilst he remained seated. He was perfectly attired in evening-dress, and wore a heavy, fur-lined coat. A silk hat, by an eminent hatter, stood upon Sheard's writing-table, a pair of gloves beside it. A gold-mounted ebony walking-stick was propped against the fireplace. But the notable and unusual characteristic of the man was his face. Its beauty was literally amazing. Sheard, who had studied black-and-white, told himself that here was an ideal head—that of Apollo himself.

And this extraordinary man, with his absolutely flawless features composed, and his large, luminous eyes half closed, lounged in Sheard's study at half-past one in the early morning and toyed with an unfinished manuscript—like some old and privileged friend who had dropped in for a chat.

"Look here!" said the outraged pressman, stepping around the table as the calm effrontery of the thing burst fully upon him. "Get out! Now!"

"Mr. Sheard," said the other, "if I apologise frankly and fully for my intrusion, will you permit me to give my reasons for it?"

Sheard again found himself inarticulate. He was angrily conscious of a vague disquiet. The visitor's suave courtesy under circumstances so utterly unusual disarmed him, as it must have disarmed any average man similarly situated. For a moment his left fist clenched, his mind swung in the balance, irresolute. The other turned back a loose page and quietly resumed his perusal of the manuscript.

That decided Sheard's attitude, and he laughed.

Whereat the stranger again raised the protestant hand.

"We shall awake Mrs. Sheard!" he said solicitously. "And now, as I see you have decided to give me a hearing, let me begin by offering you my sincere apology for entering your house uninvited."

Sheard, his mind filled with a sense of phantasy, dropped into a chair opposite the visitor, reached into the cabinet at his elbow, and proffered a box of Turkish cigarettes.

"Your methods place you beyond the reach of ordinary castigation," he said. "I don't know your name and I don't know your business; but I honestly admire your stark impudence!"

"Very well," replied the other in his quiet, melodious voice, with its faint, elusive accent. "A compliment is intended, and I thank you! And now, I see you are wondering how I obtained admittance. Yet it is so simple. Your front door is not bolted, and Mrs. Sheard, but a few days since, had the misfortune to lose a key. You recollect? I found that key! Is it enough?"

"Quite enough!" said Sheard grimly. "But why go to the trouble? What do you want?"

"I want to insure that one, at least, of the influential dailies shall not persistently misrepresent my actions!"

"Then who——" began Sheard, and got no farther; for the stranger handed him a card—

SÉverac Bablon

"You see," continued the man already notorious in two continents, "your paper, here, is inaccurate in several important particulars! Your premises are incorrect, and your inferences consequently wrong!"

Sheard stared at him, silent, astounded.

"I have been described in the Press of England and America as an incendiary, because I burned the Runek Mills; as a maniac, because I compensated men cruelly thrown out of employment; as a thief, because I took from the rich in Park Lane and gave to the poor on the Embankment. I say that this is unjust!"

His eyes gleamed into a sudden blaze. The delicate, white hand that held Sheard's manuscript gripped it so harshly that the paper was crushed into a ball. That SÉverac Bablon was mad seemed an unavoidable conclusion; that he was forceful, dominant, a power to be counted with, was a truth legible in every line of his fine features, in every vibrant tone of his voice, in the fire of his eyes. The air of the study seemed charged with his electric passion.

Then, in an instant, he regained his former calm. Rising to his feet, he threw off the heavy coat he wore and stood, a tall, handsome figure, with his hands spread out, interrogatively.

"Do I look such a man?" he demanded.

Despite the theatrical savour of the thing, Sheard could not but feel the real sincerity of his appeal; and, as he stared, wondering, at the fine brow, the widely-opened eyes, the keen nostrils and delicate yet indomitable mouth and chin, he was forced to admit that here was no mere up-to-date cracksman, but something else, something more. "Is he mad?" flashed again through his mind.

"No!" smiled SÉverac Bablon, dropping back into the chair; "I am as sane as you yourself!"

"Have I questioned it?"

"With your eyes and the left corner of your mouth, yes!" Sheard was silent.

"I shall not weary you with a detailed exculpation of my acts," continued his visitor; "but you have a list on your table, no doubt, of the people whom I forced to assist the Embankment poor?"

Sheard nodded.

"Mention but one whose name has ever before been associated with charity; I mean the charity that has no relation to advertisement! You are silent! You say"—glancing over the unfinished article—"that 'this was a capricious burlesque of true philanthropy.' I reply that it served its purpose—of proclaiming my arrival in London and of clearly demonstrating the purpose of my coming! You ask who are my accomplices! I answer—they are as the sands of the desert! You seek to learn who I am. Seek, rather, to learn what I am!"

"Why have you selected me for this—honour?"

"I overheard some remarks of yours, contrasting a restaurant supper-room with the Embankment which appealed to me! But, to come to the point, do you believe me to be a rogue?"

Sheard smiled a trifle uneasily.

"You are doubtful," the other continued. "It has entered your mind that a proper course would be to ring up Scotland Yard! Instead, come with me! I will show you how little you know of me and of what I can do. I will show you that no door is closed to me! Why do you hesitate? You shall be home again, safe, within two hours. I pledge my word!"

Possessing the true journalistic soul, Sheard was sorely tempted; for to the passion of the copy-hunter such an invitation could not fail in its appeal. With only a momentary hesitation, he stood up.

"I'll come!" he said.

A smart landaulette stood waiting outside the house; and, without a word to the chauffeur, SÉverac Bablon opened the door and entered after Sheard. The motor immediately started, and the car moved off silently. The blinds were drawn.

"You will have to trust yourself implicitly in my hands," said Sheard's extraordinary companion. "In a moment I shall ask you to fasten your handkerchief about your eyes and to give me your word that you are securely blindfolded!"

"Is it necessary?"

"Quite! Are you nervous?"

"No!"—shortly.

There was a brief interval of silence, during which the car, as well as it was possible to judge, whirled through the deserted streets at a furious speed.

"Will you oblige me?" came the musical voice.

The journalist took out his pocket-handkerchief, and making it into a bandage, tied it firmly about his head.

"Are you ready?" asked SÉverac Bablon.

"Yes."

A click told of a raised blind.

"Can you see?"

"Not a thing!"

"Then take my hand and follow quickly. Do not speak; do not stumble!"

Cautiously feeling his way, Sheard, one hand clasping that of his guide, stepped out into the keen night air, and was assisted by some third person—probably the chauffeur—on to the roof of the car!

"Be silent!" from SÉverac Bablon. "Fear nothing! Step forward as your feet will be directed and trust implicitly to me!"

As a man in a dream Sheard stood there—on the roof of a motor-car, in a London street—and waited. There came dimly to his ears, and from no great distance, the sound of late traffic along what he judged to be a main road. But immediately about him quiet reigned. They were evidently in some deserted back-water of a great thoroughfare. A faint scuffling sound arose, followed by that of someone lightly dropping upon a stone pavement.

Then an arm was slipped about him and he was directed, in a whisper, to step forward. He found his foot upon what he thought to be a flat railing. His ankle was grasped from below and the voice of SÉverac Bablon came, "On to my shoulders—so!"

Still with the supporting arm about him, he stepped gingerly forward—and stood upon the shoulders of the man below.

"Stand quite rigidly!" said SÉverac Bablon.

He obeyed; and was lifted, lightly as a feather, and deposited upon the ground! It was such a feat as he had seen professional athletes perform, and he marvelled at the physical strength of his companion.

A keen zest for this extravagant adventure seized him. He thought that it must be good to be a burglar. Then, as he heard the motor re-started and the car move off, a sudden qualm of disquiet came; for it was tantamount to burning one's boats.

"Take my hand!" he heard; and was led to the head of a flight of steps. Cautiously he felt his way down, in the wake of his guide.

A key was turned in a well-oiled lock, and he was guided inside a building. There was a faint, crypt-like smell—vaguely familiar.

"Quick!" said the soft voice—"remove your boots and leave them here!"

Sheard obeyed, and holding the guiding hand tightly in his own, traversed a stone-paved corridor. Doors were unlocked and re-locked. A flight of steps was negotiated in phantom silence; for his companion's footsteps, like his own, were noiseless. Another door was unlocked.

"Now!" came the whispered words: "Remove the handkerchief!"

Rapidly enough, Sheard obeyed, and, burning with curiosity, looked about him.

"Good heavens!" he muttered.

A supernatural fear of his mysterious cicerone momentarily possessed him. For he thought that he stood in a lofty pagan temple!

High above his head a watery moonbeam filtered through a window, and spilled its light about the base of a gigantic stone pillar. Towering shapes, as of statues of gods, loomed, awesomely, in the gloom. Behind the pillar dimly he could discern a painted procession of deities upon the wall. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the tall figure of SÉverac Bablon was at his elbow.

"Where do you stand?" questioned his low voice.

And, like an inspiration, the truth burst in upon Sheard's mind.

"The British Museum!" he whispered hoarsely.

"Correct!" was the answer; "the treasure-house of your modern Babylon! Wait, now, until I return; and, if you have no relish for arrest as a burglar, do not move—do not breathe!"

With that, he was gone, into the dense shadows about; and Henry Thomas Sheard, of the Gleaner, found himself, at, approximately, a quarter-past two in the morning, standing in an apartment of the British Museum, with no better explanation to offer, in the event of detection, than that he had come there in the company of SÉverac Bablon.

He thought of the many printing-presses busy, even then, with the deductions of Fleet Street theorists, regarding this man of mystery. All of their conclusions must necessarily be wrong, since their premises were certainly so. For which of them who had assured his readers that SÉverac Bablon was a common cracksman (on a large scale) would not have reconsidered his opinion had he learned that the common cracksman held private keys of the national treasure-house?

His eyes growing more accustomed to the darkness, Sheard began to see more clearly the objects about him. A seated figure of the Pharaoh Seti I. surveyed him with a scorn but thinly veiled; beyond, two towering Assyrian bulls showed gigantic in the semi-light. He could discern, now, the whole length of the lofty hall—a carven avenue; and, as his gaze wandered along that dim vista, he detected a black shape emerging from the blacker shadows beyond the bulls.

It was SÉverac Bablon. In an instant he stood beside him, and Sheard saw that he carried a bag.

"Follow me—quickly!" he said. "Not a second to spare!"

But too fully alive to their peril, Sheard slipped away in the wake of this greatly daring man. The horror of his position was strong upon him now.

"This way!"

Blindly he stumbled forward, upstairs, around a sharp corner, and then a door was unlocked and re-locked behind them. "Egyptian Room!" came a quick whisper. "In here!"

A white beam cut the blackness, temporarily dazzling him, and Sheard saw that his companion was directing the light of an electric torch into a wall-cabinet—which he held open. It contained mummy cases, and, without quite knowing how he got there, Sheard found himself crouching behind one. SÉverac Bablon vanished.

Darkness followed, and to his ears stole the sound of distant voices.

The voices grew louder.

Behind him, upon the back of the cabinet, danced a sudden disc of light, and, within it, a moving shadow! Someone was searching the room!

Muffled and indistinct the voices sounded through the glass and the mummy-case; but that the searchers were standing within a foot of his hiding-place Sheard was painfully certain. He shrank behind the sarcophagus lid like a tortoise within its shell, fearful lest a hand, an arm, a patch of clothing should protrude.