John Ironside - The Red Symbol

“Hello! Yes – I’m Maurice Wynn. Who are you?”

“Harding. I’ve been ringing you up at intervals for hours. Carson’s ill, and you’re to relieve him. Come round for instructions to-night. Lord Southbourne will give them you himself. Eh? Yes, Whitehall Gardens. Ten-thirty, then. Right you are.”

I replaced the receiver, and started hustling into my dress clothes, thinking rapidly the while.

For the first time in the course of ten years’ experience as a special correspondent, I was dismayed at the prospect of starting off at a moment’s notice – to St. Petersburg, in this instance.

To-day was Saturday, and if I were to go by the quickest route – the Nord express – I should have three days’ grace, but the delay at this end would not compensate for the few hours saved on the journey. No, doubtless Southbourne would expect me to get off to-morrow or Monday morning at latest. He was – and is – the smartest newspaper man in England.

Well, I still had four hours before I was due at Whitehall Gardens; and I must make the most of them. At least I should have a few minutes alone with Anne Pendennis, on our way to the dinner at the Hotel Cecil, – the Savage Club “ladies” dinner, where she and my cousin Mary would be guests of Jim Cayley, Mary’s husband.

Anne had promised to let me escort her, – the Cayley’s brougham was a small one, in which three were emphatically a crowd, – and the drive from Chelsea to the Strand, in a hansom, would provide me with the opportunity I had been wanting for days past, of putting my fate to the test, and asking her to be my wife.

I had thought to find that opportunity to-day, at the river picnic Mary had arranged; but all my attempts to secure even a few minutes alone with Anne had failed; though whether she evaded me by accident or design I could not determine, any more than I could tell if she loved me. Sometimes, when she was kind, my hopes rose high, to fall below zero next minute.

“Steer clear of her, my boy,” Jim Cayley had said to me weeks ago, when Anne first came to stay with Mary. “She’s as capricious as she’s imperious, and a coquette to her finger-tips. A girl with hair and eyes like that couldn’t be anything else.”

I resented the words hotly at the time, and he retracted them, with a promptitude and good humor that disarmed me. Jim was a man with whom it was impossible to quarrel. Still, I guessed he had not changed his opinion of his wife’s guest, though he appeared on excellent terms with her.

As for Mary, she was different. She loved Anne, – they had been fast friends ever since they were school-girls together at Neuilly, – and if she did not fully understand her, at least she believed that her coquetry, her capriciousness, were merely superficial, like the hard, glittering quartz that enshrines and protects the pure gold, – and has to be shattered before the gold can be won.

Mary, I knew, wished me well, though she was far too wise a little woman to attempt any interference.

Yes, I would end my suspense to-night, I decided, as I wrestled with a refractory tie.

Ting … ting … tr-r-r-ing! Two short rings and a long one. Not the telephone this time, but the electric bell at the outer door of my bachelor flat.

Who on earth could that be? Well, he’d have to wait.

As I flung the tie aside and seized another, I heard a queer scratching noise outside, stealthy but distinct. I paused and listened, then crossed swiftly and silently to the open door of the bedroom. Some one had inserted a key in the Yale lock of the outer door, and was vainly endeavoring to turn it.

I flung the door open and confronted an extraordinary figure, – an old man, a foreigner evidently, of a type more frequently encountered in the East End than Westminster.

“Well, my friend, what are you up to?” I demanded.

The man recoiled, bending his body and spreading his claw-like hands in a servile obeisance, quaint and not ungraceful; while he quavered out what was seemingly an explanation or apology in some jargon that was quite unintelligible to me, though I can speak most European languages. I judged it to be some Russian patois.

I caught one word, a name that I knew, and interrupted his flow of eloquence.

“You want Mr. Cassavetti?” I asked in Russian. “Well, his rooms are on the next floor.”

I pointed upwards as I spoke, and the miserable looking old creature understood the gesture at least, for, renewing his apologetic protestations, he began to shuffle along the landing, supporting himself by the hand-rail.

I knew my neighbor Cassavetti fairly well. He was supposed to be a press-man, correspondent to half a dozen Continental papers, and gave himself out as a Greek, but I had a notion that Russian refugee was nearer the mark, though hitherto I had never seen any suspicious characters hanging around his place.

But if this picturesque stranger wasn’t a Russian Jew, I never saw one. He certainly was no burglar or sneak-thief, or he would have bolted when I opened the door. The key with which he had attempted to gain ingress to my flat was doubtless a pass-key to Cassavetti’s rooms. He seemed a queer person to be in possession of such a thing, but that was Cassavetti’s affair, and not mine.

“Here, you’d better have your key,” I called, jerking it out of my lock. It was an ordinary Yale key, with a bit of string tied to it, and a fragment of dirty red stuff attached to that.

The stranger had paused, and was clinging to the rail, making a queer gasping sound; and now, as I spoke, he suddenly collapsed in a heap, his dishevelled gray head resting against the balustrade.

I guessed I’d scared him pretty badly, and as I looked down at him I thought for a moment he was dead.

I went up the stairs, and rang Cassavetti’s bell. There was no answer, and I tried the key. It fitted right enough, but the rooms were empty.

What was to be done? Common humanity forbade me to leave the poor wretch lying there; and to summon the housekeeper from the basement meant traversing eight flights of stairs, for the block was an old-fashioned one, and there was no elevator. Besides, I reckoned that Cassavetti would prefer not to have the housekeeper interfere with his queer visitor.

I ran back, got some whiskey and a bowl of water, and started to give first aid to my patient.

I saw at once what was wrong, – sheer starvation, nothing less. I tore open the ragged shirt, and stared aghast at the sight that met my eyes. The emaciated chest was seamed and knotted with curious scars. I had seen similar scars before, and knew there was but one weapon in the world – the knout – capable of making them. The man was a Russian then, and had been grievously handled; some time back as I judged, for the scars were old.

I dashed water on his face and breast, and poured some of the whiskey down his throat. He gasped, gurgled, opened his eyes and stared at me. He looked like a touzled old vulture that has been badly scared.

“Buck up, daddy,” I said cheerfully, forgetting he wouldn’t understand me. I helped him to his feet, and felt in my trouser pocket for a coin. It was food he wanted, but I had none to give him, except some crackers, and I had wasted enough time over him already. If I didn’t get a hustle on, I should be late for my appointment with Anne.

He clutched at the half-crown, and bent his trembling old body again, invoking, as I opined, a string of blessings on my unworthy head. Something slipped from among his garments and fell with a tinkle at my feet. I stooped to pick it up and saw it was an oval piece of tin, in shape and size like an old-fashioned miniature, containing a portrait. He had evidently been wearing it round his neck, amulet fashion, for a thin red cord dangled from it, that I had probably snapped in my haste.