"EMPEROR OF THE EARTH!"
In the flat light of dawn we must have looked ashen as we stood there
on the roof top with Zetta's scream ringing in our horrified ears. I
remember standing transfixed just an instant. Father made a leap toward
the stairway that led down into the house, but a cry from Hulda checked
him.
"Look! The guards--look there!"
[Illustration: The Braun with the knife sprang at Zetta, and she called
on her insect guards for help.]
We were at a corner of the roof where it projected and gave a side
view of the building. In the twilight I could see the ground--a garden
path between flowering shrubs; the burnished side wall of the house;
the lower windows, with shutters slanting out; and an upper window,
diagonally beneath us, Zetta's room! It seemed so. It was opened;
another scream from Zetta came through it.
I recall that my confusion was mingled with a sense of relief--this cry
seemed to hold not so much terror as anger and words of command.
It all happened in no more than an instant, while we hung over the roof
parapet, watching. From the ground a figure leaped upward--a great
brown thing with spindly legs, shining shell of jointed body and a head
with thin waving arms beside it.
From within the room a commotion now sounded, a struggle--the
scratching of giant insect legs, the pad of human feet. The thing on
the ground outside came sailing up with its leap; it clutched the
casement, went scuttling in the window.
Father left us and ran down the staircase from the roof, but we did
not heed his going. Then from the window a man's body was tumbled out.
The grotesque forms of two great insects showed there; they were in
the room, pushing the man through the window. He fell lightly to the
ground; lay huddled, writhing in a heap. From the window they leaped
down after him. A thing with brown spreading wings came sailing down
from the foliage; a dozen others were leaping from unseen places.
Zetta appeared at the window. Zetta, unharmed. She gazed down but
behind her, father appeared and drew her back into the room. On the
ground a score of the insect guards were writhing, scratching, pawing
over the body of Zetta's assailant. One scuttled away with a fragment,
and two others chased it.
"It's perfectly clear to me," said father. "Kean, this blackguard Graff
tried to abduct Zetta. What will your government say to that, when I
tell them this morning? Are we to have these Brauns committing crimes
right here in Garla?"
We were all in father's living room, half an hour after the attack on
Zetta. Kean had come; he stood now before us respectfully listening
to father's indignant words. He was a slim young fellow, as short as
Freddie and as slender; a smooth, white-skinned youth, in leather,
sleeveless jacket and short, wide-flaring leather trousers. Bareheaded,
his thick, white hair hung long to his ears, with a thong binding it
about his forehead. His face was pleasant, with a delicacy of cast
suggesting girlishness, but his mouth was wide and firm-lipped, his
chin strong and thoroughly masculine.
I liked him at once, this Kean. He smiled at us and shook our hands. He
spoke English, like Zetta, with that quaint, clipped accent.
Zetta had not been hurt. She had been awakened by an intruder at her
window. An insect guard evidently had followed him in, had attacked
him. The rest we witnessed.
"Who was he?" Kean demanded.
She shook her head. "I do not know."
Father said: "You never saw him before?"
"No, never. I think not."
"A Braun?"
"Oh, yes."
Kean gestured. "If we had him, we could tell--"
"He is--gone now," said Zetta. I shuddered at the memory. Gone indeed!
Father repeated: "Graff evidently sent him to abduct her. Is the
government going to do nothing--"
"They would want proof," said Kean quietly. "I was thinking--Zetta, was
he trying to get you away, or--"
"Or what?" Hulda demanded.
"Or kill her. I was thinking--it might not be Graff who sent him." He
waved away his words. "It would be a very serious problem--other days.
But not now--there is too much else."
It struck me that Zetta's face bore a queer expression. She said
suddenly: "I will tell you the truth."
We turned on her; she was smiling a faint, quizzical smile. "I was
sleeping, as I said. The insect guards caught a man who leaped for my
window. A Braun--I had never seen him before. They would have torn
him--but I made them stop. I tell them, bring him in. And when they
did, I sen' them, the guards, outside, for I wish to speak to him
alone."
Hulda exclaimed: "Zetta, you did not!"
"I did," she returned calmly. "The insects wanted to attack him--so I
force them away. I thought then he was from Graff--I thought he want to
carry me off--steal me for Graff. I was not afraid of him--" Her smile
broadened. "Especially with my guards jus' outside. So I stood agains'
the wall, with him across the room, to talk to him."
"But why?" father demanded. "Child, why would you do a thing like this?"
"I think to find out if really he was from Graff; and if so, then I
wanted to send a message. If Graff would give up his attack upon the
earth, I would marry him as he wants. That was my message."
She said it so calmly! I could picture her standing there in her room,
trying to bargain herself for the safety of another world. There was
not one of us who could find a word to comment. I saw the tears spring
to Hulda's eyes.
* * * * *
Zetta went on unmoved, heedless of our expressions. "I tell the Braun
this. But he was not--that seems sure--he was not sen' by Graff. He
stood of a sudden with a knife--a long knife of the kind we use in
Garla to cut the pods. He jump for me--he would kill me. It was then I
screamed. In the room I avoided him for a moment--and then my guards
came in." She gestured. "The res' you know--and there you have now the
truth--all of it."
Hulda took Zetta in her arms. "You strange little thing Zetta, you
mustn't do anything like this--"
Father said: "If Graff had got your message, he would trick you. Zetta,
promise me you won't try that again. Will you promise?"
She eyed him. "I think perhaps I may not get the chance."
Kean said: "He tried--that Braun--to murder her. He was from Brea--not
from Graff."
"Yes," said Zetta. "I think that is so."
"I'm going before the Council at noon," said father. "I'll have this
out with them--Zetta, if you're going to force me, I'll put you under
guard so you won't be able to do anything foolish--Kean, I want you
to tell the Council I'm bringing my son, and two young friends.
Earthmen--they must hear us now--"
"Yes," said Kean solemnly. "The people are excited, interest' that men
of earth are here. But most interest' in Graff. He promises big things
for Garla--" Kean was very solemn. "The gov'ment is making mistake.
There are too many Brauns here. At the border--I tell them jus' now
that out of our border something mus' be wrong."
He was talking mainly to father, but his gaze seemed involuntarily
swinging to Hulda. "At our border they are not checking the Brauns out
as they should. Or at leas' not sending the reports back to us. All
night--none have come. I have sen' messengers to see what is wrong--"
Father turned to us. "You understand? The authorities have grown
suddenly lax--"
"I'll tell you why," said Freddie. "They're satisfied, since Graff is
going to attack earth, that they have no immediate cause to fear him,
or his people. Maybe, too, they think that when he comes back, laden
with spoils, Garla will benefit--"
"That is it," Kean interrupted. "He tells our people that--exactly
that. It is not our gov'ment which is tempt' into greed--it is the
people--"
Father said: "Well, the authorities are making a mistake, Kean. This
Graff--you believe it as well as I do--is playing a double game. You
know he means no good to Garla. The insect workers--you say there are a
great many of them missing?"
"Yes, I am order to-day a checking of them. Many--a thousan' as you say
it--seem gone--"
"Gone?" I echoed. "What does that mean? Gone where?"
Kean waved his slim white hand. "Over the border? Per'aps--I do not
know. It is ver' strange--"
"Smuggling them out!" said father to us. "You understand? There are
no insect workers in the Braun city. Graff is here, talking--blandly
protesting friendship, with his insidious lures of gain from his earth
conquest--and all the while he's secretly smuggling out our insects--"
Kean had turned away momentarily to Hulda. "My trial, it finish last
night. They gave the verdic' jus' now--I am said, innocent."
Hulda's face brightened; she took his hands. "Oh, Kean, I'm so glad.
Father, the verdict has cleared him!"
"Yes," he said quietly. "Thank you, Hulda."
I whispered to Dan: "Father said you'd have to ask Hulda why Kean
brought his captives to Garla instead of delivering them up to the
Brauns. I can tell you why."
It was obvious, seeing Kean's earnest, flushed face as Hulda
congratulated him.
"Why?" demanded Dan.
"Because he's fascinated by her. Look at him--"
"Oh, he is?" Dan's expression was a study. "He is, is he?" And then he
laughed. "Well, you can't blame him, can you?"
"No," I said, "you can't."
Kean left presently; and Dan made a studied, but very graceful
attempt to be friendly. Both Hulda and Kean knew what he meant.
Kean's handclasp was firm and cordial; his gaze into Dan's eyes was
unfaltering. He carried himself then--and indeed, always--with a very
manly dignity worthy of any one's admiration. When he was gone, Hulda
turned to Dan, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Dan, you're a darling."
* * * * *
The morning was well advanced when we started with father from "Under
Gardens." He wanted to show us the city; we would finish at the
government house--I call it that for the want of a better term--and
make our plea to the Council. I was not aware then what thoughts and
vague plans possessed Dan and Freddie; but for my own part, my mind was
roaming upon what father had said: "With your youth and strength and
daring we might even try to make away with the Garlands' weapons. Get
them to earth--"
Why not? I determined that what was shown me of the city and the
government this morning, I would see with eyes and mind open to watch
every opportunity. And I must get a chance to plan alone, with Dan and
Freddie.
Hulda and Zetta were determined to appear before the Council with us.
Just as we started, Freddie said abruptly: "Professor Vanderstuyft, fix
it so we can go through the Scientists' Grotto, will you?"
His thoughts were running in the same channels as my own! Dan gave him
a very significant nod of approval; and father said firmly: "I intend
to. But it will likely be after the midday meal. I want you to see the
Infra-red Control. The greatest power for good or evil in this world."
Zetta and Hulda stood apart from us at the doorway. Zetta called:
"Shall we start? The guards are here, Professor Vanderstuyft--they say
you insis' on having them with us."
A group of the brown insect things were ranged before our gate! I could
not approach them at first without an inward shudder--a reluctance
wholly involuntary, which made me revolt at their nearness. Jointed
brown things crawling prone on the ground. Gruesome. Not alone because
their size was full that of a man--gruesome, in the way they sometimes
stood upright upon three hind legs; other legs dangling like arms;
head, grotesquely wearing a single, multiple-lens eye; antennae, like
arms waving above the head.
Gruesome for all this--and more gruesome for a crude leather jacket
strapped around them in the fashion of a garment. Things--living
things--more than giant insects as we of earth would conceive the term;
yet less than humans. Some stood erect now; they eyed my father as one
to whom they must look for commands. Others crawled unheeding along the
edge of the fence--ghastly! Horrible! One stopped, half raised itself,
and eyed me with a calculating stare that turned me cold.
We started. Some of the insects remained about the house; eight went
with us, four of them slithering along on each side of us. It was
full daylight now. The sunlight came down through the jungle ceiling
in a subdued yellow glow. There was a street up there; I could see the
straight lines of a causeway laid upon the top of the foliage; figures
moving along it. We were under a portion of the city. Father had said
so; and now, almost at once, we came to the foot of an incline which
led us upward.
"This way," said father. "Take it slowly. These cursed things will hold
our weight, but I never feel very comfortable on them."
We left the solid ground upon which Under Gardens was built, and I
confess I never felt comfortable either, until we were back again. The
inclined causeway was some twenty feet wide. It wound steeply upward
through the forest growth, with a ten-foot space cleared over it like a
tunnel.
It was built of porous tree-trunks, lashed together with a heavy
vegetable fiber laid on them for a walking surface. Its framework was
bound to the trees and the thick vines which grew everywhere throughout
this gigantic forest tangle. The whole structure bent and swayed
beneath our weight as we advanced up it. I was reminded of the old-time
giant bamboo bridges of Japan.
We went up through some two hundred feet of the jungle and came
abruptly into the broad daylight of its upper surface. We were in the
heart of the city they called Garla; this small locality where we
emerged was the center of population of all Xenephrene.
"Here," said father, "come up here for a minute--I'll show you how it
lies--Zetta, keep them back."
A crowd of people already was gathering, staring at us silently. Father
waved them away; and murmured a queer guttural command to our insect
convoy. The things lay quiet in a group. Near at hand, on a tree-trunk
framework, was a small platform some twenty feet in the air with a
ladder leading up to it.
"Come up," said father. "We can see better--a jumping platform, as I
call it."
* * * * *
We mounted, and gazed upon as strange a scene as ever I could have
imagined would be spread before me. The surface of Xenephrene here was
covered, for an area of perhaps five miles square, with this dense
forest growth. Its top--two hundred feet above the ground--was tangled
and matted into an undulating upper surface.
Upon this forest top, the main section of the city of Garla was built.
The streets--we seemed now to be on one of the main ones--were narrow,
crooked roadways of split porous logs, bound with matting. The tops of
the jungle vines projected with waving branches between them.
Houses lined the streets, fiber shacks of every size and shape,
with large empty areas like gardens between them. Cubical, oval,
triangular--some low like a bungalow--others tall and narrow as towers.
Flimsy vegetable structures, with matted roofs to shed the rain; with
windows, doorways, sometimes twenty feet above the roadway. Some of the
houses were set like nests below the street level, in the vegetation
itself, with entrance from the roof. Others clung between the trunks of
taller projecting branches, bound there with living vines, half hidden
by leaves and giant flowers.
At intervals were platforms like the one upon which we stood. The
street nearest to us was most closely lined with houses; the fronts
were open, with what seemed food displayed. The business district.
Further away, with a great circular open space before it, was a large,
broad structure. "The government house," said father. "An incline there
leads down to the ground--the grottos are down there."
It was an amazing, colorful scene--I fear my words are futile, wholly
inadequate to picture it. The familiar blue vault of the heavens was
above us. White clouds, tinged with a vague purple. The familiar
sun--with a dim purple haze in the air breaking its tropical heat and
glare.
This five mile area of city, laid upon the jungle top, all seemed
incredibly flimsy. It swayed everywhere in the gentle morning breeze.
All the vegetation was gigantic, and flimsy--porous like our bamboo
stalks, or banana trees.
Father commented: "Nothing living weighs very much here. All living
organism seems constructed with strange lack of solidity compared to
our earthly standards."
The lack of weight was everywhere apparent. Great brown vines and
trees, branches with giant green, red, and purple leaves, huge colorful
flowers. But with a machete I could have hacked it away, slashed
through the stoutest trunk with a single stroke. The houses! I felt,
gazing at them, that I could rip them apart with my naked hands!
Zetta, both on earth and Xenephrene, weighed some eighteen pounds.
There were white-faced, white-haired, half naked little children gazing
now at us from the near-by houses--children who weighed a pound or
two. Women passed us--in aspect save for their flowing white hair,
not unlike peasant women of the primitive, tropical cities of earth
as they were before the Great Change--but these women weighed twenty
or twenty-five pounds! Men in crude leather garments, bare-legged,
bare-armed, white hair flowing about their ears, some with small oval
kindly faces, with no hairgrowth on them; these men might weigh from
twenty-five to thirty pounds--no more.
All flimsy! Everything--it brought me a sudden sense of power. Why, in
a hand-to-hand fight I could smash a dozen of these men! We of earth
were solid; the platform bent beneath our weight as we stood there;
Dan's bulk tipped its unrailed corner until he nearly fell, lurching
backward hastily to safety. Had he fallen, I felt he might have crashed
on through the street itself, down through the forest to the ground. No
wonder father had demanded his home built down where it was!
* * * * *
I have not pictured the strangest aspect of all. The city was busy with
its activities. There seemed no vehicles here. Pedestrians only--moving
about their daily tasks. Strange, weird movements! They walked along
the streets in easy, graceful leaps. Fifteen feet at a stride. They
climbed down into the vegetation; or leaped to a housetop. A man came
from a house doorway. It was in the upper story--thirty feet from the
street. He stared at us--waved his hand in a gesture of greeting to
father and Zetta; then he leaped into the air, over the road, landing
in the notch of a tree; and from there dropped soundlessly down out of
sight.
From other platforms like the one on which we were standing,
occasionally a man would take a greater leap. Not far away, there was
one high tower, with platform at its top. Beyond it, the upper surface
of the forest sloped down to where, half a mile away in that direction,
the city ended at the ground level. There were broad fields of loam off
there, evidently under cultivation.
"Look!" said father. "There's a man climbing the tower--he's going down
to the ground-fields."
He stood poised on the platform a moment, and then leaped. It was
more the sort of leap Zetta had made in Porto Rico. This man spread
flaring folds of his leather garment. They hung like wings from his
outstretched arms. He sailed horizontally, head first, from the tower
top, over the forest slope and landed down on the ground nearly half
a mile away. I have seen, in Switzerland, a ski jumper parallel the
sloping ground in a leap something like that.
"Quite some jumper," Freddie commented.
"That is Rowlande," said Zetta to father.
"One of Garla's athletes," father explained. "They enjoy sport
here--the sail jump is a favorite contest. Over there--" He gestured.
"That open area, with the curved line of branches standing up--that's
what you might call our stadium."
"Graff speaks there to the people to-night," said Zetta.
Father did not comment on that. He pointed out where in the distance
the vegetation ended, and the open fields began; with other distant
patches of jungle here and there; and at the far horizon a purple line
of metal mountains.
Hulda said: "This is the city, here around the government house. But
most of the population lives in the rural section. You can see the
houses."
Down in the fields were occasional structures like farmhouses. They
dotted the distant landscape; and I could see that the other patches of
jungle had houses and streets on them, villages like this larger one of
Garla. Father said: "You think all our agriculture is down there on the
ground level. It isn't. Those pods, for instance--see them?"
A street or so away there was what I had thought was a large open
square. The vine tops were covered with great brown pods. I saw now, as
father pointed it out, that the pods grew everywhere under us in the
forest.
"The pith is one of our staple vegetables," said father. "Those
pods grow there because they are planted. Grafted, so to speak. The
seedlings are raised in the ground soil, then grafted into vine fiber.
The vines are used as a soil. The agriculture is here in the air, as
well as on the ground. There are several vegetables grown in the vine
soil."
Men and women were working in the field he indicated. And insects were
there. I could see them crawling up from beneath, carrying pods; men
and women were picking the pods also--and a line of insects, dwarfed by
distance to look like ants, were carrying the pods along a street.
We presently descended from the platform and walked, with our insects
again beside us, along the causeway streets toward the government house.
The people crowded around us. Once, the press of them added to our own
weight, caused the street and half a dozen of the neighboring houses
to sag alarmingly. No one seemed to mind but ourselves; but when Zetta
shouted to disperse them they went willingly enough--dropping down into
the foliage, or leaping nimbly away with their uncanny movements. My
self-satisfied sense of power was somewhat marred by the realization
of how we must have appeared to them. Chained by our weight to a slow,
dragging walk, fearful every moment that we might fall.
As we went along, father explained the city activities. All normal
enough for a primitive, peasant civilization. He told us, too, how most
of the workers sold their products to the government, exchanging their
credits by buying from the government other things they needed. One
of our ancient Indian civilizations of earth had a somewhat similar
system. And these super-modern people of Xenephrene had chosen it as
best of all! Strange commentary!
We saw the government storehouses. A huge building set in an excavation
of the forest, with its foundations on the ground; we passed through to
its top floor. Food of every sort was stored here; merchandise of every
kind involved in this primitive life was here on display.
"The manufactured stuff comes mostly from the Brauns," said father.
It was obvious to me why these Garlands did not want to champion
the earth against Graff and his Brauns. Here on Xenephrene--however
much the Garlands might differ from the Brauns in ideals and ways of
living--the two races had their interests closely interwoven.
We of earth were the real aliens. What did they care for us? I could
even imagine that the Braun conflict with earth might serve to draw
the Garlands to them, rather than estrange. Families of our earth
people often quarrel, reuniting only when an outside enemy comes in
conflict with one of their factions.
It was, I fancied, upon this human instinct which Graff now was
playing. Coupling with it an appeal to the latent cupidity which lies
in every human breast. He was succeeding. I knew that at this moment
the Garlands--people and government--felt more friendly toward the
Brauns than they ever had before. Father and Kean were convinced that
Graff was playing a double game. What could it be? He might be trying
to trick the Garlands to serve his own ends. But how?
* * * * *
Strange walk we had that morning through the city of Garla! My words
convey the merest sketch of its strangeness. Insect workers everywhere.
Patient, silent, methodical as well-trained domestic animals, yet with
a far higher intelligence. I gazed at what might have been a double
line of giant red ants, carrying boxes down an incline into the forest.
Patient workers; suddenly I was struck with the feeling that there
was a sullen resentment upon them; a smoldering hate for their human
masters.
We saw a few Brauns; swaggering fellows flushed with a new sense of
their importance. They were dressed in many complex garments. At sight
of them the cynical thought came to me that in clothes and manner they
might have been a burlesque of us on modern earth. They eyed us with
hostile stares.
"There's Kean," said Hulda. We were beyond the storehouse, back on the
street. The government house was only a block or so away.
Kean approached. "I have been sen' to you from the Council. They will
see you, Professor, but no one else."
Father was taken aback. "You mean, not my son--nor his friends--"
"Jus' you. So they sen' me to say. They would have you come now."
"I'll come," said father grimly. "Look here, Kean--"
"They tell me, Professor, they will have nothing definite to say to you
this morning. After Graff's meeting to-night, they will decide."
"What do you mean by that?" father demanded.
Dan spoke up. "The idea is, if the Garland public seems enthusiastic
about Graff's invasion--then they'll turn us down. Isn't that it, Kean?"
"Yes, I fear that is it. But if our people would favor helping earth--"
"Don't worry," exclaimed Freddie. "They won't."
A commotion near us checked him. Zetta murmured: "Graff!"
A huge figure of a man was coming slowly along the cross-street, with
a half admiring, wholly awed throng of the Garlands around him. He
saw us, waved the crowd back and, with a leap over the thirty feet of
intervening street, he stood before us. Our insect guards rose upright,
eyed father, and stood alert. Behind me I saw three young Garland men,
with metal objects like small projectors in their hands. Government
street guards. They were watching Graff narrowly, but they did not
interfere.
"Professor Vanderstuyft--" He spoke English; his manner was courteous,
but authoritative. "I wish to speak with Zetta--one moment."
The man who was about to try to conquer our earth! I stood tense,
and an awe of which I was secretly ashamed swept me as I gazed at
him. A giant fellow, six and a half feet tall, at the very least.
Broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, straight and muscular.
He wore a tubular leather garment, strapped in at the waist, falling
like a short flaring skirt to his bare knees. A short, gaudy jacket
over it; shoes with broad, flat heels, and pointed toes, curled up and
fastened to his ankles with ornamental metal chains. A heavy metal
triangle hung at his chest; chains of gleaming metal hung from his
shoulders to his elbows; his muscular forearms were bare, with heavy
metal bands at the wrists. A metal band circled his forehead, with the
close-clipped white hair under it.
A man of perhaps forty years. Deep-set blue eyes; heavy white
eyebrows--a beardless face. A strong, handsome face. He was smiling
now, but I could see a ruthless determination in the set of his square,
cloven jaw, and more than a hint of cruelty in the lines of his thin,
firm lips. A swaggering, arrogant fellow. But he was more than that.
In his voice, his bearing, I read a consciousness of his own power,
a dignity about him, more than a mere arrogant swagger. A kingly
scoundrel, contemptuous by instinct of all his fellows.
He was saying something to Zetta in his own tongue. She stood before
him, gazing calmly up into his face--a child in stature beside his huge
bulk.
Father said sharply: "Speak in my own language, please! What you can
have to say to Zetta need not be secret from us."
Graff smiled again--a smile of faintly amused tolerance. "As you
please. Zetta, I hear there was an attack made upon you this dawn. A
Braun, they say, came to carry you away." His voice was very gentle;
hate rose in me for the gentleness of it--the calm dignity of his
regard.
"Yes," she said.
"I want you to know, Zetta, I was not concern in that. Do you believe
me?"
She hesitated. "I think so."
"I want you to think so, for I was not concern in it. I would not harm
you. That you know?"
"Yes," she said.
"That is all. Excep'--Zetta, I am to-morrow going to earth--I want to
conquer it for you--I want all its riches and its pleasures to be for
you. Won't you come with me? You are master of yourself by the laws
here. This earthman, who thinks to control you--"
"Enough!" interrupted father. "She doesn't want to hear that kind of
talk, Graff."
[Illustration: "Zetta does not want to hear your kind of talk, Graff!"]
The gentleness faded from his voice. "I speak with her, not you. Let
her answer."
Zetta burst out: "What you plan to do on earth is wrong, Graff! If you
think to please me, stay here! Stay here on Xenephrene--"
He interrupted her gently: "You are misled, Zetta. You live with earth
people--they mislead you. Zetta, will you come with me--"
"No," she said.
Regret swept his face. If this were acting, it was a good brand. A very
kingly scoundrel, this! "You hurt me ver' deeply, Zetta." A faint irony
tinged his words and his glance.
Her quiet gaze was measuring him. "You want me to love you--that you
have always said. You go about it wrongly, Graff."
He was openly amused. "Do you think so? When I am succeeded--then you
will be proud of me." His tone changed. "Oh, Zetta, you know that then
I will do anything for you. Everything I have shall be yours."
I could see her hesitate, part her lips to speak, then close them
again. She was on the verge, here before all of us, of trying to bribe
him with herself. A shudder must have swept her. But she said: "You are
willing to please me--when you have had your way on earth--but not now."
No fool, this frail little girl! Her own smile was ironical. "If I
could trus' you, Graff, we might--" She checked herself.
"What?" he demanded.
"Nothing. I am finish."
Abruptly he swung from her. His gaze roved me as I stood suddenly
conscious of my clenched fists; Freddie beside me; Dan towering over
us, yet shorter than Graff. Hulda, angry and half afraid, clinging to
Dan. And Kean, a little apart--Graff fastened upon Kean, and his thin
lips twisted with contempt.
"Ah, there is my little criminal traitor!"
I saw Kean stiffen; for an instant I thought he would hurl himself
bodily upon his accuser. Graff evidently thought it, also. He added
calmly: "You are quite safe here, Kean. If you attack me, you would be
stopp'--I am guest here of Garla, as you know. And for the same reason,
I cannot do as I would like with you." His lean fingers were working;
he raised his large hand with a twisting gesture, and dropped it. "You
are quite safe here. Some other time--"
"Come," said father to us. "Enough of this. Come, Zetta."
Again Graff's glance swept us. "So these are some more of my little
earth enemies? Look well upon me! I am Graff, future Emperor of the
Earth!" He said it in a way hardly to be described. An amused, an utter
contempt. My hot anger boiled. Why, this fellow, for all his insolence,
his giant stature, was a flimsy thing of forty or fifty pounds! I
became aware that I had launched myself at him, and Freddie was holding
me.
"Easy, Peter! Stop it! You'll have us all in jail!"
Graff had not moved, his expressions unchanged save that perhaps his
amused contempt was greater. "Your littlest fellow seems to have the
mos' sense. Zetta, perhaps I will see you again."
He turned slowly, and with a lazy bound vanished down the cross-street.