We stood and looked at each other, in this tiny room, for I suppose two or three seconds.
What Juanita felt she told me afterwards, and it isn't part of this narrative.
What I felt was awe, sheer, impersonal awe, as I realized that I had surmounted incredible difficulties, endured ages of longing, plotting, planning, and now stood alone in front of the most Beautiful Girl in the World.
I saw her as that. I remembered the night at Lady Brentford's when the league was formed.
And then, thank Heaven, for in another second everything might have been quite spoiled, I remembered that she was just my Juanita, who had sent for me, and I took her in my arms and, and....
We sat hand in hand upon the odd little Chinese couch.
"Now look here, darling," I said, "you've told me all about your Governor. How he says that you must live up here in this extraordinary place and never go into the world again. You think him mad, and yet, d'you know, I don't."
"But, my heart—?"
"I've got to tell you, dearest, that he has more reason than you think."
She shrugged her shoulders—it was about the most graceful thing I had ever seen in my life.
"But to tell me that I am to be a nun because, if I were to go back into the world, my life wouldn't be worth a moment's purchase.Caro!It is madness! It cannot be anything else."
I didn't quite know how to tell her, and I was considering, when she went on:
"It is getting dreadful. Father cannot sleep, he prowls about this nightmare of a place all the night long."
"Sweetheart," I said, "I've been making all sorts of inquiries and I've found out that your Governor is really in serious danger of assassination—or was until he built this place, to which I think the devil could hardly penetrate without an invitation. Don't think your father a coward. Remember what we saw that night in the Ritz Hotel, when I was just about to tell you that I adored you. No, I'd lay long odds, Juanita darling, that Mr. Morse is more afraid for you than for himself. And there I'll back him up every time."
She laughed, and her laughter was like water falling into water in paradise!
"I have you," she said; "I have father—what do I care?"
"Quite so," I replied. "I think you take a very sensible view of it. The obvious thing to do is to relieve your father by coming with me to-night, while the coast is clear. Lady Brentford is in town. She will be delighted to receive you. Once out of the place, we can be free within an hour. To-morrow morning I can get a special license from the Archbishop of Canterbury and we can be married.
"Once that happens, I'll defy all the Santa Hermandads, and all the Mark Antony Midwinters in the world, to hurt you. And as for Mr. Morse, we'll protect him too, in a far more sensible way than—"
I suppose I had been holding her rather tightly. At any rate she broke away and stood up in the center of the little room. The brightness of her face was clouded with thought.
I had not risen and she stared down at me with great, smoldering eyes.
"So it is true!" she said, nodding her head, "it is true, father and I are in peril, after all! Names escaped you just now, I think I have heard one of them before—"
She passed her hand over her brow, like some one awaking from sleep, and I watched her, fascinated.
Oh, how lovely she was at that moment, my dear, my perfect dear!
"But,caro,of courseI cannot run away with you and be married.I muststay with father, cannot you see that?"
Well, of course I did, there were no two words about it. "Very well," I answered, "Little Lady of my heart, I'll stick by the old chap too. I've crept up here in a sort of underhand way, but not for underhand reasons. After all, I've just as much right to love you as anybody else in this world."
I took her by her sweet hands and I laughed in her face.
"I'm not the Duke of Perth," I said, "but, but, Juanita—?"
There came a little knocking at the door.
Juanita swirled round, flung up her arm—I saw her sweet face glowing for an instant—and then she seemed to whirl away like an autumn leaf.
The only thing I could possibly do was to light a cigarette.
Juanita, having met me, having delivered her ultimatum, having turned me into a jelly, flitted away quite oblivious of the fact that I was a burglar, an intruder into what was probably the most guarded and secret place in Europe at that moment.
My heart sang high music, and that was well. But at the same time I recognized that I was in the deuce of a mess and had planned out no course of action at all.
I prayed, almost audibly, for Pu-Yi.
But nobody came. There I was in the sexagonal room, with the gold dragons with their jeweled eyes leering at me.
A dull anger welled up within me. On every side, mentally as well as physically, I seemed baffled, hemmed in. I determined, at any risk to myself, to get out into the library. I took two steps towards the door through which Juanita had gone, when I heard a sharp snap just behind me.
I whipped round, clutching the only weapon I had—which was a brass knuckle-duster in the side pocket of my coat, and then I stood absolutely still.
One of the dragon panels had rolled up like a theater curtain, and standing in what appeared to be the end of a passage, was the great brute Mulligan, with a Winchester rifle at his shoulder, covering me.
As a man does in the presence of imminent danger, I swerved out of the line of the deadly barrel.
As I did so—click! A second panel disappeared, and I was confronted by Gideon Morse, his hands in the pockets of his dinner jacket, his mouth faintly smiling, his eyes inscrutable.
Imagine it! let the picture appear to you of the fool, Thomas Kirby, trapped like a rat!
Once, twice I swallowed in my throat, and I swear it wasn't from fear but only from an enormous, immeasurable disgust.
I turned to Morse.
"You've been listening," I said, "you and your servant here."
"I have been listening, Sir Thomas Kirby, that's true. I have every right to. When a man breaks into my house without my knowledge and makes clandestine love to my daughter, he's not the person to accuse one of eavesdropping. As for my servant there, you do me an injustice, which I find harder to forgive than anything, when you suggest that I allowed him to overhear what passed in this room just now. He was not at his post until Juanita had been gone from here some seconds. Mulligan, you can go now. Sir Thomas, please come with me into the library."
There was something so magnetic about this strange and compelling personality that I followed him without a word.
"Then you knew," I asked in a husky voice, "you knew all the time?"
He smiled.
"Yes," he said, "I arranged a little comedy. The faithful Mulligan was not drugged at all, and I did everything to facilitate your entrance."
"Then that treacherous cur, Pu-Yi, was playing with me the whole time! And yet I could have sworn that he was genuine. When I meet him—"
"You will shake hands with him if you are a wise man. Pu-Yi was absolutely genuine, but he, in common with my daughter, knew nothing of the truth until you told it him. He had believed me a madman. Then he understood not only the peril in which I was, and am, but also that of my daughter. Do you think, Kirby, that I should have built these towers, let imagination transcend itself, made myself the cynosure of Europe, unless I was sure of what I was doing? Now, alas, you've told Juanita, and brought terror into her life as well as mine."
"Sir," I said, "her relief is greater than any fear. I'll answer for that."
I faced him fair and square.
"God knows," I said, "I'm not worth a single glance of her sweet eyes, but somehow or other she loves me, though she wouldn't fly with me when I suggested it."
"She has some decent feeling left," he answered, with a dry chuckle. "Well, I overheard everything that passed in that little room and I must say I rather appreciate the way in which you behaved. You are a rapid thinker, Sir Thomas. What suggests itself to you as the next move in our relations?"
"Quite obvious, sir. You give your consent to my engagement with your daughter. You please her, you bind me to your interests by hoops of steel—though as a matter of fact I'm bound already—and you add a not invaluable auxiliary to your staff."
"Very well," he said, perfectly calmly, and held out his hand. "Now come and have some supper and tell me all you know."
Then that astonishing man thrust his arm through mine and led me down the great library.
"What a marvelous intellect that fellow Pu-Yi has," he said confidentially. "He saw the situation in all its bearings, from all sides at once, and made an instant decision. I'll tell you now, Kirby, that he actually predicted every detail of what has just come to pass. He told me that he owed you his life and was perfectly ready to die for you, as of course for me and my daughter, but that it had occurred to him that his living for all three of us might be by far the wisest attitude to adopt under the circumstances. I quite agree with him."
Then again came the little dry, strange chuckle.
"But no more peddling poppy-juice to my Chinese, my boy. It plays the devil with their nerves in the end!"
Morse and I sat at supper in a room which differed in no way from the ordinary study of a country gentleman. Except for the very slightest suggestion rather than sensation of vibration, which my host explained was the drag of the City on the three great towers which perpetually oscillated out of the perpendicular, and so insured the safety of the vast elastic structure, there was nothing to indicate that we were two thousand two hundred feet up in the air.
Our meal was of the simplest, and during it I told Morse, without reservation, all that I had heard from Arthur Winstanley.
"He has the outline very correctly. I'll fill it in later. How long has Lord Arthur been in London?"
"About five days, I believe."
"Time for many preparations to be made if they're going to strike quickly," he said, more to himself than to me, drumming his fingers on the tablecloth.
Then he looked up.
"And these two men who were seen to-day in the bar of your public house?"
"One, sir, was undoubtedly Midwinter. My very sharp-witted informant describes the other man as a swarthy person of just over middle height and apparently of great personal strength. He was bearded, sallow-faced, and had somewhat the appearance of a half-caste."
"Zorilla y Toro, as I expected," said Morse. "Zorilla the Bull, as he is known in half the Republics of South America."
"No doubt," I remarked, "a formidable pair of ruffians, but remember that I saw you deal with one of them at any rate, that night at the Ritz Hotel. The way he legged it out of the drawing-room wouldn't have inspired me with any particular fear of him."
Morse struck the table with his hand.
"I wish I'd sent a bullet through his heart instead of playing fancy fireworks round him. But I feared London and your colossal law and order. It's perfectly true, he didn't influence me in the least on that night. He came to sell his employers, to sell the Hermandad for a hundred thousand pounds."
"It would have been cheaper than this." I waved my hand to indicate the expensive crow's-nest of my future father-in-law.
Morse laughed.
"It wouldn't have made the least difference," he said. "The man couldn't hurt me at the time because he had to obey the orders of the villainous Society at his back. The old Marquis da Silva, who is simply a tool in their hands, insisted that I was not to be even interfered with in any way until the two years of grace from my first warning were up. Though their object was to get hold of half my fortune, and Midwinter's to revenge himself personally upon me, the Society and he didn't dare do anything until the moment struck. There were too many political issues still involved.
"That's why I made Mr. Mark Antony Midwinter dance out of the Ritz Hotel on that night."
"It's what Arthur Winstanley said."
"That young man will go far. Now, Kirby, I think you understand everything, and you've got to throw in your lot with Juanita and me, for a time at any rate, and never say you didn't know what you were up against."
I took a glass of claret and lit a cigarette.
"I understand thefacts, as you say, but I don't understand you. Allowing for all your natural and deep anxiety about Juanita, I simply fail to understand why you regard this Midwinter and his companion or companions with such apprehension. Surely you could have the man locked up to-morrow, knowing what you know about him."
Morse sighed, with a sort of gentle patience.
"A few more facts," he said; "and do reflect that it's most improbable that a man of my intelligence and resources should act as he has done without being sure of what he was doing. In the first place, I've had Midwinter watched by the most famous detectives in America, watched for years. None of these people have ever been able quite to bowl him out—a simile from your English game of cricket. But three of the most trusted and acute agents have lost their lives during these investigations, and lost them in a singularly unpleasant manner."
He sighed again, this time wearily, and I saw that his face was old and without interest or hope.
"What on earth is the use," he went on, "of telling you all I know about this man? Sir"—his voice began to rise, and a light came into the dark depths of his eyes—"Sir, if I saw his corpse before me now, I wouldn't believe him dead or his power for evil ended until I had hacked his head from his shoulders with my own hand! You cannot, I say you simply cannot realize or understand the fiendish ingenuity, persistence, and icy cruelty of this being, for I will not insult our common humanity by calling it a man. If Juanita ever gets into his hands—"
His mouth, his whole face, was working, I thought he was going to have a fit, and truth to tell, something icy began to congeal around my own heart.
"Calm yourself, sir," I said, as authoritatively as I could. "Juanita is doubly safe now that I am here, and as for Midwinter, he'll never approach us here. It's beyond the wit of mortal man, and, meanwhile, I'll see that he's apprehended and removed from all power of doing harm. I am only a young man, Mr. Morse, but I'm rather a power in the land. You see I have an important newspaper at my back, and as for you, who have already made the Government feed out of your hand in the matter of these towers, you should have gone to the Home Secretary in the first instance. At any rate, we'll go together, and believe me, we shall be listened to."
"I thank you, my dear boy," he replied with an effort, "but there is such a thing as Fate, and Fate has whispered in my ear. I am not naturally a superstitious man, but during a life spent in strange places among strange people I have learnt to be very wary of a material interpretation of life. But this I will say, whatever I feel about myself, however my precautions might fail, I believe that my dear daughter will win to safety in the end, that the power of evil will be overcome, and that you will be her savior."
I could have sworn, as he shook hands and bade me good-night, there was a tear in the great man's eye, and I wondered how long it was since any one had seen that in this master of millions and of men.
A picturesque young Chinaman, a valet in flowing Oriental robes, who spoke English with the most appalling cockney accent you ever heard in your life, conducted me to a charming bedroom, provided me with everything necessary, and in five minutes I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
A really full day, wasn't it?
When I woke up the next morning my room was flooded with sunshine from a dome in the ceiling.
Seated upon my bed, and balancing a cup of tea, was Master Bill Rolston. His hair was restored to its natural red, his nose normal, and his high cheek-bones were gone. On each side of his chubby face his transparent ears stood out at right angles, and his button of a mouth was wreathed in a genial smile.
"Good old Pu-Yi came for me about two o'clock this morning, Sir Thomas, and told me all that had happened. I say, sir,whata man to have on the staff of theEvening Special!Whatan intellect!"—I seemed to have heard that phrase before. "Why, we'd have him dictating to Cabinet Ministers within a year!"
I lay idly watching this brilliant and faithful boy; journalist once, I reflected, journalist forever. There's no getting it out of the blood, and here, if I'm not mistaken, when many of us have faded away from Fleet Street forever, will be the biggest of us all.
I was surprised to find that Bill was distinctly on the side of Gideon Morse in his anticipation of evil. We argued it out while I was dressing and I insisted that the City was impregnable.
"To all ordinary appearance, to all ordinary efforts, yes. But I shall never change my belief that there's nothing that human wit can invent that human wit cannot circumvent."
After breakfast, which I took alone, the servant led me to a great white house standing among conservatories, which I learned was almost an exact reproduction of the Palacete Mendoza, the residence of Gideon Morse at Rio. And there, in her own charming sitting-room, fragrant with flowers and stamped in a hundred ways with her personality, Juanita was waiting. She was radiant. Happiness lay about her like sunbeams. I never saw any one more changed than she was from the girl I had met the night before.
"Come, dearest," she said, "and I'll show you some of our wonders. I could not show you all of them in one day. Oh, Tom, isn't it all splendid, couldn't you sing and shout for joy!"
I helped her into a fur coat—for it was bitter cold outside, though the wind of the night before had dropped—and was provided with one myself as we left the house. Standing in the patio was a little two-seated automobile, a tiny toy of a thing run from electric storage batteries, which made no noise louder than the humming of a wasp. We got into this and Juanita was like a child as she pulled the starting lever and we rolled away.
I have said I woke to find my bedroom full of sunlight, but, as we glided down an arcade of conservatories, upon each side of the road, so that the illusion of passing among a palm grove was almost complete, I noticed that dark and angry clouds were gathering not far above our heads, and it was through one single aperture that the sunlight poured. The effect of this, when we ran through the tunneled archway and came out into a great square, was curious. A third of the buildings which towered up on every side were bathed in glory, the rest, gray, sullen, and throwing shadows of sable upon the lawns, gravel sweeps, and parquet flooring. We investigated a dozen marvels of which I shall not speak here. The whole experience was a dream of luxury so wonderful, and so fantastic also, that my readers must wait for William Rolston's book, now nearing completion. It was impossible to believe that we were actually walking, motoring, more than two thousand feet above London in a little world of our own which bore no relation whatever to ordinary human life.
This was especially borne in upon me with overwhelming force when we had ascended the steps of a tower and came out into a glass chamber on the roof, where an old Chinese gentleman with tortoise-shell spectacles showed us the great telescope which Morse had installed. Following the shifting path of sunlight, I got a dim glimpse of the English Channel over a far-flung champaign of fertile woods and downs, studded here and there with toy towns the size of threepenny-pieces. Once, but only for a moment, I made out the great towers of Canterbury Cathedral, but the sun shifted and the vision passed. London itself, brought immediately to our feet, was an astonishing sight, but as every one has seen the photographs taken from aeroplanes I will not dilate upon it, though it differed in many ways from these.
Perhaps the most pleasing sight of all was that of Richmond Park, where the winter Fair had just begun. We could see the roundabouts, the swings, and so forth, with great clearness, and even, as the wind freshened, catch a faint buzzing noise from the steam organs. Then a captive balloon rose up, I suppose a thousand feet, and some quarter of a mile away. With powerful field glasses we could see the big basket crammed with adventurous trippers, till she was hauled down again to make another ascent and add a few more pounds to the profits of her proprietors.
I was quite tired when we went back to the house to lunch.
During the meal, which was long and elaborate, Morse showed a side of his nature I had never before seen. He was not jovial or in high spirits—distinctly not that—but he was strangely tender and human. I realized the immense love he had for Juanita, and wondered how he could ever bear to see her love me. But he was kindness itself—like a father, to the interloper who had stormed his fortress, and I always like to think of him as he was on that afternoon, full of anecdotes about his youth, of Juanita's mother, of the old days in Brazil. It was my formal whole-hearted reception into his life. Henceforth I was to be—he said it once in well and delicately-chosen words—a son to him, who had never had a son.
In the afternoon I went back to my own quarters, which consisted of a villa at the end of the Palace gardens, where I was lodged with Rolston, and attended by various well-trained Chinamen. I had rarely seen a more delightful bachelor dwelling. I took a cup of tea with Bill about four o'clock. It was now quite dark, and the bitter wind was rising again, but heavy curtains of tussore silk were pulled over the windows, a fire of yew logs burned in the open hearth, and softly shaded electric lights all combined to produce the coziest and most homelike effect it is possible to imagine.
It was then that a man came in to say that Mr. Pu-Yi begged the honor of an audience.
Bill vanished, and my thin, ascetic friend glided in, and at my invitation sank into a chair by the fire. I don't think, in the whole course of my life, I could recall a conversation which touched, interested, and excited my admiration more than this, and I have met every one "from Emperor to Clown." He apologized profoundly for his seeming treachery. With a wealth of lucid self-analysis and the power of presenting a clear statement which I have seldom heard equaled, he showed how he was torn between his new-born debtorship to me, his loyalty to Morse, for whom he professed a profound esteem, and—here he hinted with extraordinaryfinesse—his mute adoration for Juanita.
"It was, Sir Thomas, touch and go, of course. I was in the position of a surgeon who has to risk everything upon one heroic stroke of the knife. I did so, and behold, all the conflicting elements are reconciled. The pieces of the puzzle have come together."
"My friend," I said, "betray me twenty million times if you can bring me such happiness as you have brought. Besides, it wasn't a betrayal, it was a great brain leading a smaller one to its appointed goal."
We talked a little more, he drank tea, he smoked, and, to my growing discomfort, I found in him the same note of pessimism and apprehension that Morse could not conceal, and Rolston himself had partially revealed.
"But Iwon'tbelieve that any harm can come to Miss Morse," I said, almost angrily.
The thin lips smiled.
"That I never said, Sir Thomas. There are no indications of that. You and your lady are in peril, but you will win through."
"Confound it, man, your liver must be out of order. It seems to me that captivity in this magnificent bird-cage has the same effect on every one. I shall get Morse to come and hunt with me in the Shires. I've got a nice little box in Gloucestershire, close to Chipping Norton, and by Jove, Pu-Yi, I'll mount you and give you a run with the Heythrope. You talk as if you actually knew something. As if you had information of a calamity."
"I hear it in the wind," he said strangely, and his voice was like a withered leaf blown before the wind. Then he left me.
I dined with Juanita and her father. Bill was asked too, and he kept my girl, and sometimes even Mr. Morse, in fits of laughter with stories of his short but erratic career, and especially a racy account of his illicit opium-selling down below.
"You see, sir," he said, "you brought it on yourself, by kidnaping me in the first instance. I had to get my own back."
Morse's face clouded over for a moment.
"It was a disgraceful thing to do," he said. "I quite admit it, but had the necessity arisen I'd have kidnaped George Robey or the Prince of Wales," and from that moment always I seemed to see that a faint but perceptible shadow was creeping over his spirits.
We had a little music, in a charming room built for the purpose. Juanita played upon the guitar and sang little Spanish love songs. Bill "obliged" with a ditty which he said was a favorite of the revered Charles Lamb, which seemed to consist entirely of the following lines:
"Diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son JohnWent to bed with his breeches on."
"Diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son JohnWent to bed with his breeches on."
I think that when Juanita said good-night to us all—and to me privately in the passage—she went to bed quite happy and cheerful.
About half-past ten Bill slipped off and I remained to smoke a final cigar with Morse.
"I'm low, Thomas," he said, "I'm very low to-night."
I made him take a little whisky and potash—a thing he rarely did.
"It's the unnatural life, sir, that you've condemned yourself to recently. You come out of this and hunt with me in Gloucestershire and I'll protect you as well as you're protected here, and you'll get as right as rain."
"You're very kind," he replied, "but—take care of her, Kirby, for God's sake, take care of her. She'll have no one else in the world but you if they get me or Pu-Yi."
I was about to expostulate again when the door opened and Boss Mulligan slouched in.
"Been all round the City, governor, with the usual patrol. Everything quiet, nothing unusual anywhere. All the servants have given in their tallies and are safe in their quarters."
Morse looked at me.
"That's our system, Tom," he said. "At a certain hour all the servants go to the lower stage, except those that may be urgently wanted. For instance, there's a fellow in your house to valet you to-night. Juanita has her little Spanish maid, and I think Pu-Yi keeps some one. Otherwise we are all to ourselves up here. All the lift doors are locked on the second stage and so is the central staircase. Mulligan here is on guard all night in the room where you saw him."
"An' watchin' ye from the ind of me eye, Sorr Thomas," said the genial ruffian, "av ye'll belave ut."
"You're a good actor, Mulligan," I said—it seemed about the only thing I could say.
"Sure, an' I am that," he said, "I am that, sorr, but I'm a bether doer. An' av ye'd reely bin staling in—"
His immense fist clenched itself and he shook it in my direction.
"Mulligan, go back to the guard-room," said Morse, "you're drunk."
The giant's face changed from ferocity into pained surprise.
"But av course, sorr," he said, "it's me usual time, as your honor must know. But begob, I'm efficient!"
The mingled grin and glare on his countenance when Mr. Mulligan went away left no doubt in my mind about that.
A few minutes afterwards, certainly not drunk, and I hope efficient, I left the Palacete Mendoza, and walked through the gardens to the villa. Morse himself barred the door after me.
It was bitter, aching cold and the wind was razor-keen. Gaunt wreaths of mist were all around like a legion of ghosts, and I realized that the clouds were descending upon us, and soon I should not be able to see a yard before me, though the electric lamps that never went out all night, over the whole City, glowed with a dim blueness here and there through the fog.
However, I found the villa all right, and my Chinese boy waiting in the hall. He took my coat, saw that the fires in the sitting-room and the adjoining bedroom were made up, and then I told him he might be off to his quarters on the second stage, for which he seemed extremely thankful.
I don't suppose he had been gone more than a minute when the door of my sitting-room opened and Rolston came in quickly. He was wearing a dressing-gown and pyjamas and his hair was all rough like one recently aroused from sleep.
"What on earth's the matter?" I said.
"I undressed," he said, "in my bedroom, which is just above yours as you know, and fell asleep in my chair with all the lights on. I woke only a short time ago, and before switching off the lamps I went to the window to see what sort of a night it was."
"Hellish, if you want to know."
"The light streamed out upon a great curtain of mist, almost like the projector lamp upon a screen of a kinema. Sir Thomas, as I stood there I could swear that something big, black and oblong sank down from that darkness above, passed through my zone of light and disappeared in the blackness below."
"What on earth do you mean, what sort of a thing?"
He hesitated for a moment and then he said:
"Almost like a group of statuary, though I only saw it for a mere instant."
He had obviously been half dreaming when he went to the window, his eyes, even now, were heavy with sleep.
"Simply and solely a trick of the wind upon the mist, and your own figure interposing between the light and the window, and throwing a momentary shade on the swaying white curtain outside. The mist's as thick as linen and it changes every moment. You go to bed properly, and sleep the sleep of the just."
He didn't attempt to argue, but looked a little ashamed of himself for obtruding for such a trivial reason. Ten minutes afterwards I was also in bed and fast asleep.
I had ordered my Chinese boy to wake me at eight. In one corner of the Grand Square was a beautifully fitted gymnasium with a swimming-bath adjoining. I proposed three-quarters of an hour's vigorous exercise before dressing.
At it happens I generally wake more or less at the time I want to. This morning, however, it was half-past eight. There was no sound of Chang whatever. I got out of bed, put on a sweater, Norfolk jacket, flannel trousers, and tennis shoes—I had sent for a portmanteau of clothes from the "Golden Swan"—went across the hall and let myself out into the gardens.
Then I hesitated in amazement. A thick, heavy, impenetrable mist hid everything from sight. It seemed as solid as wool. One literally had to push one's way through it, and when I say that I couldn't see more than a yard before my face, I mean it in the strict sense of the words. Still, I remembered that I have a good sense of topography, and I was quite confident that I could find my way to the central Square, where there would be sure to be people about whom I could ask.
From my front door there was a good hundred and twenty yards of wide gravel path to the Palacete Mendoza. I sprinted up this in less than twenty seconds I should say, and then warily turned into the palm-tree grove—the great sheets of plated glass on either side of the way were in place now, but I knew where I was because of the different quality of the ground, which was here paved with wood blocks. Soon, a faint gray mass to my right, the palace itself loomed up, but the blanket of mist was too thick for me to discern windows or doors. One could see nothing but the gray hint of mass.
The curious thing was that one could hear nothing either. That had not struck me as I did my sprint, but now it did, and most forcibly. Of course there was no sound of wind—had there been any wind we should not have been buried in the very heart of this fog—thicker and more sticky than anything I had ever experienced in the Alps themselves. But there were no sounds of occupation such as an extensive place like the City might have been expected to produce at this hour, and in fact, as I realized,didproduce, when I remembered yesterday. The place was never noisy. It was a haunt of peace if ever there was one. But the sound of gardeners and servants going about their daily toil, the distant throbbing of an engine perhaps, a subdued voice giving an order, the plashing of fountains, and the strains of music, all these were utterly and entirely absent. It was as though the mist killed not only vision but hearing also. I might have been on the top of Mont Blanc.
"What little town by harbor or sea-shoreIs empty of its folk this pious morn?"
"What little town by harbor or sea-shoreIs empty of its folk this pious morn?"
I quoted to myself with a laugh, just as I entered the arched tunnel wide enough for two coaches to be driven under it abreast, which I knew led to Grand Square.
I laughed, and then quite suddenly all laughter went out of me. I couldn't explain it at the moment, but the mist, the loneliness, my whole surroundings, seemed quite horrible.
Surely something had passed me? I called out, and my voice seemed like the bleating of a sheep. Of course, it was illusion. My nerves had suddenly gone wrong. But, honestly, I felt that there was somethingnastyin the atmosphere, nasty from a psychic point of view I mean. There are moments when the human soul turns sick and retches with disgust, and I experienced such a moment now. I think it was exactly then that I knew, though I wouldn't allow myself to believe it, that I knew inwardly all was not well. I walked on and my india-rubber shoes seemed to make a sly, unpleasant noise—it was the only one I heard even now.
I could see nothing, I was quite uncertain of where I was, so I turned and walked straight to the right until, from the impact of the air upon my face, I knew that I was within a yard or so of some building. This was correct. My hand touched what seemed like stonework, and glancing up I became aware that a building rose high above.
I followed this along, keeping my hand on the stone, moving it round projecting buttresses and going with great caution. This insect-like progression seemed to be endless. I took out my watch, which I had shoved into the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket. It was nearly nine o'clock, and not a single sound!
A second or two afterwards I came to a balustrade, felt my way along it, and found that I was at the foot of a broad flight of steps. There seemed something vaguely familiar here, and as I ran up them I began to be sure that I was at the library. I knew that Pu-Yi lived somewhere on the premises and I felt all over the great iron-studded door until I came to the small postern wicket through which one generally entered. This was locked, but a bell-pull of wrought iron hung at the side and I pulled at it lustily for a considerable time.
It opened with a jerk and Pu-Yi stood there in his skull cap with the coral button on the top and wrapped in a bear-skin robe.
"Thank goodness I've found some one," I said. "I've lost my way. I was going to the gymnasium, to exercise a little and then have a swim. My boy didn't turn up so I came out by myself."
"Come in, come in, Sir Thomas," he said, peering out at the white curtain. "What a dreadful morning! I've been here some months now, but I have never seen it so bad as this. I daresay it will blow off by nine o'clock or so when the sun gets up."
"It's nine o'clock now," I told him.
He started violently.
"Then my servant also is at fault," he said. "I ordered my coffee for eight. I was reading far into the night and must have overslept myself. This is very curious."
"Do you know, I don't quite like it, Pu-Yi. I've come all the way from the pavilion in the Palace gardens and haven't heard the least sound of any sort whatever."
We passed through a lobby and entered the great library, which was cold and gray as a tomb.
Pu-Yi snapped at a switch, then at another. Nothing happened.
"The electric light is off!" he cried. "What an extraordinary thing!"
"Mine wasn't," I said. "I got out of bed and dressed by it."
He did not reply, but took down the speaking part of a telephone and turned the handle of the box. In that gray light his thin face, with its expression of strained attention, was one I shall not easily forget.
He turned the handle again, angrily. Again an interval of silence.
"The telephone is out of order," he said, and we looked at each other with a question in our eyes.
"Well, I'm confoundedly glad I've found you," I said.
"We must look into this at once, Sir Thomas. I can find my way perfectly well to one of the lifts at the other end of the Square. We must summon assistance. One moment." He vanished for a minute and returned with something cool and shining which he pressed into my hand. It was a venomous ten-shot Colt automatic. "You never know," he whispered.
We hurried across the great Square, passing by the central fountain basins, though the fountains were not playing, which added to our uneasiness. Everything was deathly still until we came to the little lift pavilion. I half expected the thing to stick, but it glided down easily enough. As if my companion read my thoughts he said:
"All these small lifts are not electrical, but are worked by hydraulic power, the station for which is in the City and not below on the earth."
I shall never forget the extraordinary sight as we stepped from the lift. The mist here was nothing like so thick as it was above. This was owing to the fact that a hundred feet above our heads there was the immense ceiling of steel plates and girders upon which the City rested. As I said before, on all three sides this second service City was open to the air, but not above. Consequently the mist moved in tall white shapes like ghosts; it entirely surrounded one group of huts and left another great vista of buildings plain to the eye. Here a gaudily painted gable thrust itself out of the white sheet; there, through a proscenium of clinging wool, one saw the gray interior of a machine-room. A chill twilight brooded everywhere. There wasn't a single lamp burning, and from one end to the other lay the desolation of utter silence.
I leant against the jamb of the lift door, and, despite the cold, the sweat ran down my body in a stream.
Pu-Yi raised a thin arm over his head and it seemed to clutch crookedly at the somber panoply aloft.
A high, thin wail came from his parted lips and went mournfully away down the deserted streets and empty habitations.
For myself, I had been so stunned that I couldn't think, but my friend's despairing call seemed to jerk some cog-wheel within the brain and start again the mechanism of thought.
I gripped him by the shoulder.
"There isn't a soul here," I rasped out. "What does it mean, what on earth does it mean?"
"There should be three hundred at least," he answered.
I broke away at a run, flung open the first door I came to and peered in. It was some sort of a sleeping-room, there were bunks and couches all around the walls. Each one of them was empty. I had time to see that, and also that a stand of short carbines and cutlasses was full of weapons.
Then I had to back out quickly for the late inmates had left an odorous legacy behind them.
Pu-Yi faced me.
"That was one of the patrol rooms," he said.
Then I remembered our coming two days ago.
"Mulligan!" I cried. "Nobody could get here except through the guard-room, nobody could leave here except through that, could they?"
"Not unless they threw themselves from the side of the tower."
"Well, it's quite impossible to believe that three hundred people have committed suicide during the night without a sound being heard. Quick! let's get to the bottom of this."
Pu-Yi led. He didn't seem really to run, only to glide along the ghostly streets and passages. But I had hard work to keep up with him, all the same. My mouth felt as if it had been sucking a brass tap. The most deadly fear clutched at my heart—that noiseless, pattering run through the deserted town in the air, accompanied always by the mouthing, gibbering ghosts of the mist, was appalling.
We dashed down the last corridor and were brought up by a stout door. Pu-Yi bent down to the handle, turned it gently, and—it opened.
We tiptoed into that room. Directly I was over the threshold, the spiritual odor of death, of violent death, came to me.
A fire of logs was still burning redly upon the hearth. For the rest the room was lit only by its skylight, through which filtered a dirty and opaque illumination which was only sufficient to give every object a shape of the sinister or bizarre. The red glow from the fire glistened upon the polished screen of steel which divided the room into two portions. And it also fell, redly, upon something else.
This was the corpse of Mulligan.
It was seated in a chair which had been pulled up to the screen with its back towards it, as if in mockery and derision of its power to keep it.
He had been strangled by a yard of catgut, twisted, tourniquet-fashion, by a piece of stick at the back of the neck. The catgut had sunk far into the flesh, reducing the neck to less than half its ordinary size, and the great staring head hung down upon one shoulder.
One of the logs in the grate fell with a crackle of sparks. For the rest, dead silence.
"They have come," Pu-Yi said simply.
"But what has happened?" I whispered, my throat was so dry that the sound was like the rustling of paper.
"I shall know soon. I am going to find out. There is not a minute to lose. Can you, dare you, wait here—"
I nodded and he was out of the room in a flash. Upon the dead man's table was the usual array of bottles and glasses. I took some brandy and gulped it down and my brain cleared instantly. There was a little touch of infinite pathos even in this hideous moment, for by the side of an empty glass I saw a string of beads with a little metal crucifix. The Irishman, a Roman Catholic of course, must have been saying his prayers some time before he met his end. Somehow the thought comforted me and gave me power to act. I found a knife, and cut the bonds that tied the giant to the chair. I lowered him reverently to the floor and finally severed the horrible ligature around his throat. An examination of the steel door in the screen of bars showed that it was securely locked, but the bunch of keys which the dead man usually carried upon a chain was no longer there—the end of the chain dangled from his trousers pocket.
While I was doing these things a most deadly apprehension was standing specter-like by my side and plucking with wan fingers at my sleeve. What had happened, what might even now be happening at the Palacete Mendoza?
Pu-Yi whirled into the room. He made no noise, it was as though a dried leaf had been blown in by the wind. His face was transformed. Every outline was sharpened, and the color was changed until it bore the exact resemblance to a mask of green bronze. In its frozen immobility it was dead, yet awfully alive, and the eyes glittered like little crumbs of diamond.
"Well?"
"I know how it has been done. It is very clever, very clever indeed. Let me tell you that all the power cables connecting us with below have been scientifically cut. We can neither telephone down to the Park nor can we descend to it in one of the lifts. We are isolated up here in the clouds."
"But the men, the staff?" I gasped, and then I stepped back, staring down at his hands. They were all foul and stained with blood.
"Not far away," he said, "there is another body, that of my servant, a youth from my own Province, whom I loved and whom I was educating. He was alive five minutes ago. He had just time to sob out the truth and his repentance."
"Tell me quickly, Pu-Yi, time presses."
"They caught him last night, so they must have been here then."
"Who caught him?"
"He never knew. They were masked, but there were two of them, and from his description we know very well who they were. Sir Thomas, they tortured him for a long time until he spoke, promising him freedom if he did so. His story was disjointed, gasped out with his dying breath, but I can put it together pretty well.
"They made him give an order by telephone from the upper City that, immediately, the staff were to leave here and descend to the ground and await further orders, all but Mulligan, who was to remain at his post until I came to him. This message was delivered in Chinese to the man at the telephone exchange, and the poor boy was forced to counterfeit my voice. He was blindfolded immediately afterwards, but he heard a man speaking, and he said he could not have told the voice from that of Mr. Morse."
In a flash I saw the whole thing, in its devilish ingenuity, its fiendish completeness.
"Then we are absolutely alone, you, I, Mr. Rolston, Mr. Morse and his daughter?"
"And her maid," he answered quietly.
"At the mercy of—"
"That we have yet to prove. We must throw all emotion, all fear aside. That's what we have to do now. It's diamond cut diamond. There's one problem in my mind, and one only."
"What's that, quick!"
"I daresay that in an hour I could get down to the ground. Among the intricate steel-work of this tower there's a tiny circular staircase of open lattice-work, sufficient for the passage of one person only, and even here, every three or four hundred feet the way is barred by locked gates, though I have a master key to all of them. Shall I make the attempt, and risk crashing off into space—for it is a mere steeplejack's way—and summon assistance, which may well be another hour in arriving, for the tower cables have been scientifically cut and no one but an electrician could repair them? Or shall I rush with you to defend the Palace?"
"You leave the decision to me?"
"It is in your hands, Prince."
"Then, old chap, tumble down this accursed tower, hell for leather, and rouse the pack. If I and Morse and Bill Rolston cannot account for these cowardly assassins, then one more man won't make any difference."
So I said, so I thought. I had no idea into what peril I was sending him, though I have sometimes wondered if he knew. He took my hand, kissed it, and beckoning me, we hurried through the silent under City towards the lift.
"You go up, Sir Thomas," he said, "and exercise the utmost care. Have your pistol ready. The mist is as thick as ever, which is in your favor. You can find your way now to the Palace, I am sure."
"And you?"
"I go off here," he said, pointing with his left arm down a long vista to where, under a square arch, there was nothing to be seen at all but swaying yellow-white. "One opens the gate in the railing and drops on to the circular stairs," he said, "which cling to the outside of the steel-work all the way down like a little train of ivy."
"Au revoir, be as quick as you can."
"Good-by," and I jumped into the elevator.
Some two minutes afterwards, when I was creeping through the wool with my pistol in my hand, alert for the slightest sound around me, I heard the sharp crack of a rifle. It came from behind me. There was a perceptible interval and then another crack, followed, I could have sworn to it, by a thin wailing cry.
Then utter silence fell once more upon the white and muffled City.
As I ran I tried to steel myself, if that were as I suspected, the last dying cry of Pu-Yi, not to think about it. The immediate moment, the immediate future, these were everything.
All the extraordinary precautions had failed. The assassins were here! In what force? How had they come?—though that was useless to speculate on. Two things only remained. I must warn Morse if it was not already too late, must avenge him if it was. I resolutely put aside the thought of Juanita—of any personal feeling which might mar my judgment and unstring my nerves at this supreme and dreadful moment.
I found myself, somehow or other, at the entrance to the tunneled passage. Save for my own quick breathing there had not been a sound, and the horrible curtain of the fog was as thick as ever. Should I at once creep up to the Palace, or should I go back to the villa and find Rolston? It was a nice question and the decision had to be instantaneous. I decided that it would give me a tremendous advantage to have him with me, and besides that, he himself must be warned of the terror that lurked in the darkness of the cloud.
I arrived without any mishap, pushed open the door and was crossing the dark hall when my foot caught in some obstruction and I fell headlong. There was no time to cry out, had I been startled enough to do so, before something leapt upon my back with a soft yet heavy thud. A hand slipped over my mouth and the round barrel of a pistol was pressed into my neck.
I lay helpless, thinking that it was all over, when the weight lifted, the pistol was snatched away and I was hauled to my feet to discover—Rolston.
"Not a word," he whispered. "I set a trap in the hall, Sir Thomas. Thank God you are alive!"
"Thank God you are too. Bill, they've strangled Mulligan, killed another Chinese by torture and I am very much afraid have shot Pu-Yi as he was trying to get down to earth to summon help.
"Every single member of the staff is down in the Park with orders to stay there—false orders. The lifts are all put out of action beyond possibility of being repaired for several hours. That's how things stand. Now we must get to the Palace as quickly as we possibly can. God knows what has happened or may be happening there."
"This way, quick!" he said, when he had listened to me with strained attention.
He took my arm, hurried me into the back part of the house, opened a door with a key and we entered a bedroom which I had not before seen. The windows were shuttered and curtained but the electric light—which never failed either my villa or the Palace during the whole of those terrible hours—made every detail clear. Upon the bed, lying as if asleep, was Juanita. Leaning over her was a tall, elderly, hard-featured French woman with a typical Norman face.
I staggered back into Bill Rolston's arms.
"Good God!" I cried, and then, "She's not dead, tell me she's not dead!"
Marie, the French maid, turned.
"She's perfectly well, M'sieu, only she's had a fainting fit and I've given her something to keep her quiet."
She spoke in French.
"Then how do you come here, what's happened?"
"At some time in the night, M'sieu, I think it must have been between two and three, the warning bell, which is always attached to my bed, began to ring. I knew exactly what to do. It was part of Mr. Morse's precautions, in which he had drilled us. When that bell rang, at whatever time of day or night, I was to wake M'selle instantly, dress her without a second's delay, and bring her out of the Palace by a secret way.
"I did so, and arrived in this room, where M'selle fainted. The door was locked from the outside, and as I have strict orders never to exceed my instructions by a hair's breadth, I have been waiting.
"Not very long ago M'sieu here"—she pointed to Rolston—"hearing some noise, unlocked the door and came in. To him I told what had happened."
"Thank God," I said aloud, "that she's safe," and in my heart I paid a tribute to the minutely detailed genius of Gideon Morse, who had at least foiled the panthers on his track in one, and the greatest particular.
"Very well then. Now we must leave you here while we hurry to the Palace to try and learn what has happened, and do what we can. You will not be afraid?"
"No, M'sieu," she replied simply. "There's an angel with us," and she crossed herself devoutly. "And, moreover," from somewhere about her waist she withdrew a long, keen knife, "I know what to do with this, M'sieu, in the last resort."
I went to the bed, I looked down at Juanita and kissed her gently on the forehead.
"Now then, Bill, come along," I said.
Bill grinned.
"By the private way," he said, pointing to the French woman, who was removing a heavy Turkish rug which lay in front of the fireplace. There was a click, and a portion of the floor fell down, disclosing some steps, padded with felt.
"This way, M'sieu," she whispered, "the passage is lit, but here's a torch if you should need it, and here is the book."
She handed me a little leather-bound book about the size of a railway ticket.
"What's this?"
"Instructions in English and Chinese in regard to the secret room at the other end. They are few and simple, but Mr. Morse had them printed so that there could be no mistake if ever it became necessary to use the place and its machinery."
"He thinks of everything," said Bill, as we crept down into a fairly wide passage, and the trap-door above rose once more into its place.
The passage was fully a hundred and thirty or forty yards long and straight as an arrow. As we approached the end, which I saw to be hidden by a heavy curtain, I thought of the little leather covered book. Motioning Rolston to stop I opened it and read the English portion. There were about five or six pages, with one or two simple diagrams, and I blessed the journalistic training that enabled me to see the purport of the whole thing in a minute, though I gasped once more at the fertile ingenuity of Gideon Morse. Gently putting aside the heavy curtain, we entered a room of some size. The floor was heavily carpeted. Around two of the walls were couches piled with blankets. Upon shelves above were piles of stores—I saw boxes of biscuits, tins of condensed milk and many bottles of wine. The place was quite fourteen feet high and at one end four posts came down from the ceiling to the floor. They were grooved and the grooves were lined with steel which was cogged to receive a toothed wheel. Between the four posts, dropping some two feet from the ceiling, was what looked like the lower part of a large cistern or tank. This apparatus extended along the whole far end of the room, which was not square but square-oblong in shape. Immediately opposite to where we entered was an arrangement of levers, like the levers in a railway signal-box, though smaller; above these, sprouting out of the wall, were half a dozen vulcanite mouthpieces like black trumpets. Above each one was a little ivory label.
"What does it all mean?" Bill whispered.
I held up my hand for silence, looking round the place, referring once or twice to the little book, and making absolutely sure. As I was doing so there was a sudden "pop," followed by the unmistakable gurgle of champagne into a glass.
It was the most uncanny thing I have ever heard, for it might have happened at my elbow. Had it not been that a tiny electric signal-bulb no bigger than a sixpence glowed out over one of the mouthpieces, I should have been utterly unnerved. This mouthpiece was labeled "Mr. Morse's study."
"The dictograph," I whispered to Rolston, and he pressed my arm to show he understood.
I think I would have given a thousand pounds myself for some champagne just then. We stood holding each other, frozen into an ecstasy of listening. I almost thought that one of Bill's remarkable ears was elongating itself until it coiled sinuously towards the wall, but this, no doubt, was illusion.
There came a voice, an urbane, and cultured voice, well modulated and serene.
It was all that, but as I heard it my blood seemed to turn to red currant jelly and to circulate no more in my veins. If there was ever a voice which was informed by some unnamable quality which came straight from the red pit of hell, we heard that voice then. Hearing it, I knew for the first time the meaning of those words:The worm that dies not and the fire that is not quenched.
"Whoever thought, Gideon Morse, that I should be breakfasting with you to-day! To tell the truth I didn't myself. But as you know, I have always been a great gambler and now, at the end of all the games of chance that we have played together, I have turned up the final ace."
Another voice—Heaven! it was Morse himself who answered. His voice seemed almost amused. It was like coming out of a pitch dark room into summer sunlight to hear it after that other.
"Mark Antony Midwinter, you speak of triumph, but you were never nearer your ultimate end than you are at this moment"—I could have sworn I heard his dry chuckle and I moved nearer to the wall.
"This cold pheasant is quite excellent. What is the use of trying to bluff me? Your end has come and you know it. It isn't going to be a pleasant end, I expect you guess that. We have tossed the dice for many years, you and I. You've won over and over again. I had become an outcast on the face of the earth, until Fate made me the agent of a great vengeance."
This time Morse laughed outright.
"You offal-eating jackal!" he said. "Finish your stolen meal and get to work. You, the agent of a great vengeance! when not long ago you slunk into my London hotel and offered to sell your employers. I understand," he went on in a curiously impersonal voice, "that you really are supposed to be descended from a high English family. Even when I had you tarred and feathered—do you remember that, Antony?—many years ago, I still believed in your descent, though I own I didn't give it much of a thought. Tell me, where exactly did the kitchen-maid come in?"
Following upon Morse's words we heard the sound of footsteps and the scraping of a chair.
A new person had come into the room and Midwinter had risen to meet him.
"Well?"
The reply came in a deep bass voice.
"Nothing is changed. There was one Chinaman, it must have been the librarian of whom that guy we put through it, spoke—he came sliding along and tried to get down by the cat's cradle outside the tower. I was leaning out of that balcony window above, commanding every approach, and I got him with my second shot."
"Did he fall all the way down? That might startle them below."
"No. He just crumpled up on the stairs, and after looking round, I've come back here. There's a little wind beginning to get up and I shouldn't wonder if in an hour or so this mist-blanket is all blown away."
"Half an hour is enough for what we have to do, Zorilla. Just go over to Mr. Morse there and see if his lashings are secure—and then we must think about getting off ourselves."
It was as though Bill and I could see exactly what was happening in the library—the heavy tread, an affirmative grunt, and then the smooth hellish voice resuming:
"You know you've got to die, Morse, and die painfully. Nothing can alter that, but I'll let you off part of your agonies if you tell me at once where your daughter is. It will only precipitate matters. We can easily find her as you must know."
"I don't like talking with you at all. You are both of you doomed beyond power of redemption. You have overcome some of my precautions, by what means I cannot tell. You've captured my person. You are about to wreak your disgusting vengeance on it. For Heaven's sake do so. You know nothing of this place you are in, or very little. Fools!" The voice rang out like a trumpet.
There was a murmured conference, the words of which we could not catch, then Midwinter said:
"We'll put you to the test a little, before Zorilla really begins—operating. Adjoining this apartment I see there is your most luxurious bathroom—the walls of onyx, the bath of solid silver. Well, we'll take you and put you in that bath and turn on the water. I'll stand over you, and with my hands on your shoulders, I'll plunge you an inch or two beneath the surface, till you are so nearly drowned that you taste all the bitterness of death. Then we'll have you up again and ask you a few questions. Perhaps you may have to go back into the bath a second time before Zorilla gets to the real work."
No words of mine can describe the malignancy of that voice, no words of mine can describe the shout of resolute, sardonic laughter which answered it.
Bill wanted to shout in answer, but I clapped my hand over his mouth just in time, and I could almost see the frowning faces of the two fiends as they advanced upon the bound man.
... Steps overhead; the little bulb over the mouthpiece labeled "Mr. Morse's study" goes out, and another lights up over the mouthpiece labeled "Bathroom." There is a jarring as a tap is turned on and a rush of water.
"That'll do, Zorilla. Two feet is quite enough for our purpose"—the voices are actually in the room now, much louder and clearer than before.
"You take the heels—steady, heavo!" and then a splash and a thud. We heard some one vaulting lightly into the bath.
"Now, Morse, I hold you up for a minute. I shall press you down under the water until you are as near dead as a man can be. Have you anything to say?"
"Yes. Give me one moment."
"Ten if you like."
Then there came in a calm, penetrating voice, "Are you there?"
I reached upward and smote with my clenched fist upon the outside of the bath. I heard a muttered exclamation, a slight splash, and then Bill Rolston pulled over a lever, and half the ceiling of our room sank towards us with a noise like the winding-up of a clock.
Midwinter was standing in one end of the bath, which hid him almost up to his waist. His jaw dropped like the jaw of a dead man. Such baffled hate and infinite malevolence stared out of his eyes that I gave a shout of relief as Rolston lifted his arm and fired.
He must have missed the fiend's head by a hair's breadth, no more. Quick as lightning he fired again, but he was too late. Midwinter bounded out of the bath like a tennis ball, felled Rolston with a back-arm blow as he leapt, and fled down the passage.
The loud thunder of the explosions in that underground place had not died away before I had lifted Morse from under the water and dragged him over the side of the bath.
His face was very pale, but his eyes were open and he could speak.
Truly the man was marvelous.
"The other," he whispered, "the brute Zorilla! Juanita!"
I understood one of the devils, desperate now, was still at large, and even as I realized it, I saw a ghastly sight.
There was a noise above. I bent my head backward and looked up through the aperture in the ceiling.
A man was crouching over it and I saw his face and neck—a big, black-bearded face, with eyes like blazing coals, butreversed. His eyes were where his mouth should have been, his nostrils were like two pits, and for a forehead there was a grinning mouth full of gleaming teeth. Any one who, when ill, has seen their nurse or attendant bending over them from the back of the bed, will realize what I mean, though they can never understand the horror of that demoniac and inverted mask.
I was pretty quick on the target, but not quick enough. The thing whipped away even as I fired, and there was a thunder of feet running.
I think a sort of madness seized me, at any rate I was never in a moment's doubt as to what to do. I shoved my pistol in my pocket, leapt upon the edge of the bath, sprang upwards and caught the floor of the room above with my hands.
The rest was easy for any athlete in training. I pulled myself up, lay panting for a second and then stood upon the tiled floor of the bathroom.
The door leading into the library was open. I dashed through to find the place empty, rushed through the hall and out upon the steps of the main entrance. And then, joy! A morning wind had begun and instead of a white, impenetrable wall, a phantom army was retreating and, as if pursuing those ghost-like sentinels, was the black, running figure of Zorilla.
I had a clear glimpse of him as he plunged into the tunnel leading to Grand Square, and I was after him like a slipped greyhound.
In Grand Square it was clearing up with a vengeance. There were gleams of sunlight here and there and the mist had lifted for about twelve feet above my head.
I saw him bolt round the central fountain, hidden by an immense bronze dragon for a moment, and then legging it for all he was worth towards the way that led to the lifts for the second stage.
The wood floor had dried with the lifting of the mist and I was doing seven-foot strides. I was seeing red. There was a terrible cold fury at the bottom of my heart, but in my mind there was a furious joy. With every stride I gained on him—this powerful, thick-set, baboon-like man from the forests of the Amazon.
I gave a loud, exulting "View-halloo," and the black head turned for an instant—he lost ten good yards by that. I whooped again. I meant to kill, to rend him in pieces. And for the first time in my life I realized the joy of primeval man: the lust of the hunt, red fang, red claw, to tear, dominate and destroy.
Oh, it was fine hunting!
Damn him! He snapped himself into one of the little lifts when I was within six yards of him. I saw his ugly face sink out of sight behind the glass panels. I remembered that these small hydraulic lifts worked, though the big ones below didn't. But I remembered something else ... there was a stairway.
I found it by instinct, a great broad stair with tiled walls like the subway of some railway terminus.
I didn't bother about the stairs. I leapt down—preserving my balance by a miracle—six or seven at a time. Pounding out into the great empty City at the foot, I swirled round and was just in time to see my gentleman bolt out of his lift like a rabbit from its hole and run to where I knew was the outside stairway which fell, in its corkscrew path, barred by many gates, right down to safety and the normal world.
It was the way by which dear old Pu-Yi had hoped to descend and raise the alarm. It was the perilous eyrie upon which this same bull-like assassin had picked him off like a sitting pigeon and boasted of it not half an hour before.
As he dodged and ran I fired at him, but never a bullet touched the brute and I flung the Colt away with an oath.
"Much better kill him with my own hands," I said in my mind, "much better tear his head off, break him up—"
I tell you this as it happened. For the moment I was a wild beast, in pursuit of another, but still, I think, a super-beast.
Well, never mind that. I saw him fumbling at a sort of fence, clearly outlined against an immense space of morning sky, and thundered after him—thundered, I say, because I was now running along an open steel grating, which seemed to sway....
Then I vaulted over where Zorilla had vaulted, and my heart leapt into my mouth as I fell—fell some eight feet on to a tiny platform, protected from space by a rail not more than three feet high.
I reeled, and caught hold of a stanchion and saved myself. Far, far below, London—London in color was unrolling itself like a map—and immediately below my feet, already a considerable distance down, was the slithering black spider that I had sworn to kill.