The Door into Infinity

by Edmond Hamilton

  _2. Death Trap_

  There was no answer. The light in the corridor behind him suddenly wentout, plunging him into pitch-black darkness. He jumped back into thedark corridor, and as he did so, heard a sudden scuffle further alongit.

  "Campbell!" he exclaimed, lunging forward in the black passageway. Therewas no answer.

  He pitched forward through stygian obscurity, his hands searching aheadof him for the inspector. In the dark something whipped smoothly aroundhis throat, tightened there like a slender, contracting tentacle.

  Ennis tore frenziedly at the thing, which he felt to be a slender silkencord, but he could not loosen it. It was choking him. He tried to cryout again to Campbell, but his throat could not emit the sounds. Hethrashed, twisted helplessly, hearing a loud roaring in his ears,consciousness receding. Then, dimly as though in a dream, Ennis wasaware of being lowered to the floor, of being half carried and halfdragged along. The constriction around his throat was gone and rapidlyhis brain began to clear. He opened his eyes.

  He found himself lying on the floor of a room illuminated by a greathanging brass lamp of ornate design. The walls of the room were hungwith rich, grotesquely worked red silk Indian draperies. His hands andfeet were bound behind him, and beside him, tied in the same manner, layInspector Campbell. Over them stood Chandra Dass and two of the Malayservants. The faces of the servants were tigerish in their menace, butChandra Dass' face was one of dark, impassive scorn.

  "So you misguided fools thought you could deceive me so easily as that?"he said in a strong, vibrant voice. "Why, we knew hours ago that you,Inspector Campbell, and you, Mr. Ennis, were coming here tonight. We letyou get this far only because it was evident that somehow you hadlearned too much about us, and that it would be best to let you comehere and meet your deaths."

  "Chandra Dass, I've men outside," rasped Campbell. "If we don't comeout, they'll come in after us."

  The Hindoo's proud, dark face did not change its scorn. "They will notcome in for a little while, inspector. By that time you two will be deadand we shall be gone with our captives. Yes, Mr. Ennis, your wife is oneof those captives," he added to the prostrate young American. "It is toobad we cannot take you and the inspector to share her glorious destiny,but then our accommodations of transport are limited."

  "Ruth here?" Ennis' face flamed at the words, and he raised himself alittle from the floor on his elbows.

  "Then you'll let her go if I pay you? I'll raise any amount, I'll doanything you ask, if you'll set her free."

  "No amount of money in the world could buy her from the Brotherhood ofthe Door," answered Chandra Dass steadily. "For she belongs now, not tous, but to They Beyond the Door. Within a few hours she and many othersshall stand before the Door, and They Beyond the Door shall take them."

  "What are you going to do to her?" cried Ennis. "What is this damnedDoor and who are They Beyond it?"

  "I do not think that even if I told you, your little mind would be ableto accept the mighty truth," Chandra Dass said calmly. His coal-blackeyes suddenly flashed with fanatic, frenetic light. "How could yourpoor, earth-bound little intelligences conceive the true nature of theDoor and of those who dwell beyond it? Your puny brains would bestricken senseless by mere apprehension of them, They who are mighty andcrafty and dreadful beyond anything on earth."

  A cold wind from the alien unknown seemed to sweep the lamplit room withthe Hindoo's passionate words. Then that rapt, fanatic exaltationdropped from him as suddenly as it had come, and he spoke in hisordinary vibrant tones.

  "But enough of this parley with blind worms of the dust. Bring theweights!"

  The last words were addressed to the Malay servants, who sprang to acloset in the corner of the room.

  Inspector Campbell said steadily, "If my men find us dead when they comein here, they'll leave none of you living."

  * * * * *

  Chandra Dass did not even listen to him, but ordered the dark servantssharply, "Attach the weights!"

  The Malays had brought from the closet two fifty-pound lead balls, andnow they proceeded quickly to tie these to the feet of the two men. Thenone of them rolled back the brilliant red Indian rug from the rough pinefloor. A square trap-door was disclosed, and at Chandra Dass' order, itwas swung upward and open.

  Up through the open square came the sound of waves slap-slapping againstthe piles of the old pier, and the heavy odors of salt water and ofrotting wood invaded the room.

  "The water under this pier is twenty feet deep," Chandra Dass told thetwo prisoners. "I regret to give you so easy a death, but there is noopportunity to take you to the fate you deserve."

  Ennis, his skin crawling on his flesh, nevertheless spoke rapidly and assteadily as possible to the Hindoo.

  "Listen, I don't ask you to let me go, but I'll do anything you want,let you kill me any way you want, if you'll let Ruth----"

  Sheer horror cut short his words. The Malay servants had draggedCampbell's bound body to the door in the floor. They shoved him over theedge. Ennis had one glimpse of the inspector's taut, strange facefalling out of sight. Then a dull splash sounded instantly below, andthen silence.

  He felt hands upon himself, dragging him across the floor. He fought,crazily, hopelessly, twisting his body in its bonds, thrashing his boundlimbs wildly.

  "A shove sent his body scraping over the edge, and heplunged downward through dank darkness."]

  He saw the dark, unmoved face of Chandra Dass, the brass lamp over hishead, the red hangings. Then his head dangled over the opening, a shovesent his body scraping over the edge, and he plunged downward throughdank darkness. With a splash he hit the icy water and went under. Theheavy weight at his ankles dragged him irresistibly downward.Instinctively he held his breath as the water rushed upward around him.

  His feet struck oozy bottom. His body swayed there, chained by the leadweight to the bottom. His lungs already were bursting to draw in air,slow fires seeming to creep through his breast as he held his breath.

  Ennis knew that in a moment or two more he would inhale the stranglingwaters and die. The thought-picture of Ruth flashed across hisdespairing mind, wild with hopeless regret. He could no longer hold hisbreath, felt his muscles relaxing against his will, tasted the stingingsalt water at the back of his nose.

  Then it was a bursting confusion of swift sensations, the choking waterin his nose and throat, the roaring in his ears. A scroll of flameunrolled slowly in his brain and a voice shouted there, "You're dying!"He felt dimly a plucking at his ankles.

  Abruptly Ennis' dimming mind was aware that he now was shooting upwardthrough the water. His head burst into open air and he choked, strangledand gasped, his tortured lungs gulping the damp, heavy air. He openedhis eyes, and shook the water from them.

  He was floating in the darkness at the surface of the water. Someone wasfloating beside him, supporting him. Ennis' chin bumped the other'sshoulder, and he heard a familiar voice.

  "Easy, now," said Inspector Campbell. "Wait till I cut your handsloose."

  "Campbell!" Ennis choked. "How did you get loose?"

  "Never mind that now," the inspector answered. "Don't make any noise, orthey may hear us up there."

  Ennis felt a knife-blade slashing the bonds at his wrists. Then, theinspector's arm helping him, he and his companion paddled weakly throughthe darkness under the rotting pier. They bumped against the slimy,moldering piles, threaded through them toward the side of the pier. Thewaves of the flooding tide washed them up and down as Campbell led theway.

  They passed out from under the old pier into the comparativeillumination of the stars. Looking back up, Ennis saw the long, blackmass of the house of Chandra Dass, resting on the black pier, ruddylight glowing from window-cracks. He collided with something and foundthat Campbell had led toward a little floating dock where some skiffswere moored. They scrambled up onto it from the water, and lay pantingfor a few moments.

  Campbell had something in his hand, a thin, razor-edged ste
el bladeseveral inches long. Its hilt was an ordinary leather shoe-heel.

  The inspector turned up one of his feet and Ennis saw that the heel wasmissing from that shoe. Carefully Campbell slid the steel blade beneaththe shoe-sole, the heel-hilt sliding into place and seeming merely theinnocent heel of the shoe.

  "So that's how you got loose down in the water!" Ennis exclaimed, andthe inspector nodded briefly.

  "That trick's done me good service before--even with your hands tiedbehind your back you can get out that knife and use it. It was touch andgo, though, whether I could get it out and cut myself loose in the waterin time enough to free you."

  Ennis gripped the inspector's shoulder. "Campbell, Ruth is in there! Byheaven, we've found her and now we can get her out!"

  "Right!" said the officer grimly. "We'll go around to the front and intwo minutes we'll be in there with my men."

  * * * * *

  They climbed dripping to their feet, and hastened from the littlefloating dock up onto the shore, through the darkness to the cobbledstreet.

  The shabbily disguised men of Inspector Campbell were not now in frontof Chandra Dass' cafe, but lurking in the shadows across the street.They came running toward Campbell and Ennis.

  "All right, we're going in there," Campbell exclaimed in steely tones."Get Chandra Dass, whatever you do, but see that his prisoners are notharmed."

  He snapped a word and one of the men handed pistols to him and to Ennis.Then they leaped toward the door of the Hindoo's cafe, from which stillstreamed ruddy light and the babel of many voices.

  A kick from Inspector Campbell sent the door flying inward, and theyburst in with guns gleaming wickedly in the ruddy light. Ennis' face wasa quivering mask of desperate resolve.

  The motley patrons jumped up with yells of alarm at their entrance. Thehand of a Malay waiter jerked and a thrown knife thudded into the wallbeside them. Ennis yelled as he saw Chandra Dass, his dark facestartled, leaping back with his servants through the black curtains.

  He and Campbell drove through the squealing patrons toward the back. TheMalay who had thrown the knife rushed to bar the way, another daggeruplifted. Campbell's gun coughed and the Malay reeled and stumbled. Theinspector and Ennis threw themselves at the black curtains--and weredashed back.

  They tore aside the black folds. A dull steel door had been loweredbehind them, barring the way to the back rooms. Ennis beat crazily uponit with his pistol-butt, but it remained immovable.

  "No use--we can't break that down!" yelled Campbell, over the uproar."Outside, and around to the other end of the building!"

  They burst back out through that mad-house, into the dark of the street.They started along the side of the pier toward the river-end, edgingforward on a narrow ledge but inches wide. As they reached the back ofthe building, Ennis shouted and pointed to dark figures at the end ofthe pier. There were two of them, lowering shapeless, wrapped forms overthe end of the pier.

  "There they are!" he cried. "They've got their prisoners out there withthem."

  Campbell's pistol leveled, but Ennis swiftly struck it up. "No, youmight hit Ruth."

  He and the inspector bounded forward along the pier. Fire streaked fromthe dark ahead and bullets thumped the rotting boards around them.

  Suddenly the loud roar of an accelerated motor drowned out all othersounds. It came from the river at the pier's end.

  Campbell and Ennis reached the end in time to see a long, powerful, graymotor-boat dash out into the black obscurity of the river, and roareastward with gathering speed.

  "There they go--they're getting away!" cried the agonized youngAmerican.

  Inspector Campbell cupped his hands and shouted out into the darkness,"River police, ahoy! Ahoy there!"

  He rasped to Ennis. "The river police were to have a cutter heretonight. We can still catch them."

  With swiftly rising roar of speeded motors, a big cutter drove in fromthe darkness. Its searchlight snapped on, bathing the two men on thepier in a blinding glare.

  "Ahoy, there!" called a stentorian voice over the roar of the motors."Is that Inspector Campbell?"

  "Yes. Come alongside," yelled the inspector, and as the big cutter shotclose to the end of the pier, its reversing propellers churning the darkwater to foam, Ennis and Campbell leaped.

  They landed amid unseen men in the cockpit, and as he scrambled to hisfeet the inspector cried, "Follow that boat that just went down-river.But no shooting!"

  * * * * *

  With thunderous drumfire from its exhausts, the cutter jerked forward sorapidly that it almost threw them from their feet again. It shot outonto the bosom of the dark river that flowed like a black sea betweenthe banks of scattered lights that were London.

  The moving lights of yachts and barges coming up-river could be seengliding in that darkness. The captain of the cutter barked an order andone of his three men, the one crouched at the searchlight, switched itspowerful beam out over the waters ahead.

  In a moment it picked up a distant gray spot racing eastward on theblack river, leaving a white trail of foam.

  "There she is!" bawled the man at the searchlight. "She's runningwithout lights!"

  "Keep her in the searchlight," ordered the captain. "Sound our siren,and give the cutter her head."

  Swaying, rocking, the cutter roared on through the darkness on the trailof that distant fleeing speck. As they raced down Blackwall Reach, thedistance between the two craft had already begun to lessen.

  "We're overtaking him!" cried Campbell, clutching a stanchion andpeering ahead against the rush of wind and spray. "He must be making forwhatever spot it is in England that is the center of the Brotherhood ofthe Door--but he'll never reach it."

  "He said that within a few hours Ruth would go with the others throughthe Door!" cried Ennis, clinging beside him. "Campbell, we mustn't letthem get away now!"

  Pursuers and pursued flashed on down the dark, broadening river, throughmazes of shipping, the cutter hanging doggedly to the motor-boat'strail. The lights of London had dropped behind and those of Tilbury nowgleamed away on their left.

  Bigger, stronger waves now tossed and pounded the cutter as it raced outof the river mouth toward the heaving black expanse of the sea. The Kentcoast was a black blur on their right; the gray motor-boat followed itclosely, grazing almost beneath the Sheerness lights.

  "He's heading to round North Foreland and follow the coast south toRamsgate or Dover," the cutter captain cried to Campbell. "But we'llcatch him before he passes Margate."

  The quarry was now but a quarter-mile ahead. Steadily as they roaredonward the gap narrowed, until in the glare of the searchlight theycould make out every detail of the powerful gray motor-boat plungingthrough the tossing black waves.

  They saw Chandra Dass' dark face turn and look back at them, and thecutter captain raised his speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted overthe roar of motors and dash of waves.

  "Stand by or we'll fire at you!"

  "He won't obey," muttered Campbell between his teeth. "He knows wedaren't fire with the girl in the boat."

  "Yes, blast him!" exclaimed the captain. "But we'll have him in a fewminutes, anyway."

  The thundering chase had brought them into sight of the lights ofMargate on the dark coast to their right. Now only a few hundred feet ofblack water separated them from the fleeing craft.

  Ennis and the inspector, gripping the stanchions of the rushing cutter,saw a white figure suddenly stand erect in the boat ahead and wave itsarms to them. The gray motor-boat slowed.

  "It's Chandra Dass and he's signaling that he's giving up!" Ennis cried."He's stopping!"

  "By heavens, he is!" Campbell explained. "Drive alongside him, and we'llsoon have the irons on him."

  The cutter, its own motors hastily throttled down, shot through thewater toward the slowing gray craft. Ennis saw Chandra Dass standingerect, awaiting their coming, he and the two Malays beside him holdingtheir hands in the
air. He saw a half-dozen or more white-wrapped formsin the bottom of the boat, lying motionless.

  "There are their prisoners!" he cried. "Bring the boat closer so we canjump in!"

  He and Campbell, their pistols out, hunched to jump as the cutter drovecloser to the gray motor-boat. The sides of the two craft bumped, themotors of both idling noisily. Then before Ennis and Campbell could jumpinto the motor-boat, things happened with cinema-like rapidity. Two ofthe still white forms at the bottom of the motor-boat leaped up and likesuddenly uncoiled springs shot through the air into the cutter. Theywere two other Malays, their dark faces flaming with fanatic light, keendaggers glinting in their upraised hands.

  "'Ware a trick!" yelled Campbell. His gun barked, but the bullet missedand a dagger slit his sleeve.

  The Malays, with wild, screeching yells, were laying about them withtheir daggers in the cutter, insanely.

  "God in heaven, they're running amok!" choked the cutter captain.

  His slashed neck spurting blood and his face livid, he fell. One of hismen slumped coughing beside him, another victim of the crazy daggers.