by Talbot Mundy
Henrietta shook off her sandals and followed, but even bare feet stirred a whispering, like wind amid reeds. They passed between the columns, skirting the curved surface of the egg-shaped pool. It had been swept; the dust of ages lay in a heap between two columns, except for a small oval space in the center.
Seen close, that looked like polished, aluminum. But the part in the center, about six or seven feet long, defied imagination. It appeared to be neither solid nor liquid. It looked like a pool of pure moonlight. It was very difficult to look at steadily, ‘but reflected within it, reversed, reduced in size and gazing upward, was the Woman. There was nothing else reflected in that central portion. Blair made a move to examine it more closely.
“Don’t!” Henrietta exclaimed—instant—sudden— clutching his arm. Her exclamation filled the place with rolling thunder. Blair saw the fear in her eyes. He sensed no danger, but saw that she did, so he took her hand and continued his way to the wall at the far end. The light, continually more confusing, changed every second. They were close to the wall—within six strides of it—before he saw that the curious object was some clothing.
It was a coat, folded with military neatness, topped by a two-decker Terai hat of thin gray felt, such as Frensham always wore,when not in uniform. Slightly protruding from the jacket pocket was a flat metal first-aid kit-box. Beside the hat there was an empty cigarette case of thin, polished wood, a box of matches and a felt-covered water-bottle with a fitted metal cup. Beside those was a bit of black candle-wick amid the shapeless residue of a burned-out candle. Three dead matches and three closely burned cigarette ends lay in a neat little heap together, near the wall.
“He must have sat here smoking, waiting for the moon,” Henrietta whispered. “It was at full moon that the deaf-and-dumb man vanished.”
“Vanished—vanished!—” said the echo and went whispering down the tunnel—“Vanished —vanished!—”
Blair searched the jacket. There was nothing in the pockets. He stared at Henrietta—refolded the jacket:
“Why the devil did he take his clothes off?”
“The deaf-and-dumb man did,” she answered. “And he found it—the fourth dimension. He disappeared.”
“Disappeared—disappeared—” said the echo. Blair glanced upward, but from that end of the chamber the giantess was invisible.
Henrietta whispered again:
“Father made experiments, remember.”
She moved the coat and the other things, signed to him, and they sat where it had been, side by side, with their backs to the wall, heads touching, clasped in each other’s arms. A line drawn then between them would “have passed exactly down the center of the place between the columns and across the pool, to the middle of the broad end of the chamber. The oval opening by which they came in was on their left-front, hidden from them by the columns.
The light kept growing stronger every second, and yet curiously soft: there was no perceptible strain on the eyes, although there was a feeling of confusion. Attention wandered. It was like staring in a dream at fascinating and convincing unreality. There appeared an exceedingly thin line, like a plane of light seen edgewise between the pool and the roof—almost like one filament of the Aurora Borealis. When Blair moved his head it vanished.
When he resumed his position it reappeared. It refused to be placed. It was there and not there, but it seemed to pass upward, through the transparent roof toward the Woman. It shone, but it was less like a ray of light than like one of those slanting rays that Cubists paint, to lead imagination toward new frontiers of realism. It moved, but there was no describing its movements: its soundlessness suggested sound turned inside out, rather than silence.
Henrietta whispered excitedly: “Do what he did!”
Abruptly, she slipped off her clothes. Even so. Blair hesitated. Convention dies harder in a man. But Henrietta seemed perfectly unself-conscious. Chin on knees, she stared straight at the dreamlike line between the columns, not turning her head when she spoke again, low-voiced:
“I don’t know why—perhaps nobody can know why—this only happens in full moonlight. You can’t see unless you’re naked. Why, I don’t know. But you’ll have to resist. You must hang on.”
What she saw, he could not see. But he could feel the tenseness with which she set herself against almost irresistible force that he, could not feel. His jacket sleeve brushed her shoulder.
“Blair, don’t Please don’t! The least touch of clothing stops it!”
Her rapt expression instantly returned.
“Look! Look!”
“Look! Look!—” echoes shouted down the tunnel.
“What do you see?”
“What don’t I see! I can’t tell you! I suppose it’s four dimensions! It’s the next world! it’s indescribable! When the moon goes beyond the gap?”
“Blair, come with me!” The mere touch of his sleeve on her shoulder brought her back to a world of three dimensions. She looked into his eyes. Hers pleaded. “Blair dear, do look! Then we’ll both go, or we’ll both stay!”
“Go where?”
“Through that! Into eternity! I want you to see it! Then choose. I won’t go unless you come with me.”
The din was a tremendous tempest of sound —weird and unintelligible voices filled the chamber: some seemed human, but they used no words that Blair knew. For a moment he thought he was hearing instead of seeing four dimensions. Henrietta was in better possession of her senses than he was; even in that state of emotion sounds did not deceive her for a second. She spoke excitedly:
“Someone’s coming! Blair, there are only moments left! I won’t go without you, but look—look! See! Quick, while there’s moon-light!”
Blair seized the electric torch as if it were a pistol and moved his head to see between the columns.
Wu Tu stood there.
Tragically, in a hurricane of noise, she stumbled, exhausted, toward the broad end of the chamber. There she stood staring between the columns, with the Chinese girl behind her. The Chinese girl was picking her front teeth with finger and thumb: she had evidently used them to worry loose the knots on Wu Tu’s wrists.
She looked young again with soft, confused light blending and re-blending on her ivory skin. Her eyes shone in that light. She said one word in Chinese and walked straight forward. But the Chinese girl stood still and continued to pick her teeth with her back to the wall.
Henrietta’s whispering voice was lost in din that thundered from the passage. It exploded. It suggested heavy footsteps magnified and multiplied by echoes. Chetusingh on the way with assistance—
Blair groped for Henrietta’s frock and threw it over her. Wu Tu’s eyes seemed fixed on infinity. She stepped straight down into the hollow between the columns. There she raised her arms, smiled upward through the pouring light toward the Woman above her. She dropped her sari on the ground, and—like a bather entering water—touched with her toe the central, egg-shaped place that looked like pure light. Eyes could not follow what happened then. She laughed. Instantly, where she had stood there was nothing. Like a vanished shadow, she was not there. Her laugh survived her. It reverberated through the chamber until the roar from the passage drowned it.
Then, before bewilderment had time to slacken its grip on imagination, the moon’s rim passed beyond the gap on the shoulder o£ Gaglajung. The light waned as if turned down by someone unseen. Second by second, dim gray luminescence faded into darkness, soot-black, until Blair could not even see the outline of Henrietta’s face. But the din grew greater; it was like the tramp of an invading host in ammunition boots. Henrietta was speaking, but he could not distinguish what she said.
He was listening for the Chinese girl; she might be on the prowl in the dark, and he did not want to be murdered. Henrietta leaned on his shoulder to shout in his ear. Then the din ceased suddenly, as if a lid had shut tight, although the echoes mumbled away down the tunnel. Stifling heat and darkness blended into silence that bred terror, until a loud, gruff voi
ce demanded:
“Blair—where are you?”
“Are you—are you—are you—?” asked the echoes.
Three lights—an electric torch and two lanterns—suddenly shone in the entrance. They were not reflected by columns and walls as the moonlight had been. They were merely bright lights in darkness.
“Where are you, Blair?”
He kept the advantage of darkness, gripping his own torch. “Here, with Henrietta Frensham. Who are you?” he answered.
There was a gruff laugh. The lights came forward. One—a screened lantern—turned and moved toward the far wall until it framed the Chinese girl like a cameo. She was still picking her front teeth. Blair flashed on his own torch then and light met light in glare through which it was impossible to see. He had an arm around Henrietta, with his back to the wall. She saw better than he did, because of the angle of light.
“You?” she exclaimed.
Then Blair saw. “You sir?”
“Yes!” said the commissioner. “Where did you suppose I was?” He had a secret service man beside him—numbered anonymity, who moved like a shadow. “Where is Wu Tu?”
He was standing on the spot where Wu Tu had vanished.
“Damned if I know,” Blair answered and the echoes multiplied his words into a roar’ like mocking laughter.
“Tell him!” urged Henrietta. The echoes tossed her words from wall to wall until the darkness shouted: “Tell him! Tell him!”
The commissioner came closer—spoke in a lower voice: “Where’s Frensham?”
Blair turned his torch on the heap of clothing. The commissioner stooped and examined it:
“That all? Dead? Then where’s his body?”
“Damned if I know.” Blair spoke to Henrietta: “He said, in Bombay, you’re his god-child, so he believes what you say. You tell him!”
“Tell him!” the echoes cannonaded, until they died away in a whisper clown the tunnel. “Tell him—tell him—”
“Wu Tu went out of the world,” said Henrietta. “You can see her sari; and here are father’s clothes. They saw into another world and walked straight in.”
The commissioner said nothing.
She continued: “The ancients, who set the Woman where she stands, went that way. Blair and I saw it. I saw what Wu Tu saw. Blair didn’t.”
The commissioner stroked his stubbled chin.
“No,” he said. “Blair wouldn’t.” He faced Blair. “Stick to that. You hear me? We can’t have a tale like this told: India’d be a madhouse.”
“How could one tell? What could one say?” asked Henrietta. “Now you know why I told nothing.”
“There’s been fighting, one can say that,” the commissioner answered. “I passed Taron Ling’s, Zaman Ali’s and two other bodies. Chetusingh says all Zaman Ali’s men are dead. That shuts their mouths. Frensham died by accident; we’ve found his clothes, so that’s that. Who killed Wu Tu?”
Blair laughed. “You did!”
“You did—you did—!” said the echoes.
“I did—! followed and tried to overtake her. Kill her? What the hell do you mean?”
“You made a noise like the end of the world,” Blair answered. “It scared her into the next one. She walked straight ahead into it to escape you!”
“Can she come back? That’s the problem!” The commissioner stroked his chin again.
“Well, if she does, she’ll wish she hadn’t. She and Frensham are missing. I shall certify them dead on circumstantial evidence. You and I entered a cavern and found articles of their clothing. Stick to that. You understand me? Silence, barring a full report for File FF; you write and initial that; I’ll sign it. The Bat-Brahmin won’t talk. Who else might?”
He turned his searchlight on the Chinese girl. At the far end of the chamber, in a pool of lantern light, she smiled serenely with her back to the wall. She was chewing something. Chetusingh was whispering to her.
Blair felt the pain in his bandaged hand.
“Bite, yes.” he said. “Talk, no. But she’s good with a dagger. Barring luck, she’d have killed me three times over.”
The commissioner’s face was invisible in the dark, but his grin could be felt, heard; it was part of his voice: “Think so? She’d have had to answer to Chetusingh. He owns her. He’d kill her if she killed you. He swears you’re the only officer he cares to work with, because he knows what you’ll do. He and that girl between them substituted alcohol for Wu Tu’s special drug. Did she stick you with it?”
Blair bridled. He spoke abruptly: “Why wasn’t I told? “
“Told—told—told—” the echoes rumbled back and forth. The commissioner lowered his voice:
“It you’d entirely trusted Chetusingh you’d have shown it and aroused Wu Tu’s suspicion. Chetusingh agreed with me, there was no way to worm this secret out of Henrietta but by using you and letting Wu Tu force the issue. We were hard on your heels.”
The shadowy anonymity, with Wu Tu’s sari on his arm. came and gathered up Frensham’s effects by the light of the commissioner’s torch. He had left his lantern in the entrance: With his arms full, he returned toward it. Chetusingh picked up both lanterns; the Chinese girl followed him. and they two led the way down the tunnel. The commissioner flashed his light in Henrietta’s face, then in Blair’s:
“You’re dead beat, both of you. Can you climb to the cave where the cistern is? I’ve blankets, a spot of whiskey and some grub in a haversack. Sleep a bit, and then both of you tell me all about it. When I’ve seen this place by daylight, you, Chetusingh and two more men will get cement and seal up the wall that leads out of that burned crypt. After that we’ll plug Ganesha’s image tight to the wall and break the rollers somehow. Then we’ll see if that gap can be reached from outside.”
“It can’t,” said Henrietta. “I’ve tried. It can’t even be seen.”
“Well, we’ll look. Come along. Lean on me if you’re tired. Blair, this can’t be told. We’ve got to keep it secret. As soon as you’re rested, you and Chetusingh go straight for Dur-i-Duran Singh of Nagu Kulu. He knows too much. If he doesn’t talk, he’ll be trying to get in here. I depend on you to scotch him. Now let’s hurry.”
“Hurry! Hurry!” said the echoes.
“Come on.”
“Come on! Come on!” They pursued titanic echoes into darkness, toward a world in which three dimensions make trouble enough.
“Let’s pray—” said the commissioner.
“Let’s pray— let’s pray—”
“We can keep this secret!”
“Secret!— Secret!—”
* * *
THE END
* * *
