Finally, after an hour of preparations and verbal swordplay, the scientists were ready. Doyle flicked the switches that opened the circuit, and Armbruster pressed the trigger. A loud buzzing noise filled the air. The machine began to vibrate violently, and several vacuum tubes blew out, sending Armbruster ducking for cover. Just as it seemed the thing might explode and kill them all, there was a bright flash — so much for “invisible light,” thought Sid — and the machine fell suddenly silent, its wires smoldering. All the fantastic energy it contained had been poured directly into the stone. But it was all for naught. The gauges and meters affixed to the side of the machine had all shattered: no data would be gleaned from them.
A cloud of acrid smoke hung over the field. Slowly, cautiously, the men stepped over their wrecked device and moved in to inspect the target.
The singing stone was intact. It looked exactly the same as before, except for one detail.
It was blue.
* * *
The Baroness did not speak to Doyle or Armbruster for the rest of the day, nor on the flight to Guam that night.
“Does it always have to be blue?” cracked Sonny. “There’s a whole rainbow of colors, you know. You gentlemen need to expand your horizons.” Such sarcasm was unlike him. It reflected the strained atmosphere in the cabin. The scientists spent the flight staring at each other in silence, too put out even to argue.
In Guam, Sid, Hank and the Baroness called another council of war, to review their strategy for Shanghai. Nobody bothered to invite the scientists.
Hank and Sonny, it was agreed, would focus on the Shanghai waterfront, gathering information on the owners of the Golden Star and the man who had delivered the stone to New York. Perhaps they could find out what it was all about, and what had really happened to Baron de Rothburg. The Baroness didn’t know the city well, not like her father had. But she had written the names of five people who knew him in her little notebook; the Explorer’s Institute branch in Shanghai would be able to help her get in touch with them. Sid and Rosie would accompany her.
Angelica had half a mind to add a sixth name to her list: Bartholomew St. Cyr, author of Strange Tales of the Orient, which had been published in Shanghai by a group called the Celestial Mystery Society. She had begun reading the book on the plane and was both repulsed and riveted by the author’s outlandish yet strangely compelling claims. His scholarship ranged from the questionable to the absurd — he went on at length about mythical monsters, mystic mullahs and the like — but at the very least here was a man who acknowledged the existence of the Shadow Order, and who would not blink when confronted by the unlikely reality of their situation. As the Clipper took off for Manila, she picked up Strange Tales of the Orient once again, rolling her eyes at the latest ridiculous chapter title...
XLII
THE DRAGONS OF SHANGRI-LA
In the thirteenth century A.D., while Marco Polo was visiting the Great Khan in China, his lesser-known colleague Ando Chee was undertaking a much more perilous journey into the high mountains, setting out from the silk road town of Samarkand on a quest to visit the Glorious Dragon, prince of Shangri-La. His path took him through the rugged wilds of Kashmir (see Chapter XXV, “Fire Pits of Rangdum”), beyond the misty kingdom of Kathmandu (my monograph, Man-Eating Plants of the Himalaya, describes this country in great detail) and finally to the most inaccessible mountains of all, which were breached only through the cunning construction of a massive sledge pulled by a team of six yeti, with the entire expeditionary party huddled in a yurt built atop the skids for warmth. This is the only known instance of yeti pulling a sledge, although they have been known to drag boulders to the tops of cliffs and drop them on unwary passers-by (“Abominable Snowmen and their Allies,” Chapter XLI).
After four days and nights of rigorous travel, the yeti turned on the party and, treating the yurt as a sort of shepherd’s pie, devoured them all. Only Ando Chee himself escaped, through the clever use of an ancient talisman which itself had been forged in Shangri-La centuries earlier. The stones of Shangri-La are bound to their ancient homeland through some unknowable aetheric force, and gain power as they approach their crystalline brethren. This power is anathema to yeti, oni, werewolves and bedbugs (see my previous volume, Amulets, Fetishes and Charms of the Barbaric Tribes, 1915).
Climbing ever higher, Ando Chee finally emerged from the frigid mountains to find himself in a beautiful valley, where the snow fell lightly on a land of mystic wonderment: the lost civilization of Shangri-La. Great engines of a magnitude never seen before or since kept the land in constant daylight and protected its borders with a magical, all-consuming fire. Ando Chee reported seeing huge statues soaring through the air, and old men who could move objects with their minds alone.
Ando Chee was the last outsider to be granted an audience with the Glorious Dragon of Red Aspect, Shei Pua-Lao, Prince of Shangri-La. And more than that: Ando Chee was the last foreigner to enter the country at all. If any man has found Shangri-La from that time to this, he has not returned to tell of it. Many men, lesser men without the vigor of greatness in their veins, have tried and failed to find this hidden land, covering their failures by pretending that Shangri-La does not truly exist. Yet Providence smiled upon Ando Chee, and also upon the great prince he found there.
The Glorious Dragon came to his throne through a unique and highly enlightened law of succession. All male heirs of the sitting prince were tattooed with an outline of a dragon rampant, heraldic device of the Royal Family, on the day they came of age (see my article “Tattoos: Inky Incantations,” lately published in The Strand magazine). The young princes were then subjected to the most rigorous tests of mind and body, administered by the highest lamas of the land, a regimen intended to determine what manner of ruler each prince was destined to become. The dragon’s scales were afterwards inked in accordance with the prince’s temperament: red for a noble ruler, blue for wisdom, yellow for a fool and so forth.
The order of succession was thus determined by the tattoos borne by each pretender to the throne, with the most desirable qualities placed first in line. Those luckless few who received dragons in black aspect would never rule: they had been declared warlike and unfit for the throne by the lamas, and were cast out from Shangri-La as kharpat, exiles, never to return.
* * *
The Baroness closed the book. She had stopped reading during the passage about the yeti. From that point on her eyes moved over the words but her mind was elsewhere, in Shanghai, wondering if she would solve the many riddles before her or end up like her father, missing or dead, more carrion for the screeching vultures of the press.
“Yeti,” said the Baroness to herself, as she tossed the book aside and turned down her cot. “Such nonsense...”
The plane flew on.
Chapter XVII
THE DRAGON STRIKES
—
THE SHANGHAI CLIPPER did not reach Shanghai. It didn’t even get as far as Manila. A freak electrical storm overtook the plane on its approach to the Philippines just before dawn, damaging two of the engines and knocking out the radio. The plane had to make an emergency landing at a small isle some hundred miles short of Luzon, with no airfield or other source of parts nearby.
Captain Doyle offered to apply his formidable engineering knowledge to the problem, but the Clipper’s crew politely declined — they suspected lingering effects from the fluorospectrocitor had attracted the lightning in the first place. The plane was thus grounded until parts could be requisitioned and brought out to the island and the two engines fixed, a delay that might last a week or more.
The group elected to conclude their journey by sea. One day by ferry boat brought them to the crowded port of Manila, where they had their pick of ships departing for the Chinese coast. By evening they were back on the water, bearing northward from the South China Sea into the Formosa Strait aboard the packet steamer Hangchow Baby. Three more days at sea would get them at last to Shanghai.
Their stay in M
anila had been brief, but it was long enough to be noticed and reported by a sharp-eyed young man watching the docks. Lounging against a stack of cargo crates with an air of studied nonchalance, the man furtively consulted three photographs he withdrew from a trouser pocket. The names scrawled beneath the three faces were Sidney Friedman, Rosie Esterhaszy, and Angelica de Rothburg. He also had a written description of a large man who answered to the name “Hank.” They were easy to spot as they wandered along the wharf, looking for a ship’s captain who spoke English and asked no questions. Later that day, the sharp-eyed gangster slouched into a local tavern, passed the information on to the tall, gaunt-looking man who had hired him, and received a modest reward for his attentions. He would drink it all away by morning.
* * *
The Hangchow Baby seemed seaworthy enough, as long as the water was calm — but even a small swell coming from abeam would start the deck rolling like a funhouse floor. The crew was a motley group of veteran sailors drawn from ports across the Pacific: China, the Philippines, Malaysia, New Zealand. There was even an American among them, a thick wall of muscle named Sam Pochowski.
The adventurers were chatting with Sam just after dinner, trying to answer the question “so what’s new in the States” without mentioning the fact that an international gang was running amok with magic guns that turned people into smoke, or that they were all on the run and quite possibly putting the entire ship in danger. It wasn’t easy.
Rosie was attempting to describe the music of Benny Goodman to their new friend when they were interrupted by a rising commotion from the deck. They stepped out of the cabin and were met by a vision that froze them all in fear.
Nobody knew what exactly had happened to the Golden Star, the ghost ship that had been ransacked and abandoned on the open sea, but Sid thought it probably looked exactly like the scene now before him: a hideous green glow had filled the darkening sky to the north, directly ahead of the Hangchow Baby. At the center of it was an enormous flying beast, with huge, heavy-looking wings that thudded against the sky and balls of white flame where the eyes and mouth should have been. And there was a sound: a terrifying, undulating screech that turned Sid’s blood to ice and his knees to jelly. As the flying green dragon came closer, Sid saw the eyes flare, their white fire shooting towards the deck, and watched a sailor disappear in a cloud of dark smoke.
“It’s them!” he shouted, “They’ve found us!” He could do nothing but watch as the hellish beast flew low over the deck, filling his ears with the terrible scraping noise. Screams cut through the din in half a dozen languages as a second sailor vanished from the foredeck, another victim of the white flame.
Captain Doyle, watching the thing pass over his head and trying with all his might to avoid evacuating his innards on the deck, saw the creature’s pebbly, reptilian texture, felt the slamming concussions of air as its wings clawed the sky. But it was the sound that gripped him most, that ear-splitting, grinding screech. He knew that sound. He’d heard it once before, during the war. His officers had taken shelter in an old windmill, but there was something wrong with the millstone, which had taken an enemy shell: it ground and scraped with an awful racket, the noise rising and falling, rising and falling... Doyle looked up in wonder.
“It’s... it’s made of stone,” he said softly. “That’s solid stone. But how...”
The monster was circling now, preparing for another assault. Suddenly, a fresh round of screams from the rear of the vessel signaled a second attack: ten black-clad, masked soldiers of the Shadow Order had somehow materialized on the stern deck.
“Here comes da boarding party,” yelled Hank, as he balled up his massive fists and began looking for a weapon. The Baroness had a gun — she was never without one now, not after the narrow escape from San Francisco — but it was difficult to pick a target out of the tangled mass of men.
Professor Armbruster had disappeared into the cabin when he first beheld the dragon. Now he came running back onto the deck, carrying a heavy bundle in his arms. Rosie tried to tackle him, but he was running at top speed toward the onrushing monster.
“We surrender!” he shouted. “Take it! Take it and be done with us!” The Professor threw off the canvas covering: the singing stone pulsed bright blue against the fading sunlight, lighting up the deck around him. But the dragon did not change course; it bore down relentlessly like a vengeful demon. Sid tried to avert his gaze but could not as the dragon’s burning eyes flared once again, and he watched helplessly as Armbruster and the blue cylinder were enveloped by the deadly white fire.
Something astounding happened.
To Sid, the moment played out in slow motion. Armbruster was there on the deck, desperately trying to surrender, to save his own life. The white fire came: time and again Sid had seen it devour everything in its path, killing instantly, leaving only the sickening dark smoke. But this time it was not Professor Armbruster, but the fire itself that evaporated: the cylinder sucked it up! And then, in the next instant, came something else that nobody could have foreseen.
A brilliant beam of dazzling blue sparkles shot out of the cylinder’s end as if from a gigantic flashlight, nearly blinding the stunned onlookers as it slammed into the monster’s wing. There was an explosive, gut-wrenching noise as half the wing was sheared off, falling into the sea with a thunderous splash.
The flying monster became unbalanced; it could no longer fly. It spiraled away from the Hangchow Baby’s heaving deck, sputtering perhaps a hundred yards to port, and crashed clumsily into the Formosa Strait, sending plumes of steam high into the air and creating a wave that nearly swamped the packet boat.
Still holding the singing stone, the Professor spun around to face the tumult behind him. The Shadow soldiers were cutting a swath across the deck, holding the flamethrowing globes before them, their arms waving like coiled cobras ready to strike down any opposition. Sam Pochowski, his face set in a snarling grimace, threw himself at the lead Shadow man, and was met by a flash of white flame. He was gone in an instant, leaving only the all-too familiar whiff of smoke behind. The lead soldier looked up and spotted his objective, the icy blue glow lighting up the Professor like a bewildered ghost. The soldier aimed his flamethrower at Armbruster’s head and fired.
It happened again! The cylinder absorbed the white flame, leaving the Professor unharmed, and an instant later a crackling blue beam erupted in the opposite direction, blasting the startled Shadow soldier into atoms. Another soldier who failed to get out of the way went with him, as did a cast-iron capstan and several feet of the stern railing.
The Professor looked down at the singing stone, then up at the row of Shadow soldiers across the deck. He seemed suddenly to grow a foot taller, the look of slack-jawed wonder on his face replaced by one of all-consuming rage.
“Have at you!!” he screamed, lifting the glowing stone high over his head. Armbruster charged forward and the Shadow Order fled, jumping madly over the Hangchow Baby’s railing and into the churning waters, frantically trying to escape with their lives.
Those who didn’t flee quickly enough found themselves buried under a wave of angry sailors, with knives, clubs and fists making quick work of the invaders. Hank Martin grabbed one Shadow man from behind, his bearlike arms wrapped around the black figure in a wrestling grip. The man struggled like the Devil himself, but to no avail: Sonny joined the fray and landed a crack to the spook’s jaw while Hank held him pinned, and he soon joined his comrades over the side, left to dodge the various missiles and occasional gunshots fired from the deck as the Hangchow Baby chugged away.
Only one Shadow soldier remained unharmed. In the madness of the fight, nobody had seen him lurking near the smokestack atop the main cabin. He had not fled, had not wavered, and now cast his globe aside as he drew a long sword from a scabbard draped across his back. His eye fixed on the tired, panting Professor below, who was receiving the admiring congratulations of Sid, Rosie and the Baroness. With a frightening yell, the soldier leapt down to the
deck and swung his sword in a high arc, a clean swipe aimed directly at the Professor’s sweaty neck.
The sword caught in midair with a sharp metallic clang, stopping just inches from Armbruster’s head as Captain Doyle blocked it with a length of the ship’s railing, jagged at the ends where blasts of white fire and blue light had torn it loose.
“Where are your manners?” shouted Doyle, with a fierce gleam in his eye. “I won’t stand for it!” With a twist of his arm he threw off the attacker’s sword, then spun the metal rail around to parry a second blow.
“Give up, boy!” he yelled. “I...” — parry, thrust — “...was West Point...” — dodge, lunge — “...champion... in nineteen fourteen...” — chop, swish — “...fifteen...” — block, thrust — “...and sixteen!” And with that he swept his weapon upward in a surprise move that jammed his opponent’s sword into a bit of crossbar sticking out from the railing’s side. Following through, Doyle twisted the rail and slammed it into the Shadow soldier’s jaw with a sickening crack. The assassin dropped to the deck and lay still.
“Wow,” said Rosie after a time. “I never woulda figured you for a fencing champion.”
“I wasn’t,” panted Doyle. “I made that part up. But it worked. Psychology is a powerful tool, you know.”
The Hangchow Baby’s captain, a portly man with a thin mustache and scraggly goatee, had been hiding somewhere below decks during the battle. Now he came running up with sweat on his brow and a wildness in his eyes. The captain regarded his ruined foredeck, stamped his feet and demanded, “What the meaning of this? Pirates! Dragons! Three my men dead!” He ran out of words for a moment and resorted to angry gestures, then got to the real point: “Who gonna pay for this?!”
The Baroness calmly walked the man back to the cabin to discuss the increase in fare.
Dragon in the Snow Page 10
