He bent his head as if listening. From far off seemed to come a hum of
guttural voices. His lips writhed in a smile.
"My black children," he murmured. "They tear my enemy Gordon to pieces
in the tunnels. They, Mr. Costigan, are my real henchmen and it was for
their edification tonight that I laid John Gordon on the sacrificial
stone. I would have preferred to have made some experiments with him,
based on certain scientific theories, but my children must be humored.
Later under my tutelage they will outgrow their childish superstitions
and throw aside their foolish customs, but now they must be led gently
by the hand.
"How do you like these under-the-earth corridors, Mr. Costigan?" he
switched suddenly. "You thought of them--what? No doubt that the white
savages of your Middle Ages built them? Faugh! These tunnels are older
than your world! They were brought into being by mighty kings, too many
eons ago for your mind to grasp, when an imperial city towered where
now this crude village of London stands. All trace of that metropolis
has crumbled to dust and vanished, but these corridors were built by
more than human skill--ha ha! Of all the teeming thousands who move
daily above them, none knows of their existence save my servants--and
not all of them. Zuleika, for instance, does not know of them, for of
late I have begun to doubt her loyalty and shall doubtless soon make of
her an example."
At that I hurled myself blindly against the side of the cage, a red
wave of hate and fury tossing me in its grip. I seized the bars and
strained until the veins stood out on my forehead and the muscles
bulged and crackled in my arms and shoulders. And the bars bent before
my onslaught--a little but no more, and finally the power flowed from
my limbs and I sank down trembling and weakened. Kathulos watched me
imperturbably.
"The bars hold," he announced with something almost like relief in his
tone. "Frankly, I prefer to be on the opposite side of them. You are a
human ape if there was ever one."
He laughed suddenly and wildly.
"But why do you seek to oppose me?" he shrieked unexpectedly. "Why
defy me, who am Kathulos, the Sorcerer, great even in the days of the
old empire? Today, invincible! A magician, a scientist, among ignorant
savages! Ha ha!"
I shuddered, and sudden blinding light broke in on me. Kathulos himself
was an addict, and was fired by the stuff of his choice! What hellish
concoction was strong enough, terrible enough to thrill the Master and
inflame him, I do not know, nor do I wish to know. Of all the uncanny
knowledge that was his, I, knowing the man as I did, count this the
most weird and grisly.
"You, you paltry fool!" he was ranting, his face lit supernaturally.
"Know you who I am? Kathulos of Egypt! Bah! They knew me in the old
days! I reigned in the dim misty sea lands ages and ages before the
sea rose and engulfed the land. I died, not as men die; the magic
draft of life everlasting was ours! I drank deep and slept. Long I
slept in my lacquered case! My flesh withered and grew hard; my blood
dried in my veins. I became as one dead. But still within me burned
the spirit of life, sleeping but anticipating the awakening. The great
cities crumbled to dust. The sea drank the land. The tall shrines and
the lofty spires sank beneath the green waves. All this I knew as I
slept, as a man knows in dreams. Kathulos of Egypt? Faugh! _Kathulos of
Atlantis!_"