His editor, a timid man, murmured, “I advanced the gentleman five dollars.”
“Gentleman? What the devil kind of alpaca-and-steel-mixture hack do you call gentleman? And what do you mean by five dollars? How dared you do it, sir? Silver is dug out of the ground; it does not grow on bushes. Eh? Eh?”
“We might entitle it A Lucky Day for the Boar, sir.”
“And what does the confounded author call himself?”
“Ethan Arthur Poland. Confidentially, I think he’s the man who wrote The Raven. Edgar Poe, no less.”
“You make free with my dollars, sir. Read it over to me, mister, if you will.”
“By your leave,” said the editor, and read:
Self-sufficient, Colonel Hyrax came and went like a cat in the duke’s palace. Nobody could deny that there was, in fact, much of the feline in his fastidiousness and in his almost inhuman composure. As chief of the secret police, Colonel Hyrax was not bound by the rules of protocol. Dread followed him, and awe—awe of the unknown—and it was whispered that the duke himself feared Colonel Hyrax.
Certainly, no one but he would have dared to detain the duke when that potentate was booted and spurred for the hunt. Yet, although he was smiling with pleasurable anticipation as he listened to the baying of his boarhounds in the courtyard below, the duke put aside his boar-spear when Colonel Hyrax appeared, and, bidding him close the door, asked, “What now, Hyrax?”
“Your Grace, I have good news.”
“My foresters have beaten out a black boar of thirty stone, a monster. So be brief. Good news of what?”
“Of the conspiracy, your Grace,” said Colonel Hyrax.
“I suppose,” said the duke, with a harsh laugh, “I suppose you are going to tell me that my traitorous scoundrel of a nephew has named his partners in this plot against me?”
“Precisely that, your Grace,” said Colonel Hyrax, with a thin smile.
“No!”
“By your Grace’s leave—yes,” cried Colonel Hyrax. But he looked in vain for some demonstration of relief or joy. The duke frowned.
“It is hard,” he said, “it is very hard for me to believe. Are you sure, now? My nephew Stanislaus has named his friends?”
“Your Grace, I have a list of their names. They are under close arrest.”
“D——it! Stanislaus is of my blood. He had—I thought he had—something of my character. Red-hot pincers could not drag a betrayal of my friends out of me. Milksop!”
“Yet he conspired against the life of your Grace,” said Colonel Hyrax.
“I know, I know; but that was all in the family. I trapped him and he didn’t lie about it. Naturally, he refused to name his collaborators. I’d have done the same in his place. Oh yes, Hyrax—touching the matter of red-hot pincers—you never dared . . . ?”
“I know my duty, your Grace,” said Colonel Hyrax. “I am well aware that your blood is inviolable, and that it is death to spill one drop of it; or to offer violence, however slight, to any member of your family; or even to threaten it. Neither may any of your Grace’s blood be manacled. Oh, believe me, not only was his Excellency your nephew treated with the utmost gentleness—I saw to it, when he was placed in solitary confinement by your Grace’s written order, that he could not even do violence to his own person.”
“And still he betrayed his comrades? He’s no blood of mine!” The duke then uttered foul accusations against his dead brother’s wife. Growing calmer, he said, “More, Hyrax; tell me more.” The horns sounded clear in the courtyard, but the duke threw open a casement and roared, “Let the boar wait!”
“Your Grace sentenced your nephew to perpetual solitary confinement. His Excellency was to be left to cool his head, to quote your own words.”
“Did you starve him, Hyrax? You had no right to starve the boy.”
“No, your Grace. He had everything of the best. The passage of time did our work for us,” said Colonel Hyrax.
“Time? What time? The young fool hasn’t been locked up four months. What are you talking about?”
“If I may explain?” begged Colonel Hyrax; and, his master nodding, he continued: “I had prepared for his Excellency a commodious chamber, padded at walls, floor, and ceiling with heavy quiltings of lambswool covered with gray velvet. There was a double window, out of which his Excellency might look at the wild countryside surrounding the fortress.”
“Better than he deserved.”
“His viands were, as I have said, of the best. But his meat was cut for him, and all his cutlery consisted in a horn spoon. For he was so violent, at first, that I feared the young gentleman might do himself a mischief.”
“Ay, ay, he always was an overbred, nervous young fool. Well?”
“Then we asked his Excellency for permission to shave his head,” said Colonel Hyrax. “He gave it.”
“What the devil for?”
“Your Grace will see, presently. So, by his leave, we shaved off all his hair. We provided him with some quills, ink, and paper, but nothing edged or pointed. To calm him, a mild and harmless opiate was mixed with his Excellency’s breakfast. He ate, and then, leaning on the casement, gazed moodily at the landscape under the morning sun. He dozed, leaning thus, for perhaps five minutes. When he opened his eyes he was looking upon a night scene with a rising moon, and the attendants were bringing his supper. His Excellency was bewildered. ‘Am I bewitched?’ he asked. But since, by your Grace’s order, he was incommunicado, the attendants were silent.”
“Bewildered?” cried the duke, “So am I. From breakfast to supper—morning to moonrise—is a matter of hours. What was the purpose in bringing Stanislaus his supper five minutes after breakfast-time?”
“Pray let me explain, your Grace. The prospect beyond his window was not open country. It was a blank wall, upon which I had caused to be projected through a lens, by means of a powerful reflector, highly realistic scenes painted upon glass by one of the finest landscape artists in Europe. Thus, I could create a perfect illusion of the various stages of the day, and of the four seasons.”
“But what for?”
“In order, your Grace, without violating your law, to let his Excellency confuse himself in his conception of time. Soon, he fell into a deep sleep, and an adroit barber shaved him and trimmed his nails. Men incarcerated can gauge time, to a certain extent, by the rate of growth of their beards, you see. It was necessary to bewilder; it was necessary to let his Excellency force himself to have recourse to reason, and to make his reasoning invalid. Do I make myself clear?”
“Go on.”
“Hence, he would awaken—let us say—at midnight, look out of the window, see high noon; doze again, rise again in ten minutes, and—lo! and behold!—dawn. Or, awakening at dawn, he would see nothing but the rim of the setting sun, while the attendants came in with supper. Sleeping soon after, by the judicious administration of opiates, he would start up to observe another sunset. So, after a week, he asked how many months he had been there. There was no reply, of course.”
“Clever, clever,” said the duke.
Colonel Hyrax bowed, and continued, “Although the month was July, his Excellency awoke one morning to a scene of naked trees under a blanket of snow. Sometimes breakfast, dinner and supper would arrive at intervals of only a few minutes after the clearing of the table. Or sometimes hours might elapse, what time his Excellency, starting out of a fitful sleep, might notice that it was early autumn now, where it had been mid-winter when he last looked out.