"Don't you recognize me? Let me in, curse you."
I think the very boldness of the trick made for its success. Surely by
now all the Scorpion's slaves knew of Stephen Costigan's rebellion,
knew that he was marked for death. And the very fact that I came there,
inviting doom, confused the doorman.
The door opened and I entered. The man who had admitted me was a tall,
lank Chinaman I had known as a servant of Kathulos. He closed the door
behind me and I saw we stood in a sort of vestibule, lighted by a
dim lamp whose glow could not be seen from the street for the reason
that the windows were heavily curtained. The Chinaman glowered at me
undecided. I looked at him, tensed. Then suspicion flared in his eyes
and his hand flew to his sleeve. But at the instant I was on him and
his lean neck broke like a rotten bough between my hands.
* * * * *
I eased his corpse to the thickly carpeted floor and listened. No sound
broke the silence. Stepping as stealthily as a wolf, fingers spread
like talons, I stole into the next room. This was furnished in Oriental
style, with couches and rugs and gold-worked drapery, but was empty
of human life. I crossed it and went into the next one. Light flowed
softly from the censers which were swung from the ceiling, and the
Eastern rugs deadened the sound of my footfalls; I seemed to be moving
through a castle of enchantment.
Every moment I expected a rush of silent assassins from the doorways
or from behind the curtains or screens with their writhing dragons.
Utter silence reigned. Room after room I explored and at last halted at
the foot of the stairs. The inevitable censer shed an uncertain light,
but most of the stairs were veiled in shadows. What horrors awaited me
above?
But fear and the elixir are strangers and I mounted that stair of
lurking terror as boldly as I had entered that house of terror. The
upper rooms I found to be much like those below and with them they had
this fact in common: they were empty of human life. I sought an attic
but there seemed no door letting into one. Returning to the first
floor, I made a search for an entrance into the basement, but again my
efforts were fruitless. The amazing truth was borne in upon me: except
for myself and the dead man who lay sprawled so grotesquely in the
outer vestibule, there were no men in that house, dead or living.
I could not understand it. Had the house been bare of furniture I
should have reached the natural conclusion that Kathulos had fled--but
no signs of flight met my eye. This was unnatural, uncanny. I stood in
the great shadowy library and pondered. No, I had made no mistake in
the houses. Even if the broken corpse in the vestibule were not there
to furnish mute testimony, everything in the room pointed toward the
presence of the Master. There were the artificial palms, the lacquered
screen, the tapestries, even the idol, though now no incense smoke rose
before it. About the walls were ranged long shelves of books, bound
in strange and costly fashion--books in every language in the world,
I found from a swift examination, and on every subject--outré and
bizarre, most of them.
Remembering the secret passage in the Temple of Dreams, I investigated
the heavy mahogany table which stood in the center of the room. But
nothing resulted. A sudden blaze of fury surged up in me, primitive
and unreasoning. I snatched a statuette from the table and dashed it
against the shelf-covered wall. The noise of its breaking would surely
bring the gang from their hiding-places. But the result was much more
startling than that!
The statuette struck the edge of a shelf and instantly the whole
section of shelves with their load of books swung silently outward,
revealing a narrow doorway! As in the other secret door, a row of steps
led downward. At another time I would have shuddered at the thought of
descending, with the horrors of that other tunnel fresh in my mind, but
inflamed as I was by the elixir, I strode forward without an instant's
hesitancy.
Since there was no one in the house, they must be somewhere in the
tunnel or in whatever lair to which the tunnel led. I stepped through
the doorway, leaving the door open; the police might find it that way
and follow me, though somehow I felt as if mine would be a lone hand
from start to grim finish.
I went down a considerable distance and then the stair debouched into a
level corridor some twenty feet wide--a remarkable thing. In spite of
the width, the ceiling was rather low and from it hung small, curiously
shaped lamps which flung a dim light. I stalked hurriedly along the
corridor like old Death seeking victims, and as I went I noted the work
of the thing. The floor was of great broad flags and the walls seemed
to be of huge blocks of evenly set stone. This passage was clearly no
work of modern days; the slaves of Kathulos never tunneled there. Some
secret way of mediæval times, I thought--and after all, who knows what
catacombs lie below London, whose secrets are greater and darker than
those of Babylon and Rome?
On and on I went, and now I knew that I must be far below the earth.
The air was dank and heavy, and cold moisture dripped from the stones
of walls and ceiling. From time to time I saw smaller passages leading
away in the darkness but I determined to keep to the larger main one.
A ferocious impatience gripped me. I seemed to have been walking for
hours and still only dank damp walls and bare flags and guttering lamps
met my eyes. I kept a close watch for sinister-appearing chests or the
like--saw no such things.
Then as I was about to burst into savage curses, another stair loomed
up in the shadows in front of me.
_19. Dark Fury_
"The ringed wolf glared the circle round
Through baleful, blue-lit eye,
Not unforgetful of his debt.
Quoth he, 'I'll do some damage yet
Or ere my turn to die!'"
--Mundy.
Like a lean wolf I glided up the stairs. Some twenty feet up there was
a sort of landing from which other corridors diverged, much like the
lower one by which I had come. The thought came to me that the earth
below London must be honeycombed with such secret passages, one above
the other.
Some feet above this landing the steps halted at a door, and here I
hesitated, uncertain as to whether I should chance knocking or not.
Even as I meditated, the door began to open. I shrank back against the
wall, flattening myself out as much as possible. The door swung wide
and a Moor came through. Only a glimpse I had of the room beyond, out
of the corner of my eye, but my unnaturally alert senses registered the
fact that the room was empty.
And on the instant, before he could turn, I smote the Moor a single
deathly blow behind the angle of the jawbone and he toppled headlong
down the stairs, to lie in a crumpled heap on the landing, his limbs
tossed grotesquely about.
My left hand caught the door as it started to slam shut and in an
instant I was through and standing in the room beyond. As I had
thought, there were no occupants of this room. I crossed it swiftly and
entered the next. These rooms were furnished in a manner before which
the furnishings of the Soho house paled into insignificance. Barbaric,
terrible, unholy--these words alone convey some slight idea of the
ghastly sights which met my eyes. Skulls, bones and complete skeletons
formed much of the decorations, if such they were. Mummies leered
from their cases and mounted reptiles ranged the walls. Between these
sinister relics hung African shields of hide and bamboo, crossed with
assagais and war daggers. Here and there reared obscene idols, black
and horrific.
And in between and scattered about among these evidences of savagery
and barbarism were vases, screens, rugs and hangings of the highest
Oriental workmanship; a strange and incongruous effect.
I had passed through two of these rooms without seeing a human being,
when I came to stairs leading upward. Up these I went, several flights,
until I came to a door in a ceiling. I wondered if I were still under
the earth. Surely the first stairs had let into a house of some sort.
I raised the door cautiously. Starlight met my eyes and I drew myself
warily up and out. There I halted. A broad flat roof stretched away
on all sides and beyond its rim on all sides glimmered the lights of
London. Just what building I was on, I had no idea, but that it was a
tall one I could tell, for I seemed to be above most of the lights I
saw. Then I saw that I was not alone.
Over against the shadows of the ledge that ran around the roof's edge,
a great menacing form bulked in the starlight. A pair of eyes glinted
at me with a light not wholly sane; the starlight glanced silver from a
curving length of steel. Yar Khan the Afghan killer fronted me in the
silent shadows.
A fierce wild exultation surged over me. Now I could begin to pay the
debt I owed Kathulos and all his hellish band! The dope fired my veins
and sent waves of inhuman power and dark fury through me. A spring and
I was on my feet in a silent, deathly rush.
Yar Khan was a giant, taller and bulkier than I. He held a tulwar, and
from the instant I saw him I knew that he was full of the dope to the
use of which he was addicted--heroin.
As I came in he swung his heavy weapon high in air, but ere he could
strike I seized his sword wrist in an iron grip and with my free hand
drove smashing blows into his midriff.
Of that hideous battle, fought in silence above the sleeping city with
only the stars to see, I remember little. I remember tumbling back and
forth, locked in a death embrace. I remember the stiff beard rasping
my flesh as his dope-fired eyes gazed wildly into mine. I remember the
taste of hot blood in my mouth, the tang of fearful exultation in my
soul, the onrushing and upsurging of inhuman strength and fury.
God, what a sight for a human eye, had anyone looked upon that grim
roof where two human leopards, dope maniacs, tore each other to pieces!
I remember his arm breaking like rotten wood in my grip and the tulwar
falling from his useless hand. Handicapped by a broken arm, the end was
inevitable, and with one wild uproaring flood of might, I rushed him
to the edge of the roof and bent him backward far out over the ledge.
An instant we struggled there; then I tore loose his hold and hurled
him over, and one single shriek came up as he hurtled into the darkness
below.
I stood upright, arms hurled up toward the stars, a terrible statue of
primordial triumph. And down my breast trickled streams of blood from
the long wounds left by the Afghan's frantic nails, on neck and face.
Then I turned with the craft of the maniac. Had no one heard the sound
of that battle? My eyes were on the door through which I had come, but
a noise made me turn, and for the first time I noticed a small affair
like a tower jutting up from the roof. There was no window there, but
there was a door, and even as I looked that door opened and a huge
black form framed itself in the light that streamed from within. Hassim!
He stepped out on the roof and closed the door, his shoulders hunched
and neck outthrust as he glanced this way and that. I struck him
senseless to the roof with one hate-driven smash. I crouched over him,
waiting some sign of returning consciousness; then away in the sky,
close to the horizon, I saw a faint red tint. The rising of the moon!
Where in God's name was Gordon? Even as I stood undecided, a strange
noise reached me. It was curiously like the droning of many bees.
Striding in the direction from which it seemed to come, I crossed the
roof and leaned over the ledge. A sight nightmarish and incredible met
my eyes.
Some twenty feet below the level of the roof on which I stood, there
was another roof, of the same size and clearly a part of the same
building. On one side it was bounded by the wall; on the other three
sides a parapet several feet high took the place of a ledge.
A great throng of people stood, sat and squatted, close-packed on the
roof--and without exception they were _negroes_! There were hundreds of
them, and it was their low-voiced conversation which I had heard. But
what held my gaze was that upon which their eyes were fixed.
About the center of the roof rose a sort of teocalli some ten feet
high, almost exactly like those found in Mexico and on which the
priests of the Aztecs sacrificed human victims. This, allowing for
its infinitely smaller scale, was an exact type of those sacrificial
pyramids. On the flat top of it was a curiously carved altar, and
beside it stood a lank, dusky form whom even the ghastly mask he wore
could not disguise to my gaze--Santiago, the Haiti voodoo fetish man.
On the altar lay John Gordon, stripped to the waist and bound hand and
foot, but conscious.
* * * * *
I reeled back from the roof edge, rent in twain by indecision. Even
the stimulus of the elixir was not equal to this. Then a sound brought
me about to see Hassim struggling dizzily to his knees. I reached him
with two long strides and ruthlessly smashed him down again. Then I
noticed a queer sort of contrivance dangling from his girdle. I bent
and examined it. It was a mask similar to that worn by Santiago. Then
my mind leaped swift and sudden to a wild desperate plan, which to my
dope-ridden brain seemed not at all wild or desperate. I stepped softly
to the tower and, opening the door, peered inward. I saw no one who
might need to be silenced, but I saw a long silken robe hanging upon a
peg in the wall. The luck of the dope fiend! I snatched it and closed
the door again. Hassim showed no signs of consciousness but I gave him
another smash on the chin to make sure and, seizing his mask, hurried
to the ledge.
A low guttural chant floated up to me, jangling, barbaric, with an
undertone of maniacal blood-lust. The negroes, men and women, were
swaying back and forth to the wild rhythm of their death chant. On the
teocalli Santiago stood like a statue of black basalt, facing the east,
dagger held high--a wild and terrible sight, naked as he was save for a
wide silken girdle and that inhuman mask on his face. The moon thrust a
red rim above the eastern horizon and a faint breeze stirred the great
black plumes which nodded above the voodoo man's mask. The chant of the
worshipers dropped to a low, sinister whisper.
I hurriedly slipped on the death mask, gathered the robe close about
me and prepared for the descent. I was prepared to drop the full
distance, being sure in the superb confidence of my insanity that I
would land unhurt, but as I climbed over the ledge I found a steel
ladder leading down. Evidently Hassim, one of the voodoo priests,
intended descending this way. So down I went, and in haste, for I knew
that the instant the moon's lower rim cleared the city's skyline, that
motionless dagger would descend into Gordon's breast.
Gathering the robe close about me so as to conceal my white skin, I
stepped down upon the roof and strode forward through rows of black
worshipers who shrank aside to let me through. To the foot of the
teocalli I stalked and up the stairs that ran about it, until I stood
beside the death altar and marked the dark red stains upon it. Gordon
lay on his back, his eyes open, his face drawn and haggard, but his
gaze dauntless and unflinching.
Santiago's eyes blazed at me through the slits of his mask, but I
read no suspicion in his gaze until I reached forward and took the
dagger from his hand. He was too much astonished to resist, and the
black throng fell suddenly silent. That he saw my hand was not that
of a negro it is certain, but he was simply struck speechless with
astonishment. Moving swiftly I cut Gordon's bonds and hauled him erect.
Then Santiago with a shriek leaped upon me--shrieked again and, arms
flung high, pitched headlong from the teocalli with his own dagger
buried to the hilt in his breast.
[Illustration: "Santiago pitched headlong from the teocalli."]
Then the black worshipers were on us with a screech and a roar--leaping
on the steps of the teocalli like black leopards in the moonlight,
knives flashing, eyes gleaming whitely.
I tore mask and robe from me and answered Gordon's exclamation with a
wild laugh. I had hoped that by virtue of my disguise I might get us
both safely away but now I was content to die there at his side.
He tore a great metal ornament from the altar, and as the attackers
came he wielded this. A moment we held them at bay and then they flowed
over us like a black wave. This to me was Valhalla! Knives stung me and
blackjacks smashed against me, but I laughed and drove my iron fists
in straight, steam-hammer smashes that shattered flesh and bone. I saw
Gordon's crude weapon rise and fall, and each time a man went down.
Skulls shattered and blood splashed and the dark fury swept over me.
Nightmare faces swirled about me and I was on my knees; up again and
the faces crumpled before my blows. Through far mists I seemed to hear
a hideous familiar voice raised in imperious command.
Gordon was swept away from me but from the sounds I knew that the work
of death still went on. The stars reeled through fogs of blood, but
hell's exaltation was on me and I reveled in the dark tide of fury
until a darker, deeper tide swept over me and I knew no more.
_20. Ancient Horror_
"Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a God self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead."
--Swinburne.
Slowly I drifted back into life--slowly, slowly. A mist held me and in
the mist I saw a Skull----
I lay in a steel cage like a captive wolf, and the bars were too
strong, I saw, even for my strength. The cage seemed to be set in
a sort of niche in the wall and I was looking into a large room.
This room was under the earth, for the floor was of stone flags and
the walls and ceilings were composed of gigantic blocks of the same
material. Shelves ranged the walls, covered with weird appliances,
apparently of a scientific nature, and more were on the great table
that stood in the center of the room. Beside this sat Kathulos.
The Sorcerer was clad in a snaky yellow robe, and those hideous hands
and that terrible head were more pronouncedly reptilian than ever. He
turned his great yellow eyes toward me, like pools of livid fire, and
his parchment-thin lips moved in what probably passed for a smile.