"Aye, the magician, the Sorcerer.
"And down the long years of savagery, through which the barbaric races
struggled to rise without their masters, the legend came of the day of
empire, when one of the Old Race would rise up from the sea. Aye, and
lead to victory the black people who were our slaves in the old days.
"These brown and yellow people, what care I for them? The blacks were
the slaves of my race, and I am their god today. They will obey me. The
yellow and the brown peoples are fools--I make them my tools and the
day will come when my black warriors will turn on them and slay at my
word. And you, you white barbarians, whose ape-ancestors forever defied
my race and me, your doom is at hand! And when I mount my universal
throne, the only whites shall be white slaves!
"The day came as prophesied, when my case, breaking free from the halls
where it lay--where it had lain when Atlantis was still sovran of the
world--where since her empery it had sunk into the green fathoms--when
my case, I say, was smitten by the deep sea tides and moved and
stirred, and thrust aside the clinging seaweed that masks temples
and minarets, and came floating up past the lofty sapphire and golden
spires, up through the green waters, to float upon the lazy waves of
the sea.
"Then came a white fool carrying out the destiny of which he was not
aware. The men on his ship, true believers, knew that the time had
come. And I--the air entered my nostrils and I awoke from the long,
long sleep. I stirred and moved and lived. And rising in the night,
I slew the fool that had lifted me from the ocean, and my servants
made obeisance to me and took me into Africa, where I abode awhile and
learned new languages and new ways of a new world and became strong.
"The wisdom of your dreary world--ha ha! I who delved deeper in the
mysteries of the old than any man dared go! All that men know today,
I know, and the knowledge beside that which I have brought down the
centuries is as a grain of sand beside a mountain! You should know
something of that knowledge! By it I lifted you from one hell to plunge
you into a greater! You fool, here at my hand is that which would lift
you from this! Aye, would strike from you the chains whereby I have
bound you!"
* * * * *
He snatched up a golden vial and shook it before my gaze. I eyed it as
men dying in the desert must eye the distant mirages. Kathulos fingered
it meditatively. His unnatural excitement seemed to have passed
suddenly, and when he spoke again it was in the passionless, measured
tones of the scientist.
"That would indeed be an experiment worth while--to free you of the
elixir habit and see if your dope-riddled body would sustain life. Nine
times out of ten the victim, with the need and stimulus removed, would
die--but you are such a giant of a brute----"
He sighed and set the vial down.
"The dreamer opposes the man of destiny. My time is not my own or I
should choose to spend my life pent in my laboratories, carrying out
my experiments. But now, as in the days of the old empire when kings
sought my counsel, I must work and labor for the good of the race at
large. Aye, I must toil and sow the seed of glory against the full
coming of the imperial days when the seas give up all their living
dead."
I shuddered. Kathulos laughed wildly again. His fingers began to drum
his chair arms and his face gleamed with the unnatural light once more.
The red visions had begun to seethe in his skull again.
"Under the green seas they lie, the ancient masters, in their lacquered
cases, dead as men reckon death, but only sleeping. Sleeping through
the long ages as hours, awaiting the day of awakening! The old masters,
the wise men, who foresaw the day when the sea should gulp the land,
and who made ready. Made ready that they might rise again in the
barbaric days to come. As did I. Sleeping they lie, ancient kings and
grim wizards, who died as men die, before Atlantis sank. Who, sleeping,
sank with her but who shall arise again!
"Mine the glory! I rose first. And I sought out the site of old cities,
on shores that did not sink. Vanished, long vanished. The barbarian
tide swept over them thousands of years ago as the green waters swept
over their elder sister of the deeps. On some the deserts stretch bare.
Over some, as here, young barbarian cities rise."
He halted suddenly. His eyes sought one of the dark openings that
marked a corridor. I think his strange intuition warned him of some
impending danger but I do not believe that he had any inkling of how
dramatically our scene would be interrupted.
As he looked, swift footsteps sounded and a man appeared suddenly in
the doorway--a man disheveled, tattered and bloody. _John Gordon!_
Kathulos sprang erect with a cry, and Gordon, gasping as from
superhuman exertion, brought down the revolver he held in his hand and
fired point-blank. Kathulos staggered, clapping his hand to his breast,
and then, groping wildly, reeled to the wall and fell against it. A
doorway opened and he reeled through, but as Gordon leaped fiercely
across the chamber, a blank stone surface met his gaze, which yielded
not to his savage hammerings.
He whirled and ran drunkenly to the table where lay a bunch of keys the
Master had dropped there.
"The vial!" I shrieked. "Take the vial!" And he thrust it into his
pocket.
Back along the corridor through which he had come sounded a faint
clamor growing swiftly like a wolf-pack in full cry. A few precious
seconds spent with fumbling for the right key, then the cage door swung
open and I sprang out. A sight for the gods we were, the two of us!
Slashed, bruised and cut, our garments hanging in tatters--my wounds
had ceased to bleed, but now as I moved they began again, and from the
stiffness of my hands I knew that my knuckles were shattered. As for
Gordon, he was fairly drenched in blood from crown to foot.
* * * * *
We made off down a passage in the opposite direction from the menacing
noise, which I knew to be the black servants of the Master in full
pursuit of us. Neither of us was in good shape for running, but we did
our best. Where we were going I had no idea. My superhuman strength had
deserted me and I was going now on will-power alone. We switched off
into another corridor and we had not gone twenty steps until, looking
back, I saw the first of the black devils round the corner.
A desperate effort increased our lead a trifle. But they had seen
us, were in full view now, and a yell of fury broke from them to
be succeeded by a more sinister silence as they bent all efforts to
overhauling us.
There a short distance in front of us we saw a stair loom suddenly in
the gloom. If we might reach that--but we saw something else.
Against the ceiling, between us and the stairs, hung a huge thing like
an iron grill, with great spikes along the bottom--a portcullis. And
even as we looked, without halting in our panting strides, it began to
move.
"They're lowering the portcullis!" Gordon croaked, his blood-streaked
face a mask of exhaustion and will.
Now the blacks were only ten feet behind us--now the huge grate,
gaining momentum, with a creak of rusty, unused mechanism, rushed
downward. A final spurt, a gasping straining nightmare of effort--and
Gordon, sweeping us both along in a wild burst of pure nerve-strength,
hurled us under and through, and the grate crashed behind us!
A moment we lay gasping, not heeding the frenzied horde who raved and
screamed on the other side of the grate. So close had that final leap
been, that the great spikes in their descent had torn shreds from our
clothing.
The blacks were thrusting at us with daggers through the bars, but we
were out of reach and it seemed to me that I was content to lie there
and die of exhaustion. But Gordon weaved unsteadily erect and hauled me
with him.
"Got to get out," he croaked; "got to warn--Scotland Yard--honeycombs
in heart of London--high explosives--arms--ammunition."
We blundered up the steps, and in front of us I seemed to hear a sound
of metal grating against metal. The stairs ended abruptly, on a landing
that terminated in a blank wall. Gordon hammered against this and the
inevitable secret doorway opened. Light streamed in, through the bars
of a sort of grille. Men in the uniform of London police were sawing at
these with hacksaws, and even as they greeted us, an opening was made
through which we crawled.
"You're hurt, sir!" One of the men took Gordon's arm.
My companion shook him off.
"There's no time to lose! Out of here, as quick as we can go!"
I saw that we were in a basement of some sort. We hastened up the steps
and out into the early dawn which was turning the east scarlet. Over
the tops of smaller houses I saw in the distance a great gaunt building
on the roof of which, I felt instinctively, that wild drama had been
enacted the night before.
"That building was leased some months ago by a mysterious Chinaman,"
said Gordon, following my gaze. "Office building originally--the
neighborhood deteriorated and the building stood vacant for some time.
The new tenant added several stories to it but left it apparently
empty. Had my eye on it for some time."
This was told in Gordon's jerky swift manner as we started hurriedly
along the sidewalk. I listened mechanically, like a man in a trance. My
vitality was ebbing fast and I knew that I was going to crumple at any
moment.
"The people living in the vicinity had been reporting strange sights
and noises. The man who owned the basement we just left heard queer
sounds emanating from the wall of the basement and called the police.
About that time I was racing back and forth among those cursed
corridors like a hunted rat and I heard the police banging on the wall.
I found the secret door and opened it but found it barred by a grating.
It was while I was telling the astounded policemen to procure a hacksaw
that the pursuing negroes, whom I had eluded for the moment, came into
sight and I was forced to shut the door and run for it again. By pure
luck I found you and by pure luck managed to find the way back to the
door.
"Now we must get to Scotland Yard. If we strike swiftly, we may capture
the entire band of devils. Whether I killed Kathulos or not I do not
know, or if he can be killed by mortal weapons. But to the best of my
knowledge all of them are now in those subterranean corridors and----"
At that moment the world shook! A brain-shattering roar seemed to break
the sky with its incredible detonation; houses tottered and crashed to
ruins; a mighty pillar of smoke and flame burst from the earth and on
its wings great masses of debris soared skyward. A black fog of smoke
and dust and falling timbers enveloped the world, a prolonged thunder
seemed to rumble up from the center of the earth as of walls and
ceilings falling, and amid the uproar and the screaming I sank down and
knew no more.
_21. The Breaking of the Chain_
"And like a soul belated,
In heaven and hell unmated,
By cloud and mist abated,
Comes out of darkness morn."
--Swinburne.
There is little need to linger on the scenes of horror of that terrible
London morning. The world is familiar with and knows most of the
details attendant to the great explosion which wiped out a tenth of
that great city with a resultant loss of lives and property. For such
a happening some reason must needs be given; the tale of the deserted
building got out, and many wild stories were circulated. Finally, to
still the rumors, the report was unofficially given out that this
building had been the rendezvous and secret stronghold of a gang of
international anarchists, who had stored its basement full of high
explosives and who had supposedly ignited these accidentally. In a way
there was a good deal to this tale, as you know, but the threat that
had lurked there far transcended any anarchist.
All this was told to me, for when I sank unconscious, Gordon,
attributing my condition to exhaustion and a need of the hashish to the
use of which he thought I was addicted, lifted me and with the aid of
the stunned policemen got me to his rooms before returning to the scene
of the explosion. At his rooms he found Hansen, and Zuleika handcuffed
to the bed as I had left her. He released her and left her to tend
to me, for all London was in a terrible turmoil and he was needed
elsewhere.
When I came to myself at last, I looked up into her starry eyes and lay
quiet, smiling up at her. She sank down upon my bosom, nestling my head
in her arms and covering my face with her kisses.
"Steephen!" she sobbed over and over, as her tears splashed hot on my
face.
I was scarcely strong enough to put my arms about her but I managed it,
and we lay there for a space, in silence except for the girl's hard,
racking sobs.
"Zuleika, I love you," I murmured.
"And I love you, Steephen," she sobbed. "Oh, it is so hard to part
now--but I'm going with you, Steephen; I can't live without you!"
"My dear child," said John Gordon, entering the room suddenly,
"Costigan's not going to die. We will let him have enough hashish to
tide him along, and when he is stronger we will take him off the habit
slowly."
"You don't understand, sahib; it is not hashish Steephen must have. It
is something which only the Master knew, and now that he is dead or is
fled, Steephen can not get it and must die."
Gordon shot a quick, uncertain glance at me. His fine face was drawn
and haggard, his clothes sooty and torn from his work among the debris
of the explosion.
"She's right, Gordon," I said languidly, "I'm dying. Kathulos killed
the hashish-craving with a concoction he called the elixir. I've been
keeping myself alive on some of the stuff that Zuleika stole from him
and gave me, but I drank it all last night."
I was aware of no craving of any kind, no physical or mental discomfort
even. All my mechanism was slowing down fast; I had passed the stage
where the need of the elixir would tear and rend me. I felt only a
great lassitude and a desire to sleep. And I knew that the moment I
closed my eyes, I would die.
"A strange dope, that elixir," I said with growing languor. "It burns
and freezes and then at last the craving kills easily and without
torment."
"Costigan, curse it," said Gordon desperately, "you can't go like this!
That vial I took from the Egyptian's table--what is in it?"
"The Master swore it would free me of my curse and probably kill me
also," I muttered. "I'd forgotten about it. Let me have it; it can no
more than kill me and I'm dying now."
"Yes, quick, let me have it!" exclaimed Zuleika fiercely, springing
to Gordon's side, her hands passionately outstretched. She returned
with the vial which he had taken from his pocket, and knelt beside me,
holding it to my lips, while she murmured to me gently and soothingly
in her own language.
I drank, draining the vial, but feeling little interest in the whole
matter. My outlook was purely impersonal, at such a low ebb was my
life, and I can not even remember how the stuff tasted. I only remember
feeling a curious sluggish fire burn faintly along my veins, and the
last thing I saw was Zuleika crouching over me, her great eyes fixed
with a burning intensity on me. Her tense little hand rested inside her
blouse, and remembering her vow to take her own life if I died I tried
to lift a hand and disarm her, tried to tell Gordon to take away the
dagger she had hidden in her garments. But speech and action failed me
and I drifted away into a curious sea of unconsciousness.
Of that period I remember nothing. No sensation fired my sleeping brain
to such an extent as to bridge the gulf over which I drifted. They say
I lay like a dead man for hours, scarcely breathing, while Zuleika
hovered over me, never leaving my side an instant, and fighting like
a tigress when anyone tried to coax her away to rest. Her chain was
broken.
* * * * *
As I had carried the vision of her into that dim land of nothingness,
so her dear eyes were the first thing which greeted my returning
consciousness. I was aware of a greater weakness than I thought
possible for a man to feel, as if I had been an invalid for months, but
the life in me, faint though it was, was sound and normal, caused by no
artificial stimulation. I smiled up at my girl and murmured weakly:
"Throw away your dagger, little Zuleika; I'm going to live."
She screamed and fell on her knees beside me, weeping and laughing
at the same time. Women are strange beings, of mixed and powerful
emotions, truly.
Gordon entered and grasped the hand which I could not lift from the bed.
"You're a case for an ordinary human physician now, Costigan," he said.
"Even a layman like myself can tell that. For the first time since I've
known you, the look in your eyes is entirely sane. You look like a man
who has had a complete nervous breakdown, and needs about a year of
rest and quiet. Great heavens, man, you've been through enough, outside
your dope experience, to last you a lifetime."
"Tell me first," said I: "Was Kathulos killed in the explosion?"
"I don't know," answered Gordon somberly. "Apparently the entire system
of subterranean passages was destroyed. I know my last bullet--the
last bullet that was in the revolver which I wrested from one of my
attackers--found its mark in the Master's body, but whether he died
from the wound, or whether a bullet can hurt him, I do not know. And
whether in his death agonies he ignited the tons and tons of high
explosives which were stored in the corridors, or whether the negroes
did it unintentionally, we shall never know.
"My God, Costigan, did you ever see such a honeycomb? And we know not
how many miles in either direction the passages reached. Even now
Scotland Yard men are combing the subways and basements of the town for
secret openings. All known openings, such as the one through which we
came and the one in Soho 48, were blocked by falling walls. The office
building was simply blown to atoms."
"What about the men who raided Soho 48?"
"The door in the library wall had been closed. They found the Chinaman
you killed, but searched the house without avail. Lucky for them, too,
else they had doubtless been in the tunnels when the explosion came,
and perished with the hundreds of negroes who must have died then."
"Every negro in London must have been there."
"I dare say. Most of them are voodoo worshipers at heart and the power
the Master wielded was incredible. They died, but what of him? Was he
blown to atoms by the stuff which he had secretly stored, or crushed
when the stone walls crumbled and the ceilings came thundering down?"
"There is no way to search among those subterranean ruins, I suppose?"
"None whatever. When the walls caved in, the tons of earth upheld by
the ceilings also came crashing down, filling the corridors with dirt
and broken stone, blocking them forever. And on the surface of the
earth, the houses which the vibration shook down were heaped high in
utter ruins. What happened in those terrible corridors must remain
forever a mystery."
* * * * *
My tale draws to a close. The months that followed passed uneventfully,
except for the growing happiness which to me was paradise, but which
would bore you were I to relate it. But one day Gordon and I again
discussed the mysterious happenings that had had their being under the
grim hand of the Master.
"Since that day," said Gordon, "the world has been quiet. Africa has
subsided and the East seems to have returned to her ancient sleep.
There can be but one answer--living or dead, Kathulos was destroyed
that morning when his world crashed about him."
"Gordon," said I, "what is the answer to that greatest of all
mysteries?"
My friend shrugged his shoulders.
"I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks
of secret oceans of which it knows nothing. Races have lived and
vanished before our race rose out of the slime of the primitive, and
it is likely still others will live upon the earth after ours has
vanished. Scientists have long upheld the theory that the Atlanteans
possessed a higher civilization than our own, and on very different
lines. Certainly Kathulos himself was proof that our boasted culture
and knowledge were nothing beside that of whatever fearful civilization
produced him.
"His dealings with you alone have puzzled all the scientific world, for
none of them has been able to explain how he could remove the hashish
craving, stimulate you with a drug so infinitely more powerful, and
then produce another drug which entirely effaced the effects of the
other."
"I have him to thank for two things," I said slowly; "the regaining of
my lost manhood--and Zuleika. Kathulos, then, is dead, as far as any
mortal thing can die. But what of those others--those 'ancient masters'
who still sleep in the sea?"
Gordon shuddered.
"As I said, perhaps mankind loiters on the brink of unthinkable chasms
of horror. But a fleet of gunboats is even now patrolling the oceans
unobtrusively, with orders to destroy instantly any strange case that
may be found floating--to destroy it and its contents. And if my word
has any weight with the English government and the nations of the
world, the seas will be so patrolled until doomsday shall let down the
curtain on the races of today."
"At night I dream of them, sometimes," I muttered, "sleeping in their
lacquered cases, which drip with strange seaweed, far down among the
green surges--where unholy spires and strange towers rise in the dark
ocean."
"We have been face to face with an ancient horror," said Gordon
somberly, "with a fear too dark and mysterious for the human brain to
cope with. Fortune has been with us; she may not again favor the sons
of men. It is best that we be ever on our guard. The universe was not
made for humanity alone; life takes strange phases and it is the first
instinct of nature for the different species to destroy each other.
No doubt we seemed as horrible to the Master as he did to us. We have
scarcely tapped the chest of secrets which nature has stored, and I
shudder to think of what that chest may hold for the human race."
"That's true," said I, inwardly rejoicing at the vigor which was
beginning to course through my wasted veins, "but men will meet
obstacles as they come, as men have always risen to meet them. Now, I
am beginning to know the full worth of life and love, and not all the
devils from all the abysses can hold me."
Gordon smiled.
"You have it coming to you, old comrade. The best thing is to forget
all that dark interlude, for in that course lies light and happiness."
[THE END]