by Don Wilcox
“Quinton is learning a new trade,”
Gaston cracked.
“Love has been called by funny names before,” the governor laughed, placing his hand on my shoulder. “A very clever hoax, Monsieur Quinton. Does the stage’s great lover have to have an assistant when he woos a fair lady? Perhaps Monsieur Gaston writes the lines for you to recite, yes?”
My shoulder twitched out of his hand. I saw that Madeline was annoyed—whether at me for my hoax, or the governor for uncovering it, I could not tell. Red was clouding my eyes. I exploded with a quick blast of anger.
“When or whom I woo is nobody’s business, least of all Governor Revel’s.”
“Please!” Madeline cried.
“Forgive us, Mademoiselle,” the governor said suavely, “but you must be protected from this cheap trick. Obviously our famous actor has heard that your aristocratic suitors couldn’t win you. So he comes under false colors, thinking to gain your favor. But if he were really sincere—”
All self-restraint left me. I whirled, caught the governor by the shoulders, thrust him back against the wall so roughly that his wide jaw sagged. At the same instant I caught a warning hiss from Gaston, and turned to see the four Heffles enter the room.
“What’s the frame-up?” I snarled, releasing the red-faced governor. “Whatever it is, I defy anyone to say I’m not sincere. I don’t care who you are—governor, scientist, or phoney butler—”
“This has gone far enough, Governor!” Dujardin spoke quietly, but there was something electrical about his words. For a tense moment the glares crisscrossed. What he and the governor and the four Heffles were silently saying to each other I could only wonder. In my surge of temper I jumped at a passing suspicion—the governor must be jealous! Every man who fell for Mademoiselle Butterfly must be his sworn enemy!
If so, perhaps Gaston was right. Murder was the answer.
Little did I guess the actual complications. Gaston was tugging at my sleeve, whispering, “Let’s get out of here, Quinton.”
But it was the governor who broke the deadlock. With mysterious finality he said, “Well, Dujardin, there you are. The rest is up to you. I’ll go. Good night.”
He turned and walked off abruptly, and all four of the butlers escorted him out.
There was an awkward silence. The architect, completely dumbfounded by the strange turn of events, excused himself. There would be a big day’s work tomorrow, and if Gaston and I were still his assistants, he said, we’d better turn in and get a night’s sleep.
Gaston waved his hands helplessly and followed, leaving me alone with Madeline and her father. Again there was a tense silence. Then Dujardin said:
“I’m going to take you at your word, Monsieur. I would not have believed that the great Raymond Quinton would ever fall in love with my daughter—”
He paused, studying me with his kindly penetrating eyes.
“Who I am makes no difference,” I declared. “I’m in love with Madeline. I’ll always be in love with her. No earthquakes or wars—or jealous governors can change that.”
“He can’t be jealous!” Madeline said, brushing her eyes with a handkerchief.
“You may forget Governor Revel’s seemingly rude interest in our affairs,” said the scientist. “Whether you are an actor, a bricklayer, or a candlestick maker doesn’t matter in our world. The thing that matters is whether you can withstand a particular test—”
His trembling fingers raised to his brow, hiding his eyes. I waited. But he seemed reluctant to go on. One of the Heffles passed quietly through the room. The scientist cleared his throat and continued.
“We call it the Test of Dust.”
“If it’s a proof of my love,” I said, “I can withstand it.”
“It’s more than that,’ Dujardin said slowly. “It’s a test of courage—vision—and other qualities not easily named—a test of one’s kinship with Nature. I can assure you that Madeline shall not marry a man who is unequal to this challenge.”
I looked to Madeline, caught the light of eager hope in her eyes.
“Very well,” I said. “When do I start?”
“Tonight,” said Dujardin. “At once.”
We descended to a basement room. Dujardin took pains to leave all doors open, mentioning that the way was open for me to back out whenever the test became severe.
“This door marked EXIT,” he said, as we paused in a brightly lighted circular alcove, “opens toward the narrows. In case you are interested, there is a steel cable which leads across to the Portugal shore.”
“I won’t be interested,” I said.
“This door,’ he pointed to the deep-set panel constructed of bark-covered slabs, “leads to the Test of Dust. Madeline will show you the way. And now. . . I leave you to your fate.” Before his retreating footsteps had died away, I had taken Madeline in my arms. Unsmiling, she looked up at me.
“I hope—I pray to God that you win!” she breathed. “Until I learned that you were Raymond Quinton, I was terribly in love with you.”
“And now?”
“If you survive the test—” She finished by slowly nodding.
For one lingering dizzy moment I kissed her. There was nothing of the actor about me during that moment. Earnestly, feverishly, I knew, if I had not known it before, that I was ready to defy hell itself to win her.
She drew away from me, brushed her hair lightly, tilted her head with determination. “Now you must forget about me,” she said softly. “This is the door.”
On the panel of bark-covered slabs there was an inscription, a familiar Biblical quotation, neatly carved: “DUST THOU ART.”
Three ominous words on the doorway to my fate!
I opened the door, propped a stone against it. All of the underground tunnels, Madeline said, found their way back to this brightly lighted alcove.
Hazy blue light wafted up like a luminous mist through the shadowy walls. Madeline was a silhouette before me, leading the way down the winding incline. Soon the bluish mists grew brighter. Mercury tubes appeared along the dark ceilings.
“In case the war spreads over Europe,” Madeline said, “these treasures will all be preserved from bursting shells.”
“Treaures?” I thought of jewels and precious metals.
“These specimens you are about to see,” she said, “are our treasures—intricate models and dioramas that I’ve helped father mold. They tell the secrets of his knowledge.”
A long straight passage opened before us and the first line of dioramas came into view—scores if not hundreds of them. They were like an endless line of miniature window displays along a sidewalk, their colored lights glowing on the black wall opposite.
We must have devoted three hours to the study of these works of art. The secrets that they revealed need not be related in this record, for the telling could never do justice to the actual models.
Thus, for example, it is easy enough to state that the intricate skeletons of rabbits, turtles, and fish have some basic similarities; but actually to see these similarities in bona fide models is a much more vivid experience.
And yet, above and beyond the seeing is the fuller appreciation of the dramatic wonders involved—an appreciation that came home to me as I listened to Madeline. She was veritably on fire with her subject. To anyone with the slightest degree of imagination, this chain of nature revelations would be as novel and as shocking as a lift into another world.
“I can’t see why anyone should be rebuffed by this so-called Test of Dust,” I said. “It’s the most glorious array of wonders I ever witnessed.”
“Doesn’t it anger you?’
“Anger me! Why should it?”
“Maybe you’re less aristocratic, at heart, than the previous guests of this maze,” said Madeline. “Some puffed-up egos can’t stand to be deflated. Doesn’t it infuriate you to be reminded that your bodily cells divide no differently from those of a snake?”
“Not at all,” I laughed.
“Some temperaments,” said Madeline, “can’t bear it. Some aristocrats have been led to believe that their blood is bluer than a common man’s. Figuratively speaking, of course. Actually, blood is blue only when it is impure.
But these so-called blue-bloods usually see red if you remind them that they have a few properties in common with an earthworm. They do exactly what an earthworm does when it bumps into something disagreeable—they crawl the other way.”
“It isn’t very flattering,” I said.
She looked at me intently, as if wondering whether I was thinking of crawling in the other direction.
“I’ll leave you now,” she said, as we turned a right angle. “This next row of exhibitions can be understood only if you study them carefully. I warn you that they deal not with established fact, but with a theory jar removed from scientific fact: the theory that forms of life may be made to revert to earlier, simpler forms, and then, perhaps, be forced to re-develop along new lines.”
“Do you believe the theory?”
“I’m waiting for further proofs,” said Mademoiselle Butterfly noncommittally. “But my father is completely convinced. And now—for the present—I leave you to your own destiny.”
It was a curious sensation, then, to see Mademoiselle Butterfly turning to leave me, walking on ahead through the rifle-barrel straight passage that I was to follow. For this new avenue, if I had calculated the right angle turns correctly, was the third side of a rectangular tunnel that would lead back to the Dust-Thou-Art doorway.
I watched her until she finally disappeared at the distant turn.
So this was the test that made aristocratic blood run cold! The absurdity of it. Obviously there was nothing to fear. I moved along the wall of windows slowly, thoughtfully.
Each new demonstration was more fanciful than the last. I was dizzy now with the curiosity of it all—like a child being told all the mysteries of the earth, sun, and stars in a single night.
Shortly I observed something very puzzling. The windows were diminishing in height. The change was very gradual, but without exception each window squatted a bit closer to the floor than the last.
Soon I was bending down to get the full effect of each little window display. The row of dioramas stretched ahead with an effect of distance that was deceptive, for the shrinking dimensions played tricks on my eyes. The tunnel’s ceiling seemed to be rising to loftier heights.
I moved along on my hands and knees. At last I came to a sharp turn in the passage—and there stood Madeline.
“I waited for you,” she said, smiling down at me. “I saw that you were still coming, so—”
“I’m following through to the end,” I declared. Strange as it may seem, I didn’t rise to my feet. I could see another series of low-set lights in the new avenue ahead.
“There’s a dangerous pit within a few steps,” she said. “Be careful.”
She led the way slowly. I crawled along, viewing the little windows in the walls. Perhaps we were near sea level. At least we came to a narrow stream of brilliant green waters, glittering through a break in the floor.
The jagged break grew wider, the footpath narrowed. The brilliant green of the waters cast a weird lambency across the clay walls.
“Slippery footsteps ahead,” Madeline warned, “but there’s a rope to hold onto.”
The gash widened into a liquid filled pit some twenty-five feet in diameter. Madeline rounded it with practiced step, catching the rope that hung from rings in the low ceiling.
Still stooping, I tried to follow in her footsteps.
My step was not so lucky. I slipped, lost my balance, reached for the rope. But its slack slipped from my grasp, for Madeline had caught it, at the same moment, beyond the next ring. I splashed into the pit.
She looked back, and I fancied I saw an expression of disappointment. “Do you need any help?”
“I’m all right,” I said, catching hold of the rocky ledge. The water—if water it was—sucked against my body like something alive—like an octopus with a thousand tentacles attacking me everywhere at once.
I scrambled out onto the solid tunnel floor.
Mademoiselle Butterfly bent down, handed me a handkerchief to swab my face.
“Listen!” she said sharply. “Did you hear someone calling?”
Out of the hollow silence there came a dim prolonged echo of an “O-o-o-oh!”
It came twice again. It seemed to come from neither direction—or perhaps from both. It might have been someone calling, “Hello!” or, “Quinton!” but the consonants were lost in distant echoes.
Naturally I thought of Gaston. It would be like him to try to follow me.
But Madeline evidently thought it was her father.
“I’ve stayed with you too long,” she said. “I must hurry.”
Once more I watched her as she departed down the long straight tunnel. It was a scene I was destined to recall, in the light of subsequent events. I distinctly saw her walking away from me, walking as fast as she could without running, passing the low-set little windows whose light flicked across her ankles. Finally the lights seemed to run out and she was swallowed up in darkness.
What happened from then on was like a nightmare too weird for words.
My soaked flesh was undergoing strange sensations, hardly to be classified as pain, yet utterly unlike any normal feeling. I seemed to be shrinking.
The windows, however, were growing much smaller, confusing my sense of proportions. Again I began to concentrate on the wonderful displays—dainty little show-case specimens of reptiles and birds. I was strangely attracted. Here were fish, birds, and winged lizards all brought together in a single structure study. It was well worth crawling on your belly to see.
Yes, I was crawling. And it was easy! My abdominal muscles were responding so well that I felt a strange and unnatural power. Had that green fluid given me some special strength? I felt lighter, smaller, and yet far more agile.
These changes might have been frightfully disturbing but for the little window displays. Before my eyes the crawling habits of caterpillars were analyzed. For an organism that has to crawl (even as I was having to crawl) the bodily structure of the caterpillar was very advantageous.
Suddenly I discovered that a ceiling was close over my head. Surely I was coming toward the end of the passage—But, no. Madeline had walked upright! Something was wrong here. Had I been sidetracked? I tried to turn back.
But this was no place to turn. The ceiling, a series of flaps, slipped over my back readily enough as long as I went forward, but caught me fast when I tried to reverse my direction.
For a few minutes I stopped, fighting off a panic of fear. As I moved forward the valve effect of the ceiling extended around the walls to the floor beneath my abdomen. It gave my whole body a sensation of being ridged or humped, like a tight string of beads. My arms and legs must have become paralyzed. They felt as if they had shrunk into nothing.
Occasionally a spray of the green liquid would shower down over me, perhaps from hidden springs in the wall. Then the shrinking sensation would come over me again, and I would be able to move forward more easily.
At last there were no more little windows to light my way. I was groping along through absolute darkness, crawling up an inclined passage that pressed in ever tighter coils around my beaded body.
In the midst of this physical torment I heard the hollow echo of a “Halloo-oo!” Gaston’s voice!
I tried to answer. To my utter horror my voice had gone back on me. All I could manage was a weak, piping little “Hello-o-o!” that was less than the chirping of a cricket.
Once I wormed about enough to see a dim amber gleam from somewhere far back of me—enough to convince me Gaston was on the search with a lantern. By this time I was in a frenzy to get out. Gaston was right—this was a game of murder!
The sickening truth struck me like that terror of terrors—the crushing of a heel! Why the suitors of Mademoiselle Butterfly should be murdered wa
s more than I could guess. But murder this must be, contrived by the ingenuity of that innocent-mannered scientist.
“H-E-L-L-O-O, Q-U-I-N-T-O-N-!”
“Hello! Hello! Hello!”
My voice seemed so tiny and insignificant I couldn’t hope to be heard.
Gaston finally passed out of hearing. He must have seen his way to the tunnel’s outlet—the way I had missed. But he had, left the lantern. Through the porous walls that enclosed me I could see a faint amber glow. And the gentle comforting warmth that seeped through me was my last sensation before my consciousness gave way to death-like blackness.
At last I awoke and crept forth into daylight.
That sleep had been good, but too long. Many days long, I was sure.
I walked forth weakly, giddily. The wind threatened to blow me over. My instinctive sense of balance was sharp—extraordinarily so—but I felt the need of limbering up my stiff muscles. I was all folded up, so to speak.
For a long time I stood motionless. Everything was too dazzlingly bright. Where was I?
I was standing on the edge of an outcropping rock which resembled a gigantic chunk of pink taffy candy. I had just emerged from one of the caverns which honeycombed that rock. Towering above me was a mammoth vine which wove upward through an immense white trellis. On that vine were the most magnificent roses—
Instinctively I wanted to fly!
Instinctively I knew there was food in those roses.
But instinct and human intelligence crashed head-on. I shuddered. The unspeakably dreadful thing had happened. I knew it on the instant—and my shadow proved it.
For minutes I stood there trembling. But all the while I could feel the fluid of my body surging outward through the veins of my wings, filling me with power and confidence. I wanted to fly!
But in the very same breath I wanted something else—a sinister something that belongs in the human catalog of wants—revenge.
Thus before I had even tried my wings, or crept to the window to observe what I looked like in my new form, I found myself torn apart, figuratively, like a machine with two motors pulling in opposite directions.
