"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.