The butler filled the goblets and placed another bottle in the iced pail beside me; he put liqueurs and cigars upon the table and then, as though at some signal, he withdrew. He disappeared, I noted with interest, through still another wall panel that masked one of the hidden lifts. I saw that he was a Chinese.
“Manchu,” observed my host. “Of princely rank. Yet he thinks to be my servant the greater honor.”
I nodded casually, as though the matter were commonplace and butlers who were Manchu princes, wine lifted from King Alfonso, goblets of an Arabian Nights’ Caliph and Cellini compotes everyday affairs. I realized that the game which had begun in Battery Park a few hours before had reached its second stage and I was determined to maintain my best poker face and manner.
“You please me, James Kirkham,” the voice was totally devoid of expression, the lips scarcely moved as it rolled forth. “You are thinking —‘I am a prisoner, my place in the outer world is being filled by a double whom even my closest friends do not suspect of being other than I; this man speaking is a monster, ruthless and conscienceless, a passionless intellect which could—and would—blow me out if he desired as carelessly as he would blow out a candle flame.’ In all that, James Kirkham, you are right.”
He paused. I found it better not to look into those jewel-bright blue eyes. I lighted a cigarette and nodded, fixing my attention on the glowing tip.
“Yes, you are right,” he went on. “Yet you ask no questions and make no appeals. Your voice and hands are steady, your eyes untroubled. But back of all, your brain is keenly alert, poised on tiptoe to seize some advantage. You are feeling out for danger with the invisible antennae of your nerves like any jungle-man. Every sense is alive to catch some break in the net you feel around you. There is a touch of terror upon you. Yet outwardly you show no slightest sign of all this—only I could detect it. You please me greatly, James Kirkham. Yours is the true gambler’s soul!”
He paused again, studying me over the rim of his goblet. I forced myself to meet his gaze and smile.
“You are now thirty-five,” he continued. “I have watched you for years. I was first attracted to you by your work in the French Espionage Service during the second year of the war.”
My fingers stiffened involuntarily about my glass. None, I had thought, had known of that hazardous work except the Chief and myself.
“It happened that you ran counter to no plans of mine,” the toneless voice rolled on. “So you—lived. You next came to my notice when you undertook to recover the Spiradoff emeralds from the Communists in Moscow. You ingeniously left with them the imitations and escaped with the originals. I did not care for them, I have much finer ones. So I allowed you to return them to those who had commissioned you. But the audacity of your plan and the cool courage with which you carried it out entertained me greatly. I like to be entertained, James Kirkham. Your indifferent acceptance of the wholly inadequate reward showed that it had been the adventure which had been the primal appeal. It had been the game and not the gain. You were, as I had thought, a true gambler.”
And now despite myself I could not keep astonishment from my face. The Spiradoff affair had been carried out in absolute secrecy. I had insisted upon none except the owner knowing how the jewels had been recovered. They had been resold for their value as gems and not with their histories attached… not even the Communists had as yet discovered the substitution, I had reason to believe, and would not until they tried to sell them. Yet this man knew!
“It was then I decided I would—collect—you,” he said. “But the time was not fully ripe. I would let you run awhile. You went to China for Rockbilt on the strength of a flimsy legend. And you found the tomb wherein, true enough, the jade plaques of that legend lay on the moldering breast of old Prince Sukantse. You took them and were captured by the bandit Kin-Wang. You found the joint in that cunning thief’s armor. You saw, and took, the one chance to escape with your loot. Gambler he was, and you knew it. And there in his tent you played him for the plaques with two years’ slavery to him as your forfeit if you lost.
“The idea of having you as a willing slave amused him. Besides, he recognized of what value your brain and courage would be to him. So he made the bargain. You detected the cards he had cunningly nicked before the game had gone far. I approve the dexterity and skill with which you promptly nicked others in the identical fashion. Kin-Wang was confused. Luck was with you. You won.”
I half arose, staring at him, fascinated.
“I do not wish to mystify you further,” he waved me back into my seat. “Kin-Wang is sometimes useful to me. I have many men in many lands who do my bidding, James Kirkham. Had you lost, Kin-Wang would have sent me the plaques, and he would have looked after you more carefully than his own head. Because he knew that at any time I might demand you from him!”
I leaned back with a sigh, the feeling that some inexorable trap had closed upon me, oppressive.
“Afterwards,” his eyes never left me, “afterwards, I tested you again. Twice did my messengers try to take the plaques from you. Purposely, in neither of those efforts had I planned for sure success. Else you would have lost them. I left in each instance a loophole that would enable you to escape had you the wit to see it. You had the wit—and again I was vastly entertained. And pleased.
“And now,” he leaned forward a trifle, “we come to tonight. You had acquired a comfortable sum out of the jades. But there seemed to be a waning interest in the game you know so well. You cast your eyes upon another —the fool’s gamble, the stock market. It did not fit in with my plans to let you win at that. I knew what you had bought. I manipulated. I stripped you, dollar by dollar, leisurely. You are thinking that the method I took was more adapted to the wrecking of some great financier than the possessor of a few thousands. Not so. If your thousands had been millions the end would have been the same. That was the lesson I wished to drive home when the time came. Have you learned the lesson?”
I repressed with difficulty a gust of anger.
“I hear you,” I answered, curtly.
“Heed!” he whispered, and a bleakness dulled for a breath the sparkling eyes.
“So too,” he went on, “it was of tonight. I could have had you caught up bodily and carried here, beaten or drugged, bound and gagged. Such methods are those of the thug, the unimaginative savage in our midst. You could have had no respect for the mind behind such crude tactics. Nor would I have been entertained.
“No, the constant surveillance which at last forced you out into the open, your double now enjoying himself at your Club—a splendid actor, by the way, who studied you for weeks—in fact, all your experiences were largely devised to demonstrate to you the extraordinary character of the organization to which you have been called.
“And I say again that your conduct has pleased me. You could have fought Consardine. Had you done so you would have shown yourself lacking in imagination and true courage. You would have come here just the same, but I would have been disappointed. And I was greatly diverted by your attitude toward Walter and Eve—a girl whom I have destined for a great work and whom I am training now for it.
“You have wondered how they came to be in that particular subway station. There were other couples at South Ferry, the elevated station and at all approaches to the Battery within five minutes after you had seated yourself there. I tell you that you had not one chance of escape. Nothing that you could have done that had not been anticipated and prepared for. Not all the police in New York could have held you back from me tonight.
“Because, James Kirkham, I had willed your coming!”
I had listened to this astonishing mixture of subtle flattery, threat and colossal boasting with ever-increasing amazement. I stood back from the table.
“Who are you?” I asked, directly. “And what do you want of me?”
The weird blue eyes blazed out, intolerably.
“Since everything upon this earth toward which I direct my will does as that will dictates,” he