He turned the prow of the cutter toward the cliffs. Instantly they
dashed forward toward the rock walls with greatly increased speed, wild
waves bearing them onward like charging stallions of the sea.
Hunched beside the helmsman, the searchlight stabbing the dark wildly as
the cutter was flung forward by the waves, Ennis and the inspector
watched as the cliffs loomed closer ahead. The brilliant white beam
struck across the rushing, mountainous waves and showed only the
towering barriers of rock, battered and smitten by the raving waters
that frothed white. They could hear the booming thunder of the raging
ocean striking the rock.
Like a projectile hurled by a giant hand, the cutter fairly flew now
toward the cliffs. They now could see even the little streams that ran
off the rough rock wall as each giant wave broke against it. They were
almost upon it.
Sturt's face was deathly. "I don't see any opening!" he yelled. "And
we're going to hit in a moment!"
"To your left!" screamed Inspector Campbell over the booming thunder.
"There's an arched opening there."
Now Ennis saw it also, a huge arch-like opening in the cliff that had
been concealed by an angle of the wall. Sturt tried frantically to head
the cutter toward it, but the wheel was useless as the great waves bore
the craft along. Ennis saw they would strike a little to the side of the
opening. The cliff loomed ahead, and he closed his eyes to the impact.
There was no impact. And as he heard a hoarse cry from Inspector
Campbell, he opened his eyes.
The cutter was flying in through the mighty opening, snatched into it by
powerful currents. They were whirled irresistibly forward under the huge
rock arch, which loomed forty feet over their heads. Before them
stretched a winding water-tunnel inside the cliff.
And now they were out of the wild uproar of the storming waters outside,
and in an almost stupefying silence. Smoothly, resistlessly, the current
bore them on in the tunnel, whose winding turns ahead were lit up by
their searchlight.
"God, that was close!" exclaimed Inspector Campbell.
His eyes flashed. "Ennis, I believe that we have found the
gathering-place of the Brotherhood. That boat we sighted is somewhere
ahead in here, and so must be Chandra Dass, and your wife."
Ennis' hand tightened on his gun-butt. "If that's so--if we can just
find them----"
"Blind action won't help if we do," said the inspector swiftly. "There
must be all the number of the Brotherhood's members assembled here, and
we can't fight them all."
His eyes suddenly lit and he took the blazing jeweled stars from his
pocket. "These badges! With them we can pose as members of the
Brotherhood, perhaps long enough to find your wife."
"But Chandra Dass will be there, and if he sees us----"
Campbell shrugged. "We'll have to take that chance. It's the only course
open to us."
The current of the inflowing tide was still bearing them smoothly onward
through the winding water-tunnel, around bends and angles where they
scraped the rock, down long straight stretches. Sturt used the motors to
guide them around the turns. Meanwhile, Inspector Campbell and Ennis
quickly ripped from the cutter its police-insignia and covered all
evidences of its being a police craft.
Sturt suddenly snicked off the searchlight. "Light ahead there!" he
exclaimed.
Around the next turn of the water-tunnel showed a gleam of strange, soft
light.
"Careful, now!" cautioned the inspector. "Sturt, whatever we do, you
stay in the cutter. And try to have it ready for a quick getaway, if we
leave it."
Sturt nodded silently. The helmsman's stolid face had become a little
pale, but he showed no sign of losing his courage.
* * * * *
The cutter sped around the next turn of the tunnel and emerged into a
huge, softly lit cavern. Sturt's eyes bulged and Campbell uttered an
exclamation of amazement. For in this mighty water-cavern there floated
in a great mass, scores of sea-going craft, large and small.
All of them were capable of breasting storm and wind, and some were so
large they could barely have entered. There were small yachts, big
motor-cruisers, sea-going launches, cutters larger than their own, and
among them the gray motor-launch of Chandra Dass.
They were massed together here, those with masts having lowered them to
enter, floating and rubbing sides, quite unoccupied. Around the edges of
the water-cavern ran a wide rock ledge. But no living person was visible
and there was no visible source for the soft, strange white light that
filled the astounding place.
"These craft must have come here from all over earth!" Campbell
muttered. "The Brotherhood of the Door has assembled here--we've found
their gathering-place all right."
"But where are they?" exclaimed Ennis. "I don't see anyone."
"We'll soon find out," the inspector said. "Sturt, run close to the
ledge there and we'll get out on it."
Sturt obeyed, and as the cutter bumped the ledge, Campbell and Ennis
leaped out onto it. They looked this way and that along it, but no one
was in sight. The weirdness of it was unnerving, the strangely lit,
mighty cavern, the assembled boats, the utter silence.
"Follow me," Campbell said in a low voice. "They must all be somewhere
near."
He and Ennis walked a few steps along the ledge, when the American
stopped. "Campbell, listen!" he whispered.
Dimly there whispered to them, as though from a distance and through
great walls, a swelling sound of chanting. As they listened, hearts
beating rapidly, a square of the rock wall of the cavern abruptly flew
open beside them, as though hinged like a door. Inside it was the mouth
of a soft-lit, man-high tunnel, and in its opening stood two men. They
wore over their clothing shroud-like, loose-hanging robes of gray,
asbestos-like material. They wore hoods of the same gray stuff over
their heads, pierced with slits at the eyes and mouth. And each wore on
his breast the blazing star-badge.
Through the eye-slits the eyes of the two surveyed Campbell and Ennis as
they halted, transfixed by the sudden apparition. Then one of the hooded
men spoke measuredly in a hissing, Mongolian voice.
"Are you who come here of the Brotherhood of the Door?" he asked,
apparently repeating a customary challenge.
Campbell answered, his flat voice tremorless. "We are of the
Brotherhood."
"Why do you not wear the badge of the Brotherhood, then?"
For answer, the inspector reached in his pocket for the strange emblem
and fastened it to his lapel. Ennis did the same.
"Enter, brothers," said the hissing, hooded shape, standing aside to let
them pass.
As they stepped into the tunnel, the hooded guard added in slightly more
natural tones, "Brothers, you two are late. You must hurry to get your
protective robes, for the ceremony soon begins."
Campbell inclined his head without speaking, and he and Ennis started
along the tunnel. Its light, as sourceless as that of the great
water-cavern, revealed that it was chiseled from solid rock and that it
wound downward.
When they were out of sight of the two hooded guards, Ennis clutched the
detective's arm convulsively.
"Campbell," he said, "the ceremony begins soon! We've got to find Ruth
first!"
"We'll try," the inspector answered swiftly. "Those hooded robes are
apparently issued to all the members to be worn during the ceremony as
protection, for some reason, and once we get robes and get them on,
Chandra Dass won't be able to spot us.
"Look out!" he added an instant later. "Here's the place where the robes
are issued!"
The tunnel had debouched suddenly into a wider space in which were a
group of men. Several were wearing the concealing hoods and robes, and
one of these hooded figures was handing out, from a large rack of the
robes, three of the garments to three dark Easterners who had apparently
entered in the boat just ahead of the cutter.
The three dark Orientals, their faces gleaming with strange fanaticism,
quickly donned the robes and hoods and passed hurriedly on down the
tunnel. At once Campbell and Ennis stepped calmly up to the hooded
custodians of the robes, and extended their hands.
One of the hooded figures took down two robes and handed them to them.
But suddenly one of the other hooded men spoke sharply.
Instantly all the hooded men but the one who had spoken, with loud
cries, threw themselves forward on Campbell and Paul Ennis.
Taken utterly by surprize, the two had no chance to draw their guns.
They were smothered by gray-robed men, held helpless before they could
move, a half-dozen pistols jammed into their bodies.
Stupefied by the sudden dashing of their hopes, the detective and the
young American saw the hooded man who had spoken slowly lift the
concealing gray cowl from his face. It was the dark, coldly contemptuous
face of Chandra Dass.
_4. The Cavern of the Door_
Chandra Dass spoke, and his strong, vibrant voice held a scorn that was
almost pitying.
"It occurred to me that your enterprise might enable you to escape the
daggers of my followers, and that you might trail us here," he said.
"That is why I waited here to see if you came.
"Search them," he told the other hooded figures. "Take anything that
looks like a weapon from them."
Ennis stared, stupefied, as the gray-hooded men obeyed. He was unable to
believe entirely in the abrupt reversal of all their hopes, of their
desperate attempt.
The hooded men took their pistols from Ennis and Campbell, and even the
small gold knife attached to the chain of the inspector's big,
old-fashioned gold watch. Then they stepped back, the pistols of two of
them leveled at the hearts of the captives.
Chandra Dass had watched impassively. Ennis, staring dazedly, noted that
the Hindoo wore on his breast a different jewel-emblem from the others,
a double star instead of a single one.
Ennis' dazed eyes lifted from the blazing badge to the Hindoo's dark
face. "Where's Ruth?" he asked a little shrilly, and then his voice
cracked and he cried, "You damned fiend, where's my wife?"
"Be comforted, Mr. Ennis," came Chandra Dass' chill voice. "You are
going now to join your wife, and to share her fate. You two are going
with her and the other sacrifices through the Door when it opens. It is
not usual," he added in cold mockery, "for our sacrificial victims to
walk directly into our hands. We ordinarily have a more difficult time
securing them."
He made a gesture to the two hooded men with pistols, and they ranged
themselves close behind Campbell and Ennis.
"We are going to the Cavern of the Door," said the Hindoo. "Inspector
Campbell, I know and respect your resourcefulness. Be warned that your
slightest attempt to escape means a bullet in your back. You two will
march ahead of us," he said, and added mockingly, "Remember, while you
live you can cling to the shadow of hope, but if these guns speak, it
ends even that shadow."
Ennis and Inspector Campbell, keeping their hands elevated, started at
the Hindoo's command down the softly lit rock tunnel. Chandra Dass and
the two hooded men with pistols followed.
Ennis saw that the inspector's sagging face was expressionless, and knew
that behind that colorless mask, Campbell's brain was racing in an
attempt to find a method of escape. For himself, the young American had
almost forgotten all else in his eagerness to reach his wife. Whatever
happened to Ruth, whatever mysterious horror lay in wait for her and the
other victims, he would be there beside her, sharing it!
The tunnel wound a little further downward, then straightened out and
ran straight for a considerable length. In this straight section of the
rock passage, Ennis and Campbell for the first time perceived that the
walls of the tunnel bore crowding, deeply chiseled inscriptions. They
had not time to read them in passing, but Ennis saw that they were in
many different languages, and that some of the characters were wholly
unfamiliar.
"God, some of those inscriptions are in Egyptian hieroglyphics!"
muttered Inspector Campbell.
The cool voice of Chandra Dass said, behind them, "There are
pre-Egyptian inscriptions on these walls, inspector, could you but
recognize them, carven in languages that perished from the face of earth
before Egypt was born. Yes, back through time, back through mediaeval and
Roman and Egyptian and pre-Egyptian ages, the Brotherhood of the Door
has existed and has each year gathered in this place to open the Door
and worship with sacrifices They Beyond it."
The fanatic note of unearthly devotion was in his voice now, and Ennis
shuddered with a cold not of the tunnel.
As they proceeded, they heard a muffled, hoarse booming somewhere over
their heads, a dull, rhythmic thunder that echoed along the long
passageway. The walls of the tunnel now were damp and glistening in the
sourceless soft light, tiny trickles running down them.
"You hear the ocean over us," came Chandra Dass' voice. "The Cavern of
the Door lies several hundred yards out from shore, beneath the rock
floor of the sea."
They passed the dark mouths of unlit tunnels branching ahead from this
illuminated one. Then over the booming of the raging sea above them,
there came to Ennis' ears the distant, swelling chant they had heard in
the water-cavern above. But now it was louder, nearer. At the sound of
it, Chandra Dass quickened their pace.
Suddenly Inspector Campbell stumbled on the slippery rock floor and went
down in a heap. Instantly Chandra Dass and his two followers recoiled
from them, the two pistols trained on the detective as he scrambled up.
"Do not do that again, inspector," warned the Hindoo in a deadly voice.
"All tricks are useless now."
"I couldn't help slipping on this wet floor," complained Inspector
Campbell.
"The next time you make a wrong step of any kind, a bullet will smash
your spine," Chandra Dass told him. "Quick--march!"
* * * * *
The tunnel turned sharply, turned again. As they rounded the turns,
Ennis saw with a sudden electric thrill of hope that Campbell held
clutched in his hand, concealed by his sleeve, the heel-hilted knife
from his shoe. He had drawn it when he stumbled.
Campbell edged a little closer to the young American as they were
hastening onward, and whispered to him, a word at a time.
"Be--ready--to jump--them----"
"But they'll shoot, your first move----" whispered Ennis agonizedly.
Campbell did not answer. But Ennis sensed the detective's body
tautening.
They came to another turn, the strong, swelling chant coming loud from
ahead. They started around that turn.
Then Inspector Campbell acted. He whirled as though on a pivot, the
heel-knife flashing toward the men behind them.
Shots coughed from the pistols that were pressed almost against his
stomach. His body jerked as the bullets struck it, yet he remained
erect, his knife stabbing with lightning rapidity.
One of the hooded men slumped down with a pierced throat, and as
Campbell sprang at the other, Ennis desperately launched himself at
Chandra Dass. He bore the Hindoo from his feet, but it was as though he
was fighting a demon. Inside his gray robe, Chandra Dass writhed with
fiendish strength.
Ennis could not hold him, the Hindoo's body seeming of spring-steel. He
rolled over, dashed the young American to the floor, and leaped up, his
dark face and great black eyes blazing.
Then, half-way erect, he suddenly crumpled, the fire in his eyes
dulling, a call for help smothered on his lips. He fell on his face, and
Ennis saw that the heel-knife was stuck in his back. Inspector Campbell
jerked it out, and put it back into his shoe. And now Ennis, staggering
up, saw that Campbell had knifed the two hooded guards and that they lay
in a dead heap.
"Campbell!" cried the American, gripping the detective's arm. "They've
wounded you--I saw them shoot you."
Campbell's bruised face grinned briefly. "Nothing of the kind," he said,
and tapped the soiled gray vest he wore beneath his coat. "Chandra Dass
didn't know this vest is bullet-proof."
He darted an alert glance up and down the lighted tunnel. "We can't stay
here or let these bodies lie here. They may be discovered at any
moment."
"Listen!" said Ennis, turning.
The chanting from ahead swelled down the tunnel, louder than at any time
yet, waxing and waxing, reaching a triumphant crescendo, then again
dying away.
"Campbell, they're going on with the ceremony now!" Ennis cried. "Ruth!"
The detective's desperate glance fastened on the dark mouth of one of
the branching tunnels, a little ahead.
"That side tunnel--we'll pull the bodies in there!" he exclaimed.
Taking the pistols of the dead men for themselves, they rapidly dragged
the three bodies into the darkness of the unlit branching tunnel.
"Quick, on with two of these robes," rasped Inspector Campbell. "They'll
give us a little better chance."
Hastily Ennis jerked the gray robe and hood from Chandra Dass' dead body
and donned it, while Campbell struggled into one of the others. In the
robes and concealing hoods, they could not be told from any other two
members of the Brotherhood, except that the badge on Ennis' breast was
the double star instead of the single one.
Ennis then spun toward the main, lighted tunnel, Campbell close behind
him. They recoiled suddenly into the darkness of the branching way, as
they heard hurrying steps out in the lighted passage. Flattened in the
darkness against the wall, they saw several of the gray-hooded members
of the Brotherhood hasten past them from above, hurrying toward the
gathering-place.
"The guards and robe-issuers we saw above!" Campbell said quickly when
they were passed. "Come on, now."
He and Ennis slipped out into the lighted tunnel and hastened along it
after the others.
Boom of thundering ocean over their heads and rising and falling of the
tremendous chanting ahead filled their ears as they hurried around the
last turns of the tunnel. The passage widened, and ahead they saw a
massive rock portal through whose opening they glimpsed an immense,
lighted space.
Campbell and Ennis, two comparatively tiny gray-hooded figures, hastened
through the mighty portal. Then they stopped. Ennis felt frozen with the
dazing shock of it. He heard the detective whisper fiercely beside him.
"It's the Cavern, all right--the Cavern of the Door!"
* * * * *
They looked across a colossal rock chamber hollowed out beneath the
floor of ocean. It was elliptical in shape, three hundred feet by its
longer axis. Its black basalt sides, towering, rough-hewn walls, rose
sheer and supported the rock ceiling which was the ocean floor, a
hundred feet over their heads.
This mighty cathedral hewn from inside the rock of earth was lit by a
soft, white, sourceless light like that in the main tunnel. Upon the
floor of the cavern, in regular rows across it, stood hundreds on
hundreds of human figures, all gray-robed and gray-hooded, all with
their backs to Campbell and Ennis, looking across the cavern to its
farther end. At that farther end was a flat dais of black basalt upon
which stood five hooded men, four wearing the blazing double-star on
their breasts, the fifth, a triple-star. Two of them stood beside a
cubical, weird-looking gray metal mechanism from which upreared a
spherical web of countless fine wires, unthinkably intricate in their
network, many of them pulsing with glowing force. The sourceless light
of the cavern and the tunnel seemed to pulse from that weird mechanism.
Up from that machine, if machine it was, soared the black basalt wall of
that end of the cavern. But there above the gray mechanism the rough
wall had been carved with a great, smooth facet, a giant, gleaming black
oval face as smooth as though planed and polished. Only, at the middle
of the glistening black oval face, were carven deeply four large and
wholly unfamiliar characters. As Ennis and Campbell stared frozenly
across the awe-inspiring place, sound swelled from the hundreds of
throats. A slow, rising chant, it climbed and climbed until the basalt
roof above seemed to quiver to it, crashing out with stupendous effect,
a weird litany in an unknown tongue. Then it began to fall.
Ennis clutched the inspector's gray-robed arm. "Where's Ruth?" he
whispered frantically. "I don't see any prisoners."
"They must be somewhere here," Campbell said swiftly. "Listen----"
As the chant died to silence, on the dais at the farther end of the
cavern the hooded man who wore the triple-jeweled star stepped forward
and spoke. His deep, heavy voice rolled out and echoed across the
cavern, flung back and forth from wall to rocky wall.
"Brothers of the Door," he said, "we meet again here in the Cavern of
the Door this year, as for ten thousand years past our forefathers have
met here to worship They Beyond the Door, and bring them the sacrifices
They love.
"A hundred centuries have gone by since first They Beyond the Door sent
their wisdom through the barrier between their universe and ours, a
barrier which even They could not open from their side, but which their
wisdom taught our fathers how to open.
"Each year since then have we opened the Door which They taught us how
to build. Each year we have brought them sacrifices. And in return They
have given us of their wisdom and power. They have taught us things that
lie hidden from other men, and They have given us powers that other men
have not.
"Now again comes the time appointed for the opening of the Door. In
their universe on the other side of it, They are waiting now to take the
sacrifices which we have procured for them. The hour strikes, so let the
sacrifices be brought."
As though at a signal, from a small opening at one side of the cavern a
triple file of marchers entered. A file of hooded gray members of the
Brotherhood flanked on either side a line of men and women who did not
wear the hoods or robes. They were thirty or forty in number. These men
and women were of almost all races and classes, but all of them walked
stiffly, mechanically, staring ahead with unseeing, distended eyes, like
living corpses.
"Drugged!" came Campbell's shaken voice. "They're all drugged, and don't
know what is going on."
Ennis' eyes fastened on a small, slender girl with chestnut hair who
walked at the end of the line, a girl in a straight tan dress, whose
face was white, stiff, like those of the others.
"There's Ruth!" he exclaimed frantically, his cry muffled by his hood.
He plunged in that direction, but Campbell held him back.
"No!" rasped the inspector. "You can't help her by simply getting
yourself captured!"
"I can at least go with her!" Ennis exclaimed. "Let me go!"
Inspector Campbell's iron grip held him. "Wait, Ennis!" said the
detective. "You've no chance that way. That robe of Chandra Dass' you're
wearing has a double-star badge like those of the men up there on the
dais. That means that as Chandra Dass you're entitled to be up there
with them. Go up there and take your place as though you were Chandra
Dass--with the hood on, they can't tell the difference. I'll slip around
to that side door out of which they brought the prisoners. It must
connect with the tunnels, and it's not far from the dais. When I fire my
pistol from there, you grab your wife and try to get to that door with
her. If you can do it, we'll have a chance to get up through the tunnels
and escape."
Ennis wrung the inspector's hand. Then, without further reply, he walked
boldly with measured steps up the main aisle of the cavern, through the
gray ranks to the dais. He stepped up onto it, his heart racing. The
chief priest, he of the triple-star, gave him only a glance, as of
annoyance at his lateness. Ennis saw Campbell's gray figure slipping
round to the side door.
The gray-hooded hundreds before him had paid no attention to either of
them. Their attention was utterly, eagerly, fixed upon the stiff-moving
prisoners now being marched up onto the dais. Ennis saw Ruth pass him,
her white face an unfamiliar, staring mask.
The prisoners were ranged at the back of the dais, just beneath the
great, gleaming black oval facet. The guards stepped back from them, and
they remained standing stiffly there. Ennis edged a little toward Ruth,
who stood at the end of that line of stiff figures. As he moved
imperceptibly closer to her, he saw the two priests beside the gray
mechanism reaching toward knurled knobs of ebonite affixed to its side,
beneath the spherical web of pulsing wires.
The chief priest, at the front of the dais, raised his hands. His voice
rolled out, heavy, commanding, reverberating again through all the
cavern.
_5. The Door Opens_
"Where leads the Door?" rolled the chief priest's voice.
Back up to him came the reply of hundreds of voices, muffled by the
hoods but loud, echoing to the roof of the cavern in a thunderous
response.
"_It leads outside our world!_"
The chief priest waited until the echoes died before his deep voice
rolled on in the ritual.
"Who taught our forefathers to open the Door?"
Ennis, edging desperately closer and closer to the line of victims, felt
the mighty response reverberate about him.
"_They Beyond the Door taught them!_"
Now Ennis was apart from the other priests on the dais, within a few
yards of the captives, of the small figure of Ruth.
"To whom do we bring these sacrifices?"
As the high priest uttered the words, and before the booming answer
came, a hand grasped Ennis and pulled him back from the line of victims.
He spun round to find that it was one of the other priests who had
jerked him back.
"_We bring them to Those Beyond the Door!_"
As the colossal response thundered, the priest who had jerked Ennis back
whispered urgently to him. "You go too close to the victims, Chandra
Dass! Do you wish to be taken with them?"
The fellow had a tight grip on Ennis' arm. Desperate, tensed, Ennis
heard the chief priest roll forth the last of the ritual.
"Shall the Door be opened that They may take the sacrifices?"
Stunning, mighty, a tremendous shout that mingled in it worshipping awe
and superhuman dread, the answer crashed back.
_"Let the Door be opened!"_
The chief priest turned and his up-flung arms whirled in a signal.
Ennis, tensing to spring toward Ruth, saw the two priests at the gray
mechanism swiftly turn the knurled black knobs. Then Ennis, like all
else in the vast cavern, was held frozen and spellbound by what
followed.
The spherical web of wires pulsed up madly with shining force. And up at
the center of the gleaming black oval facet on the wall, there appeared
a spark of unearthly green light. It blossomed outward, expanded, an
awful viridescent flower blooming quickly outward farther and farther.
And as it expanded, Ennis saw that he could look _through_ that green
light! He looked through into another universe, a universe lying
infinitely far across alien dimensions from our own, yet one that could
be reached through this door between dimensions. It was a green
universe, flooded with an awful green light that was somehow more akin
to darkness than to light, a throbbing, baleful luminescence.
Ennis saw dimly through green-lit spaces a city in the near distance, an
unholy city of emerald hue whose unsymmetrical, twisted towers and
minarets aspired into heavens of hellish viridity. The towers of that
city swayed to and fro and writhed in the air. And Ennis saw that here
and there in the soft green substance of that restless city were circles
of lurid light that were like yellow eyes.
In ghastly, soul-shaking apprehension of the utterly alien, Ennis knew
that the yellow circles were _eyes_--that that hell-spawned city of
another universe was _living_--that its unfamiliar life was single yet
multiple, that its lurid eyes looked now through the Door!
Out from the insane living metropolis glided pseudopods of its green
substance, glided toward the Door. Ennis saw that in the end of each
pseudopod was one of the lurid eyes. He saw those eyed pseudopods come
questing through the Door, onto the dais.
The yellow eyes of light seemed fixed on the row of stiff victims, and
the pseudopods glided toward them. Through the open door was beating
wave on wave of unfamiliar, tingling forces that Ennis felt even through
the protective robe.
The hooded multitude bent in awe as the green pseudopods glided toward
the victims faster, with avid eagerness. Ennis saw them reaching for the
prisoners, for Ruth, and he made a tremendous mental effort to break the
spell that froze him. In that moment pistol-shots crashed across the
cavern and a stream of bullets smashed the pulsing web of wires!
The Door began instantly to close. Darkness crept back around the edges
of the mighty oval. As though alarmed, the lurid-eyed pseudopods of that
hell-city recoiled from the victims, back through the dwindling Door.
And as the Door dwindled, the light in the cavern was failing.
"Ruth!" yelled Ennis madly, and sprang forward and grasped her, his
pistol leaping into his other hand.
"Ennis--quick!" shouted Campbell's voice across the cavern.
The Door dwindled away altogether; the great oval facet was completely
black. The light was fast dying too.
The chief priest sprang madly toward Ennis, and as he did so, the hooded
hordes of the Brotherhood recovered from their paralysis of horror and
surged madly toward the dais.
"The Door is closed! Death to the blasphemers!" cried the chief priest
as he plunged forward.
"Death to the blasphemers!" shrieked the crazed horde below.
Ennis' pistol roared and the chief priest went down. The light in the
cavern died completely at that moment.
In the dark a torrent of bodies catapulted against Ennis, screaming
vengeance. He struck out with his pistol-barrel in the mad melee,
holding Ruth's stiff form close with his other hand. He heard the other
drugged, helpless victims crushed down and trampled under foot by the
surging horde of vengeance-mad members.
* * * * *
Clinging to the girl, Ennis fought like a madman through a darkness in
which none could distinguish friend or foe, toward the door at the side
from which Campbell had fired. He smashed down the pistol-barrel on all
before him, as hands sought to grab him in the dark. He knew sickeningly
that he was lost in the combat, with no sense of the direction of the
door.
Then a voice roared loud across the wild din, "Ennis, this way! This
way, Ennis!" yelled Inspector Campbell, again and again.
Ennis plunged through the whirl of unseen bodies in the direction of the
detective's shouting voice. He smashed through, half dragging and half
carrying the girl, until Campbell's voice was close ahead in the dark.
He fumbled at the rock wall, found the door opening, and then Campbell's
hands grasped him to pull him inside.
Hands grabbed him from behind, striving to tear Ruth from him, to jerk
him back. Voices shrieked for help.
Campbell's pistol blazed in the dark and the hands released their grip.
Ennis stumbled with the girl through the door into a dark tunnel. He
heard Campbell slam a door shut, and heard a bar fall with a clang.
"Quick, for God's sake!" panted Campbell in the dark. "They'll follow
us--we've got to get up through the tunnels to the water-cavern!"
They raced along the pitch-dark tunnel, Campbell now carrying the girl,
Ennis reeling drunkenly along.
They heard a mounting roar behind them, and as they burst into the main
tunnel, no longer lighted but dark like the others, they looked back and
saw a flickering of light coming up the passage.
"They're after us and they've got lights!" Campbell cried. "Hurry!"
It was nightmare, this mad flight on stumbling feet up through the dark
tunnels where they could hear the sea booming close overhead, and could
hear the wild pursuit behind.
Their feet slipped on the damp floor and they crashed into the walls of
the tunnel at the turns. The pursuit was closer behind--as they started
climbing the last passages to the water-cavern, the torchlight behind
showed them to their pursuers and wild yells came to their ears.
They had before them only the last ascent to the water-cavern when Ennis
stumbled and went down. He swayed up a little, yelled to Campbell. "Go
on--get Ruth out! I'll try to hold them back a moment!"
"No!" rasped Campbell. "There's another way--one that may mean the end
for us too, but our only chance!"
The inspector thrust his hand into his pocket, snatched out his big,
old-fashioned gold watch.
He tore it from its chain, turned the stem of it twice around. Then he
hurled it back down the tunnel with all his force.
"Quick--out of the tunnels now or we'll die right here!" he yelled.
They lunged forward, Campbell dragging both the girl and the exhausted
Ennis, and emerged a moment later into the great water-cavern. It was
now lit only by the searchlight of their waiting cutter.
As they emerged into the cavern, they were thrown flat on the rock ledge
by a violent movement of it under them. An awful detonation and
thunderous crashing of falling rock smote their ears.
Following that first tremendous crash, giant rumbling of collapsing rock
shook the water-cavern.
"To the cutter!" Campbell cried. "That watch of mine was filled with the
most concentrated high-explosive known, and it's blown up the tunnels.
Now it's touched off more collapses and all these caverns and passages
will fall in on us at any moment!"
The awful rumbling and crashing of collapsing rock masses was deafening
in their ears as they lurched toward the cutter. Great chunks of rock
were falling from the cavern roof into the water.
* * * * *
Sturt, white-faced but asking no questions, had the motor of the cutter
running, and helped them pull the unconscious girl aboard.
"Out of the tunnel at once!" Campbell ordered. "Full speed!"
They roared down the water-tunnel at crazy velocity, the searchlight
beam stabbing ahead. The tide had reached flood and turned, increasing
the speed with which they dashed through the tunnel.
Masses of rock fell with loud splashes behind them, and all around them
was still the ominous grinding of mighty weights of rock. The walls of
the tunnel quivered repeatedly.
Sturt suddenly reversed the propellers, but in spite of his action the
cutter smashed a moment later into a solid rock wall. It was a mass of
rock forming an unbroken barrier across the water-tunnel, extending
beneath the surface of the water.
"We're trapped!" cried Sturt. "A mass of the rock has settled here and
blocked the tunnel."
"It can't be completely blocked!" Campbell exclaimed. "See, the tide
still runs out beneath it. Our one chance is to swim out under the
blocking mass of rock, before the whole cliff gives way!"
"But there's no telling how far the block may extend----" Sturt cried.
Then as Campbell and Ennis stripped off their coats and shoes, he
followed their example. The rumble of grinding rock around them was now
continuous and nerve-shattering.
Campbell helped Ennis lower Ruth's unconscious form into the water.
"Keep your hand over her nose and mouth!" cried the inspector. "Come on,
now!"
Sturt went first, his face pale in the searchlight beam as he dived
under the rock mass. The tidal current carried him out of sight in a
moment.
Then, holding the girl between them, and with Ennis' hand covering her
mouth and nostrils, the other two dived. Down through the cold waters
they shot, and then the swift current was carrying them forward like a
mill-race, their bodies bumping and scraping against the rock mass
overhead.
Ennis' lungs began to burn, his brain to reel, as they rushed on in the
waters, still holding the girl tightly. They struck solid rock, a wall
across their way. The current sucked them downward, to a small opening
at the bottom. They wedged in it, struggled fiercely, then tore through
it. They rose on the other side of it into pure air. They were in the
darkness, floating in the tunnel beyond the block, the current carrying
them swiftly onward.
The walls were shaking and roaring frightfully about them as they were
borne round the turns of the tunnel. Then they saw ahead of them a
circle of dim light, pricked with white stars.
The current bore them out into that starlight, into the open sea. Before
them in the water floated Sturt, and they swam with him out from the
shaking, grinding cliffs.
The girl stirred a little in Ennis' grasp, and he saw in the starlight
that her face was no longer dazed.
"Paul----" she muttered, clinging close to Ennis in the water.
"She's coming back to consciousness--the water must have revived her
from that drug!" he cried.
But he was cut short by Campbell's cry. "Look! Look!" cried the
inspector, pointing back at the black cliffs.
In the starlight the whole cliff was collapsing, with a prolonged,
terrible roar as of grinding planets, its face breaking and buckling.
The waters around them boiled furiously, whirling them this way and
that.
Then the waters quieted. They found they had been flung near a sandy
spit beyond the shattered cliffs, and they swam toward it.
"The whole underground honeycomb of caverns and tunnels gave way and the
sea poured in!" Campbell cried. "The Door, and the Brotherhood of the
Door, are ended for ever!"