MORE FROM THE PAST
Tchigorsky was waiting. The room was pregnant with the perfume of
Turkish cigarettes and coffee. Ralph handed a cup to his nephew.
"Drink that," he said. "You want something to keep you awake."
Geoffrey accepted the coffee gratefully. It had the desired effect. He
felt the clouds lifting from his brain and the drowsy heaviness of limb
leaving him.
"Are you coming with us?" he asked.
Ralph shook his head. There was a strange gleam on his face.
"I stay here," he said. "You are going to be busy, but I also have much
to do. Don't be concerned for me. Blind as I am, I am capable of taking
care of myself. I shall have a deal to tell you in the morning."
A minute or two later and the two conspirators slipped away. It struck
Geoffrey as strange that they should not leave the house in the usual
way; but Tchigorsky grimly explained that he much preferred using the
ivy outside Ralph's window.
"Always be on the safe side," Tchigorsky muttered. "Come along."
Geoffrey followed. Where Tchigorsky could go he felt competent to
follow. They reached the ground in safety and later were in the road.
The moon had gone and it was intensely dark, but Geoffrey knew the way
perfectly.
"Straight to Jessop's farm?" he asked.
"As far as the lawn," Tchigorsky replied. "It will be a good hour yet
before we can venture to carry out our burglary. I can run no risks
until I know that those two Asiatics are out of the way. What time is
it?"
"About ten minutes to twelve."
Tchigorsky muttered that the time was not quite suitable for him. He
drew a watch from his pocket; there was a stifled whirr of machinery,
and the repeater's rapid pulse beat twelve with the silvery chime of a
quarter after the hour.
"You are wrong," he said. "You see it is between a quarter and half-past
twelve. We will lie on Jessop's lawn till one o'clock and then all will
be safe."
They lay there waiting for the time to pass. The minutes seemed to be
weighted. "Tell me some more of your Lassa adventures," Geoffrey asked.
"Very well," Tchigorsky replied. "Where did I leave off? Ah, we had just
been tortured on that awful grill. And we had been offered our lives on
condition that we consented to be hopeless idiots for the rest of our
days.
"Well, we were not going to live in these circumstances, you may be
sure. For the next few days we were left to our own resources in a dark
dungeon with the huge rats and vermin for company. We were half starved
into the bargain, and when we were brought into the light once more they
naturally expected submission.
"But they didn't get it. They did not realize the stuff we were made of.
And they had no idea we were armed. We had our revolvers and concealed
in our pockets were some fifty rounds of ammunition. If the worst came
to the worst we should not die without a struggle.
"Well, there was a huge palaver over us before the priests in the big
temple, with Zara on her throne, and a fine, impressive scene it was,
or, at least, it would have been had we not been so interested as to our
own immediate future. At any rate, it was a comfort to know that there
were no more tortures for the present, for nothing of the kind was to be
seen. We were going to die; we could read our sentence in the eyes of
the priests long before the elaborate mummery was over.
"I tell you it seemed hard to perish like that just at the time when we
had penetrated nearly all the secrets we had come in search of. And it
was no less hard to know that if the princess had postponed her visit
another week she would have been too late. By that time we should have
left Lassa far behind.
"The trial or ceremony, or whatever you like to call it, came to an end
at length, and then we were brought up to the throne of the princess.
You know the woman, you have looked upon the beauty and fascination of
her face; but you have no idea how different she was in the home of her
people. She looked a real queen, a queen from head to foot. We stood
awed before her.
"'You have been offered terms and refused them,' she said. 'It is now
too late.'
"'We could not trust you,' I replied boldly; we had nothing to gain by
politeness. 'Better anything than the living death you offered us. And
we can only die once.'
"The princess smiled in her blood-curdling way.
"'You do not know what you are talking about,' she said. 'Ah, you will
find out when you come to walk the Black Valley!'
"She gave a sign and we were led away unbound. A quaint wailing music
filled the air; the priests were singing our funeral song. I never fully
appreciated the refined cruelty of reading the burial service to a
criminal on his way to the scaffold till then. It makes me shudder to
think of it even now.
"They led us out into the open air, still crooning that dirge. They
brought us at length to the head of a great valley between huge towering
mountains, as if the Alps had been sliced in two and a narrow passage
made between them. At the head of this passage was a door let into the
cliff and down through this door they thrust us. It was dark inside. For
the first part of the way, till we reached the floor of the valley, we
were to be accompanied by four priests, a delicate attention to prevent
us from breaking our necks before we reached the bottom. But our guides
did not mean us to perish so mercifully.
"'Listen to me,' Zara cried, 'listen for the last time. You are going
into the Black Valley; of its horror and dangers you know nothing as
yet. But you will soon learn. Take comfort in the fact that there is an
exit at the far end if you can find it. When you are out of the exit you
are free. Thousands have walked this valley, and over their dry bones
you will make your way. Out of these thousands one man escaped. Perhaps
you will be as fortunate. Farewell!'
"The door clanged behind us, and we were alone with the priests. We
could not see, we could only feel our way down those awful cliffs, where
one false step would have smashed us to pieces. But the priests never
hesitated. Down, down we went until we reached the bottom. There we
could just see dimly.
"'You could guide us through?' I asked.
"One of the priests nodded. He could save us if he liked. Not that I was
going to waste my breath by asking him. They were priests of a minor
degree; there were thousands of them about the temple, all alike as peas
in a pod. If these men failed to return they would never be missed. A
desperate resolution came to me. In a few English whispered words I
conveyed it to Ralph Ravenspur.
"We still had a priest on either side of us. At a given signal we
produced our revolvers, and before the priests had the remotest idea
what had happened two of them were dead on the ground, shot through the
brain. When the thousand and one echoes died away we each had our man by
the throat. What did we care if the plot was discovered or not! We were
both desperate.
"'Listen, dog,' I cried. 'You have seen your companions perish. If you
would escape a similar death, you will bear us to safety. You shall
walk ten paces in front, and if you try to evade us you die, for our
weapons carry farther than you can run in the space of two minutes.
Well, are you going to convey us to a place of safety, or shall we shoot
you like the others?'"
Tchigorsky paused and pulled at his watch. He drew back the catch and
the rapid little pulse beat one.
Then he rose to his feet.
"To be continued in our next," he said. "The time has come to act.
Follow me and betray no surprise at anything you may see or hear."
"You can rely upon me," Geoffrey whispered. "Lead on."