ESTHER
I left the dead girl on the divan and went into the hall. My head ached,
and I was still dizzy from my wound, but I had grown suddenly composed,
and all my perplexities had vanished in the face of Esther’s imminent
need of me.
There was nobody in the hall. The negroes were gone, and the palm
gardens were dark and seemed deserted. Silence had descended everywhere.
Withal it was the silence of hushed voices, I knew, and not of
emptiness. Within those walls, in hidden rooms, lurked those who waited
yet for the death agony of the man who had already escaped the baited
trap.
I wondered whether Sanson had bought the attendants, if he had come
alone, whether the fear of him forbade an ambush in case Amaranth’s plot
should fail. He had evidently gone down in the elevator, for it was not
in the cage, but it came up to me when I pressed the button, and I
descended, stopping at the first door I saw, which must, I knew, give
access to the Temple.
The corridor into which I stepped was as empty as the palace hall above.
The airscouts who should have been on duty here were gone. I did not
realize that I had formed no plans and felt no fear until I found my way
unopposed. Before me was a door, leading into one of the numerous small
rooms through which one entered the Temple, and at my side was a little
window, through which the cries of the mob beneath were borne to me
fitfully on the gusty air.
I stopped and looked out. The sky was thick with battleplanes. No longer
at their stations about the city, they cruised hither and thither,
approaching one another and retiring in a manner seemingly confused and
aimless. Sometimes a group would gather as if conferring, forming a
polygon of light with changing sides as they maneuvered; and presently a
single impulse seemed to animate them all, for, like a flock of wheeling
birds, they swung around and sailed off together, till they were only
pin-points of light in the southwest.
Beneath me the courts were packed with a vast multitude that had
assembled for the morrow’s ceremonies. Looking down on them, I saw that
they were held back by two lines of the guards, armed with Ray rods,
drawn up before the Temple.
They jostled and swayed and howled fearlessly, as if they knew the
imminence of change; yet their cries were not all against the Christians
and the morons, nor yet against Lembken, nor all for Sanson. I tried to
fancy that among them were groups of our few thousand, gathered out of
the forests to play their rôle at dawn.
Yet for the moment Sanson had triumphed. I thought upon how little hung
the fate of the world. A palace women’s intrigue, the jealousy of a
girl, a cup of wine, and Lembken’s schemes were broken.
Then it came to me that the conical, glow-painted Ray guns on the
encircling wall were trained no longer outward but inward, dominating
the Temple courts and all the multitude within them. And in a flash of
comprehension I saw the scheme of Sanson. If the people rejected him on
the morrow he meant to kill all those within the walls, all human beings
inside the circle of the fortress, confident that thereby he would
destroy all his enemies. He meant to level the Temple and the palace
above, the Council Hall, the Airscouts’ Fortress, involving everything
in one colossal ruin which he would bestride—the unchallenged master of
the Federation.
This done, the Russian fleet would be attacked and destroyed, and with
it the last obstacle to world dominion.
I saw this with one flash of intuition. Perhaps I lingered in all for
forty seconds beside the window. It was hardly longer, for the thought
of Esther drove me through the doorway in front of me. I found myself
within the dark, enormous area of the Temple.
I was in a circular gallery surrounded by a brass railing, which ran
high up around the interior. The only light was the faint reflection
from a single solar bulb that shone across the gulf. Beneath it I could
discern the shining, golden surface of the Ant.
I felt my way around the gallery, working toward the light, which seemed
to descend as I approached it, until, standing immediately above it, I
looked down and saw it shining an unknown distance beneath. It showed
now the uplifted antenna of the idol, the edge of the stone altar in the
center of the bridge that spanned the Temple, and the round body of the
cylinder, which seemed to hang in space above it.
I had entered the Temple upon a floor one stage too high, and there was
no way down from the gallery; it would be necessary to go back to the
elevator and descend to a lower level, that of the bridges that spanned
the interior court.
But that was too dangerous, and I could wait no longer. I estimated that
the light was five and twenty feet below. I swung from the brass rail
and dropped into space. It was a mad plunge in the dark toward that
slender bridge a hundred feet above the Temple floor. But fortune was
with me, for I struck the golden grille around the altar-stone and
tumbled inside, rising upon my feet with only a bruise or two.
The grille was about four feet high, and the ends formed gates which,
when opened, made the altar-stone one with the two bridge spans that
extended to meet it from either side of the building. It formed thus a
sort of keystone in aspect, though not architecturally, since it did not
support the spans, which seemed to be on the principle of the
cantilever. I saw now that the stone was suspended by steel chains from
the roof, and over it, hung by two finer ones, was the cylinder.
Presently I could grasp the meaning of the mechanism. Cylinder and stone
altar were in counterpoise, so that, when the first was drawn up, the
second would descend from between the spans to the level of the Ant’s
pedestal, forming, as it were, a sacrificial stone immediately before
the idol, disrupting the continuity of the bridges also, and leaving a
gap between them.
But I spared no thoughts on this. I looked through the cylinder’s face
of glass, and, though I saw but the dimmest outlines there, I knew that
I had found Esther again, and that there were to be no more partings, so
long as we both lived.
I do not know what follies I committed there, for I forgot everything
but her. Forgotten was the imminent danger, remembered only our reunion.
I flung my arms about the iron case and called to her, telling her of my
love, as if she heard me. I came back to sanity at length to find myself
kneeling before the case upon the stone, with the tears raining down my
cheeks.
It was a mad wooing of a sleeping woman upon that giant slab, swung by
its chains from the vault above, and vibrant under me. Each movement set
the heavy mass to trembling as the chains quivered, and the cylinder,
too, danced before me, like some steel marionette.
I stretched my hands up, feeling for the cylinder cap. It was still on
the neck, but it had almost reached the end of the thread and moved
under my fingers. I could not see the figures upon the dial, but I knew
that Esther’s awakening was not many hours away.
I twisted the cap between my fingers. I could dislodge it. If I did so
... Lazaroff had told me that would bring death, but surely not when
there remained only a few short hours before the awakening. Air must
have been entering in measurable quantities during some days. And, even
if Esther died—better that than to awaken in Sanson’s arms!
It was a terrific choice. I hesitated only a few moments, but they were
a century of agony to me. Then I set my fingers to the cap, wrenched it
free, and flung it from me. It tinkled upon the stones beneath. And,
hardly venturing to breathe, I clung to the cylinder and waited.
No sound came from within. I clung and tried to place my ear against the
opening.
At last, in maddened resolution, I swung the cylinder toward me by the
chains, tilting it downward until I got purchase upon it. I bore with my
full weight upon the metal edge. I plunged my arms within. I felt the
heavy coils of Esther’s hair, her eyelids, cheek, and chin; I placed my
hands beneath her arms and drew her forth. How I contrived it I do not
know, for platform and cylinder rocked fearfully as they swung; but in a
moment, it seemed, I held her light and wasted body against my own. And
we were on the rocking altar-stone together, while the cylinder swung
rhythmically above, passing our heads in steady, sweeping flights as I
crouched with Esther in my arms behind the golden grille.
I pressed my lips to hers, I chafed her hands and pleaded with her to
awake. And presently, as if in answer to my prayer, I heard a sigh so
faint that I could scarcely dare believe I heard it.
A deeper sigh, a sobbing breath—she lived; and with amazed, awed
happiness I felt her thin arms grope instinctively toward my neck. She
knew!
I kneeled beside her on the altar-stone, listening with choked sobs and
wildly beating heart to the words that came from her lips in faltering
whispers:
“Herman! What have you done? You have killed him! Then kill me, too! I
don’t want to live! Murderer! Kill me! O Arnold, my love, to think that
neither of us knew!”
Then:
“Yes, I love him, Herman, and I have told him so. You were too late to
prevent that. I saw your heart tonight. Kill me, I say! Yes, I am ready
a thousand times to go where Arnold has gone. Be sure that I shall
follow him, through any hell of your devising!”
So Esther whispered, living over again those minutes of dreadful anguish
that she must have passed in the cellar after Lazaroff had put the cap
on my cylinder and driven me on that strange voyage of mine. The little
solar light shone on Esther’s brown gown, turning it golden. And I
remembered—with how strange a pang—the night when she had worn that gown
in the drawing-room of Sir Spofforth’s house.
“Esther,” I whispered, bending over her, “it is I. It is Arnold.”
I saw her eyelids quiver half open, but I knew that she could not see
me. She moaned. I interposed my body between her and the light.
“You have been ill, dearest Esther,” I said. “But now everything is
well. You know me, Esther?”
“Arnold,” she whispered, “I have been with you all the time. I dreamed
... Herman had sent you ... a hundred years away.”
She became unconscious the next moment. I knew the mighty grip of that
first sleep. It was in truth twin brother to death, for, with my head
against her breast, I could discern hardly the slightest stirring. But
she lived; all was well. And now the need of saving her came over me. I
caught her into my arms—she weighed no more than a small child—and
hurried across the bridge. I believed that the outer door upon this
lower level communicated with the bridge over the interior court that
led to the Airscouts’ Fortress.
I traversed the little room and pushed the swing door open. Before me
was an elevator shaft, evidently that up which I had made my first
journey to Lembken’s palace. But as I emerged into the corridor I saw,
not ten paces away, their backs toward me, two of the Guard.
I was too late. The Guard had occupied the posts vacated by the
airscouts. The Temple and all the approaches to Lembken’s palace were in
Sanson’s hands.
They had not seen or heard me, and in a moment I had withdrawn within
the little room. There still remained one chance. By crossing the bridge
again and passing through the priests’ robing-room on the other side of
the Temple, I could reach all parts of the buildings. Perhaps there were
no sentries in the gallery above the auditorium. I knew how vain the
hope was, but there was none other.
I carried Esther upon the bridge again. As I was about to set foot upon
the altar-stone, which still rocked slightly, I fancied that the bridges
themselves were moving. I leaped on the stone, stumbling against the
grille. One moment I hesitated, to assure myself that Esther still
breathed. A piece of her brown dress had come away and broke like burned
paper in my hand. I raised her higher in my arms, so that her head
rested against my shoulder, and opened the grille gate to step upon the
farther span.
That moment of delay had ended all my hopes. There was no second span.
For swiftly, noiselessly, the span was swinging away from me, pivoting
upon its further end. It was already too far away for me to make the
leap, encumbered as I was with Esther. I glanced backward in horror. The
span that I had crossed was moving also, acting in unison. They vanished
in the gloom at the sides of the Temple.
I stood with Esther in my arms upon the altar-slab, poised on that
unsteady resting place high in the Temple void. There was no refuge
anywhere. Over me was the vault; far underneath the Ant with its
gleaming, upraised tentacle.
As I stood there the little solar light went out.