[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales
August-September 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _An amazing weird mystery story, packed with thrills, danger
and startling events._]
_1. The Brotherhood of the Door_
"Where leads the Door?"
"_It leads outside our world._"
"Who taught our forefathers to open the Door?"
"_They Beyond the Door taught them._"
"To whom do we bring these sacrifices?"
"_We bring them to Those Beyond the Door._"
"Shall the Door be opened that They may take them?"
"_Let the Door be opened!_"
Paul Ennis had listened thus far, his haggard face uncomprehending in
expression, but now he interrupted the speaker.
"But what does it all mean, inspector? Why are you repeating this to
me?"
"Did you ever hear anyone speak words like that?" asked Inspector Pierce
Campbell, leaning tautly forward for the answer.
"Of course not--it just sounds like gibberish to me," Ennis exclaimed.
"What connection can it have with my wife?"
He had risen to his feet, a tall, blond young American whose
good-looking face was drawn and worn by inward agony, whose crisp yellow
hair was brushed back from his forehead in disorder, and whose blue eyes
were haunted with an anguished dread.
He kicked back his chair and strode across the gloomy little office,
whose single window looked out on the thickening, foggy twilight of
London. He bent across the dingy desk, gripping its edges with his hands
as he spoke tensely to the man sitting behind it.
"Why are we wasting time talking here?" Ennis cried. "Sitting here
talking, when anything may be happening to Ruth!
"It's been hours since she was kidnapped. They may have taken her
anywhere, even outside of London by now. And instead of searching for
her, you sit here and talk gibberish about Doors!"
Inspector Campbell seemed unmoved by Ennis' passion. A bulky, almost
bald man, he looked up with his colorless, sagging face, in which his
eyes gleamed like two crumbs of bright brown glass.
"You're not helping me much by giving way to your emotions, Mr. Ennis,"
he said in his flat voice.
"Give way? Who wouldn't give way?" cried Ennis. "Don't you understand,
man, it's Ruth that's gone--my wife! Why, we were married only last week
in New York. And on our second day here in London, I see her whisked
into a limousine and carried away before my eyes! I thought you men at
Scotland Yard here would surely act, do something. Instead you talk
crazy gibberish to me!"
"Those words are _not_ gibberish," said Pierce Campbell quietly. "And I
think they're related to the abduction of your wife."
"What do you mean? How could they be related?"
The inspector's bright little brown eyes held Ennis'. "Did you ever hear
of an organization called the Brotherhood of the Door?"
Ennis shook his head, and Campbell continued, "Well, I am certain your
wife was kidnapped by members of the Brotherhood."
"What kind of an organization is it?" the young American demanded. "A
band of criminals?"
"No, it is no ordinary criminal organization," the detective said. His
sagging face set strangely. "Unless I am mistaken, the Brotherhood of
the Door is the most unholy and blackly evil organization that has ever
existed on this earth. Almost nothing is known of it outside its circle.
I myself in twenty years have learned little except its existence and
name. That ritual I just repeated to you, I heard from the lips of a
dying member of the Brotherhood, who repeated the words in his
delirium."
Campbell leaned forward. "But I know that every year about this time the
Brotherhood come from all over the world and gather at some secret
center here in England. And every year, before that gathering, scores of
people are kidnapped and never heard of again. I believe that all those
people are kidnapped by this mysterious Brotherhood."
"But what becomes of the people they kidnap?" cried the pale young
American. "What do they do with them?"
* * * * *
Inspector Campbell's bright brown eyes showed a hint of hooded horror,
yet he shook his head. "I know no more than you. But whatever they do to
the victims, they are never heard of again."
"But you must know something more!" Ennis protested. "What is this
Door?"
Campbell again shook his head. "That too I don't know, but whatever it
is, the Door is utterly sacred to the members of the Brotherhood, and
whomever they mean by They Beyond the Door, they dread and venerate to
the utmost."
"Where leads the Door? _It leads outside our world_," repeated Ennis.
"What can that mean?"
"It might have a symbolic meaning, referring to some secluded fastness
of the order which is away from the rest of the world," the inspector
said. "Or it might----"
He stopped. "Or it might what?" pressed Ennis, his pale face thrust
forward.
"It might mean, literally, that the Door leads outside our world and
universe," finished the inspector.
Ennis' haunted eyes stared. "You mean that this Door might somehow lead
into another universe? But that's impossible!"
"Perhaps unlikely," Campbell said quietly, "but not impossible. Modern
science has taught us that there are other universes than the one we
live in, universes congruent and coincident with our own in space and
time, yet separated from our own by the impassable barrier of totally
different dimensions. It is not entirely impossible that a greater
science than ours might find a way to pierce that barrier between our
universe and one of those outside ones, that a Door should be opened
from ours into one of those others in the infinite outside."
"A door into the infinite outside," repeated Ennis broodingly, looking
past the inspector. Then he made a sudden movement of wild impatience,
the dread leaping back strong in his eyes again.
"Oh, what good is all this talk about Doors and infinite universes doing
in finding Ruth? I want to _do_ something! If you think this mysterious
Brotherhood has taken her, you must surely have some idea of how we can
get her back from them? You must know something more about them than
you've told."
"I don't know anything more certainly, but I've certain suspicions that
amount to convictions," Inspector Campbell said. "I've been working on
this Brotherhood for many years, and block after block I've narrowed
down to the place I think the order's local center, the London
headquarters of the Brotherhood of the Door."
"Where is the place?" asked Ennis tensely.
"It is the waterfront cafe of one Chandra Dass, a Hindoo, down by East
India Docks," said the detective officer. "I've been there in disguise
more than once, watching the place. This Chandra Dass I've found to be
immensely feared by everyone in the quarter, which strengthens my belief
that he's one of the high officers of the Brotherhood. He's too
exceptional a man to be really running such a place."
"Then if the Brotherhood took Ruth, she may be at that place now!" cried
the young American, electrified.
Campbell nodded his bald head. "She may very likely be. Tonight I'm
going there again in disguise, and have men ready to raid the place. If
Chandra Dass has your wife there, we'll get her before he can get her
away. Whatever way it turns out, we'll let you know at once."
"Like hell you will!" exploded the pale young Ennis. "Do you think I'm
going to twiddle my thumbs while you're down there? I'm going with you.
And if you refuse to let me, by heaven I'll go there myself!"
Inspector Pierce Campbell gave the haggard, fiercely determined face of
the young man a long look, and then his own colorless countenance seemed
to soften a little.
"All right," he said quietly. "I can disguise you so you'll not be
recognized. But you'll have to follow my orders exactly, or death will
result for both of us."
That strange, hooded dread flickered again in his eyes, as though he saw
through shrouding mists the outline of dim horror.
"It may be," he added slowly, "that something worse even than death
awaits those who try to oppose the Brotherhood of the Door--something
that would explain the unearthly, superhuman dread that enwraps the
secret mysteries of the order. We're taking more than our lives in our
hands, I think, in trying to unveil those mysteries, to regain your
wife. But we've got to act quickly, at all costs. We've got to find her
before the great gathering of the Brotherhood takes place, or we'll
never find her."
* * * * *
Two hours before midnight found Campbell and Ennis passing along a
cobble-paved waterfront street north of the great East India Docks. Big
warehouses towered black and silent in the darkness on one side, and on
the other were old, rotting docks beyond which Ennis glimpsed the black
water and gliding lights of the river.
As they straggled beneath the infrequent lights of the ill-lit street,
they were utterly changed in appearance. Inspector Campbell, dressed in
a shabby suit and rusty bowler, his dirty white shirt innocent of tie,
had acquired a new face, a bright red, oily, eager one, and a high,
squeaky voice. Ennis wore a rough blue seaman's jacket and a vizored cap
pulled down over his head. His unshaven-looking face and subtly altered
features made him seem a half-intoxicated seaman off his ship, as he
stumbled unsteadily along. Campbell clung to him in true land-shark
fashion, plucking his arm and talking wheedlingly to him.
They came into a more populous section of the evil old waterfront
street, and passed fried-fish shops giving off the strong smell of hot
fat, and the dirty, lighted windows of a half-dozen waterfront saloons,
loud with sordid argument or merriment.
Campbell led past them until they reached one built upon an abandoned,
moldering pier, a ramshackle frame structure extending some distance
back out on the pier. Its window was curtained, but dull red light
glowed through the glass window of the door.
A few shabby men were lounging in front of the place but Campbell paid
them no attention, tugging Ennis inside by the arm.
"Carm on in!" he wheedled shrilly. "The night ain't 'alf over yet--we'll
'ave just one more."
"Don't want any more," muttered Ennis drunkenly, swaying on his feet
inside. "Get away, you damned old shark."
Yet he suffered himself to be led by Campbell to a table, where he
slumped heavily into a chair. His stare swung vacantly.
The cafe of Chandra Dass was a red-lit, smoke-filled cave with cheap
black curtains on the walls and windows, and other curtains cutting off
the back part of the building from view. The dim room was jammed with
tables crowded with patrons whose babel of tongues made an unceasing
din, to which a three-string guitar somewhere added a wailing undertone.
The waiters were dark-skinned and tiger-footed Malays, while the patrons
seemed drawn from every nation east and west.
Ennis' glazed eyes saw dandified Chinese from Limehouse and Pennyfields,
dark little Levantins from Soho, rough-looking Cockneys in shabby caps,
a few crazily laughing blacks. From sly white faces, taut brown ones and
impassive yellow ones came a dozen different languages. The air was
thick with queer food-smells and the acrid smoke.
Campbell had selected a table near the back curtain, and now stridently
ordered one of the Malay waiters to bring gin. He leaned forward with an
oily smile to the drunken-looking Ennis, and spoke to him in a wheedling
undertone.
"Don't look for a minute, but that's Chandra Dass over in the corner,
and he's watching us," he said.
Ennis shook his clutching hand away. "Damned old shark!" he muttered
again.
He turned his swaying head slowly, letting his eyes rest a moment on the
man in the corner. That man was looking straight at him.
Chandra Dass was tall, dressed in spotless white from his shoes to the
turban on his head. The white made his dark, impassive, aquiline face
stand out in chiseled relief. His eyes were coal-black, large, coldly
searching, as they met Ennis' bleared gaze.
Ennis felt a strange chill as he met those eyes. There was something
alien and unhuman, something uncannily disturbing, behind the Hindoo's
stare. He turned his gaze vacantly from Chandra Dass to the black
curtains at the rear, and then back to his companion.
The silent Malay waiter had brought the liquor, and Campbell pressed a
glass toward his companion. "'Ere, matey, take this."
"Don't want it," muttered Ennis, pushing it away. Still in the same
mutter, he added, "If Ruth's here, she's somewhere in the back there.
I'm going back and find out."
"Don't try it that way, for God's sake!" said Campbell in the wheedling
undertone. "Chandra Dass is still watching, and those Malays would be on
you in a minute. Wait until I give the word.
"All right, then," Campbell added in a louder, injured tone. "If you
don't want it, I'll drink it myself."
He tossed off the glass of gin and set the glass down on the table,
looking at his drunken companion with righteous indignation.
"Think I'm tryin' to bilk yer, eh?" he added. "That's a fine way to
treat a pal!"
He added in the coaxing lower tone, "All right, I'm going to try it. Be
ready to move when I light my cigarette."
He fished a soiled package of Gold Flakes from his pocket and put one in
his mouth. Ennis waited, every muscle taut.
The inspector, his red, oily face still injured in expression, struck a
match to his cigarette. Almost at once there was a loud oath from one of
the shabby loungers outside the front of the building, and the sound of
angry voices and blows.
The patrons of Chandra Dass looked toward the door, and one of the Malay
waiters went hastily out to quiet the fight. But it grew swiftly,
sounded in a moment like a small riot. _Crash_--someone was pushed
through the front window. The excited patrons pressed toward the front.
Chandra Dass pushed through them, issuing quick orders to his servants.
For the time being the back of the cafe was deserted and unnoticed.
Campbell sprang to his feet, and with Ennis close behind him, darted
through the black curtains. They found themselves in a black corridor at
the end of which a red bulb burned dimly. They could still hear the
uproar.
Campbell's gun was in his hand, and the American's in his.
"We dare only stay here a few moments," the inspector cried. "Look in
those rooms along the corridor here."
Ennis frantically tore open a door and peered into a dark room smelling
of drugs. "Ruth!" he cried softly. "Ruth!"
_2. Death Trap_
There was no answer. The light in the corridor behind him suddenly went
out, plunging him into pitch-black darkness. He jumped back into the
dark corridor, and as he did so, heard a sudden scuffle further along
it.
"Campbell!" he exclaimed, lunging forward in the black passageway. There
was no answer.
He pitched forward through stygian obscurity, his hands searching ahead
of him for the inspector. In the dark something whipped smoothly around
his throat, tightened there like a slender, contracting tentacle.
Ennis tore frenziedly at the thing, which he felt to be a slender silken
cord, but he could not loosen it. It was choking him. He tried to cry
out again to Campbell, but his throat could not emit the sounds. He
thrashed, twisted helplessly, hearing a loud roaring in his ears,
consciousness receding. Then, dimly as though in a dream, Ennis was
aware of being lowered to the floor, of being half carried and half
dragged along. The constriction around his throat was gone and rapidly
his brain began to clear. He opened his eyes.
He found himself lying on the floor of a room illuminated by a great
hanging brass lamp of ornate design. The walls of the room were hung
with rich, grotesquely worked red silk Indian draperies. His hands and
feet were bound behind him, and beside him, tied in the same manner, lay
Inspector Campbell. Over them stood Chandra Dass and two of the Malay
servants. The faces of the servants were tigerish in their menace, but
Chandra Dass' face was one of dark, impassive scorn.
"So you misguided fools thought you could deceive me so easily as that?"
he said in a strong, vibrant voice. "Why, we knew hours ago that you,
Inspector Campbell, and you, Mr. Ennis, were coming here tonight. We let
you get this far only because it was evident that somehow you had
learned too much about us, and that it would be best to let you come
here and meet your deaths."
"Chandra Dass, I've men outside," rasped Campbell. "If we don't come
out, they'll come in after us."
The Hindoo's proud, dark face did not change its scorn. "They will not
come in for a little while, inspector. By that time you two will be dead
and we shall be gone with our captives. Yes, Mr. Ennis, your wife is one
of those captives," he added to the prostrate young American. "It is too
bad we cannot take you and the inspector to share her glorious destiny,
but then our accommodations of transport are limited."
"Ruth here?" Ennis' face flamed at the words, and he raised himself a
little from the floor on his elbows.
"Then you'll let her go if I pay you? I'll raise any amount, I'll do
anything you ask, if you'll set her free."
"No amount of money in the world could buy her from the Brotherhood of
the Door," answered Chandra Dass steadily. "For she belongs now, not to
us, but to They Beyond the Door. Within a few hours she and many others
shall stand before the Door, and They Beyond the Door shall take them."
"What are you going to do to her?" cried Ennis. "What is this damned
Door and who are They Beyond it?"
"I do not think that even if I told you, your little mind would be able
to accept the mighty truth," Chandra Dass said calmly. His coal-black
eyes suddenly flashed with fanatic, frenetic light. "How could your
poor, earth-bound little intelligences conceive the true nature of the
Door and of those who dwell beyond it? Your puny brains would be
stricken senseless by mere apprehension of them, They who are mighty and
crafty and dreadful beyond anything on earth."
A cold wind from the alien unknown seemed to sweep the lamplit room with
the Hindoo's passionate words. Then that rapt, fanatic exaltation
dropped from him as suddenly as it had come, and he spoke in his
ordinary vibrant tones.
"But enough of this parley with blind worms of the dust. Bring the
weights!"
The last words were addressed to the Malay servants, who sprang to a
closet in the corner of the room.
Inspector Campbell said steadily, "If my men find us dead when they come
in here, they'll leave none of you living."
* * * * *
Chandra Dass did not even listen to him, but ordered the dark servants
sharply, "Attach the weights!"
The Malays had brought from the closet two fifty-pound lead balls, and
now they proceeded quickly to tie these to the feet of the two men. Then
one of them rolled back the brilliant red Indian rug from the rough pine
floor. A square trap-door was disclosed, and at Chandra Dass' order, it
was swung upward and open.
Up through the open square came the sound of waves slap-slapping against
the piles of the old pier, and the heavy odors of salt water and of
rotting wood invaded the room.
"The water under this pier is twenty feet deep," Chandra Dass told the
two prisoners. "I regret to give you so easy a death, but there is no
opportunity to take you to the fate you deserve."
Ennis, his skin crawling on his flesh, nevertheless spoke rapidly and as
steadily as possible to the Hindoo.
"Listen, I don't ask you to let me go, but I'll do anything you want,
let you kill me any way you want, if you'll let Ruth----"
Sheer horror cut short his words. The Malay servants had dragged
Campbell's bound body to the door in the floor. They shoved him over the
edge. Ennis had one glimpse of the inspector's taut, strange face
falling out of sight. Then a dull splash sounded instantly below, and
then silence.
He felt hands upon himself, dragging him across the floor. He fought,
crazily, hopelessly, twisting his body in its bonds, thrashing his bound
limbs wildly.
[Illustration: "A shove sent his body scraping over the edge, and he
plunged downward through dank darkness."]
He saw the dark, unmoved face of Chandra Dass, the brass lamp over his
head, the red hangings. Then his head dangled over the opening, a shove
sent his body scraping over the edge, and he plunged downward through
dank darkness. With a splash he hit the icy water and went under. The
heavy weight at his ankles dragged him irresistibly downward.
Instinctively he held his breath as the water rushed upward around him.
His feet struck oozy bottom. His body swayed there, chained by the lead
weight to the bottom. His lungs already were bursting to draw in air,
slow fires seeming to creep through his breast as he held his breath.
Ennis knew that in a moment or two more he would inhale the strangling
waters and die. The thought-picture of Ruth flashed across his
despairing mind, wild with hopeless regret. He could no longer hold his
breath, felt his muscles relaxing against his will, tasted the stinging
salt water at the back of his nose.
Then it was a bursting confusion of swift sensations, the choking water
in his nose and throat, the roaring in his ears. A scroll of flame
unrolled slowly in his brain and a voice shouted there, "You're dying!"
He felt dimly a plucking at his ankles.
Abruptly Ennis' dimming mind was aware that he now was shooting upward
through the water. His head burst into open air and he choked, strangled
and gasped, his tortured lungs gulping the damp, heavy air. He opened
his eyes, and shook the water from them.
He was floating in the darkness at the surface of the water. Someone was
floating beside him, supporting him. Ennis' chin bumped the other's
shoulder, and he heard a familiar voice.
"Easy, now," said Inspector Campbell. "Wait till I cut your hands
loose."
"Campbell!" Ennis choked. "How did you get loose?"
"Never mind that now," the inspector answered. "Don't make any noise, or
they may hear us up there."
Ennis felt a knife-blade slashing the bonds at his wrists. Then, the
inspector's arm helping him, he and his companion paddled weakly through
the darkness under the rotting pier. They bumped against the slimy,
moldering piles, threaded through them toward the side of the pier. The
waves of the flooding tide washed them up and down as Campbell led the
way.
They passed out from under the old pier into the comparative
illumination of the stars. Looking back up, Ennis saw the long, black
mass of the house of Chandra Dass, resting on the black pier, ruddy
light glowing from window-cracks. He collided with something and found
that Campbell had led toward a little floating dock where some skiffs
were moored. They scrambled up onto it from the water, and lay panting
for a few moments.
Campbell had something in his hand, a thin, razor-edged steel blade
several inches long. Its hilt was an ordinary leather shoe-heel.
The inspector turned up one of his feet and Ennis saw that the heel was
missing from that shoe. Carefully Campbell slid the steel blade beneath
the shoe-sole, the heel-hilt sliding into place and seeming merely the
innocent heel of the shoe.
"So that's how you got loose down in the water!" Ennis exclaimed, and
the inspector nodded briefly.
"That trick's done me good service before--even with your hands tied
behind your back you can get out that knife and use it. It was touch and
go, though, whether I could get it out and cut myself loose in the water
in time enough to free you."
Ennis gripped the inspector's shoulder. "Campbell, Ruth is in there! By
heaven, we've found her and now we can get her out!"
"Right!" said the officer grimly. "We'll go around to the front and in
two minutes we'll be in there with my men."
* * * * *
They climbed dripping to their feet, and hastened from the little
floating dock up onto the shore, through the darkness to the cobbled
street.
The shabbily disguised men of Inspector Campbell were not now in front
of Chandra Dass' cafe, but lurking in the shadows across the street.
They came running toward Campbell and Ennis.
"All right, we're going in there," Campbell exclaimed in steely tones.
"Get Chandra Dass, whatever you do, but see that his prisoners are not
harmed."
He snapped a word and one of the men handed pistols to him and to Ennis.
Then they leaped toward the door of the Hindoo's cafe, from which still
streamed ruddy light and the babel of many voices.
A kick from Inspector Campbell sent the door flying inward, and they
burst in with guns gleaming wickedly in the ruddy light. Ennis' face was
a quivering mask of desperate resolve.
The motley patrons jumped up with yells of alarm at their entrance. The
hand of a Malay waiter jerked and a thrown knife thudded into the wall
beside them. Ennis yelled as he saw Chandra Dass, his dark face
startled, leaping back with his servants through the black curtains.
He and Campbell drove through the squealing patrons toward the back. The
Malay who had thrown the knife rushed to bar the way, another dagger
uplifted. Campbell's gun coughed and the Malay reeled and stumbled. The
inspector and Ennis threw themselves at the black curtains--and were
dashed back.
They tore aside the black folds. A dull steel door had been lowered
behind them, barring the way to the back rooms. Ennis beat crazily upon
it with his pistol-butt, but it remained immovable.
"No use--we can't break that down!" yelled Campbell, over the uproar.
"Outside, and around to the other end of the building!"
They burst back out through that mad-house, into the dark of the street.
They started along the side of the pier toward the river-end, edging
forward on a narrow ledge but inches wide. As they reached the back of
the building, Ennis shouted and pointed to dark figures at the end of
the pier. There were two of them, lowering shapeless, wrapped forms over
the end of the pier.
"There they are!" he cried. "They've got their prisoners out there with
them."
Campbell's pistol leveled, but Ennis swiftly struck it up. "No, you
might hit Ruth."
He and the inspector bounded forward along the pier. Fire streaked from
the dark ahead and bullets thumped the rotting boards around them.
Suddenly the loud roar of an accelerated motor drowned out all other
sounds. It came from the river at the pier's end.
Campbell and Ennis reached the end in time to see a long, powerful, gray
motor-boat dash out into the black obscurity of the river, and roar
eastward with gathering speed.
"There they go--they're getting away!" cried the agonized young
American.
Inspector Campbell cupped his hands and shouted out into the darkness,
"River police, ahoy! Ahoy there!"
He rasped to Ennis. "The river police were to have a cutter here
tonight. We can still catch them."
With swiftly rising roar of speeded motors, a big cutter drove in from
the darkness. Its searchlight snapped on, bathing the two men on the
pier in a blinding glare.
"Ahoy, there!" called a stentorian voice over the roar of the motors.
"Is that Inspector Campbell?"
"Yes. Come alongside," yelled the inspector, and as the big cutter shot
close to the end of the pier, its reversing propellers churning the dark
water to foam, Ennis and Campbell leaped.
They landed amid unseen men in the cockpit, and as he scrambled to his
feet the inspector cried, "Follow that boat that just went down-river.
But no shooting!"
* * * * *
With thunderous drumfire from its exhausts, the cutter jerked forward so
rapidly that it almost threw them from their feet again. It shot out
onto the bosom of the dark river that flowed like a black sea between
the banks of scattered lights that were London.
The moving lights of yachts and barges coming up-river could be seen
gliding in that darkness. The captain of the cutter barked an order and
one of his three men, the one crouched at the searchlight, switched its
powerful beam out over the waters ahead.
In a moment it picked up a distant gray spot racing eastward on the
black river, leaving a white trail of foam.
"There she is!" bawled the man at the searchlight. "She's running
without lights!"
"Keep her in the searchlight," ordered the captain. "Sound our siren,
and give the cutter her head."
Swaying, rocking, the cutter roared on through the darkness on the trail
of that distant fleeing speck. As they raced down Blackwall Reach, the
distance between the two craft had already begun to lessen.
"We're overtaking him!" cried Campbell, clutching a stanchion and
peering ahead against the rush of wind and spray. "He must be making for
whatever spot it is in England that is the center of the Brotherhood of
the Door--but he'll never reach it."
"He said that within a few hours Ruth would go with the others through
the Door!" cried Ennis, clinging beside him. "Campbell, we mustn't let
them get away now!"
Pursuers and pursued flashed on down the dark, broadening river, through
mazes of shipping, the cutter hanging doggedly to the motor-boat's
trail. The lights of London had dropped behind and those of Tilbury now
gleamed away on their left.
Bigger, stronger waves now tossed and pounded the cutter as it raced out
of the river mouth toward the heaving black expanse of the sea. The Kent
coast was a black blur on their right; the gray motor-boat followed it
closely, grazing almost beneath the Sheerness lights.
"He's heading to round North Foreland and follow the coast south to
Ramsgate or Dover," the cutter captain cried to Campbell. "But we'll
catch him before he passes Margate."
The quarry was now but a quarter-mile ahead. Steadily as they roared
onward the gap narrowed, until in the glare of the searchlight they
could make out every detail of the powerful gray motor-boat plunging
through the tossing black waves.
They saw Chandra Dass' dark face turn and look back at them, and the
cutter captain raised his speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted over
the roar of motors and dash of waves.
"Stand by or we'll fire at you!"
"He won't obey," muttered Campbell between his teeth. "He knows we
daren't fire with the girl in the boat."
"Yes, blast him!" exclaimed the captain. "But we'll have him in a few
minutes, anyway."
The thundering chase had brought them into sight of the lights of
Margate on the dark coast to their right. Now only a few hundred feet of
black water separated them from the fleeing craft.
Ennis and the inspector, gripping the stanchions of the rushing cutter,
saw a white figure suddenly stand erect in the boat ahead and wave its
arms to them. The gray motor-boat slowed.
"It's Chandra Dass and he's signaling that he's giving up!" Ennis cried.
"He's stopping!"
"By heavens, he is!" Campbell explained. "Drive alongside him, and we'll
soon have the irons on him."
The cutter, its own motors hastily throttled down, shot through the
water toward the slowing gray craft. Ennis saw Chandra Dass standing
erect, awaiting their coming, he and the two Malays beside him holding
their hands in the air. He saw a half-dozen or more white-wrapped forms
in the bottom of the boat, lying motionless.
"There are their prisoners!" he cried. "Bring the boat closer so we can
jump in!"
He and Campbell, their pistols out, hunched to jump as the cutter drove
closer to the gray motor-boat. The sides of the two craft bumped, the
motors of both idling noisily. Then before Ennis and Campbell could jump
into the motor-boat, things happened with cinema-like rapidity. Two of
the still white forms at the bottom of the motor-boat leaped up and like
suddenly uncoiled springs shot through the air into the cutter. They
were two other Malays, their dark faces flaming with fanatic light, keen
daggers glinting in their upraised hands.
"'Ware a trick!" yelled Campbell. His gun barked, but the bullet missed
and a dagger slit his sleeve.
The Malays, with wild, screeching yells, were laying about them with
their daggers in the cutter, insanely.
"God in heaven, they're running amok!" choked the cutter captain.
His slashed neck spurting blood and his face livid, he fell. One of his
men slumped coughing beside him, another victim of the crazy daggers.
_3. Up the Water-Tunnel_
The man at the searchlight sprang for the maddened Malays, tugging at
his pistol as he jumped. Before he got the weapon out, a dagger slashed
his jugular and he went down gurgling in death. One of the Malays
meanwhile had knocked Inspector Campbell from his feet, his knife-hand
swooping down, his eyes blazing.
Ennis' gun roared and the bullet hit the Malay between the eyes. But as
he slumped limply, the other fanatic was upon Ennis from the side.
Before Ennis could whirl to meet him, the attacker's knife grazed down
past his cheek like a brand of living fire. He was borne backward by the
rush, felt the hot breath of the crazed Malay in his face, the
dagger-point at his throat.
Shots roared quickly, one after another, and with each shot the Malay
pressing Ennis back jerked convulsively. With the light of murderous
madness fading from his eyes, he still strove to drive the dagger home
into the American's throat. But a hand jerked him back and he lay
prostrate and still.
Ennis scrambled up to find Inspector Campbell, pale and determined, over
him. The detective had shot the attacker from behind.
The captain of the cutter and two of his men lay dead in the cockpit
beside the two Malays. The remaining seaman, the helmsman, held his
shoulder and groaned.
Ennis whirled. The motor-boat of Chandra Dass was no longer beside the
cutter, and there was no sight of it anywhere on the black sea ahead.
The Hindoo had taken advantage of the fight to make good his escape with
his two other servants and their prisoners.
"Campbell, he's gone!" cried the young American frantically. "He's got
away!"
The inspector's eyes were bright with cold flame of anger. "Yes, Chandra
Dass sacrificed these two Malays to hold us up long enough for him to
escape."