"Think you callous and unfeeling?" he said in answer. "Guess I know
better than that, my friend. You're out to prevent just such a
spectacle as we're going to witness from ever happening again. You're
playing a better game than prancing along at the head of a procession.
You're getting busy at the heart of things. Now sit down and share the
pork bosom and beans, or whatever they've given us. And tell me all
about it."
We sat down to lunch, and after a glass of Burgundy, I told Van Adams of
all that had occurred, and also expressed my complete confidence in
Danjuro.
"You're right," he said. "There isn't an investigator on the globe
that'd carry a tune to him. He has his orders to stick to you right
through and he'll carry them out. That little man's got a brain like the
Mammoth Cave, and he's without human passions, save only one--he'd go to
hell in a paper suit for me! See here----" and the millionaire told me a
string of anecdotes about the uncanny little Jap that would make the
fortunes of a writer of Romance.
He was still on the same subject when he stopped in the middle of a
sentence.
The noise in the square outside was suddenly hushed, and we heard a
muffled chord of music. Rising from our chairs we went to the windows.
Everywhere, as far as eye could reach, was a black sea of heads, from
among which the slender clocktower on its island in the centre rose
like a sentinel.
The pavements were lined by troops, soldiers and sailors in equal
proportions, and there was a flutter as of falling leaves as every head
was bared and the piercing sweetness of Chopin's "Funeral March" filled
all the air.
Then they came, following the band: thirteen coffins covered with
flowers, thirteen brave heroes, who would never slant down the long
reaches of the upper air again.
After the hearses walked Paget and Fowles, the two heroic airmen who had
called the rescuing ship by wireless, and then came the chaplains and
Muir Lockhart.
For my part I saw the whole procession in a dream. The head of the
Transatlantic Air Line, the Mayor and Corporation in their robes--the
stately funereal pomp of it all seemed unsubstantial and unreal.
Mr. Van Adams was kneeling a yard or two away from the window. His head
was bent, he had a crucifix and a string of golden beads in his hands,
and was saying prayers. Who would have thought it of this master of
millions with the pike-like jaw? I suppose he was a Catholic.
But my mind was far away, above the heaving wastes of the Atlantic, and
I saw an unnamed, unknown ship rushing through the air, at a speed
undreamed of hitherto in the history of flight. And in the pilot's seat
I had a vision of a hawk-faced man with cruel eyes and a smile upon his
hard, thin lips....
I stood there for so long that the very tail of the procession was
passing by, and Mr. Van Adams rose from his prayers with the sign of the
Cross, and touched me on the arm.
"Look!" he said, pointing down into the street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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