The City in the Clouds

He took the cigar he had been smoking from his lips, and his hand shook a little. "Think what you like of me," he said, "but remember that there is Juanita. I say to you, Kirby, that if I never descend to the world again alive, I must stay here until Mark Antony Midwinter is dead."

Well, I had already made up my mind on this point. "I think you are quite right," I told him. "Still, he will not make a second appearance in the City. You can treble your precautions. He must be attacked down in the world."

Then a thought struck me for the first time. "But how," I said, "did he and Zorilla ever come here in the first instance? Treachery among the staff? It is the only explanation."

Pu-Yi shook his head. "You may put that out of your mind, Sir Thomas," he said. "That is my department. I know what you cannot know about my chosen compatriots."

"But the man isn't a specter! He's a devil incarnate, but there's nothing supernatural about him."

Then little Rolston spoke. "I've been down below all day," he said, "and though I haven't discovered anything of Midwinter, I am certain of how he and Zorilla got here."

We all turned to him with startled faces.

"Do you remember, Sir Thomas," he said, "that, shortly after your arrival, when you were looking down upon London from one of the galleries, there was a big fair in Richmond Park?"

I remembered, and said so.

"Among the other attractions, there was a captive balloon – "

Morse brought his hand heavily down upon the table with a loud exclamation in Spanish.

"Yes, there was, but – but it was quite half a mile away and never came up anything like our height here."

"No," the boy answered, "not at that time. But do you remember how during the fog last night I told you I had seen something, or thought I had seen something, like a group of statuary falling before my bedroom window?"

Something seemed to snap in my mind. "Good heavens! And I thought it was merely a trick of the mist! Nothing was discovered?"

"No, but in view of what happened afterwards, I formed a theory. I put it to the test this morning. I made a few inquiries as to the proprietors of the captive balloon and the engine which wound it up and down by means of a steel cable on a drum. I need not go into details at the moment, but the whole apparatus did not leave Richmond Park when it was supposed to do so. The wind was drifting in the right direction, the balloon could be more or less controlled – certainly as to height. I have learned that there was a telephone from the car down to the ground. Desperate men, resolved to stick at nothing, might well have arranged for the balloon to rise above the City – the cable was quite long enough for that – and descend upon part of it by means of a parachute, or, if not that, a hanging rope. More dangerous feats than that have been done in the air and are upon record. It seems to me there is no doubt whatever that this is the way the two men broke through all our precautions."

There was a long silence when he had spoken. Mendoza Morse leant back in his chair with the perspiration glittering in little beads upon his face, but he wore an aspect of relief.

"You've sure got it, my friend," he said at length, "that was how the trick was done! It was the one possibility which had never occurred to me, and hence we were unprovided. Well, that relieves my mind to a certain extent. We can take it that we are safe in the City, if Midwinter has escaped. How are we to make an end of him?"

"The difficulty is," I said, "that we are, so to speak, both literally and actually above, or outside, the Law. If that were not so, if ordinary methods could deal with this man, or could have dealt with the Hermandad in the past, Mr. Morse would never have planned and built the eighth wonder of the world. No word of what has happened in the last day or two must get down to the public – isn't that so?"

Morse nodded. "It goes without saying," he said. "We have our own law in the City in the Clouds. At the present moment, there are three bodies awaiting final disposal – and there won't be any inquest on them."

"That," Rolston broke in, "was something I was waiting to hear. It's important."

He stopped, and looked at me with his usual modesty, as if waiting permission to speak. I smiled at him, and he went on.

"It is an absolute necessity," he said, "to enter into the psychology of Midwinter. We may be sure that his purpose is as strong as ever. The death of Zorilla, and his present failure, will not deter him in the least, knowing what we know of him?"

He looked inquiringly at Morse.

"It won't turn him a hair's breadth," said the millionaire. "If he was mad with blood-lust and hatred before, he must be ten times worse now."

"So I thought, sir. He has lost his companion, as desperate and as cunning as himself, but we can be quite certain that he is not without resources. I think it safe to assume that he has practically an unlimited supply of money. He must have other confederates, though whether they are in his full confidence or not is a debatable question. That, however, at the moment, is not of great importance. We have him in London, let us suppose, for it is the safest place in the world for a man to hide – in London, determined, and hungering for revenge. We have no idea what his next scheme will be, and in all human probability he hasn't planned either. He must be considerably shaken. He will know, now, how tremendously strong our defenses are, and it will not escape a man of his intelligence that they will now be greatly strengthened. It will take him some time to gather his wits together and work out another scheme. The only thing to do, it seems to me, is to force his hand."

"And how?" Morse and I said, simultaneously.

"We must trap him – not here at all, but down there, in London" – he made a little gesture towards the floor with his hand, and as he did so, once more the strange and eerie remembrance of where we were came over me, lost for a time in the comfortable seclusion of a room that might have been in Berkeley Square.

"Here we, that is the Press, come in," said Rolston, smiling proudly at me.

I smiled inwardly at the grandiloquence of the tone, and yet, how true it was! – this lad who, so short a time ago had got to see me by a trick, was certainly the most brilliant modern journalist I had ever met. I made him a little bow, and, delighted beyond measure, he continued.

"Let it be put about," he said, "with plenty of detail, rumor, contradiction of the rumor and so on – in fact we will get up a little stunt about it – that Mr. Mendoza Morse has tired of his whim. For a time, at any rate, he is going to make his reappearance in the world. If necessary, announce Miss Juanita's engagement to Sir Thomas. Get all London interested and excited again."

Morse nodded, his face wrinkled with thought. "I think I see," he said, "but go on."

"When this is done, let us put ourselves in Midwinter's place. I believe that he will have no suspicion of a trap. He will argue it in this way. We are too much afraid of him to attack ourselves. Hitherto, all our measures have been measures of defense and escape. It will hardly occur to him that we have changed all our tactics. He will think that, with the failure of his attempt, the bad failure, and the death of Zorilla – which I have no doubt he will have discovered by now – we imagine he will abandon all his attempts. He will say to himself that we now believe ourselves safe and that his power is over, his initiative broken, that he will never dare to go on with his campaign. Everything seems in favor of it. I should say that it is a hundred to one that his line of thought will be precisely as I have said."

"By Jove, and I think so, too! Good for you, Rolston!" I shouted, seeing where he was going.

His boyish face was wreathed in smiles. "Thank you," he said. "Well, we are to lay a trap, and it is on the details of that trap that everything depends. I see, by to-day's Times, that Birmingham House in Berkeley Square, is to let. The Duke is ordered a long cruise in the Pacific. Let Mr. Morse immediately take the house and issue invitations for a great ball to celebrate Miss Juanita's engagement. If that house and that ball are not to Midwinter as a candle is to a moth, then my theory is useless! Somehow or other he will be there, either before or actually on the occasion. By some means or other he will get into the house."

He stopped, and with a little apologetic look took out his cigarette case and began to smoke. He really was wonderful. This was the lad, airily ordering one of the richest men in the world to take the Duke of Birmingham's great mansion, whose capital but a few short weeks ago was one penny, bronze. I remember how he was forced to confess it to me, even as I congratulated him.

We talked on for another half-hour, or rather little Bill Rolston talked, the rest of us only putting in a word now and then. He seemed to have mapped out every detail of the new campaign, and we were content to listen and admire.

Of course I am not a person without original ideas, or unaccustomed to organization – my career, such as it is, has proved that. But on that night, at least, I could initiate nothing, and I was even glad when the conference came to an end. Morse was much the same – he confessed it to me as we left the room – and the truth is that we were both feeling the results of the terrible shocks we had undergone. Rolston was younger and fresher, and besides his peril had not been as great as mine or the millionaire's.

Pu-Yi vanished in his mysterious fashion, and Morse, Rolston and I went to dinner. There was no question of dressing on such a night as this, but, if you believe me, the meal was a merry one!

It was Juanita's whim to have dinner served in a wonderful conservatory built out on that side of the Palacete which looked upon the gardens separating it from the eastern villa where Rolston and I were housed. The place was yet another of the fantastic marvels conjured up by Morse and his millions. It was an exact reproduction of a similar conservatory at my host's house in Rio de Janeiro, and had been carried out at a frightful cost by the greatest landscape gardener and the most celebrated scenic artist in existence.

We sat at a little table, surrounded by tall palm trees rising from thick, tropical undergrowth, a gay striped awning was over our heads, protecting us from what seemed brilliant sunshine. On every side was the golden rain of mimosa, masses of deep crimson blossoms, and wax-like magnolia flowers. From a marble pool of clear water sprang a little fountain – a laughing rod of diamonds. In the distance, seen over a marble balustrade, was the deep blue of the tropic sea dominated by the great sugar-loaf mountain, the Pão de Azucar.

It was an illusion, of course, but it was perfect. That sea, and the gleaming mountain, which, from where we sat, seemed so real, was but a cleverly painted cloth. The warm and scented air came to us through concealed pipes, and down in the lower portion of the City, patient, moon-faced Chinamen were at work to produce it. The sunlight, actually as brilliant as real sunlight, was the result of a costly installation of those marvelous and newly invented lamps which are used in the great cinema studios. Only the trees and the flowers were real.

Outside, it was a keen, cold night. We were perched on the top of gaunt, steel towers, more than two thousand feet in the air, and yet, I swear to you, all thought of our surroundings, and even of our peril, was banished for a brief and laughing hour. Like the tired traveler in some clearing of those lovely South American forests from which the wealth of Morse had sprung, we had forgotten the patient jaguar that follows in the tree-tops for a week of days to strike at last.

I dwell upon this scene because it was another of those little interludes, during my life in the City of the Clouds, which stand out in such brilliant relief from the encircling horrors.

Juanita was in the highest spirits. I had never seen her more lovely or more animated. Morse himself, always a trifle grim, unbent to a sardonic humor. He told us story after story of his early life, with shrewd flashes of wit and wisdom, revealing the keen and mordaunt intellect which had made him what he was. A wonderful pink champagne from Austria, looted from the Imperial cellars during the war, and priceless even then, poured new life into our veins – it was impossible to believe in the tragedy of the last few hours, in the shadow of any tragedy to come.

We adjourned to the music-room after dinner, an apartment paneled in cedar-wood and with a wagon roof, and Juanita played and sang to us for a time. It was just ten o'clock when Rolston looked at his watch and gave me a significant glance. I rose and said good-night, both Morse and Juanita announcing their intention of going to bed.

As we came to the outside door, Bill turned to me.

"Hadn't you better go back to our house, Sir Thomas, and sleep? Remember what you have been through."

"Sleep? I couldn't sleep if I tried! I feel as fit and well as ever I did – why?"

"I've promised to meet Mr. Pu-Yi in the office of the chief of the staff. Reports will be coming in of the search which has been going on all the evening. I am anxious to see how far it has got, though of course if Midwinter had been found, or any trace of him, we should have been informed at once. And there is something else, also – "

He stopped, and I made no inquiries. "Well, I'm with you," I said; for I felt ready for anything that might come, in a state of absolute, pleasant acquiescence in the present and the future. I hadn't a tremor of fear or anxiety.