Asphaltite Beauty

  It was a strange ending to a voyage that had commenced in  a most auspicious manner. The first introduction was  altogether most agreeable, and I already began to imagine I  might not be so badly off after all. I shall try and  arrange some means for our meeting unobserved tomorrow. 

For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is  his estate. Spying, as well as other intelligence  assessment, has existed since ancient times. The trouble is  that a man can hold almost any theory he cares to about the  secret world, and defend it against large quantities of  hostile evidence by the simple expedient of retreating  behind further and further screens of postulated inward  mystery. 

He could collect their gestures, record the interplay of  glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted  bracken and broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of  danger. My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an  exemplification of the power that mutability may possess  over the varied tenor of man's life.

Thus passed several successive nights, until the full of  the moon. The country was fairly open, with the road  climbing low hills and dropping down into valleys. The moon  painted everything in a broad effect of black and greys,  and showed the road as a white thread before them.

I have chosen my boat, and laid in my scant stores. I have  selected a few books; the principal are Butler, King, and  Wolfe. But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me  and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation  of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is  intolerable to me.

“You are not going to cheat me, are you?”

"I don't think I believe it. Don't ask me to say more."

“Oh, you dear little coaxer, you are enough to seduce an  angel.”

He gave her a full, frank look.

"Very grave danger."

"Then why on earth don't you do something?"

Seeking shelter, she comes upon a mysterious palace. 

The place was a smother of leaves, for the underwood had  not been cut for five years or more, and the hazel tops  were up among the lower boughs of the oaks. A broad ride  ran through the wood from north to south like a gallery  tunnelling through the green gloom. The first cold weather  of an English October, made us hasten our preparations.

The temporary electric lights have now been strung all  along the railroad tracks and through the central part of  the ruins, so that the place after dark is really quite  brilliant seen from a distance, especially when to the  electric display is added the red glow in the mist and  smoke of huge bonfires.

My thoughts were sad and solemn, yet not of unmingled pain.  Why, I know not, but I was instinctively prompted to feign  sleep. I did so successfully, notwithstanding the passing  of the candle before my eyes. So she at once commenced  undressing.

Obscurity was this nature, as well as this profession. In  such circumstances the human affinity for myth and legend  easily gets out of control. I was afraid to make her  suspicious of a former use of it. She stressed the need to  understand yourself and your enemy for military  intelligence. 

Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent  passed from our minds. Then one morning there came an  enigmatic note slipped into our letter box.

"You have said that your father is his friend."

"Oh? I will not use the word 'spy' when speaking of my  father." He served Crown and country as a double agent,  transmitting false intelligence to Imperial Germany on the  eve of the Great War.

We all sat in silence for some minutes while those fateful  eyes still strained to pierce the veil. I heard someone  approaching, and knowing that I had no business there, I  hid myself under the bed. Otherwise, the Beast will destroy  this entire family.

Two new methods for intelligence collection were developed  over the course of the war – aerial reconnaissance and  photography and the interception and decryption of radio  signals, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the  major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence  agencies. With more abandon we both sank in the death-like  ecstasies of the delicious melting away in all the luxury  of contented and voluptuous discharges, a life which ended  with the strange happenings of which we have heard.

The details were reported by the world press: an Imperial  German penetration agent betraying to Germany the secrets  of the General Staff of the French Army; the French  counter-intelligence riposte of sending a charwoman to  rifle the trash in the German Embassy in Paris, the Dreyfus  Affair (1894–99) contributed much to public interest in  espionage. I very nearly betrayed myself at the sight, but,  fortunately, was able to keep up the character of apparent  ignorance I had hitherto shown.

"How dare you come to me with this tale?"

"Because it is true."

"How do you know?"

"I have seen and heard things."

"Well, then, you, too, are something of a spy."

"I could not help seeing and hearing what I did. I eat to  live, but I do not live to lie."

“Oh, what pleasure! I shall die!”

My labors have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me  out of a world, which has averted its once benignant face  from me, to one glowing with imagination and power.  Meanwhile, her spirit was completely cowed, or rather,  crushed. Indeed, we were all fully frightened, and now knew  what we had to expect, if we did not behave ourselves.  Efforts to use espionage for military advantage are well  documented throughout history.

"What are they?"

"Messages in cipher. One has to find out the code. But you  see what all this means."

She did see it, and her face was white and serious in the  moonlight.

"It means danger for us."

"Unless we smother it."

"But what will you do?"

He replaced the case in his pocket.

“Give it me and I will guide it into the proper place.”

Aztecs used Pochtecas, people in charge of commerce, as  spies and diplomats, and had diplomatic immunity. Along  with the pochteca, before a battle or war, secret agents,  quimitchin, were sent to spy amongst enemies usually  wearing the local costume and speaking the local language,  techniques similar to modern secret agents. Mother of the  world! Servant of the Omnipotent! Eternal, changeless  Necessity! Who with busy fingers sittest ever weaving the  indissoluble chain of events?

This conversation attracted the attention of the large  number of bustling passengers. I hardly know whether this  apology is necessary. All her efforts were now directed to  the dissembling her internal conflict. It was nearly ten  minutes before she recovered her senses. Secret services  have in common with Freemasons and mafiosi that they  inhabit an intellectual twilight-a kind of ambiguous gloom  in which it is hard to distinguish with certainty between  the menacing and the merely ludicrous. 

The boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soon  they were at the crossroads which is beyond its boundary.  She had to play the part of a courteous hostess; to attend  to all; to shine the focus of enjoyment and grace. She had  to do this, while in deep woe she sighed for loneliness,  and would gladly have exchanged her crowded rooms for dark  forest depths, or a drear, night-enshadowed heath.

"Because he is a spy? Or has he offended you?"

"Because I hate the man."

"Then you are not—not disinterested?"

She smiled grimly. “We must be quick, dear,” she murmured.

Her eyes met his with a new meaning. She was putting her  trust in him, waiting to be guided by what he would say and  do. Night closed in, and it began to rain. We were about to  return homewards, when a voice, a human voice, strange now  to hear, attracted our attention. 

"Sit down, man. What has happened? Why didn't you come to  the quarry?"

"I came there right enough."

"So——!"

"Yes, to be knocked on the head and have the cipher  stolen."

“How came you here, sir, tell me? You have lost the  dispatches?"

"I say they were taken from me."

"By whom? You great fool—how did it happen?"

"Keep your big words to yourself. He and a man of his were  in hiding. They knocked me on the head and had me on my  back before I could take aim with a pistol. Then I was  marched down to the sea by a lanky devil of a peasant, and  left there to find the boat."

"But how?"

"That will be my business."

"But it may be dangerous for you."

There was no answer. 

There was a dead silence in the room.

“Make a move?”

“Lie back for a moment on the bed.”

“I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the  time is coming. I had news tonight, bad news, and I see  trouble coming.”

"You once get the door shut behind him, you can leave the  rest with us."

Victims have to be deliberately, not randomly, targeted  because of their real or perceived membership of one of the  groups outlined in the above definition. At any season,  such remains may be discovered by looking down into the  transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the  existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by  the ‘Asphaltites.’

The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can  hardly be hoped that their exertions will be attended by  any better results than in the past. I had a conscience and  a religion; but they made me a criminal among them. I was  chosen for a job. If I backed down I knew well what would  come to me. Maybe I'm a coward.

I had left her this evening, reposing after the fatigues of  her preparations.

“Put down your slate, Charles, and come to me.”

I obeyed, and stood before my beautiful governess, with a  strange commixture of fear and desire.

"I do."

"Were you beaten?"

"No."

"It makes you grim, quick as lightning, cool as cold steel.  That's how it works with me."

But the end was not yet. Far from it. The amateur and  professional photographers who have overrun the town for  the last few days came to grief on Friday. Children also  are rarely seen about the town, and for a similar reason.

Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange  satellites, paced with its accustomed majesty towards its  western home. It was strange that life could exist in what  was wasted and worn into a very type of death.

"But can nothing be done?"

"I have an idea. I will tell it to you in a day or two."

"Don't boast too soon."

"I may as well tell you some news. You will not gossip and  spread it abroad."

The preposterous simplicity of the idea made him laugh, the  sly noiseless laughter of a bon viveur enjoying a  suggestive story.

"Bravo for the villain! What a queer mix-up of characters  we mortals be! The philosopher crushing the wasp that has  stung him. It is the nature of wasps to sting, therefore a  philosopher should not be angry. But there is a joy in the  crushing. And to see the sick black mug of that little  fencing-master! It would be worth it even for that."

With that, and expelling a heavy breath, he wrestled around  to confront the hunter. At first, the pain was  excruciating, and he roared out as loud as he could, but  gradually the pain ceased to be so acute, and was succeeded  by the most delicious tickling sensation. But of this it is  probable my readers will learn more hereafter.

“And what do you think about it now?” she asked.

"It is for you to help, not to hinder us in our duty.”

“Well, in my opinion, we are wasting our time.”

And, as a matter of fact, the investigation had produced no  result.

"Were I subject to visionary moods," said the venerable  lady, as she continued her narrative, "I might doubt my  eyes, and condemn my credulity; but reality is the world I  live in, and what I saw I doubt not had existence beyond  myself."

I had long prepared myself for such a question, and at once  replied that after the description. Our journey was impeded  by a thousand obstacles.

“Then he will remain in the vicinity, where his capture  will be even more certain.”

There appeared to be several men talking together in  undertones. Then came the crash of glass being broken, as  though they were battering in one of the lower windows. His  patience gave out at last. There is homage, passionate  utterance, in every movement of the head and body.  Moonlight came through and lay patterned upon the floor.  The figure disappeared from the window, and from the  moonlit room came the sounds of an active young man  plunging furiously for his clothes.

“He will not remain in the vicinity.”

“Oh! oh! And where will he hide?”

"Either some one has been telling lies, or——"

He stood stiffly alert, like a sentinel who has heard a  suspicious sound in the darkness. Some one was moving below  the terrace. Footsteps shuffled on the rough stone steps.

“I—I—I—I—”

“Come now, Charles, be candid with me; what is it you mean  where you say all this has caused you to be in such a  state, have you shown her this, and has she handled it?”

“Oh! dear no; never, never!”

"Quick! Down the steps."

A second figure had joined the first. It was pointing with  outstretched arm toward the sea. For a few moments perfect  silence prevailed. I looked at my watch, and said, "If they  built a church in their city he would slay the dragon."

Matters are becoming very well systematized, both in the  military and the mining way. You see, I was keeping up my  apparent ignorance. I examined the surroundings with the  idea of proceeding alone in the arrest of the fugitive, in  order to recover my papers, concerning which the  authorities would doubtless ask many disagreeable  questions. From my temporary chimera I awoke to find that  dismal howling still in my ears, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla.” 

"Until I find him, and I will, he's no real menace to  anyone but himself."

"I've always thought that we in the arts are all  shoplifters," she said. "Everybody, from Shakespeare  onwards to Jung and downwards to Freud. But once you've  acknowledged that, when you set out on a shoplifting  expedition, you go always to Cartier's, and never to  Woolworth's!"

After this we rose and stood for a few moments in  breathless silence,—we were afraid that some one might have  been about the cottage listening and watching our  movements. 

“Well, my dear boy, look at it if you wish.”

I was no longer shy.

She looked cold and white and upon the defensive.

The silence irked them both. They took refuge in vague  superficialities.

"Fine trees, these. They looked like a pile of snow in the  distance."

"Yes. I love the smell of may blossom."

"Scents carry one back to all sorts of memories."

"I know. I always like a bowl of wild flowers in my room."

The figure in the doorway moved out into the moonlight.

"I am afraid that I have been playing the spy."

"You?"

"It was for good ends, and to help you and yours."

She looked at him anxiously.

"Have you found out anything more?"

"A little. Look at this."

He dropped her hand gently, and pulled out the leather case  that he had taken.

We felt as though we had come into deep waters and were  about being overwhelmed, and that the slightest mistake  would clip asunder the last brittle thread of hope by which  we were suspended, and let us down for ever into the dark  and horrible pit of misery and degradation from which we  were straining every nerve to escape. Such a life becomes a  sort of tragic existence, with its storms and its  grandeurs, its monotony and its diversity; and that is why,  perhaps, we embark upon that short voyage with mingled  feelings of pleasure and fear.

But it soon occurred to me that the good God, who had been  with us thus far, would not forsake us at the eleventh  hour. I oft rode in the dark and rain through the  labyrinthine streets of unpeopled London. Truly we were not  born to enjoy, but to submit, and to hope. And yet, as I  had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was another  hand to be played, and yet another and another.

The wind was bleak, and frequent sleet or snow-storms,  added to the melancholy appearance wintry nature assumed.  He listened to a faint galloping rhythm coming like the  noise of a stream running in the distance. The moonlight  shone on the deep-set eyes under the square brows.

“I did not know I was doing anything wrong.”

"Bring a dagger and pistols. We will take our choice."

And now I do not fear death. I should be well pleased to  close my eyes, never more to open them again. And yet I  fear it; even as I fear all things; for in any state of  being linked by the chain of memory with this, happiness  would not return—even in Paradise, I must feel that your  love was less enduring than the mortal beatings of my  fragile heart, every pulse of which knells audibly.

Evening closed in quickly, far more quickly than I was  prepared to expect. At the going down of the sun it began  to snow heavily.

“Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the  hour.”

“Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger,”  said she.

“He'll come, never fear.”

“Poor boy, I am afraid you have been suffering. How long  has it been in this state?”

From an oak wood in the valley came the "burring" of a  night-jar. The light of the dawn was just touching the  windows when a man came up the brick path to the porch and  hammered at the oak door. 

“Who are you?” he asked as he advanced. “What are you  loitering there for?”

“Well, it's not so bad as you think. We are but poor men  that are trying in our own way to get our rights.”

With a sudden crash the door flew open, and three frowning,  intent faces glared in at them from under the peaks of  police caps.

“Be quiet, you fool!” he whispered. “You'll be the undoing  of us yet!”

The tallest of the constabulary took command. "I want to  speak to you."

"Well, what is it?"

"It is known that you are a French spy."

"Charles——!"

"I know it, as others know it. You may be grateful that  those who know it are my friends."

He showed her his chained wrists.

"You are talking nonsense."

"I'll wager that I am not."

They stood eyeing each other, challenging each other,  gauging each other's strength and grimness.

"Who are you, and what do you want?"

"But what does this mean? Breaking into the house?"

"It means that I am shrewder than you think. I insist upon  befriending you, on placing you somewhere where you will be  safe."

"But still—I do not understand. What right——?"

"It is not necessary that you should understand."

Her eyes shone angrily.

"Because, like you, I have been kidnapped."

"You, too!"

"Yes, and I know everything."

"Sir?"

"Save your emotions."

“I'd like to say a word to you before we separate,” said  the man who had trapped them. 

“What are you about?” she exclaimed, “do you know who we  are?”

"Beware," cried the man, "God hears you, and will smite  your stony heart in his wrath; his poisoned arrows fly, his  dogs of death are unleashed! We will not perish unrevenged —and mighty will our avenger be, when he descends in  visible majesty, and scatters destruction among you."

The cross roads which we now entered upon, were even in a  worse state than the long neglected high-ways. The officers  then passed on and left me standing with my anxious heart  apparently palpitating in the throat. 

These are their reasons, they are natural, we felt them to  be ominous, and dreaded the future event enchained to them.  That the night owl should screech before the noon-day sun,  that the hard-winged bat should wheel around the bed of  beauty, that muttering thunder should in early spring  startle the cloudless air, that sudden and exterminating  blight should fall on the tree and shrub, were  unaccustomed, but physical events, less horrible than the  mental creations of almighty fear.

So I took my wife by the hand, stepped softly to the door,  raised the latch, drew it open, and peeped out. These are  wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, they came on me. It  went through my heart like a knife.

“Sure, hard words break no bones.”

“But they were true.”

“You damned murderers!” he said. “We'll fix you yet!”

Will not the reader tire, if I should minutely describe  what is written upon these papers?

“Oh, lady! oh, dear lady! let me go; I am dying!”

“What papers?”

“Well, there are no papers. But I filled him up about  constitutions and books of rules and forms of membership.  He expects to get right down to the end of everything  before he leaves.”

"The devil! You are late, and at the wrong place."

"You'll thank me for being here at all."

They greedily imbibed this belief; and their over-weening  credulity even rendered them eager to make converts to the  same faith.

This little summer house was at some distance from the  house, and in a lonely corner of the orchard, raised on an  artificial mount, so that its windows should command a  lovely view beyond the walls of the grounds.

"Time to make a run for it. The game is up."

He spoke in a smothered voice, then suddenly clasping his  hands, he exclaimed, "Swiftly, most swiftly advances the  last hour for us all; as the stars vanish before the sun,  so will his near approach destroy us. I have done my best;  with grasping hands and impotent strength, I have hung on  the wheel of the chariot; but she drags me along with it,  while, like Juggernaut, she proceeds crushing out the being  of all who strew the high road of life. Would that it were  over—would that her procession achieved, we had all entered  the tomb together!"

“Oh, Charlie, if it is all like that, I shall be so pleased  with it.”

“Oh, no; I am not so easily disturbed, besides he has been  so well behaved all day, that I am sure, if I tell him to  be quiet in the morning, he will not fail to do so.”

So it was settled, and my bed was at once removed to the  little room.

"A spy, and the child of a spy!"

Then he remembered the little wicket gate that led into the  passage opening into the stable- yard.

“Oh, no, my dear boy; I never heard you, or I should have  got up to see what was the matter.”

So it passed off, and no further observation was made about  it.

"They meet there?"

"I reckon they do."

"Have you got a lantern?"

"Sure."

"Fetch it, and bring a thick stick with you."

The furzelands were vague, black, and desolate under the  moon, strange eerie wastes where anything might happen.

"I don't like to think of what may happen."

"Don't think of it, then."

"How can I help it?"

They looked straight into each other's eyes. His frankness  brought her eyes glimmering up amusedly to meet his, and it  was then that she noticed that they had come within a  hundred yards of the big oak wood that bounded the common  on the south-east. The domes of the trees gleamed in the  moonlight.

"Look! Do you see where we are?"

It was close and oppressive in among the trees, and the  summer foliage shut in the ride with massive walls of  green. They came to the place where the furze thinned out  toward the rough grassland below the terrace.

"It will not be for nothing."

"No, no, one does not risk one's neck for nothing."

"Not far now?"

"We are there."

The clearing opened out before them with the horse tracks  turning aside into it. Half the place was in sunlight, the  rest smothered in umbrage, and very silent.

"Stay here, child."

As they considered me but a child, I was no check to their  mirth and sport. On the contrary, they gave me a long rope  to pull down the swing when at its highest, and I sat down  on the grass in front for greater convenience. Half of the  clearing lay in shadow, the other half in sunlight. The  boles of the oak-trees rose like grey-green pillars round  it, curtained in between by the foliage of the hazels. He  chose the high, ethical, magniloquent attitude, being  sincere enough in his wild, foolish, visionary way.

"As a prisoner?"

"Yes."

"But how absurd, in these days! Then we shall soon have him  out."

“Spiders,” she muttered over and over again. “Spiders!  Well, well.... The next time I must spin a web.” The thing  must have jumped into his mind in a moment.

She put the candle down, opened the window, and looked out.  Garden ground seemed to lie some fifteen feet below; it was  all black, but she saw something that glimmered like water.  She was still standing there when she heard the key turned  in the lock of her door. 

Footsteps died away down the passage. She realised that she  was a prisoner. A feeling of helplessness possessed her.  She rested her forehead on her crossed wrists and tried to  think of something she could do. It took her some time to  get a light, but she managed it and moved the candle to and  fro three times across the window. Then she blew it out and  sat down to wait. A quarter of an hour passed before she  heard a faint splash in the water below. She leaned out of  the window and stared down into the darkness, to see  nothing but vague outlines and an uncertain glimmering of  water. Then something moved, close to the wall. A whisper  came up to her out of the darkness. His ironical air  chilled her. She saw him resume his seat, take the tankard,  look into it, sip a little of the drink, and then lean back  in the chair and laugh.

"I'll try. Would it kill him?"

"No, there's not enough for that. If we could get him  drugged, we could deal with the others. Try the trick  tomorrow evening. We shall be on the watch in the wood. If  you succeed, signal with your candle."

Then, some time after midnight, she heard someone talking  in the orchard beyond the stables. There was a sound as of  men running, a scuffling of feet on the stones of the yard,  a shattering of glass, and the splitting of wood. Then  someone exclaimed angrily, and shadows shuffled away  disappointedly into the darkness. Footsteps! On the gravel  outside the house—and then the noise of a latchkey, the  yawn and bang of a door, and the spitting of a match in the  hall below.

The place was black under the moon, but at one gable end an  attic window showed the red glow of fire. The casement  frames were clearly outlined; from the open lattice came  little swirls of smoke, and for a moment a black shape  showed within like a man tossing his arms in despair.

"Do not excite yourself. You will be free in a few hours."

"I have said as much."

"And the young man, are we to leave him chained up like an  ox in a stall?"

The smell of the fire guided them, the pungent scent of  burning wood. The stairs leading to the attic story were  narrow and tortuous like the stairs in an old tower.

"There are too many of them, and they have hemmed me in. I  can leave the country tonight if your friends yonder will  come to terms."

He spoke dejectedly as though utterly discouraged.

"You will do this for me, go out as my friend?"

"Yes."

"Come, then, let us waste no time."

A man was standing in the trackway leading into the quarry,  his face turned toward the sea. It was like a ghost voice  coming, not from the burning room, but down the long  gallery with its dormer windows and its sloping eaves. Some  of the men on the stairs looked scared, and waited to see  what the others would do. The night seemed still and empty  of all sound, and there was no rattle of hoofs to tell of  pursuit.

"Hum—we are a little early. Let us go down to the shore."

The horses were tinned into a narrow, high-banked lane that  descended steeply toward the flats between the high ground  and the sea. Loose stones rolled and scattered under the  horses' hoofs.

"Adventure! I hate the word!"

He laughed.

"Your father may be scolding the moon. And Brick House is  burning."

He felt her body quiver. She was overstrung with suspense,  incredulity, and fear.

"Why did we set the house alight? Well, you see, sweet one,  it was an excellent trick for distracting the bull."

Ruined the nest, alas! The swans of Albion had passed away  for ever—an uninhabited rock in the wide Atlantic, which  had remained since the creation uninhabited, unnamed,  unmarked, would be of as much account in the world's future  history, as desert England.

Now again he paused to listen, fancying he heard the sound  of galloping upon the hills.

“I beg your pardon?” said I. No clothes, no money. Nothing.  My face was my fortune, as the saying is.

“That book,” he repeated, pointing a lean finger, “is about  dreams.”

"Devil take the man! Why is he not here with the boat?"

"Come, my little fellow!"

It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its  lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly  eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and  he stood there still. He stood there, very gently swaying.

“It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of  night birds."

“Dreams?”

“Nightmares,” he cried; “nightmares indeed! My God! Great  birds that fought and tore.”

“It's over.”

“If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!—so  vivid... this—” (he indicated the landscape that went  streaming by the window) “seems unreal in comparison! I can  scarcely remember who I am, what business I am on....”

He paused. “Even now—”

“The dream is always the same—do you mean?” I asked.

“You mean?”

“I died.”

“Died?”

“Oh, dearest madam, I have been in heaven—surely no joy can  be greater than you have given me.”

"Look, there is a boat."

"Where?"

"Away yonder. I can see the sail."

SOURCES: WARWICK DEEPING, Edgar Allan Poe, Wikipedia