XX
IT HAS BEEN DONE AGAIN
Hereford, though Max's manner had in a measure prepared him for a surprise, halted astonished at the sight of the second box. There were, then, two such boxes in the world! Had that ancient artificer of Java, who made for the sultan the box in which to keep the emerald, made at the same time another just like it, perhaps in revenge? But as those about the table gave way to allow him to get nearer the illusion disappeared. The grotesque bodies of the figures on the four sides of the box were not of steel delicately hand-wrought, but of some rough composition which resembled but had more tenacity than clay—only the heads, the hands and the feet were, like the body of the box, of some wood that Hereford guessed was teak. These heads and hands and feet, as Hereford bent beside the box and touched them, moved with soft clickings of wooden levers within; while from under the lid of the box, which stood partly open, came a strong smell of sandalwood.
The captain of police, who seemed to be in charge of the situation, turned to Hereford.
"Your friend has been telling us some surprising things, Mr. Hereford," he said, "and has suggested some still more surprising. Already he has proved enough so that we are to permit him to demonstrate the rest."
Hereford nodded his understanding.
Presently Max came in, flushed and anxious. By his direction, two members of the police carried the heavy steel box into the room from which the emerald had been stolen. Max went with them, but almost immediately he reappeared, and now he invited the rest to follow him. They filed in slowly.
The room, Hereford now saw, had been restored as nearly as it could be to the same condition as on the night of the robbery. New furniture as much as possible like that destroyed by the fire, had been brought from other parts of the hotel and arranged here. The bed, the chairs—every article of furniture—were in the places the first had occupied; and the original box was in its former position at the foot of the bed.
Max first asked his audience to arrange themselves as near as possible to the entrance door, so as not to interfere with his operations. Then accompanied by Baraka and the captain of police, he made an examination of the windows and the doors into the closet and bathroom to show that all were locked and that entrance to or exit from the room was impossible except through the one doorway before which his audience was gathered.
Finally he turned to the police captain.
"Gif me, please, your watch," Max requested of the officer. "The emerald we no longer haf; but we must haf something which you in particular will most surely know."
The officer handed the watch to him.
"Now please,"—Max turned to Baraka—"the box open again."
Baraka, with the assent of one whose mind already had been made up, concealed the operation of the levers and clicked them quickly. The top of the box sprang back. Max, in sight of all, took the captain's watch from the chain and placed it within the box, locking it by closing down the cover. He motioned to Baraka and the officer to join Hereford, his ward and the others in the doorway. He glanced round once more.
"Opserve now," said Max, "that all iss as it wass the night of the theft. Only besides, I pelieve, wass there a handbag by the wall. Well, I will put mine there to take the place." And he put down by the blank wall the suitcase he had with him.
He placed himself then behind Baraka and the police captain, who stood in front and quite filled the doorway, so that it was impossible for any one to pass them. They crouched so that Hereford and his ward and the others behind them might see into the room, though there was nothing to see. Max turned out the light as he took his place. Everything was absolutely black.
Every one stood silent. Hereford could hear only the breathing of those about him, and he felt the soft touch of Lorine's arm against his and a strand of her hair against his cheek as she shifted her position slightly. In the darkness his hearing became more acute, so that he would have known the position of every one even if he had not already known; also he became conscious suddenly of the heavy odor of sandalwood, which filled his nostrils and seemed to ingulf and make negligible all other sensations for the instant. With it awoke strange, dim images from the superstitiously imaginative East. He let himself seem to be upon that middle ground of the Oriental tales where the supernatural mingles with the natural at will. His hand touched Lorine's; and, as though she were unconscious of it, she permitted his touch. He started when Max's slow voice broke the silence.
"The sound of knocking now will be me against this wall," Max announced. "Remember, all are pledged only to observe—to interfere in no way with what will follow." And, waiting for his own voice to become silent, he knocked four times with a peculiar interval between, and then repeated the raps.
In the silence which followed—enduring a full half-minute—Hereford was conscious that the girl beside him seemed to be holding her breath. Then, at the end of a suspense during which he heard her draw her breath only as she panted for it, there came a sound—clear, distinct, perfectly unmistakable—a click within the room and toward its side where there was neither door nor window, only a solid brick wall. So like the click of a cocking pistol was it that Hereford felt the spontaneous checking of his pulses as the suggestion came to him. The tremble in the hand against his told him that Lorine was at least equally affected. What he heard next Hereford could not tell, or that any sound at all came to his ears—or by what sensations, beyond the prickling of the short hairs upon his skin, it was revealed to him, in the midst of the darkness and of the heavy, sandalwood smell, that something which lived was moving in the room before them. Yet some one was in the room—who or what? Some one had entered to whom a brick wall had made no bar!
And suddenly, without warning, began the soft clicking of the box.
He heard before him and behind him the aspirate ejaculations of the Javanese not entirely suppressed, the movement of surprise about him, the shudder of superstitious fear.
Hereford had no superstitions. He tried—he swiftly tried at this sound to take hold of his nerves. Involuntarily he turned his hand to grasp his ward's to calm her, but met her grasp firm upon the same purpose. He smiled as there rioted through his mind strange, half-remembered stories of the East; of treasures guarded in temples by malignant squat deities; of significant jewels like the emerald, which ghostly agents brought back to the rightful possessor as often as they were taken away.
The clicking of the box went steadily on; and Hereford's mind, which tried to picture the agent by which the levers moved, saw nothing, but only thought them moving of themselves.
Mechanically, he noted now, he had counted the clicks. One, two, three, four—they were rapid and without hesitation. And he heard Baraka, just in front of him, counting, too, in Javanese with intense, irrepressible aspiration. At ten Baraka involuntarily started forward. Apparently checked by the officer next him, he settled back. At fifteen Hereford felt him, fumbling in his pocket, withdraw his hand; and as the last lever clicked he struck a match against the wall. The match-head broke in two—half shot like a tiny meteor through the dark; half sputtered in a weak blue flame that finally caught the wood and showed no one.
The captain tried to check him, but Max now made no objection—he himself was reaching for the light. He switched it on. As they blinked in the blaze of light they saw that the box stood open; the watch, which had been locked inside, was gone! No one could have come in; no one could have gone out. Yet some one had been there, for it was done! It undeniably had been done!
In the hubbub of incredulity, questions and confusion Hereford stared about the room. He laughed nervously and looked to Lorine. She directed his eyes to the police captain. That officer, bewilderment but also determination in his manner, had changed his place to bring him nearer to Max Schimmel. He glanced now significantly toward his men, who, Hereford saw, returned his look with nods of understanding.
"You must explain this—fully and satisfactorily, Schimmel," the officer warned meaningly.
But whatever had been Max's previous reasons for uneasiness, they seemed now wholly to have disappeared.
"Efen when I haf been to so much trouble to find out how the Surakarta wass stolen," he said to Hereford, "and when I am ready to explain it, they would like to arrest me and make me gif my explanation from behind their bars. But I ask only, Mr. Bolice Office, that my friendts be allowed to hear me too."
The police captain selected with his eyes two of his men, who at his nod remained just within the door, while the others filed out. He and Baraka then sat down upon the edge of the bed. Hereford and his ward dropped into the two chairs which were the only ones in the room; and Max perched himself upon the little stand for baggage beside which he had placed his suitcase.