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, but _reversed_. 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.
I could see him through the grid, and then I flung myself upon the
corkscrew ladder, grasping the rails with my hands until the skin was
burnt from them, disdaining the steps and spinning round and ever
downwards like a great top.
As I went my head projected at right angles to my body. As I buzzed down
that sickening height I saw that Zorilla had stopped. I knew that he
had come to one of the steel gates, at which he was fumbling uselessly.
Then, as I came to the last step before the little gate platform I saw
also, under the curve of the stair, a huddled figure, and I knew who
_that_ was, who that had been....
I threw myself at Zorilla with my knee in the small of his back.
Instantly I caught him round the throat with my fingers just on the big
veins behind the ear which supply the brain with blood, and my fingers
crushed the trachea until the whole supple throat seemed breaking under
the molding of my grip.
I felt that I had got him. That if I could hold out for a minute he
would be dead, but I hadn't reckoned with the immense muscular force of
the body.
I clung like the leopard on the buffalo, but he began to sway this way
and that. In front of us was the steel gate and the motionless figure of
Pu-Yi. We were struggling upon the steel grid, not much larger than a
tea table. A slight rail only three feet high defended us from the
void--a little thigh-high rail between us and a drop of near two
thousand feet.
He lurched to the left, and I swung out into immensity, carried on his
back. I was sure it was the end, that I should be flung off into space,
when with one arm he gripped the gate, braced all his great strength and
slowly dragged us back into equilibrium. It seemed that the whole tower
trembled, vibrated in a horrible, metallic music.
I pressed down my thumbs, I strained every sinew of my wrist and arm in
the strangle hold, and I felt the life pulsing out of him in steady
throbs. There was nothing else in the world now but myself and him and I
ground my teeth and clutched harder.
In his death agony he lurched to the other side of our tiny foothold
space. This was where the circular stairway ended. He caught his foot,
so I was told afterwards, in the last stanchion of the stair, fell over
the rail with a low, sobbing groan, and then, weighted by me upon his
shoulders, began to slip, slip, slip, downwards.
And I with him.
I had conquered. I don't think that in that moment I had any feeling but
one of wild, fierce joy. He was going, I was going with him, but I never
thought of that, until my right ankle was clutched in a vice-like grip.
I felt the warm, heaving body below me rush away, tearing my grip from
its throat by its own dreadful impetus, and then, as I was snatched back
with a jar of every bone in my body, there was a shrill whistling of air
for a second as Zorilla went headlong to his doom, and I knew nothing
else.