IX

Long after midnight John’s body gave a nervous jerk, and he sat suddenly

upright, staring into the veils of somnolence that draped the room.

Through the squares of blue darkness that were his open windows, he

had heard a faint far-away sound that died upon a bed of wind before

identifying itself on his memory, clouded with uneasy dreams. But the

sharp noise that had succeeded it was nearer, was just outside the

room--the click of a turned knob, a footstep, a whisper, he could not

tell; a hard lump gathered in the pit of his stomach, and his whole

body ached in the moment that he strained agonisingly to hear. Then

one of the veils seemed to dissolve, and he saw a vague figure

standing by the door, a figure only faintly limned and blocked in upon

the darkness, mingled so with the folds of the drapery as to seem

distorted, like a reflection seen in a dirty pane of glass.

With a sudden movement of fright or resolution John pressed the button

by his bedside, and the next moment he was sitting in the green sunken

bath of the adjoining room, waked into alertness by the shock of the

cold water which half filled it.

He sprang out, and, his wet pyjamas scattering a heavy trickle of

water behind him, ran for the aquamarine door which he knew led out on

to the ivory landing of the second floor. The door opened noiselessly.

A single crimson lamp burning in a great dome above lit the

magnificent sweep of the carved stairways with a poignant beauty. For

a moment John hesitated, appalled by the silent splendour massed about

him, seeming to envelop in its gigantic folds and contours the

solitary drenched little figure shivering upon the ivory landing. Then

simultaneously two things happened. The door of his own sitting-room

swung open, precipitating three naked negroes into the hall--and, as

John swayed in wild terror toward the stairway, another door slid back

in the wall on the other side of the corridor, and John saw Braddock

Washington standing in the lighted lift, wearing a fur coat and a pair

of riding boots which reached to his knees and displayed, above, the

glow of his rose-colored pyjamas.

On the instant the three negroes--John had never seen any of them

before, and it flashed through his mind that they must be the

professional executioners--paused in their movement toward John, and

turned expectantly to the man in the lift, who burst out with an

imperious command:

“Get in here! All three of you! Quick as hell!”

Then, within the instant, the three negroes darted into the cage, the

oblong of light was blotted out as the lift door slid shut, and John

was again alone in the hall. He slumped weakly down against an ivory

stair.

It was apparent that something portentous had occurred, something

which, for the moment at least, had postponed his own petty disaster.

What was it? Had the negroes risen in revolt? Had the aviators forced

aside the iron bars of the grating? Or had the men of Fish stumbled

blindly through the hills and gazed with bleak, joyless eyes upon the

gaudy valley? John did not know. He heard a faint whir of air as the

lift whizzed up again, and then, a moment later, as it descended. It

was probable that Percy was hurrying to his father’s assistance, and

it occurred to John that this was his opportunity to join Kismine and

plan an immediate escape. He waited until the lift had been silent for

several minutes; shivering a little with the night cool that whipped

in through his wet pyjamas, he returned to his room and dressed

himself quickly. Then he mounted a long flight of stairs and turned

down the corridor carpeted with Russian sable which led to Kismine’s

suite.

The door of her sitting-room was open and the lamps were lighted.

Kismine, in an angora kimono, stood near the window of the room in a

listening attitude, and as John entered noiselessly she turned toward

him.

“Oh, it’s you!” she whispered, crossing the room to him. “Did you hear

them?”

“I heard your father’s slaves in my--”

“No,” she interrupted excitedly. “Aeroplanes!”

“Aeroplanes? Perhaps that was the sound that woke me.”

“There’re at least a dozen. I saw one a few moments ago dead against

the moon. The guard back by the cliff fired his rifle and that’s what

roused father. We’re going to open on them right away.”

“Are they here on purpose?”

“Yes--it’s that Italian who got away--”

Simultaneously with her last word, a succession of sharp cracks

tumbled in through the open window. Kismine uttered a little cry, took

a penny with fumbling fingers from a box on her dresser, and ran to

one of the electric lights. In an instant the entire château was in

darkness--she had blown out the fuse.

“Come on!” she cried to him. “We’ll go up to the roof garden, and

watch it from there!”

Drawing a cape about her, she took his hand, and they found their way

out the door. It was only a step to the tower lift, and as she pressed

the button that shot them upward he put his arms around her in the

darkness and kissed her mouth. Romance had come to John Unger at last.

A minute later they had stepped out upon the star-white platform.

Above, under the misty moon, sliding in and out of the patches of

cloud that eddied below it, floated a dozen dark-winged bodies in a

constant circling course. From here and there in the valley flashes of

fire leaped toward them, followed by sharp detonations. Kismine

clapped her hands with pleasure, which, a moment later, turned to

dismay as the aeroplanes, at some prearranged signal, began to release

their bombs and the whole of the valley became a panorama of deep

reverberate sound and lurid light.

Before long the aim of the attackers became concentrated upon the

points where the anti-aircraft guns were situated, and one of them was

almost immediately reduced to a giant cinder to lie smouldering in a

park of rose bushes.

“Kismine,” begged John, “you’ll be glad when I tell you that this

attack came on the eve of my murder. If I hadn’t heard that guard

shoot off his gun back by the pass I should now be stone dead--”

“I can’t hear you!” cried Kismine, intent on the scene before her.

“You’ll have to talk louder!”

“I simply said,” shouted John, “that we’d better get out before they

begin to shell the château!”

Suddenly the whole portico of the negro quarters cracked asunder, a

geyser of flame shot up from under the colonnades, and great fragments

of jagged marble were hurled as far as the borders of the lake.

“There go fifty thousand dollars’ worth of slaves,” cried Kismine, “at

pre-war prices. So few Americans have any respect for property.”

John renewed his efforts to compel her to leave. The aim of the

aeroplanes was becoming more precise minute by minute, and only two of

the anti-aircraft guns were still retaliating. It was obvious that the

garrison, encircled with fire, could not hold out much longer.

“Come on!” cried John, pulling Kismine’s arm, “we’ve got to go. Do you

realise that those aviators will kill you without question if they

find you?”

She consented reluctantly.

“We’ll have to wake Jasmine!” she said, as they hurried toward the

lift. Then she added in a sort of childish delight: “We’ll be poor,

won’t we? Like people in books. And I’ll be an orphan and utterly

free. Free and poor! What fun!” She stopped and raised her lips to him

in a delighted kiss.

“It’s impossible to be both together,” said John grimly. “People have

found that out. And I should choose to be free as preferable of the

two. As an extra caution you’d better dump the contents of your jewel

box into your pockets.”

Ten minutes later the two girls met John in the dark corridor and they

descended to the main floor of the château. Passing for the last time

through the magnificence of the splendid halls, they stood for a

moment out on the terrace, watching the burning negro quarters and the

flaming embers of two planes which had fallen on the other side of the

lake. A solitary gun was still keeping up a sturdy popping, and the

attackers seemed timorous about descending lower, but sent their

thunderous fireworks in a circle around it, until any chance shot

might annihilate its Ethiopian crew.

John and the two sisters passed down the marble steps, turned sharply

to the left, and began to ascend a narrow path that wound like a

garter about the diamond mountain. Kismine knew a heavily wooded spot

half-way up where they could lie concealed and yet be able to observe

the wild night in the valley--finally to make an escape, when it

should be necessary, along a secret path laid in a rocky gully.

X

It was three o’clock when they attained their destination. The

obliging and phlegmatic Jasmine fell off to sleep immediately, leaning

against the trunk of a large tree, while John and Kismine sat, his arm

around her, and watched the desperate ebb and flow of the dying battle

among the ruins of a vista that had been a garden spot that morning.

Shortly after four o’clock the last remaining gun gave out a clanging

sound, and went out of action in a swift tongue of red smoke. Though

the moon was down, they saw that the flying bodies were circling

closer to the earth. When the planes had made certain that the

beleaguered possessed no further resources they would land and the

dark and glittering reign of the Washingtons would be over.

With the cessation of the firing the valley grew quiet. The embers of

the two aeroplanes glowed like the eyes of some monster crouching in

the grass. The château stood dark and silent, beautiful without light

as it had been beautiful in the sun, while the woody rattles of

Nemesis filled the air above with a growing and receding complaint.

Then John perceived that Kismine, like her sister, had fallen sound

asleep.

It was long after four when he became aware of footsteps along the

path they had lately followed, and he waited in breathless silence

until the persons to whom they belonged had passed the vantage-point

he occupied. There was a faint stir in the air now that was not of

human origin, and the dew was cold; he knew that the dawn would break

soon. John waited until the steps had gone a safe distance up the

mountain and were inaudible. Then he followed. About half-way to the

steep summit the trees fell away and a hard saddle of rock spread

itself over the diamond beneath. Just before he reached this point he

slowed down his pace, warned by an animal sense that there was life

just ahead of him. Coming to a high boulder, he lifted his head

gradually above its edge. His curiosity was rewarded; this is what he

saw:

Braddock Washington was standing there motionless, silhouetted against

the gray sky without sound or sign of life. As the dawn came up out of

the east, lending a gold green colour to the earth, it brought the

solitary figure into insignificant contrast with the new day.

While John watched, his host remained for a few moments absorbed in

some inscrutable contemplation; then he signalled to the two negroes

who crouched at his feet to lift the burden which lay between them. As

they struggled upright, the first yellow beam of the sun struck

through the innumerable prisms of an immense and exquisitely chiselled

diamond--and a white radiance was kindled that glowed upon the air

like a fragment of the morning star. The bearers staggered beneath its

weight for a moment--then their rippling muscles caught and hardened

under the wet shine of the skins and the three figures were again

motionless in their defiant impotency before the heavens.

After a while the white man lifted his head and slowly raised his arms

in a gesture of attention, as one who would call a great crowd to

hear--but there was no crowd, only the vast silence of the mountain

and the sky, broken by faint bird voices down among the trees. The

figure on the saddle of rock began to speak ponderously and with an

inextinguishable pride.

“You--out there--!” he cried in a trembling voice.

“You--there----!” He paused, his arms still uplifted, his head held

attentively as though he were expecting an answer. John strained his

eyes to see whether there might be men coming down the mountain, but

the mountain was bare of human life. There was only sky and a mocking

flute of wind along the treetops. Could Washington be praying? For a

moment John wondered. Then the illusion passed--there was something in

the man’s whole attitude antithetical to prayer.

“Oh, you above there!”

The voice was become strong and confident. This was no forlorn

supplication. If anything, there was in it a quality of monstrous

condescension.

“You there--” Words, too quickly uttered to be understood, flowing

one into the other .... John listened breathlessly, catching a phrase

here and there, while the voice broke off, resumed, broke off

again--now strong and argumentative, now coloured with a slow, puzzled

impatience. Then a conviction commenced to dawn on the single

listener, and as realisation crept over him a spray of quick blood

rushed through his arteries. Braddock Washington was offering a bribe

to God!

That was it--there was no doubt. The diamond in the arms of his slaves

was some advance sample, a promise of more to follow.

That, John perceived after a time, was the thread running through his

sentences. Prometheus Enriched was calling to witness forgotten

sacrifices, forgotten rituals, prayers obsolete before the birth of

Christ. For a while his discourse took the form of reminding God of

this gift or that which Divinity had deigned to accept from men--great

churches if he would rescue cities from the plague, gifts of myrrh and

gold, of human lives and beautiful women and captive armies, of

children and queens, of beasts of the forest and field, sheep and

goats, harvests and cities, whole conquered lands that had been

offered up in lust or blood for His appeasal, buying a meed’s worth of

alleviation from the Divine wrath--and now he, Braddock Washington,

Emperor of Diamonds, king and priest of the age of gold, arbiter of

splendour and luxury, would offer up a treasure such as princes before

him had never dreamed of, offer it up not in suppliance, but in pride.

He would give to God, he continued, getting down to specifications,

the greatest diamond in the world. This diamond would be cut with many

more thousand facets than there were leaves on a tree, and yet the

whole diamond would be shaped with the perfection of a stone no bigger

than a fly. Many men would work upon it for many years. It would be

set in a great dome of beaten gold, wonderfully carved and equipped

with gates of opal and crusted sapphire. In the middle would be

hollowed out a chapel presided over by an altar of iridescent,

decomposing, ever-changing radium which would burn out the eyes of any

worshipper who lifted up his head from prayer--and on this altar there

would be slain for the amusement of the Divine Benefactor any victim

He should choose, even though it should be the greatest and most

powerful man alive.

In return he asked only a simple thing, a thing that for God would be

absurdly easy--only that matters should be as they were yesterday at

this hour and that they should so remain. So very simple! Let but the

heavens open, swallowing these men and their aeroplanes--and then

close again. Let him have his slaves once more, restored to life and

well.

There was no one else with whom he had ever needed to treat or

bargain.

He doubted only whether he had made his bribe big enough. God had His

price, of course. God was made in man’s image, so it had been said: He

must have His price. And the price would be rare--no cathedral whose

building consumed many years, no pyramid constructed by ten thousand

workmen, would be like this cathedral, this pyramid.

He paused here. That was his proposition. Everything would be up to

specifications, and there was nothing vulgar in his assertion that it

would be cheap at the price. He implied that Providence could take it

or leave it.

As he approached the end his sentences became broken, became short and

uncertain, and his body seemed tense, seemed strained to catch the

slightest pressure or whisper of life in the spaces around him. His

hair had turned gradually white as he talked, and now he lifted his

head high to the heavens like a prophet of old--magnificently mad.

Then, as John stared in giddy fascination, it seemed to him that a

curious phenomenon took place somewhere around him. It was as though

the sky had darkened for an instant, as though there had been a sudden

murmur in a gust of wind, a sound of far-away trumpets, a sighing like

the rustle of a great silken robe--for a time the whole of nature

round about partook of this darkness; the birds’ song ceased; the

trees were still, and far over the mountain there was a mutter of

dull, menacing thunder.

That was all. The wind died along the tall grasses of the valley. The

dawn and the day resumed their place in a time, and the risen sun sent

hot waves of yellow mist that made its path bright before it. The

leaves laughed in the sun, and their laughter shook until each bough

was like a girl’s school in fairyland. God had refused to accept the

bribe.

For another moment John watched the triumph of the day. Then,

turning, he saw a flutter of brown down by the lake, then another

flutter, then another, like the dance of golden angels alighting from

the clouds. The aeroplanes had come to earth.

John slid off the boulder and ran down the side of the mountain to the

clump of trees, where the two girls were awake and waiting for him.

Kismine sprang to her feet, the jewels in her pockets jingling, a

question on her parted lips, but instinct told John that there was no

time for words. They must get off the mountain without losing a

moment. He seized a hand of each, and in silence they threaded the

tree-trunks, washed with light now and with the rising mist. Behind

them from the valley came no sound at all, except the complaint of the

peacocks far away and the pleasant undertone of morning.

When they had gone about half a mile, they avoided the park land and

entered a narrow path that led over the next rise of ground. At the

highest point of this they paused and turned around. Their eyes rested

upon the mountainside they had just left--oppressed by some dark sense

of tragic impendency.

Clear against the sky a broken, white-haired man was slowly descending

the steep slope, followed by two gigantic and emotionless negroes, who

carried a burden between them which still flashed and glittered in the

sun. Half-way down two other figures joined them--John could see that

they were Mrs. Washington and her son, upon whose arm she leaned. The

aviators had clambered from their machines to the sweeping lawn in

front of the château, and with rifles in hand were starting up the

diamond mountain in skirmishing formation.

But the little group of five which had formed farther up and was

engrossing all the watchers’ attention had stopped upon a ledge of

rock. The negroes stooped and pulled up what appeared to be a

trap-door in the side of the mountain. Into this they all disappeared,

the white-haired man first, then his wife and son, finally the two

negroes, the glittering tips of whose jewelled head-dresses caught the

sun for a moment before the trap-door descended and engulfed them all.

Kismine clutched John’s arm.

“Oh,” she cried wildly, “where are they going? What are they going to

do?”

“It must be some underground way of escape--”

A little scream from the two girls interrupted his sentence.

“Don’t you see?” sobbed Kismine hysterically. “The mountain is wired!”

Even as she spoke John put up his hands to shield his sight. Before

their eyes the whole surface of the mountain had changed suddenly to a

dazzling burning yellow, which showed up through the jacket of turf as

light shows through a human hand. For a moment the intolerable glow

continued, and then like an extinguished filament it disappeared,

revealing a black waste from which blue smoke arose slowly, carrying

off with it what remained of vegetation and of human flesh. Of the

aviators there was left neither blood nor bone--they were consumed as

completely as the five souls who had gone inside.

Simultaneously, and with an immense concussion, the château literally

threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose,

and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay

projecting half into the water of the lake. There was no fire--what

smoke there was drifted off mingling with the sunshine, and for a few

minutes longer a powdery dust of marble drifted from the great

featureless pile that had once been the house of jewels. There was no

more sound and the three people were alone in the valley.