THE HOUSE ON THE WALL
She stared at me with eyes that seemed to see nothing; and then a look
of recognition came into them, and a twitching smile upon her lips. She
put her arms out and came unsteadily toward me. She threw her right arm
back. I caught her hand as it swung downward, and the dagger’s razor
edge grazed my shoulder.
The next moment she was fighting like a trapped panther. I could not
have imagined that such strength and fierceness existed in any woman.
She twisted her wrists out of my grasp time and again, and we wrestled
for the dagger till the blood from my slashed fingers fouled my priest’s
robe. Each of the stabbing blows she dealt so wildly would have driven
the dagger in to the hilt.
I grappled with her, caught her right arm at last, and forced it upward,
but we swayed to and fro for nearly a minute before I mastered her. Even
then she had one last surprise in store, for, when she saw that she was
beaten, she drew her dagger hand quickly backward, and I seized the
point of the blade within an inch of her breast. I forced her fingers
open brutally, and the steel fell to the floor. Then she wrested herself
away, and crouched in the corner, watching me, motionless, but still
ready to leap. Her gasping breaths were the only sound in the room.
“Elizabeth!” I cried. “I am not here to harm you. Look at me; listen to
me!”
Her eyes were fixed on my face in terror that precluded speech. How she
watched me! Only once did her glance waver, and that was toward the
dagger on the floor. I kicked it backward with my heel.
“Elizabeth, listen to me!” I implored her. “I did not know that you were
here, and I do not know how you came here. I want to help you. I want to
take you home to David!”
“Ah!” she said, shuddering. “This is what you whites call a romance in
the style of the first century B.C., a fashionable pastime, to dress
yourselves as blues or grays and worm your way into the homes of your
prospective victims, in order to study them, and see whether they suit
your taste and are worth adding to your collection. I have read of that
in the Council factory novels. But there was never any romance in it to
me. So I appeared to suit you, after my father had taken you into his
home so trustingly? You deceived him; but you never deceived me.”
I saw her glance turn to the dagger again.
“Elizabeth, you are talking nonsense,” I said, with an affectation of
brusqueness. “Let us sit down in the next room, and I propose a compact.
You shall take the dagger, provided you do not attempt to harm yourself
with it till you have heard me. Is that agreed?”
She scrutinized me for half a minute. Then she nodded. I preceded her
into the library with an affectation of indifference which I was far
from feeling, for I heard her stoop to pick the dagger up, and wondered
each instant whether I was about to feel the point between my shoulders.
However, my faith appeared to inspire her with a measure of confidence,
for she followed me into the middle room and consented to sit down.
But when I faced her, toying with the blade and all aquiver with the
reaction from the terrific nerve-tension, I could hardly find words to
utter. Whatever purpose Lembken might have in using me, I had the full
measure of his mind. He had thought that my three weeks spent in David’s
house had inspired me with a passion for the girl; and he had brought
her here, to leave her helpless in my power, a lure to bind me to his
interests beyond the possibility of double-dealing.
Before I could begin, Elizabeth collapsed. She began to weep without
restraint. I could only wait till she grew more composed. I stared out
through the window, looking down toward the Airscouts’ Fortress, whose
roof rose perhaps twenty feet beneath me.
I saw the sentry with the swan badge, pacing below. Above him was the
luminous wall of the fortress, and over it, floating in the air, was a
host of ghostly shapes, airplanes encased in their phosphorescent glow
armor, which, as I watched them, rose one by one into the air, circled,
and flitted noiselessly away toward the south, like bubbles blown by
children.
It could not have been late, for curfew had not come into operation, and
London was ablaze with the solar light; but the crowds had gone home and
everything was quite still. As I withdrew from the window Elizabeth rose
and came timidly toward me.
“Arnold, have I done you a wrong?” she whispered.
“You misunderstood me,” I answered. “But you could not have thought
otherwise. If we understand each other now we can help each other—isn’t
that so?”
She seized me by both arms and gazed into my face with an imploring,
pitiful appeal that wrung my heart.
“Then I thank God,” she said, “for that impulse which held me from
self-destruction. Arnold, do you remember that promise I made to you one
day? I remembered it; I remembered it, and it was that alone which
stayed my hand this afternoon, when the emissary from Lembken came, and
there was only the one barred door between us, and I stood behind it,
with the knife at my breast. Then I resolved to keep my promise to you,
and to let them bring me here, and—to kill Lembken—but it was you! When
you disappeared from the Strangers’ House this morning we feared for
your safety. We thought you had been seized or lured away. Then my
father was summoned on some pretext back to the Strangers’ Bureau, and
the airscout came—Lembken’s man. I thought I was for Lembken—”
She broke off, and I took her hands in mine.
“Elizabeth,” I said, “my dear, I do not understand anything of what you
tell me. How could they bring you here against your will?”
She looked at me in amazement.
“No, I see you do not understand,” she answered. “And yet you are
dressed as a priest. I cannot tell you now. But the airscout who had
been sent for me was sorry when he saw that I was not willing, like most
women. He took the knife from me, but afterward he let me keep it; he
was kind and promised to carry the news to Jones, our friend. The
airscouts are disloyal to Lembken, and hate his cruelty, but he dared
not disobey. We went by scoutplane from the roof, and Lembken’s women
took me and clothed me in this dress of palms, and carried me here,
laughing at me. They did not find the knife. I hid that; I meant to
serve the Province and the world by killing Lembken. But then I saw you,
Arnold, and—and—”
She burst into a new storm of weeping. I drew her to me and placed her
head on my shoulder. I felt a cold, burning fire of resolution in my
heart which never disappeared. Something, some spiritual door was opened
in me. I became part of the wretchedness of the world and suffered its
sorrows; pleasure seemed the worst part of life then. I think, too, I
loved Esther the better because of that compassion.
When at last Elizabeth raised her head I was struck by the
transformation in her appearance. It seemed the reflection of my own
determination. I had put forth my will and conquered, and her own seemed
one with mine.
“I am going to save you, Elizabeth,” I said. “You are not destined for
this earthly hell.”
“Arnold, are you yourself in danger here?” she asked.
“Only of hell-fire,” I answered.
“You must save yourself and not think of me,” she said.
I bade her sit down, and went back to the entrance of the little house.
I had half expected that the door would have been locked, but it stood
open, having become unhasped, and the sickly odor of the pervading
perfume clung to the warm, stale air. I crossed the close to the gate
that led into the garden of palms, and stood there in hesitation.
The solar lights had been turned off, and all was dark, except for
varicolored lanterns twinkling among the trees. Yet I was aware of souls
peopling that darkness. I heard the tinkle of stringed instruments; I
had the sense of hidden beings in the undergrowth. If hell can wear the
mask of beauty, surely it did that night.
I crossed the lawn and began to skirt the graveled path that extended
before me, working my way toward the front of the Palace. The squat,
white building glittered against the darkness. Nobody stirred at the
entrance; there were no lights, but always I had the sense of something
watching me.
At last I saw the crystal walls on the west side, and, beyond them, the
phosphorescence of the glow buildings. I stood in hesitancy. On my right
stood the thickets; on my left the crystal ended in a stone wall. There
was no egress except through the Palace itself. Lembken left nothing to
surprise.
As I turned I heard the rustle of stealthy footsteps near me. A red
spark drew my eyes along the vista of the orange trees, whose perfumed
flowers dispelled the cloying odor of the scented night. I saw a Mænad’s
face, framed in a leopard skin, peering at me above a bank of hibiscus.
I thought I recognized the girl Amaranth; but it vanished with the dying
of the spark, and subdued laughter followed it.
All that was evil in the world seemed to have its focus there. I felt
it, breathed it, once more its psychic dominance oppressed me heavily. I
saw with sudden intuition why, in a world less stable, witches were
burned, how passionately the souls of simple men fought for their
heritage of truth and law. This was the negation of life, of all that
struggling life that aspired upward, and set its heel upon the serpent’s
head. Old myths, made real in this new light, flashed into memory.
I hurried back to the close and fastened the gate behind me. The sweat
was dripping from my forehead when I regained the safety of the little
house. I burst from the first room into the second.
Elizabeth was not there.
I ran into the third room. She was not there, either. Terror gripped me.
Had she been lured away during the few minutes of my absence? It seemed
impossible. She would have died there.
Then my eyes fell on something that hung outside the window, dangling,
as it seemed, from a fixed point above. It was a rope ladder, and moving
outward. As I watched, I saw it begin to rise in a succession of short
jerks.
I grasped it with my hands. It pulled me from the floor. I clung to it,
striving to get my feet upon the rungs. It drew me to the level of the
window, but I would not let go. It pulled me through the window-gap, and
I swung far out above the Airscouts’ Fortress. Over me I saw the dark
outlines of an unshielded scoutplane, high in the air.
I swung by my hands at the rope’s end, like the weight of a pendulum,
making great transverse sweeps that carried me high above the bridge,
from end to end of the fortress roof. I saw the courts revolve beneath
me. I swept from the crystal wall out into nothingness, and London was a
reeling dance of phosphorescent maze. Then the ladder began to descend.
I felt the roof of the fortress touch my feet, wrenched my numbed hands
away, and fell. A moment later the airplane dropped beside me as
noiselessly as an alighting bird, and two men sprang from it and seized
me.
One was the airscout Jones. He caught me by both arms and forced me
backward. But the other leaped at my throat. It was David; and he would
have strangled me, had not Jones pulled him away.
Then, to my vast relief, Elizabeth ran forward, interposing herself
between us. “Arnold is not to blame!” she cried. “He tried to save me!”
[Illustration:
It pulled me through the window-gap, and I swung far out above the
Airscouts’ Fortress
]
David’s hands fell to his sides. The airscout caught me by the arms and
pulled me toward an elevator entrance. He forced me into the cage, the
others following, and we descended a few feet, emerging into a small,
bare room with walls of unsquared stone.
Jones sent the elevator up and pulled the door of the shaft to.
“Now you can speak. You have five minutes to explain yourself,” he said.
He pulled a Ray rod from his tunic and looked at David, who nodded.