LEMBKEN
The maneuvers of our party had been so skilfully planned and carried out
so surely that the Temple fell into our hands almost immediately.
Entering upon that side which faced the Airscouts’ Fortress, our men had
surprised and overpowered the guards posted about the elevators, and
driven them in flight toward the Science Wing, into which Sanson
withdrew to rally them about him.
The Council Hall and offices beneath it were occupied as quickly.
Including the Airscouts’ Fortress, we had thus three-fourths of the
quadrilateral in our possession; but the Guard held the Science Wing in
strength, and, of course, the surrounding wall, armed with the Ray
artillery and commanding everything within it.
The change of fortune was so swift that I could hardly grasp its
significance immediately. Carrying Esther, and surrounded by a frenzied
mob, I was dragged from the bridge to the corridor of the elevators,
between Elizabeth and David, pent up among five hundred men, some
carrying Ray rods and trying to force their way through the Temple in
the direction of the Science Wing, others returning, realizing the
impossibility of pushing through the crowds, and others, merely
spectators, unarmed, who had gone mad with delirious joy. The confusion
was indescribable, and, to make it worse, these people seemed to look to
me for leadership, while I was caught in the throng and helpless.
Precious moments were passing.
Into the mob burst a man heading a little group of revolutionists.
“Follow me!” he shouted. “To the Science Wing! Capture the bridges!
Follow me!”
As he spoke the Temple lights went out. I was not yet clear of the
bridge. Inch by inch I struggled onward, but in the darkness the
confusion was still more undisciplined; and while the oncoming party
still fought for a foothold I heard a rending, straining sound behind
me, a crash of wood, and a mighty fall that set the whole building
echoing. Shouts, oaths, and groans came from below; the span on which we
stood shook from the concussion.
There was no need to ask what had occurred. Sanson had cut down the
farther half of the bridge, securing himself against attack from the
upper floor of the Temple.
Then a voice, bellowing with rage and ferocity, arose:
“Follow me! Seize the elevators! To Lembken! To the People’s House!”
The mob broke and dissolved, carrying me with it into the corridor. I
saw the leader with the Assyrian beard heading the rush for the elevator
shafts. He carried all with him. But the shafts were empty; the
elevators had been drawn up. There followed howls of fury.
“Lembken!” shrieked the mob. “Out with him! Out with the defective!”
It was queer, that word; but one impulse animated all. They plunged
after their leader, scrambling up the ironwork of the interior, and
clinging there like flies as they worked their way upward. The little
band of disciplined men alone stood still, and their chief turned to me
with a wry look.
“We are too late,” he said. “Sanson has got his men together. We shall
have to storm the Wing from below. Half our men have joined in that mad
attack on Lembken, who is helpless, whereas Sanson—”
He shrugged his shoulders in despair. Then David turned to me.
“You must bring them back, Arnold,” he said. “They will obey and follow
you. Leave Esther—”
He saw the look on my face, and began to plead with me. “It is your
duty, Arnold,” he cried. “All will be lost unless you can draw off our
men from the Palace. I will protect her with my life.” He bent down and
looked into Esther’s face, and an expression of amazement came upon his
own. It occurred to me afterward that he had never believed that Esther
really lived. But at the time only the thought of this flickered through
my brain, and it yielded to more urgent ones.
“They will follow you!” cried David.
I hesitated no longer. I placed Esther’s unconscious body in Elizabeth’s
arms, and, without stopping to glance at her, lest it sap my resolution,
I plunged into the shaft and began to scramble upward.
Somehow I reached the summit. I fell upon my hands within the Palace.
The mob was swarming everywhere, in every room, it seemed, and through
the gardens. I ran out under the dome. The winter sun shone through a
gray fog, a blood-red ball of fire.
The yelling mob swept through the groves. Its fury was unleashed, and
the remembered wrongs of years impelled it to universal destruction. I
saw at the first glance that these men were beyond the power of
argument. With their bare hands they tore up palms and tossed them down
into the courts through jagged holes in the transparent walls. They tore
the panes out of their settings, twisting the thin, un-splintering glass
until it writhed everywhere, coiled, crystal snakes among the uprooted
flowers. They spared nothing. The yellow orange spheres gleamed in the
rank grass. The scent of orange flowers was choking.
I ran among them, calling on them to follow me back, for the sake of our
cause, to join their comrades, hard pressed by Sanson. Most of them did
not seem to hear me; some raised their heads from their work, stared at
me for a moment, and resumed their wild task of ruin. It came to me then
that I was unknown to them. Not one in a hundred of these men had seen
my face more than a moment or two upon the altar platform.
I turned and ran through the Palace rooms, still calling, and still
unheeded. The mob was sweeping onward like an avalanche. They had torn
the costly hangings from the walls. From the blue rooms, mull rooms, red
rooms, purple rooms, all the baroque, fantastic, and depraved trappings
of Lembken’s gleaning were heaped into great rolls at which the furious
army hacked and tore. In one place it was venting its rage upon a heap
of masquerade clothing. Pieces were flung from man to man, and some,
tearing great rents in garments, thrust their heads through them and
continued in the pursuit, with skirts about their shoulders and leopard
skins about their bodies. A tun of wine had overturned and spilled, and
the contents crept like a rivulet along the floor, seeping from room to
room. The conduit that fed the artificial brooks, being slashed, poured
out a muddy stream that dogged our heels, befouling the slashed rugs and
tattered coverlets. And ever the cries became more furious.
The mob was yelling with one universal voice. Palm trees were hurled
from man to man, clods of earth clung to walls, mud spattered
everything. I followed, breathless, imploring, pleading in vain. No one
paid me the least attention. Some, indeed, scowled at me, but the spirit
of destruction, seizing them before the words were framed on their lips,
hurled them along. They swept me with them. At the head was the giant,
bellowing in frantic wrath. The mob followed him, hypnotized; and he,
armed with a spiked stanchion which he must have wrenched from some
portion of the wall supports, dashed the weapon in furious assault
against each door, and shattered it, leading the chase down every
corridor of the bewildering place, returning, hot on the scent,
dog-like, and the great arms thrashing the club from side to side.
The Palace was enormous. We had not covered half of it, and we had seen
no one. But, as we ran, shouts came from another party behind us, roars
mingled with shrieks, and, keening above all clamor, I heard that
bloodhound cry that breaks from human throats when the death hunt draws
near to its finale.
With an answering roar our mob turned and sprang toward its victims,
smashing down doors and wrenching weapons from legs of tables and
woodwork of the walls. The quarry was found. Like bolting hares they
turned and scuttled into the small, hidden room, where they cowered,
women and negro eunuchs, still dressed in the masquerade of the revels
that Lembken had held that night even while his empire was breaking from
his hand. Horned women, women in dominoes, in striped and spotted hides,
Elizabethans wearing hooped skirts and huge, starched neck frills,
Victorian girls with parasols and corseted bodies, a motley, cowering
crew, less abject only than the cringing blacks, eyed their pursuers
with terror-stricken looks that sought their eyes for pity and found
only hatred.
The giant leaped out before his followers and whirled his spiked club.
“Where is Lembken?” he roared. “Where are his men?” All the while his
eyes searched the women’s faces; but he did not find her whom he sought.
“There are no men,” a frightened woman gasped. “There were never any but
Lembken. We have never seen any others in our lives.”
He had lied to me, then, when he spoke of his friends. How long would he
have endured me there before the poisoned cup came to me? I felt my own
hate and wrath become implacable as that of the mob.
[Illustration:
The giant leaped out before his followers. “Where is Lembken?” he
roared. “Where are the men?”
]
The giant clutched at a cringing negro boy and pulled him from his
knees. “Where is he?” he shouted.
The boy was tongue-tied with fear. But a girl stepped forth bravely.
“That way!” she said, pointing toward a door.
The mob whirled through in a torrent, following the Assyrian-bearded
giant. I heard their shouts grow fainter. The women bolted, scattering
through the dismantled rooms, seeking some other refuge. But one of them
stopped and then came toward me quickly.
“She lied! He is there,” she whispered, pointing toward a wall. “Kill
him, but whisper my name in his ear before he dies.”
I looked at the girl and recognized Coral, the maid who had supplanted
Amaranth. I turned quickly toward the wall, and my eyes discovered the
hidden door, flush with the wall. I burst it open and ran through.
I raced along a winding passage, hearing the mob’s cries far away as
they ran on the false scent they had taken up. I emerged suddenly upon a
little platform fronting a part of the crystal wall that was still
standing in the rear of the Palace. The mob had not yet found the
approaches to this secret refuge.
A glass gateway within the wall stood open, and outside, at rest in the
air, I saw the dark airplane, with Hancock at the wheel. And at the
gate, hesitating to set his feet upon the narrow plank that led to
safety, was Lembken. His arms were filled with bundles, and on his
shoulder a monkey perched, mouthing and gibbering. At his side kneeled a
young girl, with hands clasped, urging Lembken to flight.
The old man heard me and turned around. I saw Hancock start forward,
raise a Ray rod, and aim it at me. But Lembken stood in the way, and he
could not fire.
The girl leaped at me, clutching me by the arms with surprising
strength, and crying to Lembken to fly. But the obese old man only
stared into my face. Fear seemed to have paralyzed him. He did not
remember me, but my presence seemed to awaken some association in his
mind, and, as I watched, I saw it flash into consciousness.
“Jacquette!” he screamed in a tremulous falsetto. “I have forgotten her.
I must go back for her.”
He scrambled past me, and the girl, releasing me, ran after him. I
followed. On we ran, till Lembken turned into a tiny room, once meant to
be a hiding place, no doubt, but now doorless and bare. Again I heard
the shouting. The mob was drawing near.
On a perch beside the entrance sat the gaudy macaw, head on one side,
preening her plumage.
“The people’s friend!” she cackled. “The people’s friend!
Friend—friend—friend—friend—frien—”
With a cry of delight Lembken snatched at her. She fluttered to his
shoulder. He turned, and, with monkey and bird against his sagging
cheeks, he began to make his way along the passage. As he ran I saw
another corridor at right angles to this, and, at the end, daylight and
the waste of uprooted palms. The mob was sweeping past. They saw him;
they howled and dashed to cut off his flight.
Lembken saw them, doubled back, dashing in panic from room to room. The
mob was everywhere about him, searching for him, blocking all exits;
their howls were a continuous sound.
They were upon him. Lembken fell on his knees and pulled a Ray rod from
his robes. With shaking, nerveless fingers he forced up the guard. He
held it to his breast; but it fell from his hand.
“Kill me!” he muttered to the girl.
She flung her arms about him; and thus the mob found them.
The giant leaped at them. His bellowings shook the walls. He sprang for
Lembken, caught him by the throat, and forced his head upward. I saw the
loose spike in his hand. The monkey chattered, the parrot stretched out
her neck and snapped, shrieking her phrases. Between the men the frail
girl wrestled, dashing her weak fists into the giant’s face.
The roaring mob choked the narrow corridor on either side. “Death to
him!” they shrieked. “Death! Death!”
The old man caught the words upon his tongue and screamed.
“Not death!” he yelped. “I’m Lembken. I can’t die. I never thought of
death—dying—going nowhere—nowhere—nothing—I want to live—”
He cowered behind the girl, thrusting her between himself and his enemy.
So furious were her struggles that she forced the giant away. She dashed
her fists into his eyes again and again, until he turned on her and
gripped her by the wrists, twisting her backward. He looked into her
face for the first time.
“Let him go!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him. He is old—he is old—he has
done no harm—he is the people’s friend—he has told me so—I love him—”
The giant dropped her wrists and staggered back. His horror-painted face
became a tragic mask. He moaned, and his hands groped impotently in the
air for something that he failed to find. It was not the blood in his
eyes that blinded him. For this was she whom he had sought, torn from
his home, the last to share Lembken’s favor, the child whom I had seen
dragged from the Council Hall, her innocent child’s heart loyal in his
last hour to the only lover she knew.
It wrung my heart, the pity of it: this blossom of love that sprang from
that festering, rank soil of human baseness.
The next instant the mob swept over us. They seized their prey and
stamped out the life beneath their feet. I saw the quivering body tossed
high in the air and dashed from wall to wall, trampled on, hacked, and
torn. I saw it poised against the crystal walls, saw the dark airplane
swoop to safety amid a hail of Ray fire; and then the air was filled
with zig-zag flashes of blinding light.