He hugged his knees for a few minutes. He was remembering the rags, and the fog-darkened room in the slums, and the loud, hideous laughter.
“What if you want something that will harm somebody else?'' he said next. “What if you hate some one and wish you could kill him?''
“That was one of the questions my father asked that night on the ledge. The holy man said people always asked it,'' Marco answered. “This was the answer:
“ `Let him who stretcheth forth his hand to draw the lightning to his brother recall that through his own soul and body will pass the bolt.' ''
“Wonder if there's anything in it?'' The Rat pondered. “It'd make a chap careful if he believed it! Revenging yourself on a man would be like holding him against a live wire to kill him and getting all the volts through yourself.''
A sudden anxiety revealed itself in his face.
“Does your father believe it?'' he asked. “Does he?''
“He knows it is true,'' Marco said.
“I'll own up,'' The Rat decided after further reflection--“I'll own up I'm glad that there isn't any one left that I've a grudge against. There isn't any one--now.''
Then he fell again into silence and did not speak until their journey was at an end. As they arrived early in the day, they had plenty of time to wander about the marvelous little old city.
But through the wide streets and through the narrow ones, under the archways into the market gardens, across the bridge and into the square where the “glockenspiel'' played its old tinkling tune, everywhere the Citadel looked down and always The Rat walked on in his dream.
They found the hair-dresser's shop in one of the narrow streets.
There were no grand shops there, and this particular shop was a modest one. They walked past it once, and then went back. It was a shop so humble that there was nothing remarkable in two common boys going into it to have their hair cut. An old man came forward to receive them. He was evidently glad of their modest patronage. He undertook to attend to The Rat himself, but, having arranged him in a chair, he turned about and called to some one in the back room.
“Heinrich,'' he said.
In the slit in Marco's sleeve was the sketch of the man with smooth curled hair, who looked like a hair-dresser. They had found a corner in which to take their final look at it before they turned back to come in. Heinrich, who came forth from the small back room, had smooth curled hair. He looked extremely like a hair- dresser. He had features like those in the sketch--his nose and mouth and chin and figure were like what Marco had drawn and committed to memory. But--He gave Marco a chair and tied the professional white covering around his neck. Marco leaned back and closed his eyes a moment.
“That is NOT the man!'' he was saying to himself. “He is NOTthe man.''
How he knew he was not, he could not have explained, but he felt sure. It was a strong conviction. But for the sudden feeling, nothing would have been easier than to give the Sign. And if he could not give it now, where was the one to whom it must be spoken, and what would be the result if that one could not be found? And if there were two who were so much alike, how could he be sure?
Each owner of each of the pictured faces was a link in a powerful secret chain; and if a link were missed, the chain would be broken. Each time Heinrich came within the line of his vision, he recorded every feature afresh and compared it with the remembered sketch. Each time the resemblance became more close, but each time some persistent inner conviction repeated, “No;the Sign is not for him!''
It was disturbing, also, to find that The Rat was all at once as restless as he had previously been silent and preoccupied. He moved in his chair, to the great discomfort of the old hair-dresser. He kept turning his head to talk. He asked Marco to translate divers questions he wished him to ask the two men.
They were questions about the Citadel--about the Monchsberg--the Residenz--the Glockenspiel--the mountains. He added one query to another and could not sit still.
“The young gentleman will get an ear snipped,'' said the old man to Marco. “And it will not be my fault.''
“What shall I do?'' Marco was thinking. “He is not the man.''
He did not give the Sign. He must go away and think it out, though where his thoughts would lead him he did not know. This was a more difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing.
There was no one to ask advice of. Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously wriggling and twisting in his chair.
“You must sit still,'' he said to him. “The hair-dresser is afraid you will make him cut you by accident.''
“But I want to know who lives at the Residenz?'' said The Rat.
“These men can tell us things if you ask them.''
“It is done now,'' said the old hair-dresser with a relieved air. “Perhaps the cutting of his hair makes the young gentleman nervous. It is sometimes so.''
The Rat stood close to Marco's chair and asked questions until Heinrich also had done his work. Marco could not understand his companion's change of mood. He realized that, if he had wished to give the Sign, he had been allowed no opportunity. He could not have given it. The restless questioning had so directed the older man's attention to his son and Marco that nothing could have been said to Heinrich without his observing it.
“I could not have spoken if he had been the man,'' Marco said to himself.
Their very exit from the shop seemed a little hurried. When they were fairly in the street, The Rat made a clutch at Marco's arm.
“You didn't give it?'' he whispered breathlessly. “I kept talking and talking to prevent you.''
Marco tried not to feel breathless, and he tried to speak in a low and level voice with no hint of exclamation in it.
“Why did you say that?'' he asked.
The Rat drew closer to him.
“That was not the man!'' he whispered. “It doesn't matter how much he looks like him, he isn't the right one.''
He was pale and swinging along swiftly as if he were in a hurry.
