Third Circle — The Guest Of Honor

*PART ONE*

The doctor shut and locked his desk drawer upon his memorandum book with his right hand, and extended the left to his friend Manning Verrill, with the remark: "Well, Manning, how are you?"

"If I were well, Henry," answered Verrill gravely, "I would not be here."

The doctor leaned back in his deep leather chair, and having carefully adjusted his glasses, tilted back his head, and looked at Verrill from beneath them.

He waited for him to continue.

"It's my nerves--I _suppose_," began Verrill.

"Henry," he declared suddenly leaning forward, "Henry, I'm scared; that's what's the matter with me--I'm scared."

"Scared," echoed the doctor, "What nonsense!

What of?"

"Scared of death, Henry," broke out Verrill, "scared _blue_!"

"It is your nerves," murmured the doctor.

"You need travel and a bromide, my boy.

There's nothing the matter with you.

Why, you're good for another forty years,--yes, or even for another fifty years.

You're sound as a nut.

You, to talk about death!"

"I've seen thirty--twenty-nine I should say, twenty-nine of my best friends go."

The doctor looked puzzled a moment; then--"Oh!

you mean that club of yours," said he.

"Yes," said Verrill, "Great heavens!

to think that I should be the last man after all--well, one of us had to be the last.

And that's where the trouble is, Henry.

It's been growing on me for the last two years--ever since Curtice died.

He was the twenty-sixth.

And he died only a month before the Annual Dinner.

Arnold, Brill, Steve--Steve Sharrett, you know, and I--just the four,--were left then; and we sat down to that big table alone; and when we came to the toast of 'The Absent Ones' ...

Well, Henry, we were pretty solemn before we got through.

And we knew that the choice of the last man,--who would face those thirty-one empty covers and open the bottle of wine that we all set aside at our first dinner, and drink 'The Absent Ones,'--was narrowing down pretty fine.

"Next year there were only Arnold and Steve, and myself left.

Brill--well you know all about his death.

The three of us got through dinner somehow.

The year after that we were still three, and even the year after that.

Then poor old Steve went down with the _Dreibund_ in the bay of Biscay, and four months afterward Arnold and I sat down to the table at the Annual, alone.

I'm not going to forget that evening in a hurry.

Why, Henry--oh!

never mind.

Then--" "Well," prompted the doctor as his friend paused: "Arnold died three months ago.

And the day of our Annual--I mean my--the club's," Verrill changed his position.

"The date of the dinner, the Annual Dinner, is next month, and I'm the only one left."

"And, of course, you'll not go," declared the doctor.

"Oh, yes," said Verrill.

"Yes, I will go, of course.

But--" He shook his head with a long sigh.

"When the Last Man Club was organised," he went on, "in '68, we were all more or less young.

It was a great idea, at least I felt that way about it, but I didn't believe that thirty young men would persist in anything--of that sort very long.

But no member of the club died for the first five years, and the club met every year and had its dinner without much thought of--of consequences, and of the inevitable.

We met just to be sociable."

"Hold on," interrupted the doctor, "you are speaking now of thirty.

A

while ago you said thirty-one."

"Yes, I know," assented Verrill, "There were thirty in the club, but we always placed an extra cover--for--for the Guest of Honour."

The doctor made a movement of impatience.

Then in a moment, "Well," he said, resignedly, "go on."

"That's about the essentials," answered Verrill.

"The first death was in '73. And from that year on the vacant places at the table have steadily increased.

Little by little the original bravado of the thing dropped out of it all for me; and of late years--well I have told you how it is.

I've seen so many of them die, and die so fast, so regularly--one a year you might say,--that I've kept saying 'who next, who next, who's to go this year?'

...

And as they went, one by one, and still I was left ...

I

tell you, Henry, the suspense was, ...

the suspense is ...

You see I'm the last now, and ever since Curtice died, I've felt this thing weighing on me.

_By God, Henry, I'm afraid; I'm afraid of Death!

It's horrible!

_ It's as though I were on the list of 'condemned' and were listening to hear my name called every minute."

"Well, so are all of us, if you come to that," observed the doctor.

"Oh, I know, I know," cried Verrill, "it is morbid and all that.

But that don't help me any.

Can you imagine me one month from to-morrow night.

Think now.

I'm alone, absolutely, and there is the long empty table, with the thirty places set, and the extra place, and those places are where all my old friends used to sit.

And at twelve I get up and give first 'The Absent Ones,' and then 'The Guest of the Evening.'

I

gave those toasts last year, but there were two of us, then, and the year before there were three.

But ever since Curtice died and we were narrowed down to four, this thing has been weighing on me--this idea of death, and I've conceived a horror of it--a--a dread.

And now I am the last.

I had no idea this would ever happen to me; or if it did, that it would be like this.

I'm shaken, Henry, shaken.

I've not slept for three nights.

So I've come to you.

You must help me."

"So I will, by advising you.

You give up the idiocy.

Cut out the dinner this year; yes, and for always."

"You don't understand," replied Verrill, calmly.

"It is impossible.

I

could not keep away.

I _must_ be there."

"But it's simple lunacy," expostulated the doctor.

"Man, you've worked upon your nerves over this fool club and dinner, till I won't be responsible for you if you carry out this notion.

Come, promise me you will take the train for, say Florida, tomorrow, and _I'll_ give you stuff that will make you sleep.

St. Augustine is heaven at this time of year, and I hear the tarpon have come in.

Shall--" Verrill shook his head.

"You don't understand," he repeated.

"You simply don't understand.

No, I shall go to the dinner.

But of course I'm--I'm nervous--a little.

Did

I say I was scared?

I didn't mean that.

Oh, I'm all right; I just want you to prescribe for me, something for the nerves.

Henry, death is a terrible thing,--to see 'em all struck down, twenty-nine of 'em--splendid boys.

Henry, I'm not a coward.

There's a difference between cowardice and fear.

For hours last night I was trying to work it out.

Cowardice--that's just turning tail and running; but I shall go through that Annual Dinner, and that's ordeal enough, believe me.

But fear,--it's just death in the abstract that unmans me.

_That's_ the thing to fear.

To think that we all go along living and working and fussing from day to day, when we _know_ that this great Monster, this Horror, is walking up and down the streets, and that sooner or later he'll catch us,--that we can't escape.

Isn't it the greatest curse in the world!

We're so used to it we don't realise the Thing.

But suppose one could eliminate the Monster altogether.

_Then_ we'd realise how sweet life was, and we'd look back at the old days with horror--just as I do now."

"Oh, but this is rubbish," cried the doctor, "simple drivel.

Manning, I'm ashamed of you.

I'll prescribe for you, I suppose I've got to.

But a good rough fishing-and-hunting-trip would do more for you than a gallon of drugs.

If you won't go to Florida, get out of town, if it's only over Sunday.

Here's your prescription, and _do_ take a Friday-to-Monday trip.

Tramp in the woods, get tired, and _don't go to that dinner_!"

"You don't understand," repeated Verrill, as the two stood up.

He put the prescription into his pocket-book.

"You don't understand.

I

couldn't keep away.

It's a duty, and besides--well I couldn't make you see.

Good-by.

This stuff will make me sleep, eh?

And do my nerves good, too, you say?

I see.

I'll come back to you if it don't work.

Good-by again.

_This_ door, is it?

Not through the waiting-room, eh?

Yes, I remember....

Henry, did you ever--did you ever face death yourself--I mean--" "Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense," cried the doctor.

But Verrill persisted.

His back to the closed door, he continued: "_I_ did.

_I_ faced death once,--so you see I should know.

It was when I was a lad of twenty.

My father had a line of New Orleans packets and I often used to make the trip as super-cargo.

One October day we were caught in the equinox off Hatteras, and before we knew it we were wondering if she would last another half-hour.

Along in the afternoon there came a sea aboard, and caught me unawares.

I lost my hold and felt myself going, going....

I was sure for ten seconds that it was the end,--_and I saw death then, face to face_!

"And I've never forgotten it.

I've only to shut my eyes to see it all, hear it all--the naked spars rocking against the grey-blue of the sky, the wrench and creak of the ship, the threshing of rope ends, the wilderness of pale-green water, the sound of rain and scud....

No, no, I'll not forget it.

And death was a horrid specter in that glimpse I got of him.

I--I don't care to see him again.

Well, good-by once more."

"Good-by, Manning, and believe me, this is all hypochondria.

Go and catch fish.

Go shoot something, and in twenty-four hours you'll believe there's no such thing as death."

The door closed.

Verrill was gone.

*PART TWO*

The banquet hall was in the top story of one of the loftiest sky-scrapers of the city.

Along the eastern wall was a row of windows reaching from ceiling to floor, and as the extreme height of the building made it unnecessary to draw the curtains whoever was at the table could look out and over the entire city in that direction.

Thus it was that Manning Verrill, on a certain night some four weeks after his interview with the doctor, sat there at his walnuts and black coffee and, absorbed, abstracted, looked out over the panorama beneath him, where the Life of a great nation centered and throbbed.

To the unenlightened the hall would have presented a strange spectacle.

Down its center extended the long table.

The chairs were drawn up, the covers laid.

But the chairs were empty, the covers untouched; and but for the presence of the one man the hall was empty, deserted.

At the head of the table Verrill, in evening dress, a gardenia in his lapel, his napkin across his lap, an unlighted cigar in his fingers, sat motionless, looking out over the city with unseeing eyes.

Of thirty places around the table, none was distinctive, none varied.

But at Verrill's right hand the thirty-first place, the place of honour, differed from all the rest.

The chair was large, massive.

The oak of which it was made was black, while instead of the usual array of silver and porcelain, one saw but two vessels,--an unopened bottle of wine and a large silver cup heavily chased.

From far below in the city's streets eleven o'clock struck.

The sounds broke in upon Verrill's reverie and he stirred, glanced about the room and then, rising, went to the window and stood there for some time looking out.

At his feet, far beneath lay the city, twinkling with lights.

In the business quarter all was dark, but from the district of theatres and restaurants there arose a glare into the night, ruddy, vibrating, with here and there a ganglion of electric bulbs upon a "fire sign" emphasising itself in a whiter radiance.

Cable-cars and cabs threaded the streets with little starring eyes of coloured lights, while underneath all this blur of illumination, the people, debouching from the theatres, filled the sidewalks with tiny ant-like swarms, minute, bustling.

Farther on in the residence district, occasional lighted windows watched with the street-lamps gazing blankly into the darkness.

In particular one house was all ablaze.

Every window glowed.

No doubt a great festivity was in progress and Verrill could almost fancy that he heard the strains of the music, the rustle of the silks.

Then nearer at hand, but more to the eastward, where the office buildings rose in tower-like clusters and somber groups, Verrill could see a vista of open water--the harbour.

Lights were moving here, green and red, as the great hoarse-voiced freighters stood out with the tide.

And beyond this was the sea itself, and more lights, very, very faint where the ships rolled leisurely in the ground swells; ships bound to and from all ports of the earth,--ships that united the nations, that brought the whole world of living men under the view of the lonely watcher in the empty Banquet Hall.

Verrill raised the window.

At once a subdued murmur, prolonged, monotonous,--the same murmur as that which disengages itself from forests, from the sea, and from sleeping armies,--rose to meet him.

It was the mingling of all the night noises into one great note that came simultaneously from all quarters of the horizon, infinitely vast, infinitely deep,--a steady diapason strain like the undermost bourdon of a great organ as the wind begins to thrill the pipes.

It was the stir of life, the breathing of the Colossus, the push of the nethermost basic force, old as the world, wide as the world, the murmur of the primeval energy, coeval with the centuries, blood-brother to that spirit which in the brooding darkness before creation, moved upon the face of the waters.

And besides this, as Verrill stood there looking out, the night wind brought to him, along with the taint of the sea, the odour of the heaped-up fruit in the city's markets and even the suggestion of the vegetable gardens in the suburbs.

Across his face, like the passing of a long breath, he felt the abrupt sensation of life, indestructible, persistent.

But absorbed in other things, Verrill, unmoved, and only dimly comprehending, closed the window and turned back into the room.

At his place stood an unopened bottle and a glass as yet dry.

He removed the foil from the neck of the bottle, but after looking at his watch, set it down again without drawing the cork.

It lacked some fifteen minutes to midnight.

Once again, as he had already done so many times that evening, Verrill wiped the moisture from his forehead.

He shut his teeth against the slow thick labouring of his heart.

He was alone.

The sense of isolation, of abandonment, weighed down upon him intolerably as he looked up and down the the empty table.

Alone, alone; all the rest were gone, and he stood there, in the solitude of that midnight; he, last of all that company whom he had known and loved.

Over and over again he muttered: "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."

Then slowly Verrill began to make the circuit of the table, reading, as if from a roll call, the names written on the cards which lay upon the place-plates.

"Anderson, Evans, ...

Copeland,--dear old 'crooked-face' Copeland, his camp companion in those Maine fishing-trips of the old days, dead now these ten years....

Stryker,--'Buff' Stryker they had called him, dead,--he had forgotten how long,--drowned in his yacht off the Massachusetts coast; Harris, died of typhoid somewhere in Italy; Dick Herndon, killed in a mine accident in Mexico; Rice, old 'Whitey Rice' a suicide in a California cattle town; Curtice, carried off by fever in Durban, South Africa."

Thus around the whole table he moved, telling the bead-roll of death, following in the footsteps of the Monster who never relented, who never tired, who never, never,--never forgot.

His own turn would come some day.

Verrill, sunken into his chair, put his hands over his eyes.

Yes his own turn would come.

There was no escape.

That dreadful face would rise again before his eyes.

He would bow his back to the scourge of nations, he would roll helpless beneath the wheels of the great car.

How to face that prospect with fortitude!

How to look into those terrible grey eyes with calm!

Oh, the terror of that gorgon face, oh, the horror of those sightless, lightless grey eyes!

But suddenly midnight struck.

He heard the strokes come booming upward from the city streets.

His vigil was all but over.

Verrill opened the bottle of wine, breaking the seal that had been affixed to the cork on the night of the first meeting of the club.

Filling his glass, he rose in his place.

His eyes swept the table, and while for the last time the memories came thronging back, his lips formed the words: "To the Absent Ones: to you, Curtice, Anderson, Brill, to you, Copeland, to you, Stryker, to you, Arnold, to you all, my old comrades, all you old familiar faces who are absent to-night."

He emptied the glass, but immediately filled it again.

The last toast was to be drunk, the last of all.

Verrill, the glass raised, straightened himself.

But even as he stood there, glass in hand, he shivered slightly.

He made note of it for the moment, yet his emotions had so shaken him during all that evening that he could well understand the little shudder that passed over him for a moment.

But he caught himself glancing at the windows.

All were shut.

The doors of the hall were closed, the flames of the chandeliers were steady.

Whence came then this certain sense of coolness that so suddenly had invaded the air?

The coolness was not disagreeable, but none the less the temperature of the room had been lowered, at least so he could fancy.

Yet already he was dismissing the matter from his mind.

No doubt the weather had changed suddenly.

In the next second, however, another peculiar circumstance forced itself upon his attention.

The stillness of the Banquet Hall, placed as it was, at the top of one of the highest buildings in the city was no matter of comment to Verrill.

He was long since familiar with it.

But for all that, even through the closed windows, and through the medium of steel and brick and marble that composed the building the indefinite murmur of the city's streets had always made itself felt in the hall.

It was faint, yet it was distinct.

That bourdon of life to which he had listened that very evening was not wholly to be shut out, yet now, even in this supreme moment of the occasion it was impossible for Verrill to ignore the fancy that an unusual stillness had all at once widened about him, like the widening of unseen ripples.

There was not a sound, and he told himself that stillness such as this was only the portion of the deaf.

No faintest tremor of noise rose from the streets.

The vast building itself had suddenly grown as soundless as the unplumbed depth of the sea.

But Verrill shook himself; all evening fancies such as these had besieged him, even now they were prolonging the ordeal.

Once this last toast drunk and he was released from his duty: He raised his glass again, and then in a loud clear voice he said: "_Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the evening.

_" And as he emptied the glass, a quick, light footstep sounded in the corridor outside the door.

Verrill looked up in great annoyance.

The corridor led to but one place, the door of the Banquet Hall, and any one coming down the corridor at so brisk a pace could have but one intention--that of entering the hall.

Verrill frowned at the idea of an intruder.

His orders had been of the strictest.

That a stranger should thrust himself upon his company at this of all moments was exasperating.

But the footsteps drew nearer, and as Verrill stood frowning at the door at the far end of the hall, it opened.

A gentleman came in, closed the door, behind him, and faced about.

Verrill scrutinised him with an intent eye.

He was faultlessly dressed, and just by his manner of carrying himself in his evening clothes Verrill knew that here was breeding, distinction.

The newcomer was tall, slim.

Also he was young; Verrill, though he could not have placed his age with any degree of accuracy, would none the less have disposed of the question by setting him down as a young man.

But Verrill further observed that the gentleman was very pale, even his lips lacked colour.

However, as he looked closer, he discovered that this pallor was hardly the result of any present emotion, but was rather constitutional.

There was a moment's silence as the two looked at each other the length of the Hall; then with a peculiarly pleasant smile the stranger came forward drawing off his white glove and extending his hand.

He seemed so at home, so perfectly at his ease, and at the same time so much of what Verrill was wont to call a "thoroughbred fellow" that the latter found it impossible to cherish any resentment.

He preferred to believe that the stranger had made some readily explained mistake which would be rectified in their first spoken words.

Thus it was that he was all the more non-plussed when the stranger took him by the hand with words: "This is Mr. Manning Verrill, of course.

I am very glad to meet you again, sir.

Two such as you and I who have once been so intimate, should never forget each other."

Verrill had it upon his lips to inform the other that he had something the advantage of him; but at the last moment he was unable to utter the words.

The newcomer's pleasure in the meeting was so hearty, so spontaneous, that he could not quite bring himself to jeopardise it--at the outset at least--by a confession of implied unfriendliness; so instead he clumsily assumed the other's manner, and, though deeply perplexed, managed to attain a certain heartiness as he exclaimed: "But you have come very late.

I have already dined, and by the way, let me explain why you find me here alone, in a deserted Banquet Hall with covers laid for so many."

"Indeed, you need not explain," replied the stranger.

"I am a member of your club, you know."

A member of the club, this total stranger!

Verrill could not hide a frown of renewed perplexity; surely this face was not one of any friend he ever had.

"A charter member, you might say," the other continued;

"but singularly enough, I have never been able to attend one of the meetings until now.

Of us all I think I have been the busiest--and the one most widely traveled.

Such must be my excuses."

At the moment an explanation occurred to Verrill.

It was within the range of the possible that the newcomer was an old member of the club, some sojourner in a foreign country, whose death had been falsely reported.

Possibly Verrill had lost track of him.

It was not always easy to "place" at once every one of the thirty.

The two sat down, but almost immediately Verrill exclaimed: "Pardon me, but--that chair.

The omen would be so portentous!

You have taken the wrong place.

You who are a member of the club!

You must remember that we reserved that chair--the one you are occupying."

But the stranger smiled calmly.

"I defy augury, and I snap my fingers at the portent.

Here is my place and here I choose to remain."

"As you will," answered Verrill, "but it is a singular choice.

It is not conducive to appetite."

"My dear Verrill," answered the other, "I shall not dine, if you will permit me to say so.

It is very late and my time is limited.

I can stay but a short while at best.

I have much to do to-night after I leave you,--much good I hope, much good.

For which," he added rather sadly, "I shall receive no thanks, only abuse, only abuse, my dear Verrill."

Verrill was only half listening.

He was looking at the other's face, and as he looked, he wondered; for the brow was of the kind fitted for crowns, and from beneath glowed the glance of a King.

The mouth seemed to have been shaped by the utterance of the commands of Empire.

The whole face was astonishing, full of power tempered by a great kindliness.

Verrill could not keep his gaze from those wonderful, calm grey eyes.

Who was this extraordinary man met under such strange circumstances, alone and in the night, in the midst of so many dead memories, and surrounded by that inexplicable stillness, that sudden, profound peace?

And what was the subtle magnetism that upon sight, drew him so powerfully to the stranger?

Kingly he was, but Verrill seemed to feel that he was more than that.