He tottered. A foot slipped upon the edge of the dais. He reeled down a step or two, swaying in effort to regain his balance.
Consardine was upon him!
His hands gripped Satan’s throat. The mighty arms of Satan wrapped themselves around him. The two fell. Locked, they went rolling down the steps.
There was a howling, like packs of wolves. At the back of the Temple and at the two sides, the panels flew open. Through them seethed the kehjt slaves.
“Quick, Cap’n!”
Barker spun me around. He pointed to the throne of gold.
“Be’ind it!” he grunted, and ran.
I caught Eve’s arm and we raced after him. He was on his knees, working frantically at the floor. Something clicked, and a block slid aside. I saw a hole down which dropped a narrow flight of steps.
“Go first,” said Barker. “Quick!”
Eve slipped through. As I followed I caught a glimpse of the Temple through the legs of the throne. It was a seething place of slaughter. The knives of the kehjt slaves were flashing. Men were shooting. From side to side was battle. Of Satan and Consardine I saw nothing. There were a dozen of the slaves rushing up the stairs toward us—
Barker shoved me down the hole. He jumped after me, landing almost on my head. The slab closed.
“’Urry!” gasped Barker. “Gord! If ’e gets us now!”
The stairs led into a bare and small chamber of stone. Over our heads we could hear the tumult. The feet of the fighters beat on the ceiling like drums.
“Watch the stairs. Where’s your gun? ’Ere, tyke mine,” Barker thrust his automatic into my hand. He turned to the wall, scrutinizing it. I ran back to where the narrow stairs entered the chamber. I could hear hands working at the block.
“Got it!” cried Barker. “’Urry!”
A slab had opened in the wall. We passed through. It shut behind us. I could see no place in the wall to mark where it had been.
We stood in one of those long and dimly lighted corridors that honeycombed Satan’s house.
Clearly to us came the turmoil of the fighting above us.
There were five quick sharp explosions.
And, then, abruptly, as though at some command, the turmoil was stilled.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The effect of that abrupt silencing of the tumult overhead was disconcerting, to put it mildly. The five sharp reports had been less like pistol shots than those of a rifle. But who had been shooting, and how could so few bullets have ended such a melee as I had glimpsed?
“They’re quiet! What does it mean?” whispered Eve.
“Somebody’s won,” I said.
“Satan—you don’t think Satan?” she breathed.
Whether Consardine had done for Satan or Satan for him, I had no means of knowing. Desperately I hoped that Consardine had killed him. But whether he had or had not, my betting upon the general battle was with the kehjt drinkers. They swung a wicked knife, and they didn’t care. If Consardine had choked Satan’s life out of him, the kehjt slaves had in all probability sent Consardine’s life after Satan. I didn’t tell Eve that.
“Whether Satan has lost or won, his power is gone,” I told her. “There’s little to fear from him now.”
“Not if we can get out of this blinkin’ ’ole without gettin’ scragged, there ain’t,” said Harry, gloomily. “It’s only fair to tell you I’d a lot rather be ’earin’ that Bank ’Oliday goin’ on up there.”
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
“It’d keep their minds off us, for one thing,” he looked askance at Eve. “But that ain’t the ’ole of it.”
“Will you kindly not regard me as a sensitive female, Barker,” said Eve with considerable acerbity. “Never mind considering my feelings. What do you mean?”
“All right,” said Barker. “I’ll tell you stryte then. I don’t know where the ’ellwe are.”
I whistled.
“But you knew your way here,” I said.
“No,” he answered, “I didn’t. I took a long chance on that, Cap’n. I knew about the trap be’ind the gold throne an’ the room under it. It’s where ’e stows it, an’ I been there, from up above. I took a chance there was another wye out. I was lucky enough to find it. But ’ow to get from ’ere—I don’t know.”
“Hadn’t we better be moving along, somewhere?” said Eve.
“We sure had,” I said. “We’ve only got one gun. Those slaves may come piling in any minute.”
“I move we tyke the right ’and,” said Harry. “We’re somewhere close to Satan’s private quarters. I know that. You keep the gun, Cap’n.”
We moved along the corridor, cautiously. Barker kept scanning the walls, shaking his head, and mumbling. Something had been puzzling me ever since Eve had walked forth from the dark amphitheater to take my place at the steps. It seemed as good a time as any to satisfy my curiosity.
“Harry,” I asked, “how did you work it so that all the prints registered only on that one side of the globe? What kept Satan from doing his double-crossing as usual from the black throne? He was trying hard enough. Did you get back into the Temple again after we’d left?”
“I fixed it before we went, Cap’n,” he grinned. “You saw me fussin’ with the machinery after we’d tried it out, didn’t you?”
“I thought you were readjusting it,” I said.
“So I was,” he grinned more broadly. “Settin’ it so the steps threw all the contacts on the lucky side o’ the telltale. Settin’ it so ’is little arryngement in ’is chair wouldn’t myke no contacts at all. Took a chance, I did. Thought mybe the next Temple meetin’ would be on account o’ you. Only thing I was afryd of was ’e’d miss the noise when ’e pulled the little lever. I couldn’t ’elp that. Thank Gord, ’e didn’t. ’E was too mad.”
“Harry,” I took the little man by the shoulders, “you’ve surely paid me back in full and more for whatever I did for you.”
“Now, now,” said Barker, “wyte till we’re out—”
He halted.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
There had been another sharp explosion, louder than those we had heard before the silence had dropped upon the Temple. It was closer, too. The floor of the corridor trembled. Quick upon it came another.
“Bombs!” exclaimed Barker.
There was a third explosion, nearer still.
“Cripes! We got to get out o’ here!” Barker began questing along the walls like a terrier. Suddenly he grunted, and stopped.
“Got something,” he said. “Quiet now. Stand close be’ind me while I tyke a look.”
He pressed upon the wall. A panel slid aside revealing one of the small lifts. He drew a long breath of relief. We crowded in.
“Down or up?” he closed the panel on us.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“Well, the Temple’s on the ground floor. We’re just under it. If we go down, we’ll be somewhere around that slyves’ den. If we go up, we got to pass the Temple. If we can get by, an’ keep on goin’ up—well, it’s ’ardly likely there’ll be as many slyves over it as under an’ around it, Cap’n.”
“Up we go,” said Eve, decisively.
“Up it is,” I said.
He sent the lift upward, slowly. There was a fourth explosion, louder than any of the others. The frame of the elevator rattled. There was a sound of falling masonry.
“Getting close,” said Eve.
“If we could bryke into Satan’s rooms, we’d ’ave a chance o’ findin’ that private tunnel of ’is,” Barker stopped the lift. “It’s somewhere close by. It’s our best bet, Cap’n. With any luck at all, we could come out syfe on the shore.”
“I’ll bet that by now everybody on the place knows what’s going on, and is somewhere around here,” I said. “We could lift one of those speed boats and get away.”
“I smell something burning,” said Eve.
“Cripes!” Barker sent the lift up at the limit
of its speed, “I’ll sye you do!”
A crack had opened in the wall in front of us. Out of it had shot a jet of smoke.
Suddenly Barker stopped the lift. He slid aside a panel, cautiously. He peered out, then nodded to us. We stepped into a small room, paved and walled with a dull black stone. On one side was a narrow door of bronze. It was plainly an antechamber. But to what?
As we stood there, hesitating, we heard two more explosions, one immediately following the other. They seemed to be upon the floor where we were. From below us came another crash, as of a falling wall. The lift from which we had just emerged went smashing down. Out of the open panel poured a dense volume of smoke.
“Gord! The ’ole bloody plyce is on fire!” Barker jammed the panel shut, and stared at us, white faced.
And suddenly I thought of Cobham.
Cobham, with his gentlemanly bomb that was to blow the bottom out of the Astarte. Satan had said that he had been driven into hiding near the laboratory. Had Cobham seen his chance to escape during the rush of the kehjt slaves to aid Satan? Had he found his way clear, gone straight to the laboratory, and was he now strewing in crazed vengeance the death and destruction he had garnered there?
I tried the bronze door. It was unfastened. Gun ready, I slowly opened it.
We were at one end of that amazing group of rooms, that shrine of beauty, which Satan had created for himself. That place of magic whose spell had so wrought upon me not so long ago that I had gone forth from it, half-considering the giving up of Eve, the placing of my whole allegiance in Satan’s hands. There was a thin veil of smoke in the silent chamber. It dimmed the tapestries, the priceless paintings, the carvings of stone and wood. We crossed its floor, and looked into a larger treasure room. At its far side where were its doors, the smoke hung like a curtain.
From behind the smoke, and close, came another explosion.
Through the curtain stumbled Satan!
At sight of him we huddled together, the three of us. My mouth went dry, and I felt the sweat wet the roots of my hair. It was not with fear. It was something more than fear.
For Satan, stumbling toward us, was blind!
His eyes were no longer blue, jewel-hard and jewel-bright. They were dull and gray, like unpolished agates. They were dead. It was as though a flame had seared them. There was a red stain over and around them, like a crimson mask.
He was cloakless. Black upon the skin of his swollen neck were the marks of strangling fingers. Consardine’s.
One arm hung limp. The other clasped to his breast a little statue of ivory, an Eros. Of all those things of beauty which he had schemed and robbed and slain to possess, that statue was, I think, the thing he loved the best; the thing in which he found the purest, perfect form of that spirit of beauty which, evil as Satan was, he knew and worshiped.
He stumbled on, rolling his great head from side to side like a blinded beast. And as he came, tears fell steadily from the sightless eyes and glistened on the heavy cheeks.
Through the curtain of smoke, following him, stalked Cobham.
A bag was slung over his left shoulder. It bulged, and as he emerged he dipped a hand within it. In his hand when he drew it out was something round, about as big as an orange, something that gleamed, with a dully metallic luster.
As Cobham walked, he laughed; constantly, even as Satan wept.
Cobham halted.
“Satan!” he called. “Stop! Time for a rest, dear Master!”
The stumbling figure lurched on, unheeding. The jeering note in Cobham’s voice fled; it became menacing.
“Stop, you dog! Stop when I tell you. Do you want a bomb at your heels?”
Satan stood still, shuddering, the little statue clasped closer.
“Turn, Satan,” jeered Cobham. “What, Master, would you deny me the light of those eyes of yours!”
And Satan turned.
Cobham saw us.
The hand that held the bomb flew up.
“Walter!” cried Eve, and leaped in front of me, arms outstretched. “Walter! Don’t!”
I had not tried to shoot. To be honest, I had not thought of it. The paralysis with which the sight of Satan had touched me still held me. Eve’s swift action saved us more surely than a bullet would have.
Cobham’s arm dropped to his side. Satan did not turn. I doubt even if he heard. He was past all except his agony and the voice of his tormentor, and that, it came to me, he obeyed only to save from destruction the thing he was clasping.
“Eve!” some of the madness was swept from Cobham’s face. “Who’s with you? Come closer.”
We moved toward him.
“Kirkham, eh? and little ’Arry. Stop where you are. Put your hands up, both of you. I owe you something, Kirkham. But I don’t trust you. Eve, where do you think you’re going?”
“We’re trying to get away, Walter,” she said gently. “Come with us.”
“Come with you? Come with you!” I saw the madness fill his eyes again. “I couldn’t do that. There’s only a part of me here, you know. The rest of me is in a room full of little mirrors. A part of me in every one of those mirrors. I couldn’t go away and leave them.”
He paused, seemingly to consider the matter. The smoke grew thicker. Satan never moved.
“Disintegrated personality, that’s it,” said Cobham. “Satan did it. But he didn’t keep me there long enough. I got away. If I’d stayed a little longer, all of me would have gone into the mirrors. Into them and through them and away. As it is,” said Cobham with a dreadful, impersonal gravity, “the experiment remains unfinished. I can’t go away and leave those bits of myself behind. You see that, Eve?”
“Careful, Eve. Don’t cross him,” I muttered. He heard me.
“Shut up, you, Kirkham. Eve and I will do the talking,” he said, viciously.
“We could help you, Walter,” she said, steadily. “Come with us—”
“I went to the Temple,” he interrupted her, speaking quite calmly, the shattered mind abruptly taking another path, “I had my bombs with me. I distributed a few of them. I used the sleep gas. Consardine was at the bottom of the steps. His back was broken. Satan was just getting up from him. He covered his mouth and nose and ran. I caught him. A little spray across the eyes with something I was carrying. That was all. He made for here like a rat to his hole. Blind as he was—”
The mood had changed. He roared his crazy laughter.
“Come with you! Leave him! After what he’s done to me? No, no, Eve. Not if you were all the angels in Heaven. We’ve had a nice long walk, Satan and I. And when we go, we go together. With all the little bits of me in his damned mirrors going, too. A long, long journey. But I’ve arranged it so we’ll have a swift, swift start!”
“Cobham,” I said. “I want to save Eve. The tunnel to the shore. Will you tell us how to find it? Or is the way to it blocked?”
“I told you to shut up, Kirkham,” he leered at me. “Everybody used to obey Satan. Now Satan obeys me. Therefore everybody obeys me. You’ve disobeyed me. Walk over to that wall, Kirkham.”
I walked to the wall. There was nothing else to do.
“You want to know how to get to the tunnel,” he said when I had reached it, and turned. “Go into that anteroom. Through the right wall there—listen to me, you ’Arry,” he shot a malicious look at me. “Six panels left along the corridor. Through again into another passage. Go down the ramp to the end. Through it at the last panel, right. That’s the start of the tunnel. So much for that. Now, Kirkham, let’s see whether you’re going with them. Catch.”
He raised his arm and threw the bomb at me.
It seemed to come to me slowly. I seemed to have plenty of time to think of what would happen to me if I missed it, or dropped it, or caught it too roughly. Luck was with me. I did none of the three.
“All right, you go,” grinned Cobham. “Keep it in case you meet any of the slaves. I think I cleaned them all out in the Temple. Gas bombs, Kirkham, gas bombs. They’re lying up
there asleep and toasting.”
Again he roared with laughter.
“Get out!” he snarled suddenly.
We walked back through the other room. We did not dare look into each other’s faces. At the door, I glanced back. Cobham was watching us.
Satan had not stirred.
We passed through the door, and closed it.
We got out of the little antechamber as quickly as we could. It was pretty bad with the smoke, and rather too much like a furnace. The first corridor was uncomfortably choky, too. The second was entirely clear. When we reached its end, Barker had a bit of trouble with the panel. Finally it swung open, like a door.
Before us was not, as I had expected, the entrance to the tunnel, but a bare, stone room about twenty feet square. Opposite us was a massive steel door closed with heavy bars. On each side of it was a kehjt drinker. They were big fellows, armed with throwing cords and knives. In addition to these they had carbines, the first guns I had seen in the hands of the slaves.
I had thrust Cobham’s bomb in my pocket. For an instant I thought of using it. Then common sense told me that it might bring the place crashing down about us, at any rate seal the tunnel entrance. I dropped my hand on my automatic. But by that time the guards covered us with their rifles. The only reason that they had not shot on sight, I suppose, was that they had recognized Barker.
“’Ullo! ’Ullo! What’s the matter with you?” Barker stepped toward them.
“What are you doing here?” one of the slaves spoke, and by the faint accent in the deadened voice I thought that he had been Russian before he had become—what he was.
“Satan’s orders,” answered Harry brusquely, and gestured to the guns. “Put ’em down.”
The slave who had spoken said something to the other in that unfamiliar tongue I had heard Satan use. He nodded. They lowered their carbines, but held them in readiness.
“You have his token?” asked the slave.
“You got it, Cap’n,” Barker turned his head to me quickly, then back to the guard. “No, you ’aven’t. I ’ave—”
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 108
