It was “afterward.” There could be no doubt of that. His Highness, so
far as Dolores was concerned, had retired into one of his silences. He
must be enraged with her for her interference in the pool play. But for
what could he be waiting?
True, the concession for which she had offered to pay any price was
no longer an issue. There was no need now for her to be put in spirit
connection with Earth, even had she not discovered that her own
concentrated will could accomplish the projection--that the dead might
return to their quondam surroundings, ruling and being ruled through
senses stronger far than physical. Could she sooner have realized this
of the strange laws which governed her present state of existence, what
heart-hurts of foreboding and regret she might have spared John and
herself!
Not for an hour of the days and nights since the failure of that
“Greatest Show” had she forgotten that the time set for her own answer
as to her fate was approaching. On this afternoon--the sixth of those
allotted “seven days of disgrace”--she felt herself no nearer decision
than before the end of her séances.
She tried not to dread. Dread shriveled the soul; would mar her
progress. And she was determined now to progress, despite her sentence
to Gehenna. Hope was the immortal soul of love. Once John had joined
her, no law of the lowlands could kill their hope.
So the girl-shade was happy in her deplorable state as she never had
been happy when the gateway of the mortal world had opened to her
youthful tread. He whom she loved loved her. That was the lyric of
her song of the soul. Deep-chording into the accompaniment was her
absolute knowledge of his worthiness. Expectancy played a running
obbligato through each measure, with here and there a trill of errant
joy. He was coming, John; must by now be nearing the end of that long,
drear journey from Earth to Shadow Land.
Every hour helped now. From far away, whispers of the altruistic
philosophy she had taught young Jack Cabot penetrated her moods. How
better prepare for the eventualities of to-morrow than by good cheer
to-day? Since all the to-morrows must come disguised as to-days, she
would make the best of the here and now.
A bit advanced were such ideas for the shell-pink ear of her infant,
yet to the wee-shade she murmured them this late afternoon while out
for a stroll. Although Adeline accompanied her, she herself carried the
spirit-child to save the maid’s pride.
Their practice had been to take their evening walks through the Garden
of Bad Luck. To-day, for the first time Dolores chose the Avenue
of Locusts, which led from the palace direct to the Limbian Gates.
The ex-great lady protested against walking beside her mistress,
even when ordered to do so, on the plea that she must work out her
term of degradation. The young mother’s hopeful adjurations to the
instinct-fretted babe seemed only to increase her bitterness.
How could m’lady benefit, Adeline demanded in French, even though her
lover did come through the gates that eventide? Her own husband’s
pretense to care for her was only the last-lingering impulse of
self-protection. He was assuming the virtue of constancy though he
had it not. But he would rue the attempt, since he was insulting, not
only her intelligence but that of the Mind Prince as well. M’lady must
remember the rule of the realm; must clear her mind of the heresy of
earthly ideals, lest they become known and she punished therefor. She
would be saved a shock could she but realize beforehand that the lover
she had loved would hate her even as she him. In Gehenna he and she
who had caused each other’s fall would be, indeed, bad met.
“See yonder warehouse beyond the wall?” Adeline pointed out a low
structure. “There is checked all such superfluous baggage as love. Only
hate may be brought within.”
Dolores wondered that so small a building could store the lingering
loves of the Hadean hordes. Before she could comment, there came to
them from the entrance of the wireless station just inside the gate a
high shriek rent by a deeper staccato of laughter. Down the steps and
directly into her path came rolling what looked an oversized foot-ball.
Close followed His Evil Majesty himself. In one hand he waved a knout
with snapping lashes. The laughter was his and more cruel than his
instrument of torture.
After handing over her babe to Adeline and commanding a quick retreat,
Dolores hurried toward the ball, which was unwinding as it rolled.
Its arms, legs and head proved to belong to a male _manes_, terrified
beyond coherency. By the time Satan reached them with knout upraised,
she had pushed the wretch behind her and started him after the
noble-maid. Beyond a stinging of her consciousness, she did not feel
the blow that fell. Almost at once she recovered; was able to face His
Highness with calm inquiry.
“What has he done to deserve this attack?”
“_Done?_” Satan’s voice crackled as had the whip. “Shouldn’t the chief
inter-world operator know better than to retail me bad tidings? Out of
my way--I’m highly charged!”
“No.” Dolores stood firm.
“You’d rather I’d experiment on you?”
“Yes.”
“Best look out, unless you want to be blinded until Judgment.”
She was able to disregard the Boss Bully’s warning by centering her
mind upon her great happiness. _He had been love-worthy, John._
“You can’t strike me blind,” she said.
Into the confidence of the purple-black eyes uplifted to his Satan
scowled.
“You’d not be blind. You’d only think you were because I say so and
my mind is stronger than yours. Everything is a thought down here, as
you must have learned ere this--just a bad thought.” With the lash in
mid-air he added: “But, thank me, you can’t kill a bad thought.”
As her hair was lifting to the magnet of the knout, he dropped it. The
respite, however, was not for mercy’s sake.
“You didn’t change expression. You don’t cringe. Why?”
“Pain is a coward’s thought. I know that you, Augustness, cannot hurt
me.”
Interestedly he contemplated her and this, her first open defiance.
“You’re smarter than I thought. You have a certain regardlessness that
is the next-best thing to conscious power.”
“I have,” she said, “faith that----”
“_Faith?_” he jeered. “Then I have it, too--faith that I’ll do my
damnedest. I cannot hurt you physically, no. But I hold a record for
hurting minds that may cause you to reconsider.”
“Not while I believe that all will be well with me.” The voice of her
contention sounded like the balmy winds of spring, to which nor man nor
devil may say nay.
Perhaps her glance toward the gates suggested the source of her
beatitude. Perhaps he sensed it from his own irritation. He passed her
point to level one of his own.
“And has this belief absolute padded your senses against the fact that
I am displeased with you, she-fool? Don’t worry. I never let personal
prejudice interfere with The Cause. This faith-theory is valuable with
the reverse English put on it. As a science, it has done considerable
harm to the religions of the world. I’ve been waiting until your week
was up. Why not have it now--your answer?”
“My answer to--to----”
“To my indecent proposition that you organize the vice of womanhood.
Are you going to take that Low Priestess job?”
“I have until to-morrow to decide.”
“True. And you hope meantime that your love-hound will come barking at
our Avernian door. Oh, don’t deny it! Why else should you be hanging
’round the gates? Why else should I?”
“But you said the judgments of men would never send a hero here.”
Stooping to recover his electric lash, Satan used it to punctuate his
reply. “I’m hoping against hope, just as you are. If only he would be
sent this way--_ah!_ My latest wireless from Earth, however, leads me
to fear not. The newspapers are headlined with his heroism. Imbecile
earthlings are going to erect a memorial to him. And, would you
believe it, that hunting parson of yours has used your friend’s death
as a stepping-stone out of the muddle-puddle of his ecclesiastical
disrepute? With Cabot as his text, he preached to thousands in Central
Park, exampling himself through the viciously attacked philanthropist
who, although proved guilty of weakness of the flesh, rose to the moral
strength of a god in an emergency. Get the idea? His plea is for all
men who have been dragged down by women. Should not he know that Cabot
was too greatly tried, since the same she-devil ruined him with his
church? You recognize the allusion? The prayers he sent up for the soul
of his fellow victim were indirectly for himself. As a result he is to
head the new Church of the Broad-Minded. Could you beat it--or him?”
At her consternation, he chuckled enjoyably.
“How the people of Earth like to bunk themselves! But you look fogged.
Is your faith getting cured? Care to come into the receiving room and
sit while you wait? I left some unfinished business.”
As they mounted the steps of the stone-like structure, he added a
mental lash to her punishment.
“You remember, of course, the lawyer who lost Mrs. Cabot’s divorce
case? Last you saw of him, in ‘The Turn-Turtle,’ he was being thrown
out of his profession for mal-practicing that delicate art called
‘double-crossing.’ The timely birth of your ill-begot, with fatherhood
pinned on John Cabot by Seff’s testimony and the guilty admission of
your suicide, was a-plenty and to spare to ruin Rufus Holt. But along
comes that judge you tricked, Roscoe Strang, of the good-sport tie.
He has Holt’s case re-opened and carries through a daring example of
man-to-man friendliness.”
From his belt he took the paper-like slip on which wireless messages
were sent down by Gehennan operators.
“Let’s see just what he testified, this brotherly judge. Oh yes; ‘The
accused did bring the Trent girl to me, but to let me judge of her
guilt. She looked so pure that I was not convinced and stood, as I
stand now, on my right to judge. If fault there was, that fault was
mine.’ After that, there was nothing for the Bar Association to do but
open their arms to the brother they had misjudged.”
“I am glad,” Dolores said. “For a time I blamed Rufus Holt for my
sufferings. But he tried to be a true friend to John.”
“I dare say,” sneered Satan as he opened the station door, “and made
a mess of it, as true friends usually do. At that, you’ve got a good
start with him and can use him in our new campaign.”
Within, an operator wearing a receiving head-dress, sat among his
instruments. Beside a window which commanded a view of the entrance,
His Highness placed a chair for her.
“The gates will open soon,” he advised. “Watch the new arrivals trickle
in and call me in case you catch sight of your John. I am pardonably
impatient to meet him.”
To sink into the chair was a relief. At sight of the preparations
outside which the pigmy ushers were making for the reception of the
evening’s recruits, Dolores’ mental pulse accelerated. She strove for
the strong thoughts which lately had sustained her and tried to keep
out of her expression the pinch of hope long deferred.
“Are these likenesses, sweet Grief?”
Turning, she found Satan at her elbow, offering her half-a-dozen
sepia-like photographs. She took them; looked; exclaimed:
“John--_wonderful!_ And this is Catherine at her best. How splendid of
dear Clarke Shayle! Rufus Holt, too. Have you had them made for me? But
why include these of Vincent Seff and Dr. Willard? I’d rather forget
them.”
“Does the murderer forget the features of the slain? Nay, fair
assassin, you won’t need this collection for your dressing table to
remember your victims. These are stills selected from our stock of
life-films. I am glad you pronounce them such likenesses, for I’m
sending them up to old Mors of the Mystery Gate to hang in his rogues’
gallery.”
“To Mors?”
Satan nodded. “I mean to put a stop-order on the lot, in case any of
them come through ticketed to Elysium. I need their kind down here.”
“But I thought it was written in the tome called Judgments of Men where
shades should spend the time until the Call,” she puzzled. “Doesn’t
each enter his new estate as he left the old? Must not his Earth record
hold?”
His Highness frowned at the reminder. “Just because a rule never has
been broken is no reason why it never will be. I may try, mayn’t I?
Queer if I can’t frighten Mors into making a few exceptions.” He turned
to the operator. “Get the old ghoul. I would a word with him.”
The connection soon was made. Ensued a brief exchange, but one so
vehement that the operator cautioned his master to calm down, lest he
blow out all the fuses about the place.
“There is one of them I must have, old-timer,” Satan continued less
offensively. “John Cabot by name and physiognomy. Likely to come
through this very night.... _What_ ... What for, in the name of
Hell?... Gallantry on Earth, eh?... Death, you’re a choicer fool than
your sister Birth!”
As he banged the receiver on its hook, Dolores arose.
“John has gone on--up into Elysium?” Her voice was more faint from
surprise than his had been strong. “He won’t--- come down--this way?”
At the nod which His Highness spared her from his rage, she crossed the
room, went out the door and down the steps. She was well along the path
when he caught up with and stopped her.
“A word to the unwise,” said he. “To be without a job is an
embarrassing situation anywhere--particularly so down here. Your fancy
position as First Royal Entertainer has come to an end. You’ll do well
to take on the next best thing that offers, lest your ability become
discredited. I really believe you’re the ablest she-devil ever given a
chance to work out her own damnation. You have unique powers, but there
is no personal power that cannot be destroyed. And I am the Destroyer.”
“This position you offer is so--is very difficult,” the girl-soul
protested.
“Isn’t everything worth while difficult? And you are very clever,
although in ways that may be used for or against you. On Earth you
failed, just as badly managed talent often fails. Here I, the Boss
Producer of a play called Sin, stand ready to star you in a success
such as you, with your present limitations, cannot conceive. Already
you know something of me----”
Dolores interrupted, although haltingly. “I know that you are--that
you, too, are difficult.”
“At least that.” He bowed, as if thanking her. “Since it confuses you
to consider me, pray consider yourself. It is plain that you’ve been,
like myself, wrong since birth. Count the men you’ve ruined, every one
of whom turned to good works after your influence was removed. Think
of what you did--the first earth-law for women that you broke. What
you’ve needed is a manager just a shade worse-minded than yourself. Now
you’re offered one and a chance such as no vampire of Earth or Hell
ever aspired to. It is a position fitted to the applicant, as your
employment-agency friend, _née_ Shinn, would say. What more ambitious
rôle could you find than arousing the worst, not in one, but in all the
men controlled by women in the world?”
She drew her arm from his detaining clutch. “I have, you know,
until----”
“Very well. I’ll wait. But mind you, there’ll be no extension of time.
Yes or no, and Hell help you if it be no! I want to get you started, so
that I can give my own energies to the incipient race riots in America.
Great field for trouble. All the wealth of the world is there, with
the basest traitors cast out of other countries to misuse it. Go home,
since you must have that last day of disgrace. But be ready with your
answer to-morrow.”
Like well-aimed shot, the syllables riddled Dolores’ brain. A wounded
doe, she hurried on her way to cover.
_To-morrow._
* * * * *
That night while she lay bleeding of her heart wound, Dolores roused
to the perception of an unaccustomed metallic sound. She realized
that, for some time, she had been hearing it. Tap, tap, _tap_--it now
increased in peremptoriness. Someone must be trying to attract her
attention from outside the window.
She sat up among her pillows of satin sheen. By the sulphuric glow of
the night-light, she saw that it was after one o’clock, three long
hours since Adeline had tip-toed out.
After one and _to-morrow_----
The face of the sardonyx-like clock seemed to grin back at her in
anticipation of the seventh--said to be the perfect day. “The faith of
fools--the faith of fools!” it ticked away.
Until she knew that John was not to join her, she had failed to
appreciate how greatly she was relying upon his assistance and advice.
To choose between His Majesty’s diabolic assignment and the ingenious
torments to which she and her babe would be subjected became the more
impossible the longer she considered.
Were she what she once had been, expectant of the best because
all-ignorant of the worst, she would have decided, without a moment’s
hesitation, upon what she knew to be right. But knowledge was
weakening. Constant association with sin and suffering wore away
the best intentions. To struggle against fore-assured failure until
the negligent hopes of Gehenna changed to fear and fear changed, to
despair----
She covered her eyes from the suggestive leer of the clock-face and
sank back into the veil of her crepe-black hair.
“Amor ... Innocentia ... Where are you?”
“Tap! _Tap!_”
As though in answer to her stifled sob of loneliness, the metallic
sound was repeated on the pane. Could they be without, the comrades of
her youth, come to console her even before she called? Into _peignoir_
and mules she hurried; crossed the room; threw wide the casement.
“Who is it? Who is there?”
“Sh--hush!”
In the answering rasp sounded neither the lilt of Innocentia nor the
fearlessness of the love-lad Amor. From out the deep shadows that
hugged the palace wall limped the lately-promoted General Cummings.
More spectral than seemed consistent with his brief lapse from
mortality he looked as he crossed the sill. From his once tranquil eyes
shone the hell-haunted look of the archaics. His kindly old face was
stretched and blanched.
“What has happened to you, Corporal Sam?” Dolores’ tones sounded her
distress at the change in him.
Before replying he drew the window hangings and dimmed the night lamp.
“No one must discover I’m here. They say His Highness knows everything
that goes on in the palace, but I have risked it. You seem the only
chance of saving us.”
From the edge of the bed, Dolores focused her amazement upon the
doughty soldier-soul. “Saving you--from what?”
“From his Great Intention.” Old Sam’s voice shivered into a whisper.
“You don’t understand? I’ve heard that even the prime minister is not
in his confidence. But I hoped that you had wormed it out of him. Since
I understood, I haven’t rested day nor night, although there’s little
I can do. You have no idea what a hold he’s got on those fight-fiends.
I don’t want to hurt your feelings, miss, that is to say ma’am, but
from the reports of your séances you’ve turned some mighty powerful
mortal minds topsy-turvy. For your own sake, for the sake of God
Himself--wouldn’t you be willing to try?”
“To try just what?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” Stiff from apprehension, the old
_manes’_ lips formed clumsily to his revelation. “His Lowness aims to
march into the Fields before Judgment, conquer the Elysiumites and hurl
the Great-I-Am from His throne. Don’t you understand yet? _He aims to
set himself on high as God-of-all!_”
“Oh, but he can’t do that! How _could_ he conquer God?”
“You wouldn’t be so sure could you see how those hordes take to
training. Every decent impulse is drilled out of them. The kind of
frightfulness he’s planning makes a lately mortal brain reel. Ma’am, I
calculate that he’s going to win.”
“No! The Great-I-Am would not let him.”
At the girl-shade’s vehemence the old soul waggled his head, in his
eyes the shadow of horrors that might not be forgot.
“You’ve seen wrong conquer right on Earth, or you wouldn’t be here.
I’ve lost all hope unless--From what I hear I wasn’t so far off about
his having a weakness for you. In camp every officer has his joke about
the modern Delilah that’s destroying the Destroyer. All Gehenna is
talking over his neglect of affairs of state to amuse you with shows
and such. Not once of late has he been to most of the sham battles that
he used to review daily.”
“I am afraid you overrate----”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but that’s the best. The worst can’t be overrated.
You see, they call him the Hope of Hell. His hold on the hordes is
that, if they drive on to victory in the great offensive, they win
eternal release. They fight for themselves, not him. If they lose,
they’ll be the first cast into the bottomless pit forever and ever,
amen. If they win, he’ll give them rank and estates in the new
autocracy of universal, everlasting, licensed crime. I don’t fear for
myself so much. I and even you might sink low enough to get by without
exciting suspicion that we’re unsympathetic. It’s the Elysiumites that
are going to suffer. Miss, can’t you imagine what a Satanic victory
would mean to a gentle spirit like----”
To hide his emotion Old Sam covered his face with both hands.
“My Mary Gertrude never was mistreated in her life. But I wouldn’t put
it past these helliot hordes to----”
Dolores shuddered. “The damned masters and the blessed their slaves?”
“You begin to understand. Isn’t there someone up there that you feel
grateful to--someone you’d hate to see----”
“My mother died to give me life,” the spirit-girl breathed. “And my
father must be with her. He’s not down here. Intemperance, you know, is
considered a disease, not a crime, in the eyes of men. And then there’s
little Jack Cabot. He seemed really to trust every word I told him
about his reward if he did what was right. I couldn’t bear to see poor,
crippled Jack----”
General Sam nodded. “It comes home, doesn’t it, ma’am, when you think
of those you love?”
“_Love?_” With the word, Dolores threw up her head. Into the veteran’s
pale eyes her dark ones gloomed. “Already the King hates the one I
love. If Satan should come into this limitless power, what torments he
would devise for the great soul of John Cabot!”
A sound startled them. The soldier-shade hobbled toward the window
by which he had entered, motioning her to follow. Before opening the
shutter, he whispered:
“I’d best go. I dare not come again and there’s no way I can help you.
You’ll have to make up your own mind what to do. Only remember there
isn’t much time. He’s nigh about ready to strike. God A’mighty give you
wisdom, ma’am.”
He had wrung her hand. Almost was he over the sill when a blinding
flash struck at him from out the drab-dim night. Not a sound escaped
him. Not so much as a clutch at the air stayed his fall. His right hand
raised to his cap visor in his old-time salute. Then backward he fell
upon the floor.
When Dolores’ eyes had recovered from their momentary confusion, she
saw His Majesty standing just without. His pleased look reminded her of
the fearing wretch she had saved from a like attack yesterday. Only the
hope born of her happiness had defeated his power to hurt her. Although
not happy now, she was far from despair. Should he turn next on her,
only faith could save her. She must believe that, despite appearances
on Earth and in Shadow Land, good was stronger than evil.
He stepped aside, the King; glanced at the procumbent figure; smiled
his attractive smile.
“Damme if one can count upon the taste feminine!”
The cynicism he addressed to the double of himself that showed in
the nearest mercurized pier-panel of her chamber. For a moment he
contemplated the dim reflection of his splendid proportions, the
clean-cut features of his infernally youthful face and the perfection
of his evening attire.
“Is no age or fraction of he-man safe from you?” he commented.
“So _this_ is why he always plead your cause, why I caught him
_rendezvousing_ with you in the garden, why he talked me down? These
shallow-looking folk, forsooth, are the deep ones.”
“Your Lowness--” Dolores approached him with blaze-indignant
eyes--“surely you do not assume that I or General Sam----”
“I never assume. I know the worst. That’s my power. I ought to be
disgusted with you, and yet----” He considered her face almost as
interestedly as he had his own. The charm of his smile increased. He
added: “I’ve often noticed that men never get disgusted with the lady
in the case. But I’ll make a horrible example of that broken-winged old
moth, lured here by your light, for benefit of other mashers. Have to
protect your promiscuous stamp of vamp from the outside.”
That he was angrier than he sounded was suggested by the snap of his
fingers toward the window. Into the chamber sprang a pair of the palace
guards.
“Nerve shock--_boomeranged_.” Laconically His Highness gestured toward
the soldier-soul. “Lay him out in the Revival Room. See you handle him
gently until I advise you what particular form his mistreatment is to
take. I must work out something especially effective.”
He followed to the casement, as the stalwarts carried out the victim of
his inviolate will. There he turned, as though chancing to remember the
recipient of the two nocturnal calls.
“Miss or madame, I wish you good morrow. As your--ah--friend was saying
at the moment of my interruption, remember that there isn’t much time.
Think things over.”
Dolores took the repeated advice. Through the long, vague hours of the
Avernian dawn she did think things over; thought and thought.
His Highness said she had power. Indeed, she must have power, else she
could not have flouted, even in small ways, his mastery. But hers was
not the power for sin which he ascribed to her. Long ago a brilliant
lawyer had toasted it as “truth.” Before that she herself had called it
“sincerity.” She knew before trying that she should fail at the task
of rousing the worst in women, when their best had been her Earth-life
ideal.
Since nothing in all the universe was meant to be wasted--not a throb
of heart or thought of mind--why had she been given power? To lose it
in the chaos of disappointment into which she had sunk after realizing
that John Cabot was not to come to her--that the sentences for the
same crime in man and his woman were not necessarily the same? She
had been anticipating Hell. Although the time before That Day might
be short, she might yet earn progression; perhaps might go to John,
since he had not come to her. Suppose she had the right with everyman
to draw upon the exhaustless supply of strength which they claimed was
God---- Suppose she could possess more and still more of this power of
sincerity----
Stronger than the gleams of the up-rising electric sun grew her
determination; brighter her hope; realer her faith. The Rex of
Reversals did not know everything, else would he have realized ere this
that he could not conquer her. And he _had_ some sort of weakness for
her. Otherwise he’d have crushed her long ago. In the present emergency
she would seem to yield to him. She would match power against power,
wit against wit, subtlety against subtlety. She would take the case of
the women of the world, but take it, as had Rufus Holt that of Cabot
_versus_ Cabot, to lose. By stress of her own emotion she had learned
that only spiritual strength was necessary to communicate with Earth.
That discovery should not be wasted. Over the official wireless through
the days would she command evils. In the night-time, with only her own
yearning soul as sending station and the souls of Earth’s sad women as
receivers, would she counter-command.
Perhaps the time would be shorter than General Cummings feared or His
Majesty hoped. Perhaps The Call would sound before he found her out.
And if she was insincere toward her enemy, it would be that she might
be the more sincere toward her friends. A judge of Earth had absolved
her of guilt at first sight because he saw in her face that her motive
was innocent. Surely the Great Judge would be as keen.
As for the unspeakable thing known, without being known, as The Great
Intention, that also might she delay and divert. On Earth she had
been called a menace to men. If wiles enough remained at her command,
now that she needed them to save rather than destroy herself--if the
value of her favors did not decrease with deliberate use of them--she
soon would have the soldier messenger set free. With or without him,
however, she would find ways to weaken the King’s hold upon his
military. While Satan was giving the whole of his intelligence to
inciting riot among the mixed races of her own America she would be
sowing schism among the condemned who had been drafted and branded into
the Hadean armies.
The truth ought to be spreading propaganda. With what little she could
disseminate on Earth and the much she must begin at once to spread in
Gehenna----
Adeline’s tap on her door announced that what couldn’t happen had
happened--that she had caught up with the elusive to-morrow. But
sufficient unto the seventh day was the enlightenment thereof.
Dolores was ready at last with her answer.