In beginning this account of our great adventure, it must be understood
that I attempt no complete history of the matter. There will be gaps,
many gaps, in the continuity of my story, for that story remains, after
all, simply a record of my own contacts with the Raider, and with those
people whose lives he entered and darkened. So that my tale here is
necessarily one of personal experience, except for a few places where I
have summarized general knowledge.
Besides this history of what I may term the more human side of our
experience, Dr. Lantin has dealt with its scientific aspects in his
epochal work on time-displacement and in our joint monograph on
electronic acceleration. Although several salient features of the
affair have been omitted, for reasons that will figure later, yet the
two works mentioned and the present record give a broad outline of the
whole matter, from the beginning.
From the beginning! But where was that beginning? Ages back in the
past, or ages ahead in the future? To place the true beginning of it
all would be to know much about it that we do not know. So I start at
the point where the matter definitely entered my own life and world.
And that point, that event, is the Cannell Mystery, as it was then
termed.
You will find it in the newspapers of the day, the bare facts wrapped
in clouds of speculation. Professor Ferdinand Cannell, of New York,
disappearing inexplicably in the jungles of Indo-China, vanishing from
the world of men as though blotted out.
At that time, Cannell was undoubtedly one of the very greatest of
living archeologists. Nominally attached to a great New York museum,
he was really a free-lance student and excavator, roaming about the
world in search of proof for his numerous and startling theories. His
first fame had been established by his researches into the Dravidian
remnants in lower India, and he had followed that brilliant achievement
by another as great, the monumental Warren Society investigation into
the walled ruins of Zimbabwe, in South Africa.
With two such successes behind him, Cannell then boldly proposed to
make the subject of his next researches the mighty ruined city of
Angkor, in the heart of the Cambodian jungle. Angkor has long been a
colossal challenge to modern wisdom, a gigantic, towered metropolis of
gray stone, once noisy with the life of swarming millions, but silent
and dead now, unutterably dead. A thousand years the huge ruin has lain
in the jungle, wrapped in silence, inhabited only by snakes and bats
and tigers. Its past, the history of its builders, has been a vast
enigma always, which Cannell had determined to solve.
So he sailed for Hongkong, and Dr. Lantin and I were on the dock when
his ship cleared. My own acquaintance with Cannell was recent, but
Lantin and he had been close friends for years. Their friendship dated
back to their university days, and had continued after they diverged
into different lines of work, Cannell's taking him to the remnants of
past peoples, while Lantin's interest in radio-chemistry had brought
him to the great New York laboratories of the Downe Foundation, with
myself as his laboratory assistant.
For all their warm friendship, there was a strong contrast between
the two men. Cannell was the younger by a few years, a blond giant
of thirty-five or thirty-six, with snapping blue eyes and a habit of
talking with machine-gun rapidity. Altogether the antithesis of Dr.
Lantin, who was dark, medium of stature and quiet of manner, with
friendly gray eyes that could take on the glint of steel, at times.
Together we had waved farewell to Cannell and a few weeks later had
received a cable from Saigon, in Indo-China, briefly announcing his
arrival. He had then proceeded up the Mekong River into the wilderness
of the interior, and finally over a network of winding creeks to Angkor
itself. The latter stage of the journey was made in canoes, some seven
or eight natives poling along Cannell and his outfit, but no other
white man was in the party.
No more was heard of the venture until a week later, when the natives
of Cannell's party straggled into a little up-river village, without
him. They explained, volubly, that on the third night after reaching
Angkor, the white man had been seized and carried away by the devils
of the ruins. None of them had actually seen this but they had heard
his scream, from a distance, and when they conquered their fears enough
to search the ruins, had found no trace of him. It was clear that
the powerful spirits of the dead city were angered, and had snatched
away the white man who dared to disturb them, so the terror-stricken
natives had at once fled from the place with all speed.
On hearing this tale, several French planters made their way to Angkor,
forcing the unwilling natives to accompany them, but they found no
trace of Cannell, who seemed to have vanished completely. His tent and
outfit were found, quite undisturbed, which tended to corroborate the
natives' story regarding their sudden flight.
So when the little search-party returned, it was advanced as its
opinion that Cannell had been seized and carried away by a roving
tiger, his scream and disappearance being interpreted by the natives
as a visitation of demons, since they were known to be extremely
superstitious in regard to the dead city. While this explanation was
faulty enough, it seemed the only rational one available, and was
accepted by the authorities at Saigon.
And so the matter rested. Cannell's only relatives had been distant
connections, and except for Lantin he had had scarcely one intimate
friend, so after the first shock of surprize his passing caused little
stir. The newspapers speculated briefly, and the archeological journals
expressed regrets, referring to his splendid achievements. But that was
all. New stars soon rose to fill his place in the scientific firmament.
And Cannell was forgotten.
Time drove on. Days ... months ... years....
_CHAPTER 2_