In the winter of 19—, I spent three weeks in Monte Carlo, partly for a short holiday by myself and partly to look for a villa at Roquebrune or Mentone.
My wife was planning to come out with the baby as soon as I found us a suitable house.
Every now and then I went into the Casino and risked a louis or two on an even chance or a transversale at roulette.
But, generally speaking, the Casino bored me.
The fashionable international crowd drifting around the place reminded me of champagne corks floating on dirty water. The professional gamblers were no more interesting. Behind their calm, respectable faces was a fierce hunger for money they had never earned.
There were also plenty of over-dressed women from the demi-monde, moving through the rooms with hard, calculating eyes.
I preferred the long walks and drives through the beautiful country of the Alpes Maritimes.
I was staying at the Métropole Hotel and using it as the starting point for my excursions.
One evening after dinner, however, I made one of my rare visits to the Casino.
I wandered through the gilded, stuffy rooms beneath the yellow light of oil lamps.
The lamps were used for a practical reason. No enterprising thief could simply cut the electric wires and plunge the tables into darkness before escaping with the money.
The players spoke in low voices and behaved with almost religious seriousness.
The place was crowded.
Every chair around the roulette tables was occupied, and people were standing behind them as well.
Being tall, I could reach over the seated players and put down my bets.
I did so several times.
After losing four louis with almost ridiculous regularity, I decided I had had enough.
I thought I would go somewhere and smoke.
Contrary to the usual pictures in magazines, smoking was not allowed in the roulette or trente-et-quarante rooms.
I went out into the Atrium, the huge pillared entrance hall, which looked more like a grand provincial grain market than the entrance to a famous casino.
I lit a cigarette.
The hall was fairly crowded. People were walking back and forth or reading the latest telegrams pinned to a green-baize notice board.
I was watching them without much interest when a man came around the corner from the cloakroom.
I saw his face.
It was Danjuro.
My heart suddenly jumped.
The sight of him was so completely unexpected that it brought back a whole world I had almost forgotten.
To tell the truth, Danjuro seemed to belong to some terrible dream from a distant past.
Connie and I had both agreed never to speak much about the days of the pirates.
Danjuro was about fifteen yards away.
I saw him clearly.
There could be no mistake.
Then he looked up.
I could have sworn that he saw me and recognized me.
Whether he did or not, he immediately turned away and slipped around the corner like a weasel.
I hurried after him.
By the time I reached the corner, he had disappeared.
I searched, of course, although I knew it would be useless if he had decided to avoid me.
It was exactly as I expected.
There was no sign of him anywhere.
I asked several attendants and doorkeepers whether they had seen a Japanese gentleman.
None of them had.
I gave up and went for a walk on the terrace in the moonlight.
Later I returned to the hotel and went to bed.
For a long time I could not sleep.
Seeing Danjuro had disturbed me more than I cared to admit.
Memory after memory came rushing through my mind, and curiosity seemed to lead them all.
What was that mysterious and sinister man doing here?
Was he still pursuing his terrible mission, wandering through Europe like some ancient spirit of vengeance?
Nothing had ever been heard of Vargus again.
As far as I was concerned, I agreed with the police authorities throughout Europe.
The soft-spoken, vicious criminal was dead.
It was almost heartbreaking to imagine Danjuro still wandering through life, trying to avenge his master and wasting his extraordinary abilities on a hopeless search.
Yes, it was heartbreaking.
But it was impossible to think of Danjuro as an ordinary man.
He seemed to be one single idea given a human body.
He was like a magnificent machine built for one purpose and one purpose only.
He was so perfectly devoted to that purpose that it had become an obsession.
Poor Van Adams.
Protecting and serving him had been Danjuro’s entire life.
Every power of his mind and body had been devoted to that one task.
And yet, surely, he must have loved the American to have served him so faithfully?
And if he could love, then he was human.
I struggled with the question until dawn, but I found no answer.
I knew that despite everything Danjuro and I had been through together, if Van Adams had survived and ordered Danjuro to kill me for some reason, the little man would have done it calmly and efficiently, without the slightest regret.
At last I decided that Danjuro was simply beyond my ability to understand.
I tried to forget the whole incident.
Eventually I succeeded and managed to sleep for a few hours before Thumbwood woke me.
I said nothing to him about seeing Danjuro.
Thumbwood was just as unwilling to discuss those terrible days as I was.
Perhaps that was partly because his wife, Wilson before her marriage and still Connie’s maid, strongly disliked any mention of them.
At about half-past eleven, I left the hotel and walked down to the foot of the funicular railway.
The railway carried passengers from the narrow strip of land where Monte Carlo stood up to the heights of La Turbie.
I planned to have lunch at the excellent hotel there, enjoy the clear mountain air, and then walk along the Upper Corniche toward Roquebrune and Eze, and into the mountains above Mentone.
There was plenty to explore in those high regions.
There were Roman and medieval fortifications built to defend the coast against raiding Moors from the Mediterranean.
There were also beautiful villas hidden among pine woods and olive groves, far from the crowds and noise of ordinary life.
That was exactly what I was looking for.
I wanted to rent a secluded mountain house for six months.
I knew such places were sometimes available, but they were difficult to find through the agents.
Several people in Monte Carlo had told me that exploring the countryside myself was the quickest way to find one.
I had lunch at La Turbie.
The bouillabaisse was excellent, and so was the riz-de-veau.
After resting for a while, I began my walk.
It was a magnificent afternoon.
The air was perfectly clear and golden.
Far out at sea, Corsica looked like a faint cloud on the horizon.
The mountain slopes fell away in terrace after terrace of olive trees, ending among groups of brightly painted houses that looked like toys from that height.
Far to the right I could see the red roofs and brilliant white buildings of the Monte Carlo palaces.
The rocky headland of the Tête du Chien stood out sharply against the deep blue sea.
I looked around and thought about the life I wanted.
“This is where a man should live when he comes to the Côte d’Azur,” I thought. “I won’t go home tonight until I’ve found a place.”
I left the main road and started up a narrow mountain path.
The afternoon heat was strong.
After walking a mile or two, I stopped beneath a huge rock to rest.
I must have fallen asleep.
When I woke, the sun was already sinking.
Winter comes early in the south, and darkness was approaching.
I was no longer completely sure where I was.
I thought I could reach Roquebrune by taking an indirect path across the mountain ridge.
From there I could easily descend to Cap Martin, hire a carriage, and take the little tram that crawled along the cliffs back to Monte Carlo.
So I continued.
Unfortunately, the path was not the one I had intended to take.
Twilight had already fallen when I reached three or four stone huts standing beside a small plateau.
An enclosure nearby was filled with goats.
A dark-skinned woman sat knitting in the doorway of one of the huts.
I explained that I had lost my way.
She gave me directions.
Then, speaking in a mixture of French and Italian, she told me something else.
The frontier was less than five miles away, so the mixture of languages was hardly surprising.
“There should be a small empty villa about a mile farther on,” she said. “At least, I think there is.”
“Can you tell me the name of the owner?” I asked.
“But no, monsieur. He is a new gentleman. He bought this villa and the larger one nearby, higher up the hill.”
“What sort of man is he?”
“He is some kind of scholar. He lives completely alone. So I cannot imagine why he would need the smaller house beside the road.”
She continued knitting.
“The smaller villa was always rented by the previous owner, Monsieur Visguis of Nice.”
I thanked the woman.
I refused her offer of a cup of goat’s milk, gave her a five-franc piece, and continued on my way.
My luck seemed to have changed.
The mountain villa sounded exactly like what I wanted.
I decided that I would call on the mysterious owner before returning to Monte Carlo.
The sun disappeared.
Night came rushing up from the Mediterranean.
Everything became completely silent.
There were no birds in those lonely mountains, and the insects of the daytime had stopped their buzzing.
The moon rose almost immediately and gave me enough light to see the path.
Even so, the place felt strangely frightening.
Huge rocks cast pale shadows across the ground.
Stone pines stood like silent guards.
Far away, Monte Carlo glittered like a vast crown of jewels, topaz against black velvet.
It seemed a hundred miles away.
Eventually I reached the garden wall of a fairly large villa.
The walls were painted, and enormous, gloomy trees stood around the property.
Moonlight gave the whole place a ghostly appearance.
I knew this was the larger house, the one that was occupied.
The smaller villa that might be rented stood lower down the slope, across the road to my right.
I could just make out its roof as I leaned over the parapet.
I pushed open a wooden gate and walked up the garden path toward the house.
I had discovered that its name was Villa Turquoise.
Tree frogs croaked somewhere around the building.
Because it was winter, there were no friendly fireflies drifting through the garden.
Once or twice, the leaves of a palm tree clicked and rustled in the night breeze.
As I approached the villa, I had difficulty finding the entrance.
Then I noticed a broad strip of yellow light coming from the side of the building.
I turned toward it.
I crossed a small lawn and made my way between orange trees and pepper trees.
Here and there grew bushes of Cape gooseberries.
Up to that moment, I had not felt the slightest suspicion.
I had not even been uneasy.
I felt completely at peace with myself and with the world.
The clean mountain air and the beauty I had seen all day seemed to have washed every worry from my mind.
Then I heard music.
A sudden, powerful chord sounded from a piano inside the house.
I stopped instantly.
Another crashing chord followed.
Then came a smooth, rich arpeggio as brilliant fingers moved effortlessly up and down the keys of a magnificent instrument.
I suddenly became cold.
Not merely cold from the night air.
Terribly cold.
All I could see was a long French window glowing orange against the darkness.
I had heard nothing but a few chords played on a grand piano.
Yet somehow, deep inside, I knew.
I moved forward in short, stiff steps.
I listened with a growing sense of horror.
I was almost certain of what I was about to see.
Then, just before I reached the window, the music began.
Played by a master, I heard the opening notes of Chopin’s Third Ballade.
I took another step.
Standing in the darkness outside, I looked through the window.
The pianist was Mr. Vargus.
He had grown a small moustache, carefully waxed at the ends.
A little black imperial covered his chin.
He was much fatter than when I had last seen him.
He wore a purple velvet smoking jacket.
A diamond ring flashed on one finger as his strong hands moved over the keys.
There was a soft, sly smile in his eyes as he played the beautiful, strange music.
I will tell you what happened next without adding any comment about what I felt.
The music continued toward that extraordinary passage which Beardsley once imagined as a white horse moving through a dark pine forest, carrying a woman dressed in black velvet.
As Vargus played the opening chords of that theme, a door behind him quietly opened.
He heard nothing.
A terrible and solemn figure entered the room.
It was Danjuro.
But it was not the Danjuro I had ever known.
He wore a robe of yellow silk with wide kimono sleeves.
A purple sash was tied around his waist.
Tucked into it was the long scabbard of an ancient Japanese sword, decorated with tortoiseshell and silver.
His hair was arranged differently.
His lips were pressed into one thin line.
His eyes seemed strangely elongated, and they glittered like black lacquer under the bright light.
He moved silently toward Vargus.
Then he touched him on the shoulder.
Vargus jumped to his feet with a short, sharp cry.
He spun around.
He found himself face to face with Danjuro.
For several seconds, neither man moved.
They simply stared into each other’s eyes.
Then I saw something happen to Vargus’s face.
Slowly, inch by inch, a strange change spread across it.
It was as though a veil were passing over his features while the life inside him drained away.
Then he collapsed onto the carpet in a crumpled heap.
Danjuro looked down at him.
His terrible expression did not change.
He bent over, pulled Vargus’s limp body straight, and turned him face down.
Then he drew the sword.
He raised it high above his head.
As the blade flashed in the light, I shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, I felt sick with the horror of death itself.
Danjuro stood with both arms raised above his head.
His wide sleeves had fallen back, revealing the powerful muscles of his brown arms.
His lips were parted.
He seemed to be speaking rapidly to something above him.
His entire face was filled with an almost frightening joy.
The sword in his right hand shone like a tall flame.
He remained that way for some time.
Then he slowly lowered his arms.
He took a square of purple silk from inside his robe and carefully wiped the sword clean.
I knew what he intended to do.
He placed the jeweled hilt on the carpet.
Then he positioned the point of the sword against his waist and held the blade steady with his left hand.
With a loud cry that sounded almost like a cry of triumph, he threw himself forward.
And so Danjuro went to his own appointed place, in the ancient manner of the heroes of old Japan.