Fire Tongue

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The man at the window was interested in a car which, approaching
from the direction of the Circus, had slowed down immediately
opposite and now was being turned, the chauffeur's apparent
intention being to pull up at the door below. He had seen the
face of the occupant and had recognized it even from that
elevation. He was interested; and since only unusual things
aroused any semblance of interest in the man who now stood at the
window, one might have surmised that there was something unusual
about the present visitor, or in his having decided to call at
those chambers; and that such was indeed his purpose an upward
glance which he cast in the direction of the balcony sufficiently
proved.

The watcher, who had been standing in a dark recess formed by the
presence of heavy velvet curtains draped before the window, now
opened the curtains and stepped into the lighted room. He was a
tall, lean man having straight, jet-black hair, a sallow
complexion, and the features of a Sioux. A long black cigar
protruded aggressively from the left corner of his mouth. His
hands were locked behind him and his large and quite
expressionless blue eyes stared straight across the room at the
closed door with a dreamy and vacant regard. His dinner jacket
fitted him so tightly that it might have been expected at any
moment to split at the seams. As if to precipitate the
catastrophe, he wore it buttoned.

There came a rap at the door.

"In!" said the tall man.

The door opened silently and a manservant appeared. He was
spotlessly neat and wore his light hair cropped close to the
skull. His fresh-coloured face was quite as expressionless as
that of his master; his glance possessed no meaning. Crossing to
the window, he extended a small salver upon which lay a visiting
card.

"In!" repeated the tall man, looking down at the card.

His servant silently retired, and following a short interval
rapped again upon the door, opened it, and standing just inside
the room announced: "Mr. Paul Harley."

The door being quietly closed behind him, Paul Harley stood
staring across the room at Nicol Brinn. At this moment the
contrast between the types was one to have fascinated a
psychologist. About Paul Harley, eagerly alert, there was
something essentially British. Nicol Brinn, without being
typical, was nevertheless distinctly a product of the United
States. Yet, despite the stoic mask worn by Mr. Brinn, whose
lack-lustre eyes were so unlike the bright gray eyes of his
visitor, there existed, if not a physical, a certain spiritual
affinity between the two; both were men of action.

Harley, after that one comprehensive glance, the photographic
glance of a trained observer, stepped forward impulsively, hand
outstretched. "Mr. Brinn," he said, "we have never met before,
and it was good of you to wait in for me. I hope my telephone
message has not interfered with your plans for the evening?"

Nicol Brinn, without change of pose, no line of the impassive
face altering, shot out a large, muscular hand, seized that of
Paul Harley in a tremendous grip, and almost instantly put his
hand behind his back again. "Had no plans," he replied, in a
high, monotonous voice; "I was bored stiff. Take the armchair."

Paul Harley sat down, but in the restless manner of one who has
urgent business in hand and who is impatient of delay. Mr. Brinn
stooped to a coffee table which stood upon the rug before the
large open fireplace. "I am going to offer you a cocktail," he
said.

"I shall accept your offer," returned Harley, smiling. "The 'N.
B. cocktail' has a reputation which extends throughout the clubs
of the world."

Nicol Brinn, exhibiting the swift adroitness of that human dodo,
the New York bartender, mixed the drinks. Paul Harley watched
him, meanwhile drumming his fingers restlessly upon the chair
arm.

"Here's success," he said, "to my mission."

It was an odd toast, but Mr. Brinn merely nodded and drank in
silence. Paul Harley set his glass down and glanced about the
singular apartment of which he had often heard and which no man
could ever tire of examining.

In this room the poles met, and the most remote civilizations of
the world rubbed shoulders with modernity. Here, encased, were a
family of snow-white ermine from Alaska and a pair of black
Manchurian leopards. A flying lemur from the Pelews contemplated
swooping upon the head of a huge tigress which glared with glassy
eyes across the place at the snarling muzzle of a polar bear.
Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon the same shelf as
Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess of the
thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which
rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish
goddess Derceto, at Ascalon.

Arrowheads of the Stone Age and medieval rapiers were ranged
alongside some of the latest examples of the gunsmith's art.
There were elephants' tusks and Mexican skulls; a stone jar of
water from the well of Zem-Zem, and an ivory crucifix which had
belonged to Torquemada. A mat of human hair from Borneo overlay a
historical and unique rug woven in Ispahan and entirely composed
of fragments of Holy Carpets from the Kaaba at Mecca.

"I take it," said Mr. Brinn, suddenly, "that you are up against a
stiff proposition."

Paul Harley, accepting a cigarette from an ebony box (once the
property of Henry VIII) which the speaker had pushed across the
coffee table in his direction, stared up curiously into the
sallow, aquiline face. "You are right. But how did you know?"

"You look that way. Also--you were followed. Somebody knows
you've come here."

Harley leaned forward, resting one hand upon the table. "I know I
was followed," he said, sternly. "I was followed because I have
entered upon the biggest case of my career." He paused and smiled
in a very grim fashion. "A suspicion begins to dawn upon my mind
that if I fail it will also be my last case. You understand me?"

"I understand absolutely," replied Nicol Brinn. "These are dull
days. It's meat and drink to me to smell big danger."

Paul Harley lighted a cigarette and watched the speaker closely
the while. His expression, as he did so, was an odd one. Two
courses were open to him, and he was mentally debating their
respective advantages.

"I have come to you to-night, Mr. Brinn," he said finally, "to
ask you a certain question. Unless the theory upon which I am
working is entirely wrong, then, supposing that you are in a
position to answer my question I am logically compelled to
suppose, also, that you stand in peril of your life."

"Good," said Mr. Brinn. "I was getting sluggish." In three long
strides he crossed the room and locked the door. "I don't doubt
Hoskins's honesty," he explained, reading the inquiry in Harley's
eyes, "but an A1 intelligence doesn't fold dress pants at
thirty-nine."

Only one very intimate with the taciturn speaker could have
perceived any evidence of interest in that imperturbable
character. But Nicol Brinn took his cheroot between his fingers,
quickly placed a cone of ash in a little silver tray (the work of
Benvenuto Cellini), and replaced the cheroot not in the left but
in the right corner of his mouth. He was excited.

"You are out after one of the big heads of the crook world," he
said. "He knows it and he's trailing you. My luck's turned. How
can I help?"

Harley stood up, facing Mr. Brinn. "He knows it, as you say," he
replied, "and I hold my life in my hands. But from your answer to
the question which I have come here to-night to ask you, I shall
conclude whether or not your danger at the moment is greater than
mine."

"Good," said Nicol Brinn.

In that unique room, at once library and museum, amid relics of a
hundred ages, spoil of the chase, the excavator, and the scholar,
these two faced each other; and despite the peaceful quiet of the
apartment up to which as a soothing murmur stole the homely
sounds of Piccadilly, each saw in the other's eyes recognition of
a deadly peril. It was a queer, memorable moment.

"My question is simple but strange," said Paul Harley. "It is
this: What do you know of 'Fire-Tongue'?"

CHAPTER V. THE GATES OF HELL

If Paul Harley had counted upon the word "Fire-Tongue" to have a
dramatic effect upon Nicol Brinn, he was not disappointed. It was
a word which must have conveyed little or nothing to the
multitude and which might have been pronounced without
perceptible effect at any public meeting in the land. But Mr.
Brinn, impassive though his expression remained, could not
conceal the emotion which he experienced at the sound of it. His
gaunt face seemed to grow more angular and his eyes to become
even less lustrous.

"Fire-Tongue!" he said, tensely, following a short silence. "For
God's sake, when did you hear that word?"

"I heard it," replied Harley, slowly, "to-night." He fixed his
gaze intently upon the sallow face of the American. "It was
spoken by Sir Charles Abingdon."

Closely as he watched Nicol Brinn while pronouncing this name he
could not detect the slightest change of expression in the stoic
features.

"Sir Charles Abingdon," echoed Brinn; "and in what way is it
connected with your case?"

"In this way," answered Harley. "It was spoken by Sir Charles a
few moments before he died."

Nicol Brinn's drooping lids flickered rapidly. "Before he died!
Then Sir Charles Abingdon is dead! When did he die?"

"He died to-night and the last words that he uttered were
'Fire-Tongue'--" He paused, never for a moment removing that
fixed gaze from the other's face.

"Go on," prompted Mr. Brinn.

"And 'Nicol Brinn.'"

Nicol Brinn stood still as a carven man. Indeed, only by an added
rigidity in his pose did he reward Paul Harley's intense
scrutiny. A silence charged with drama was finally broken by the
American. "Mr. Harley," he said, "you told me that you were up
against the big proposition of your career. You are right."

With that he sat down in an armchair and, resting his chin in his
hand, gazed fixedly into the empty grate. His pose was that of a
man who is suddenly called upon to review the course of his life
and upon whose decision respecting the future that life may
depend. Paul Harley watched him in silence.

"Give me the whole story," said Mr. Brinn, "right from the
beginning." He looked up. "Do you know what you have done
to-night, Mr. Harley?"

Paul Harley shook his head. Swiftly, like the touch of an icy
finger, that warning note of danger had reached him again.

"I'll tell you," continued Brinn. "You have opened the gates of
hell!"

Not another word did he speak while Paul Harley, pacing slowly up
and down before the hearth, gave him a plain account of the case,
omitting all reference to his personal suspicions and to the
measures which he had taken to confirm them.

He laid his cards upon the table deliberately. Whether Sir
Charles Abingdon had uttered the name of Nicol Brinn as that of
one whose aid should be sought or as a warning, he had yet to
learn. And by this apparent frankness he hoped to achieve his
object. That the celebrated American was in any way concerned in
the menace which had overhung Sir Charles he was not prepared to
believe. But he awaited with curiosity that explanation which
Nicol Brinn must feel called upon to offer.

"You think he was murdered?" said Brinn in his high, toneless
voice.

"I have formed no definite opinion. What is your own?"

"I may not look it," replied Brinn, "but at this present moment I
am the most hopelessly puzzled and badly frightened man in
London."

"Frightened?" asked Harley, curiously.

"I said frightened, I also said puzzled; and I am far too puzzled
to be able to express any opinion respecting the death of Sir
Charles Abingdon. When I tell you all I know of him you will
wonder as much as I do, Mr. Harley, why my name should have been
the last to pass his lips."

He half turned in the big chair to face his visitor, who now was
standing before the fireplace staring down at him.

"One day last month," he resumed, "I got out of my car in a big
hurry at the top of the Haymarket. A fool on a motorcycle passed
between the car and the sidewalk just as I stepped down, and I
knew nothing further until I woke up in a drug store close by,
feeling very dazed and with my coat in tatters and my left arm
numbed from the elbow. A man was standing watching me, and
presently when I had pulled round he gave me his card.

"He was Sir Charles Abingdon, who had been passing at the time of
the accident. That was how I met him, and as there was nothing
seriously wrong with me I saw him no more professionally. But he
dined with me a week later and I had lunch at his club about a
fortnight ago."

He looked up at Harley. "On my solemn word of honour," he said,
"that's all I know about Sir Charles Abingdon."

Paul Harley returned the other's fixed stare. "I don't doubt your
assurance on the point, Mr. Brinn," he acknowledged. "I can well
understand that you must be badly puzzled; but I would remind you
of your statement that you were also frightened. Why?"

Nicol Brinn glanced rapidly about his own luxurious room in an
oddly apprehensive manner. "I said that," he declared, "and I
meant it."

"Then I can only suppose," resumed Harley, deliberately, "that
the cause of your fear lies in the term, 'Fire-Tongue'?"

Brinn again rested his chin in his hand, staring fixedly into the
grate.

"And possibly," went on the remorseless voice, "you can explain
the significance of that term?"

Nicol Brinn remained silent--but with one foot he was slowly
tapping the edge of the fender.

"Mr. Harley," he began, abruptly, "you have been perfectly frank
with me and in return I wish to be as frank with you as I can be.
I am face to face with a thing that has haunted me for seven
years, and every step I take from now onward has to be considered
carefully, for any step might be my last. And that's not the
worst of the matter. I will risk one of those steps here and now.
You ask me to explain the significance of Fire-Tongue" (there was
a perceptible pause before he pronounced the word, which Harley
duly noticed). "I am going to tell you that Sir Charles Abingdon,
when I lunched with him at his club, asked me precisely the same
thing."

"What! He asked you that so long as two weeks ago?"

"He did."

"And what reason did he give for his inquiry?"

Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. "Let me
think," he replied. "I recognize that you must regard my
reticence as peculiar, Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason
to look before he leaped, I am that man."

Silence fell again, and Paul Harley, staring down at Nicol Brinn,
realized that this indeed was the most hopelessly mystifying case
which fate had ever thrown in his way. This millionaire scholar
and traveller, whose figure was as familiar in remote cities of
the world as it was familiar in New York, in Paris, and in
London, could not conceivably be associated with any criminal
organization. Yet his hesitancy was indeed difficult to explain,
and because it seemed to Harley that the cloud which had stolen
out across the house of Sir Charles Abingdon now hung
threateningly over those very chambers, he merely waited and
wondered.

"He referred to an experience which had befallen him in India,"
came Nicol Brinn's belated reply.

"In India? May I ask you to recount that experience?"

"Mr. Harley," replied Brinn, suddenly standing up, "I can't."

"You can't?"

"I have said so. But I'd give a lot more than you might believe
to know that Abingdon had told you the story which he told me."

"You are not helping, Mr. Brinn," said Harley, sternly. "I
believe and I think that you share my belief that Sir Charles
Abingdon did not die from natural causes. You are repressing
valuable evidence. Allow me to remind you that if anything should
come to light necessitating a post-mortem examination of the
body, you will be forced to divulge in a court of justice the
facts which you refuse to divulge to me."

"I know it," said Brinn, shortly.

He shot out one long arm and grasped Harley's shoulder as in a
vice. "I'm counted a wealthy man," he continued, "but I'd give
every cent I possess to see 'paid' put to the bill of a certain
person. Listen. You don't think I was in any way concerned in the
death of Sir Charles Abingdon? It isn't thinkable. But you do
think I'm in possession of facts which would help you find out
who is. You're right."

"Good God!" cried Harley. "Yet you remain silent!"

"Not so loud--not so loud!" implored Brinn, repeating that odd,
almost furtive glance around. "Mr. Harley--you know me. You've
heard of me and now you've met me. You know my place in the
world. Do you believe me when I say that from this moment onward
I don't trust my own servants? Nor my own friends?" He removed
his grip from Harley's shoulder. "Inanimate things look like
enemies. That mummy over yonder may have ears!"

"I'm afraid I don't altogether understand you."

"See here!"

Nicol Brinn crossed to a bureau, unlocked it, and while Harley
watched him curiously, sought among a number of press cuttings.
Presently he found the cutting for which he was looking. "This
was said," he explained, handing the slip to Harley, "at the
Players' Club in New York, after a big dinner in pre-dry days. It
was said in confidence. But some disguised reporter had got in
and it came out in print next morning. Read it."

Paul Harley accepted the cutting and read the following:

NICOL BRINN'S SECRET AMBITIONS
MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN WHO WANTS TO SHOOT
NIAGARA!

Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati, who is at present in New York,
opened his heart to members of the Players' Club last night. Our
prominent citizen, responding to a toast, "the distinguished
visitor," said:

"I'd like to live through months of midnight frozen in among the
polar ice; I'd like to cross Africa from east to west and get
lost in the middle. I'd like to have a Montana sheriff's posse on
my heels for horse stealing, and I've prayed to be wrecked on a
desert island like Robinson Crusoe to see if I am man enough to
live it out. I want to stand my trial for murder and defend my
own case, and I want to be found by the eunuchs in the harem of
the Shah. I want to dive for pearls and scale the Matterhorn. I
want to know where the tunnel leads to--the tunnel down under the
Great Pyramid of Gizeh--and I'd love to shoot Niagara Falls in a
barrel."

"It sounds characteristic," murmured Harley, laying the slip on
the coffee table.

"It's true!" declared Brinn. "I said it and I meant it. I'm a
glutton for danger, Mr. Harley, and I'm going to tell you why.
Something happened to me seven years ago--"

"In India?"

"In India. Correct. Something happened to me, sir, which just
took the sunshine out of life. At the time I didn't know all it
meant. I've learned since. For seven years I have been flirting
with death and hoping to fall!"

Harley stared at him uncomprehendingly. "More than ever I fail to
understand."

"I can only ask you to be patient, Mr. Harley. Time is a
wonderful doctor, and I don't say that in seven years the old
wound hasn't healed a bit. But to-night you have, unknowingly,
undone all that time had done. I'm a man that has been down into
hell. I bought myself out. I thought I knew where the pit was
located. I thought I was well away from it, Mr. Harley, and you
have told me something tonight which makes me think that it isn't
where I supposed at all, but hidden down here right under our
feet in London. And we're both standing on the edge!"

That Nicol Brinn was deeply moved no student of humanity could
have doubted. From beneath the stoic's cloak another than the
dare-devil millionaire whose crazy exploits were notorious had
looked out. Persistently the note of danger came to Paul Harley.
Those luxurious Piccadilly chambers were a focus upon which some
malignant will was concentrated. He became conscious of anger. It
was the anger of a just man who finds himself impotent--the rage
of Prometheus bound.

"Mr. Brinn!" he cried, "I accept unreservedly all that you have
told me. Its real significance I do not and cannot grasp. But my
theory that Sir Charles Abingdon was done to death has become a
conviction. That a like fate threatens yourself and possibly
myself I begin to believe." He looked almost fiercely into the
other's dull eyes. "My reputation east and west is that of a
white man. Mr. Brinn--I ask you for your confidence."

Nicol Brinn dropped his chin into his hand and resumed that
unseeing stare into the open grate. Paul Harley watched him
intently.

"There isn't any one I would rather confide in," confessed the
American. "We are linked by a common danger. But"--he looked
up--"I must ask you again to be patient. Give me time to think
--to make plans. For your own part--be cautious. You witnessed
the death of Sir Charles Abingdon. You don't think and perhaps I
don't think that it was natural; but whatever steps you may have
taken to confirm your theories, I dare not hope that you will
ever discover even a ghost of a clue. I simply warn you, Mr.
Harley. You may go the same way. So may I. Others have travelled
that road before poor Abingdon."

He suddenly stood up, all at once exhibiting to his watchful
visitor that tremendous nervous energy which underlay his
impassive manner. "Good God!" he said, in a cold, even voice. "To
think that it is here in London. What does it mean?"

He ceased speaking abruptly, and stood with his elbow resting on
a corner of the mantelpiece.

"You speak of it being here," prompted Harley. "Is it consistent
with your mysterious difficulties to inform me to what you
refer?"

Nicol Brinn glanced aside at him. "If I informed you of that," he
answered, "you would know all you want to know. But neither you
nor I would live to use the knowledge. Give me time. Let me
think."

Silence fell in the big room, Nicol Brinn staring down vacantly
into the empty fireplace, Paul Harley standing watching him in a
state of almost stupefied mystification. Muffled to a soothing
murmur the sounds of Piccadilly penetrated to that curtained
chamber which held so many records of the troubled past and which
seemed to be charged with shadowy portents of the future.

Something struck with a dull thud upon a windowpane--once--twice.
There followed a faint, sibilant sound.

Paul Harley started and the stoical Nicol Brinn turned rapidly
and glanced across the room.

"What was that?" asked Harley.

"I expect--it was an owl," answered Brinn. "We sometimes get them
over from the Green Park."

His high voice sounded unemotional as ever. But it seemed to Paul
Harley that his face, dimly illuminated by the upcast light from
the lamp upon the coffee table, had paled, had become gaunt.

CHAPTER VI. PHIL ABINGDON ARRIVES

On the following afternoon Paul Harley was restlessly pacing his
private office when Innes came in with a letter which had been
delivered by hand. Harley took it eagerly and tore open the
envelope. A look of expectancy faded from his eager face almost
in the moment that it appeared there. "No luck, Innes," he said,
gloomily. "Merton reports that there is no trace of any dangerous
foreign body in the liquids analyzed."

He dropped the analyst's report into a wastebasket and resumed
his restless promenade. Innes, who could see that his principal
wanted to talk, waited. For it was Paul Harley's custom, when the
clue to a labyrinth evaded him, to outline his difficulties to
his confidential secretary, and by the mere exercise of verbal
construction Harley would often detect the weak spot in his
reasoning. This stage come to, he would dictate a carefully
worded statement of the case to date and thus familiarize himself
with its complexities.

"You see, Innes," he began, suddenly, "Sir Charles had taken no
refreshment of any kind at Mr. Wilson's house nor before leaving
his own. Neither had he smoked. No one had approached him.
Therefore, if he was poisoned, he was poisoned at his own table.
Since he was never out of my observation from the moment of
entering the library up to that of his death, we are reduced to
the only two possible mediums--the soup or the water. He had
touched nothing else."

"No wine?"

"Wine was on the table but none had been poured out. Let us see
what evidence, capable of being put into writing, exists to
support my theory that Sir Charles was poisoned. In the first
place, he clearly went in fear of some such death. It was because
of this that he consulted me. What was the origin of his fear?
Something associated with the term Fire-Tongue. So much is clear
from Sir Charles's dying words, and his questioning Nicol Brinn
on the point some weeks earlier.

"He was afraid, then, of something or someone linked in his mind
with the word Fire-Tongue. What do we know about Fire-Tongue? One
thing only: that it had to do with some episode which took place
in India. This item we owe to Nicol Brinn.

"Very well. Sir Charles believed himself to be in danger from
some thing or person unknown, associated with India and with the
term Fire-Tongue. What else? His house was entered during the
night under circumstances suggesting that burglary was not the
object of the entrance. And next? He was assaulted, with
murderous intent. Thirdly, he believed himself to be subjected to
constant surveillance. Was this a delusion? It was not. After
failing several times I myself detected someone dogging my
movements last night at the moment I entered Nicol Brinn's
chambers. Nicol Brinn also saw this person.

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