The Sea Peoples(72)
Of even my own eyeballs! Well, they’re not really mine, are they?
—but Hildred hurried up the trembling stairways to Mr. Wilde’s apartment, then knocked and entered without ceremony. John recognized the salt-iron-copper smell of blood, like metallic seawater, and so did Hildred and the other passenger in his mind. The sound of a man whimpering in pain was something they’d all heard before too.
Wilde lay groaning on the floor, his face covered with blood, his clothes torn to shreds. Drops of blood were scattered about over the carpet, which had also been ripped and frayed in the struggle. Judging from the fresh liquid look of the blood, it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
“It’s that cursed cat,” Wilde said, panting quickly without moving anything but his colorless eyes to the newcomer. “She attacked me while I was asleep. I believe she will kill me yet.”
The anger in Hildred’s mind suddenly had a focus; setting down the case with the crown and robe, he went into the pantry—past a scuttling of cockroaches among the stale-smelling dishes stacked randomly—seized a hatchet and started searching. When he gave it up and came back to the parlor he found Mr. Wilde squatting on his high chair by the table. He had washed his face and changed his clothes. The great furrows which the cat’s claws had ploughed up in his face he had filled with collodion, and a rag hid the wound in his throat.
“I’ll kill that cat the moment I see it,” Hildred said.
Yes! Please! Before it sings to me again, please kill it! John thought, the force of the sudden passion astonishing him.
Wilde only shook his head and turned to the open ledger before him, reading off name after name. The sums startled Hildred, and some mental alchemy translated them into terms John could understand.
Enough to buy houses and land in a chartered city, or memberships in the guild-merchant in Astoria, he thought. Or ships . . .
Calculations of grazing-rights and cattle and horses and wool-clips moved through the back of his consciousness; that would be the Boisean.
“I put on the screws now and then,” Wilde explained. “A reputation I repair is one I can destroy, after all.”
“One day or other some of these people will assassinate you,” Hildred said.
“Do you think so?” Wilde said, rubbing his mutilated ears.
Hildred shrugged. John felt his own mind growing sharper, and as it did it occurred to him how odd the conversations between Wilde and the would-be king were. They seemed so wrapped up in themselves that often they weren’t conversing at all, as he used the term; it was more as if they were talking past each other, to fragments of their own minds. And they were close confederates in an enterprise both considered of transcendent importance . . . but each was utterly indifferent to the other as a human being.
Hildred took down the manuscript entitled The Imperial Dynasty of America. The Boisean recognized it, with a start of fear and guilt and blazing desire.
Wait a minute, John thought with newfound clarity. That means he read it somewhere else . . . in Boise? There’s a copy of this in Montival?
He read along with the madman whose trembling hands turned the pages. When Hildred had finished Wilde took the manuscript and, turning to the dark passage which led from his study to his bedchamber, called out in a loud voice:
“Vance.”
Then for the first time, Hildred noticed a man crouching there in the shadow.
How did he expect to catch a cat, if he couldn’t see a man? John thought, and the other presence concurred.
“Vance, come in,” cried Wilde in a flat harsh tone.
The figure rose and crept towards them. “Vance, this is Mr. Castaigne,” said Wilde.
Before he had finished speaking, the man threw himself on the ground before the table, crying and grasping at Hildred’s feet:
“Oh, God! Oh, my God! Help me! Forgive me! Oh, Mr. Castaigne, keep that man, that thing, away. You cannot, you cannot mean it! You are different—save me! I am broken down—I was in a madhouse and now—when all was coming right—when I had forgotten the King—the King in Yellow and—but I shall go mad again—I shall go mad—”
His voice died into a choking rattle, as Wilde leapt and his right hand encircled the man’s throat, clenching with brutal power. When Vance fell in a heap on the stained, faded carpet, coughing and retching, Mr. Wilde clambered nimbly into his chair again, and rubbing his mangled ears with the stump of his other hand, turned to Hildred.
“The ledger, please,” he said.
Castaigne took it down from the shelf, a little surprised at the weight of the heavy bond paper, and Wilde opened it. After a moment’s searching among the beautifully written pages, he coughed complacently, and pointed to the name Vance.
“Vance,” he read aloud. “Osgood Oswald Vance.”
At the sound of his name, the man on the floor raised his head and turned a convulsed face to Wilde. His eyes were suffused with blood, his lips swollen and bitten until they bled.
“Called April 28th,” continued Mr. Wilde. “Occupation, cashier in the Seaforth National Bank; has served a term for forgery at Sing Sing, from whence he was transferred to the Asylum for the Criminal Insane. Pardoned by the Governor of New York, and discharged from the Asylum, January 19, 1918. Reputation damaged at Sheepshead Bay. Rumors that he lives beyond his income. Reputation to be repaired at once. Retainer $1,500.”