He rose shrugging his shoulders.
“Am I to be taken abroad?” I cried.
“You are not,” he answered, curtly. “You will remain in England. And if I may give you one word of warning, Mr. Gaunt, it is this. I require your services on one or two matters, and I intend to have your services. And my earnest advice to you is that you should give that service willingly. It will save me trouble, and you—discomfort.”
With that they left me, if possible more completely bewildered than before. I turned it over from every point of view in my mind, and I could see no ray of light in the darkness. The only point of comfort was that at any rate I was going to change my quarters, and it was possible that I might escape from the new ones. Vain hope! It is dead now, but it buoyed me up for a time.
It was two days later that Helias entered the room and told me to get ready.
“You are going in a car,” he said. “And I am going with you. If you make the slightest endeavour to communicate or signal to anyone I shall gag you and truss you up on the floor.”
And that brings me to the point. … Eyes, those ghastly staring eyes. And the woman screaming. … Oh! God, my head …
At this point the narrative as a narrative breaks off. It is continued in the form of a diary. But it has given rise to much conjecture. Personally I think the matter is clear. I believe, in fact from a perusal of the original it is obvious, that “head” was the last coherent word written by Robin Gaunt. The rest of the sheet is covered with meaningless scrawls and blots. In fact I think that at that point the poor chap’s reason gave way. How comes it, then, that the diary records events which occurred after he had been taken away in the motorcar? To me the solution is clear. The diary, though its chronological position comes after the narrative given above, was actually written first.
Surely it must be so. Up to the time when he was removed in the car he was in such a dazed physical and mental condition that the mere effort of keeping a diary would have been beyond him. Besides, what was there to record? His mind, as he says, was hopelessly fogged. He knew nothing when he left the house in which he had been confined as to what had happened in his rooms in London—or rather shall I say he knew nothing as to what had been reported in the papers? And yet the narrative already given was obviously written with a full knowledge of those reports.
Besides—take his first paragraph, “Daily torture.” There had been no question of daily torture. “Final unbelievable atrocity.” There had been none. No: it is clear. When things began to happen Gaunt kept a diary. And when, at the end he felt his reason going, he wrote the narrative to fill in the gap not covered by the subsequent notes. Had he not gone mad we might have had the whole story in the form in which he presented the first half.
I know that certain people hold a different view. They agree with me that he went mad at this point, but they maintain that the diary was written by him when he was insane. They say, in fact, that he scrawled down the disordered fancies of his brain, and for confirmation of their argument they point to the bad writing—sometimes well-nigh illegible: to the scraps of paper the notes were made on: to the general untidiness and dirt of the record.
I can only say that I am utterly convinced they are wrong. The bad writing, the scraps of paper were due, I feel certain, to the inherent difficulties under which they were written. Always was he trying to escape detection: he just scribbled when he could and where he could. Then for some reason which we shall never know he found himself in the position of being able to write coherently and at length. And the fortunate thing is that he brought his narrative so very close to the point where his diary starts.
XI
In Which We Read the Diary of Robin Gaunt
I am on board a ship. She is filling with oil now from a tanker alongside. No lights. No idea where we are. Thought the country we motored through resembled Devonshire.
They’re Russians—the crew—unless I’m much mistaken. The most frightful gang of murderous-looking cutthroats I’ve ever seen. Two of them fighting now: officers seem to have no control. Difficult to tell which are the officers. Believe my worst fears confirmed: the Bolsheviks have my secret. May God help the world!
Underway. Just read the papers Wilmot spoke about. Is Stockton mad? Why did he say nothing at the inquest? And Joe—poor little chap. How dare they say such things about me? The War Office knew; why have they kept silent?
The murderers! The foul murderers! There was a wretched woman on board, and these devils have killed her. They pushed her in suddenly to the cabin where I was sitting. She was terrified with fear, poor soul. The most harmless little short fat woman. English. They hustled her through—three of them, and she screamed to me
