_The Invisible Emperor_
It was the sound of his name, spoken repeatedly, that brought Dick
back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, blinking in broad daylight.
He stared about him, and the first thing he saw was Luke Evans,
regarding him anxiously from a little distance away. He saw that it
was Luke who had spoken.
He had heard the old man distinctly. The condition of inaudibility was
gone.
Not that of invisibility. Dick stared about him in bewilderment. For a
moment, before he quite realized what had happened to him, he thought
he had lost his mind. Underneath him was a thick rug, beneath his head
a pillow; he could feel both of them, and yet all he could see was the
open country, a clearing with shrubbery on either side, and, beyond
that, a luxurious growth of tropical trees. Under him, to all visual
appearance, was the bare ground.
He moved, and heard the clank of chains. He looked down at himself.
His wrists were loosely linked to a chain that seemed to stretch tight
into vacancy and end in nothing. His ankles were bound likewise.
And both chains appeared to be of solid silver, but thick enough to
give them the strength of iron!
Then he perceived that old Evans was bound in the same way.
"Rennell! Rennell!" repeated the old man in a sort of whimper. "Thank
God you've come out of it! I was afraid you were dead."
"What's happened?" asked Dick. "Where are we? Didn't they get us?"
"They've got us, damn them!" snarled old Evans. "All the rest burned
to cinders, those fine fellows, Rennell! You were thrown unconscious,
but none of my tough old bones were hurt. They pulled us out of the
wreckage and brought us in here and tied us with these silver chains."
"In here? But where are we?" demanded Dick, trying to pass his hand
across his aching forehead, and realizing that the chain, though it
seemed fastened to nothing, was perfectly taut.
* * * * *
"In one of their damned invisible houses," whimpered the old man.
"They're fireproof. Nearly all our bombs fell on the tarmac, and they
did hardly any damage at all. One of those devils was bragging about
it to me. I couldn't see anything but his eyes. And they've taken away
my gas-box," wailed old Luke.
Dick cursed comprehensively and was silent. The burning rage that
filled him left him incapable of other utterance. Silver chains! They
must be madmen--yes, that was the only explanation. Madmen who had
escaped from somewhere, obtained possession of scientific secrets, and
banded themselves together to overcome the world. If he could get the
chance of a blow at them before he died!
He heard a door swing open--a door somewhere out on the prairie. Two
men sprang into sudden visibility and approached him. There was
nothing invisible about these men, though they had seemed to have
materialized out of nothing. They wore the same black, trimly fitting
uniform that Dick had seen in the White House. They were flesh and
blood human beings like themselves.
"I congratulate you upon your recovery, Captain Rennell," remarked one
of them with ironical politeness. "Also upon your shrewd coup.
Needless to say, it had no chance of success, but we were misinformed
as to the hour at which you might be expected. We thought it would
take the fools at Washington a little longer to puzzle out our
location--and then we did not put quite sufficient force into our
hurricane. Quite an artificial one, Captain."
Dick, glaring at them, said nothing, and the one who had spoken turned
to his companion, laughing, and said something in a foreign language
that he did not recognize.
"His Majesty the Emperor commands your presence, and that of this old
fool," said the first man. "Do not attempt to escape us. Death will be
instantaneous." He drew a glass rod from his pocket, the tip of which
glowed with a pale blue light.
* * * * *
Again he spoke to his companion, who moved apparently a few feet
distant out on the prairie. Suddenly Dick saw old Evans' chain
slacken: then Dick's slackened too. He understood that he was unbound,
though his wrists and ankles were still loosely fastened.
The second man took his station beside Luke Evans and motioned to him
to rise. The first man beckoned to Dick to do the same. The two
prisoners got upon their feet, trailing each a length of clanking
chain. Each of the two guards covered his captive with the glass rod
and motioned to him to precede him.
Choking with fury, Dick obeyed. He had taken a dozen steps with his
guard uttered a sharp command to halt, at the same time shouting some
word of command.
The edge of a door appeared, also seeming to materialize out of space.
It widened, and Dick realized that he was looking at the unpainted
inner side of a door whose outside was invisible. Beyond the door
appeared a flight of steps.
Dick passed through and descended them. He counted fifteen. He emerged
into a timbered underground passage, well lit with lamps, filled with
what seemed to be mercury vapor. Behind him walked his guard: behind
the guard he heard Luke Evans shambling. Both chains were clinking,
and again Dick's fury almost overcame him.
He controlled himself. He had no hope or desire for life, but he meant
to strike some sort of blow before he died, if it were possible.
They turned out of the timbered passage, Dick's guard now walking at
his side, the glass rod menacing his back. Dick found himself in a
large subterranean room of extraordinary character. The walls were not
merely timbered, but paneled. Pictures hung upon them, there were soft
rugs underfoot, there was antique furniture. Everything was in plain
sight.
* * * * *
There was a door at the farther end, from beyond which came the murmur
of voices. Two guards in the same black uniform, but without the
ornamental silver braid, stood to attention, long halberds in their
hands. One spoke a challenge.
The guard at Dick's side answered. The two men stepped backward, each
about two feet, and pulled the two cords on either side of a curtain
behind the open door. Dick passed through.
He stopped in sheer amazement. The gorgeousness of this larger room
into which he entered was almost stupefying. It seemed to have been
lifted bodily from some European palace. Mirrors with gilt edges ran
along the side. On the floor was a single huge rug of Oriental weave.
At the farther end was a throne of gilt, lined with red velvet in
which sat a man. An old man, of perhaps eighty years, with a grey
peaked beard and fierce, commanding features. On his head was a gold
crown glittering with gems. About him were gathered some twoscore men
and a few women.
Those ranged on either side of the throne wore, like its occupant,
robes of red, lined with ermine. The rank behind wore shorter robes,
less decorative, but no less extraordinary. They might all have
stepped out of some medieval court.
Behind this second line, and half-encircling them, were officers in
the black uniform with the silver braid.
There had been chattering, but as Dick passed through into the room it
was succeeded by complete silence. Dick fixed his eyes upon the old
man on the throne.
He knew him! Knew him for a once famous European ruler who had lost
his throne in the war. A man always of unbalanced mentality, who,
after living for years in exile, had been reported dead three years
before. A madman who had vanished to make this last attempt upon the
world, aided and abetted by the secret group of nobles who had
surrounded him in the days of his pomp and power.
* * * * *
Old men, all of those in the first line! Madmen too, perhaps, as
madness begets madness. Behind them, younger men, infected by the
strange malady, and enthusiastic for their desperate cause.
Yes, Dick knew this Invisible Emperor, lurking here in his underground
palace. He knew Von Kettler, too, in the second line, close to the
Emperor's throne. And, among the women in their robes, grouped
picturesquely about that throne, he knew Fredegonde Valmy.
Dark-haired beneath her coronet, of radiant beauty, she fixed her eyes
upon Dick's. Not a muscle of her face quivered.
Then only did Dick see something else, which he had not hitherto
observed, owing to its concealment by the robes of those grouped about
the Emperor, and the sight of it sent such a thrill of fury through
him that he stood where he was, unable to speak or move a muscle.
The throne was set on a sort of dais, with three steps in front of it.
The lowest of these steps was hollow. Within this hollow appeared the
head and shoulders of a man.
An elderly man clothed in parti-colored red and yellow, the
time-honored garment of court fools. He was on his hands and knees,
and the round of his back fitted into the hollow of the step, and had
a flat board over it, so that the Emperor, in ascending his throne,
would place his foot upon it.
He was kept in that position with heavy chains of what looked like
gold, which passed about his neck and arms, and fitted into heavy gold
staples in the wood. And the old man was President Hargreaves of the
United States!
* * * * *
The President of the American Republic, chained as a footstool for the
Invisible Emperor, the madman who defied the world. Dick stood
petrified, staring into the mild face of the old man, still incapable
of speech. Then a herald, carrying a long trumpet, to which a square
banner was attached, strode forward from one side of the grotesque
assemblage.
"Dog, on your knees when His Majesty deigns to admit you to the
Presence!" he shouted.
The guard at Dick's side prodded him with his glass rod.
Then the storm of mad fury in Dick's heart released limbs and voice.
The cry that came from his lips was like nothing human. He leaped upon
the guard with a swift uppercut that sent him sprawling.
The glass rod slipped from his hands to the rug, striking the edge of
his shoe, and broke to fragments. A single streak of fire shot from
it, blasting a black streak across the Oriental rug.
Dick leaped toward the throne, and the assemblage, as if paralyzed by
his sudden maneuver, remained watching him without moving. Then a
woman screamed, and instantly the picturesque gathering had dissolved
into a mob placing itself about the person of the Emperor, who sprang
from his throne in agitation.
Dick was almost at the steps. But it was not at the Emperor that he
leaped. He sprang to Hargreaves's side. "Mr. President, I'm an
American," he babbled. "We've located this gang, we'll blow them off
the face of the earth. In chains--God, in chains, sir--"
Dick stumbled over the length of his own chain that he had been
dragging behind him--stumbled and fell prone upon the floor. Before he
could regain his feet they were upon him.
* * * * *
A dozen men were holding him, despite his mad, frenzied struggles, and
as, at length, he paused, exhausted, one of them, covering his head
with a glass rod, looked up at the Emperor, who had resumed his seat.
Dick calmed himself. Still gripped, he straightened his body, and gave
the mad monarch back look for look. For a moment the two men regarded
each other. Then a peal of laughter broke from the Invisible Emperor's
lips. And any one who heard that peal--any one save those accustomed
to him--might have known that it was a madman's laughter.
He flung back his head and laughed, and the whole crowd laughed too.
All those sycophants roared and chuckled--all except Fredegonde. It
was not till afterward that Dick remembered that.
He stood up. "Dog of an American," he roared, "do you know why you
were brought here? It was because I wanted one Yankee to live and see
the irresistible powers that I exercise, so that he can go back and
report on them to those fools in Washington who still think they can
defy me, the messenger of the All-Highest.
"I tell you that the things I have done are nothing in comparison with
the things that I have yet to do, if your insane government of
pig-headed fools persists in its defiance. It is my plan to send you
back to tell them that their President lies bound in gold chains as my
footstool. That the hurricane which spread the gas through southern
America was a mere summer zephyr in comparison with the storm that I
shall send next.
* * * * *
"All the resources of Nature are at my command thanks to the
illustrious chemists who have been secretly working for the past ten
years to serve me. I, the All-Highest, have been commanded by the
Almighty to scourge the world for its insolence in rejecting me, and
especially the pig-race of Yankees whose pride has grown so great.
Mine is the divinely appointed task to cast down your ridiculous
democracies and re-establish the divine world-order of an Emperor and
his nobility.
"That is why I have chosen, to permit so mean a thing as you to live.
As for the old fool beside you, who thought to stay my power with his
box of tricks--his gas-box is already being analyzed by my chemists,
and in a few hours the trivial secret will be at my disposal."
"And that's just where you're wrong," piped old Luke Evans in his
cracked voice. "That gas can't be analyzed, because it contains an
unknown isotope, and, as for yourself, you're nothing but a daft old
fool, with your tin-horn trumpery!"
For a moment the Emperor stood like a statue, staring at old Luke. The
expression on his face was that of a madman, but a madman through
whose brain a straggling ray of realization has dawned. It was the
look upon his face that held the whole assemblage spellbound. Then
suddenly came intervention.
Through a doorway in the side of the hall came one of the officers in
black. He advanced to the foot of the throne and made a deep, hurried
bow, speaking rapidly in some language incomprehensible to Dick.
The Emperor started, and then a peal of laughter left his lips.
"Pig of a Yankee," he shouted to Dick, "your contemptible navy's now
approaching our shores, with a dirigible scout above it. You shall now
see how I deal with such swine!"