THE PALACE OF PALMS
The sun dipped behind the western buildings, and the glare of the glow
on fort and Temple and encircling wall was like phosphorescent fire. I
saw the guards stirring in their enclosure. The Airscouts’ Fortress
shone, hard and brilliant, against the sky.
I gathered my wits together. I had seen the hidden things, and, because
I knew of none other to whom to turn, I resolved to appeal to David.
Esther, the prey of these insane degenerates when she awakened ...
David’s own secret troubles ... could we not aid each other? Might not
two men accomplish something in these evil days?
I turned to the right across the bridge that led to the Airscouts’
Fortress. The sentinel stood still, watching me. He raised his Ray rod,
not to threaten me, but to salute, and I remembered that the airscouts
had no love for the Guard, and hence must be under Lembken’s control. He
took me for a priest. But the weapon shook in his hand, and the
astonishment upon his face matched that on mine. I recognized the man
Jones, who had brought me to London.
“I want to leave this hell!” I cried. “Which way? Which way?”
“You want—you want—?” he stammered.
“The Strangers’ House. I am lost here—”
He looked at me in utter perplexity.
“Help me!” I pleaded. “Show me the way!”
The door behind him opened, and there stepped out a man of about fifty
years, dressed in white, with a golden swan on each shoulder. Jones
stepped aside and saluted him. The newcomer approached me. His hard,
clean-shaven face was impenetrable, and his eyes burned with a dull
fire. Behind him crept a second figure; it was the old priest.
“There he is! Seize him!” he shrieked.
The first man laid his hand on my shoulder. “I am Air-Admiral Hancock,”
he said. “You are to accompany me to Boss Lembken.”
I went with him across the bridge into a doorway set in the west side of
the Temple building. I expected again to see the vast interior beneath
me, but we entered a narrow corridor and stepped into a small automatic
elevator. In a moment we had shot up and halted inside the Palace
entrance. Hancock opened the door of the cage.
We were standing in a spacious hall, bare, save for the hanging
tapestries and heavy Persian rugs on the mosaic floor. It was half dark,
and there was a perfume that made my head swim. Before the curtained
aperture opposite us stood a negro boy, with a Ray rod in his hand. As
we approached he threw the curtain aside and saluted us.
There were soft solar lights in the next room, which was rose-red, and
decorated and furnished in the style of Louis Quatorze. Another negro
stood in the doorway opposite; he, too, saluted and threw the curtain
back.
The third room was enameled in blue. The blue lights gave it an
unearthly aspect, which was increased by the baroque style of its
ornamentation. The perfume was stronger.
The negro at the door of the fourth room was a giant. He wore the
uniform of an eighteenth century grenadier. His scarlet coat and white
pigtail formed vivid spots against the dull-gold curtain. The room
within was dark. We waited on the threshold.
At first I could see nothing. Then, gradually, the outlines of the room
came into sight. There were low divans and rugs, and mirrors on every
wall multiplied them. I heard a rasping sound, and a blotch of crimson
and green became a brilliant macaw that scraped its way with its sharp
claws from end to end of a horizontal perch. Behind it I now saw the
white gleam of Lembken’s robe; then the couch on which he lay; then the
girl who crouched, fanning him, at his feet; then the rotund form of the
old man, the sharp eyes and the heavy jowl with the pendulous cheeks.
“I have executed your orders, Boss,” said the Air-Admiral.
The old man rose upon his feet heavily and came puffing up to us. His
heavy soft hands wandered about my robes, patting me here and there,
while he puffed and snorted like some sea monster.
“You haven’t a knife or a Ray rod?” he inquired suspiciously. “You
haven’t anything to harm me? I am an old, weak man. I am the people’s
friend, and yet many want to kill me.”
He seemed to satisfy himself with the result of his inspection, and
withdrew to his couch, picking up a Ray rod and resting it across his
knee.
He dismissed Hancock and the girl. She rose to her feet briskly, with a
mechanical smile. She was about twenty years old, it seemed to me, but
there was a hardness and cruelty about her mouth that shocked me, and
the soul behind the mask of youth seemed centuries old.
“Amaranth wanted to stay, to hear what I was going to say to you,” said
Lembken, “but I make everybody mind his own business in the People’s
House. Besides, she might have fallen in love with you. I like to have
good-looking people about me.” He looked at me and at the Ray rod, and
then at me again; then, with a petulant gesture, he sent the weapon
flying across the room.
“There! You see I trust you!” he said, smiling. “Sit down beside me. We
understand each other, so we will be frank. Men such as we are above
deceptions. You ought to be about a hundred and twenty-eight years old!”
He spoke jocularly, and yet I could see that he wished to be sure I was
the man he sought. Evidently he knew my history. He heaved a sigh of
immense satisfaction when I acquiesced.
“I was not sure it was you,” he said. “One has to be cautious when so
much depends on it. And Sanson was beginning to suspect, but he does not
know that I discovered Lazaroff’s papers. Sanson does not know
everything, you see, Arnold. What do you think of his Rest Cure, as the
people term it? It is his, not mine, you know.”
“I think he is Satan himself,” I answered quickly. Yet I was not sure
that I preferred this perfumed degenerate to Sanson, with his maniac
cruelty.
A smile crept over the flabby face. Lembken looked pleased. He placed
his hand upon my shoulder.
“A classical scholar,” he said. “You refer to the mythical ruler of the
infernal realms. Assuredly we shall soon understand each other. Sanson
is a strong man. When I meet strong men I let them be as strong as they
want to be. They break themselves to pieces. In a democracy like ours
there is no room for strong men. Sanson doesn’t understand that. He
thinks the Mayor of the Palace is going to step into the shoes of the
Roi Fainéant. But the Roi Fainéant always wins—if he sits still. I am
the Roi Fainéant.”
I was so amazed at the strange psychology he was disclosing that I found
no answer ready. I knew he was dissembling some deep-laid purpose, but
why he had need of me I could not imagine. And the man’s affectation of
good-will almost began to delude me.
“Do you like David’s daughter?” he began, so suddenly that I started.
“Ah!” he continued, shaking his finger waggishly, “one seldom sees a
woman approximating so closely to the Sanson norm. There is an
attachment, if I know young men. How would you like her for your own? I
hit the mark, then?”
Before I could reply he was on another tack.
“Now, there is Hancock,” he resumed. “He is a Christian, and ought to go
to the defectives’ shops, according to the law Sanson made. But I don’t
care. I would just as soon have Christianity as the Ant, or Mormonism,
as they have in America. I don’t like tyranny. If I had my way everyone
would be perfectly free. Sanson doesn’t see that he has embittered the
people. He is harrying them with his laws, and they blame me. I am the
people’s friend.”
With a sudden, hoarse scream the macaw flew from the bar and perched on
Lembken’s shoulder, where she sat, preening her plumage and croaking at
me. “The people’s friend,” she screamed, and broke into choking
laughter.
“So you see it is entirely to your interest to help me and not Sanson,”
Lembken continued. “Reasonable men cement their friendships with
self-interest. Come, let me look at you.”
He touched some switch near him, and the room was illuminated with a
blaze of solar light. The golden ants upon his robes leaped into view.
He turned on the divan heavily and stared into my face.
“Yes, I can trust you,” he said in approbation. “Well, Sanson will learn
his error in four days’ time. You shall live here with me and have a
life of pleasure. You need never think about the world below. We do
exactly what we please; that is my rule in the People’s House.”
“The People’s House!” screamed the macaw, leaving his shoulder and
fluttering back to her perch, from which she surveyed us coldly, head on
one side. “The People’s House! The people’s friend!” she alternated, in
a muttering diminuendo.
“My head aches today,” said Lembken petulantly. “That is why I am
sitting here. There has been an accident: one of our ladies fell down
through an open door. It made my head ache.”
I knew he lied when he spoke of an accident. I knew that she had thrown
herself down. The lie brought back my mind to its focus; and in that
instant my lips were sealed, and my half-formed intent to throw myself
on Lembken’s mercy, pleading for Esther and our love, died.
“So we shall talk tomorrow,” Lembken continued. “For the present you are
one of us. You see your interest lies in joining us, and the part you
have to play in return will be short and not difficult for a man of your
discernment. That small part will be paid, four days hence—”
I was sure that it concerned Esther now. “And will be all, and afterward
your life will be free from all laws and bonds. You never need leave the
People’s House unless you want to. Here everyone does as he pleases.
Come, Arnold, I will show you the gardens.”
He stood up, puffing, and gave me his arm like an old friend. The man’s
manners were fascinating. I could well understand how he had worked his
way to power. There was the good-fellowship of the twentieth-century
demagogue, but there was more; there was discernment and culture; and
there was more still; there was a corrupting influence about his candor
that seemed to strike its deadly roots down into my moral nature and
shrivel it.
We passed out through the empty rooms. The Palace was level with the
Temple roof; there were no steps. There was no stairway at all, for the
whole structure, which seemed to extend from side to side of the vast
roof, consisted of a single story. We passed out between two giant
negroes, who stood like ebony statues. And now I saw that the four rooms
in which I had been, comprised only the smallest portion of the
building, which was set out irregularly, receding here to leave space
for a little lawn, projecting there, evidently to enclose a garden. And
I discovered why the interior was so dark; there were no windows—at
least, on this side of the Palace.
It was a fairyland. I thought of the old palaces at Capri. Here, high
above the swarming streets, a man might take his pleasure in ease
indeed. The crystal walls must have been sound-proof, for not a murmur
from below reached us. I heard the music of bubbling brooks, the cries
of birds among the trees, the faint tinkle of a guitar or mandolin
struck somewhere in the recesses of the ramified buildings.
We were traversing a graveled path that ran between the Palace and the
crystal wall. Looking down, I could see the glow circle of the fortress.
It had grown dark; the lights which lit our way, that I had thought
daylight, were from the solar vents, concealed so skilfully that they
shed a soft, diffused radiance everywhere, as of afternoon. We turned
the angle of the building, and I stopped short and looked in involuntary
admiration at the scene before me.
We might have stepped into the heart of some Amazonian forest, for we
were in a tangled wilderness of palms and other tropical trees. The air
was filled with the scent of orange flowers, and in a grove near me
clusters of the bright fruit hung from the weighted boughs. From the
dank earth sprang clusters of exotic, flaming flowers, and ferns. Huge
vines knotted themselves about the trunks of trees, through whose
recesses flew flocks of brilliantly plumaged birds. The path became a
trail, meandering between the trees and crossing rushing brooklets. The
vast concavity of the dome above was like an arched heaven of blue,
studded with golden stars.
“What do you think of the People’s House, Arnold?” Lembken inquired,
turning heavily upon me.
“It is a paradise,” I answered.
I was amazed to see two tears roll down his cheeks. It was the same
strange yielding to emotional impulse that I had discerned before. So
might Nero have wept over his fiddle.
“It is the reward of those who are the chosen of the people,” he
answered. “It will be your reward, Arnold. You must dream over this
tonight, and tomorrow we will make our compact. I have reserved quarters
for you. You will meet nobody you do not wish to meet. That is the chief
charm of the People’s House; we meet only for our festivities; otherwise
we are quite free. Come, Arnold!”
The scene, the atmosphere, the fearful personality of Lembken seemed to
appeal to some being in me whose hideous presence I had never suspected.
A deadly inertia of the spirit was conquering me. Esther, my love of a
hundred years, became in memory elusive as a dream to me. The sensuous
appeal of this wonderland swept over me.
We had threaded the recesses of the groves, passing secluded arbors of
twisted vines, pergolas and rustic cottages about which clung the
scarlet trumpets of pomegranate flowers; now the crystal walls came into
sight again, and, as we approached, a gust of wind blew the door open.
Instantly, to divert my senses from that soul-destroying dominance,
there rushed in, the murmurs of the city, the voices of the multitude
below, and, above all, clear and distinct, the wild accents of the
whitebeard, who had denounced the pleasure-palace that afternoon.
“Woe to you, London, when your whitecoats sit with their harlots in the
high places! Woe! Woe!”
I could not see him; through the door I saw only the circle of the
enclosing walls, a luminous orb beneath, and the glare of the huge Ray
guns; beyond were the mighty buildings. Lembken put out his hand and
closed the door. The voices were cut off into silence. I glanced at him,
but his brow was untroubled and serene.
He led me across a little, shelving lawn, through a small gateway. There
was nobody in the tiny close, surrounded by a high marble wall. There
were no windows in the little house before me. It might have held two
rooms.
“Three rooms,” said Lembken, as if he had read my thoughts. “Good night,
Arnold. Remember, we do what we like to do in the People’s House. There
are no laws, no bonds. Dream of this paradise that shall be yours, and
open the third door softly.”
He left me. I pushed the first door open and entered.
It was a bedroom, furnished in the conventional style which had not
changed appreciably during the century, but all in ebony or teak, and
luxurious almost beyond conception. The floor was covered with a
thick-piled Bokhara rug, of red and ivory, and exquisite texture.
I passed through the inevitable swing door. The second room was fitted
as a combination library and dining-room. There was an ebony bookcase,
filled with magnificently bound books, a sideboard on which stood wines
and distilled liquors, a heavy dining-table, armchairs.
This room had a window, and, looking out, I was surprised to see beneath
me the bridge that led to the Airscouts’ Fortress, and, at the end of
it, a figure in blue, the white swan on his breast brilliant in the
glare of the solar light over his head.
I passed on. But instead of the swing door the further wall contained a
door of heavy, iron-bound wood, with bolts of steel. Then I remembered
Lembken’s words: “Open the third door softly.”
The bolts moved in their sockets with hardly a sound. I drew them; I
opened the door and passed into a tiny chamber.
A girl in white, with the palm badge upon her shoulder, was standing
there. The room had been dark; the sudden influx of the solar light from
the library showed me the pallid face and blazing eyes of her whom I had
least thought to see before me—Elizabeth!