The Master of Silence

"My boy," said he, "if all the murders were done that men conceive, the devil would live alone on earth. We shall know some time--I tell you we shall know! Let us go to Rayel," he said, rising and leading the way.

The interview had greatly excited him, and his speech seemed even more halting and labored than before. Many of his words were mispronounced and separated by long pauses; but his manner was marvelously expressive, and often a peculiar turn of the eye or movement of the hand made his meaning clear when I was in doubt about his words.

I followed him through a long gymnasium and out upon a grassy courtyard extending along the rear of the grounds parallel with the river wall for a hundred yards or more, and adorned with beds of flowers. It was completely shut off from the eye of the outside world by a thick grove and an impenetrable growth of underbrush that reached beyond the lowest branches of the trees. Nothing but the blue sky, in which the sun was on its downward course, the house, and the walls of living green, were visible. Out of this Eden-like spot we passed into another wing of the building with large windows looking out upon it. Rayel met us at the door, dressed in a black robe of silk that hung gracefully from his shoulders. Again he took my hand and kissed it, then looked into my eyes with the same expression of curious interest upon his face that I had noted before. Still holding my hand, he led me across the room. For the first time I noticed that its walls were covered with pictures, unframed, and that an easel stood in the light of each window. We stopped before one of them. On a large canvas that was stretched across it I saw a likeness of myself. The eyes wore a haggard look which seemed unnatural. But there was something strangely real about it, in spite of that.

"Wonderful!" said I.

Rayel started at the sound of my voice, and glanced from one to the other with a puzzled, inquiring look. Turning to his father, he uttered some strange monosyllable in a deep voice. Then he took my hand and walked back and forth across the room with me, smiling in great delight. I was fascinated by one of the pictures which showed a great gleaming eye with a suggestion of lightning in its fiery depths, as if taken at the keenest flash of fury. To intensify its fierceness a human hand was raised in front of it so as to throw a dark shadow across the canvas.