“Oddly enough, the ancients were on the right track all the while, though, of course, they could not know it; for they were wont to refer to the Stone as a substratum—from the Latin sub and stratus, of course, signifying something spread under—and hundreds of years later scientists actually discovered the uranium oxide we know as pitchblende, the chief source of radium.
“Clendenning must have realized the queer substance in the altar was possessed of remarkable radioactive properties, for instead of attempting to grasp it in his fingers, as I should have done, he seized two of the altar candlesticks, and holding them like a pair of pincers, lifted the thing bodily from its setting; then, taking great care not to touch it, wrapped and rewrapped it in thin sheets of gold stripped from the altar ornaments. His data were incomplete, of course, but his reasoning, or perhaps his scientifically trained instinct, was accurate. You see, he inferred that since the ‘stone’ had the property of transmuting base metals with which it came in near contact into gold, gold would in all probability be the one element impervious to its radioactive rays, and consequently the only effective form of insulation. We had seen the ta-lama and his assistants grasp the little image of Buddha so recently transformed from lead to gold with their bare hands, so felt reasonably sure there would be no danger of radium burns from gold recently in contact with the substance, while there might be grave danger if we used anything but gold as wrappings for it.
“Clendenning was for strangling the lama we had stunned when we saw the procession headed toward the chapel, but I persuaded him to tie and gag the fellow and leave him hidden in the shrine; so when we had finished this we crept through the underground passages to the courtyard where our Bhotias were squatting beside the luggage and ordered them to break camp at once.
“The old ta-lama came to bid us a courteous good-bye and refused our offered payment for our entertainment, and we set off on the trail toward Nepal as if the devil were on our heels. He was, though we didn’t know it then.
“Our way was mostly downhill, and everything seemed in our favor. We pushed on long after the sun had set, and by ten o’clock were well past the third tach-davan, or pass, from the lamasery. When we finally made camp Clendenning could hardly wait for our tent to be pitched before experimenting with our loot.
“Unwrapping the strange substance, we noticed that it glowed in the half-light of the tent with a sort of greenish phosphorescence, which made Clendenning christen it Pi Yü, which is Chinese for jade, and by that name we knew it thereafter. We put a pair of pistol bullets inside the wrappings, and lay down for a few hours’ sleep with the Pi Yü between us. At five the next morning when we routed out the bearers and prepared to get under way, the entire leaden portions of the cartridges had been transmuted to gold and the copper powder-jackets were beginning to take on a decided golden glint. Forcing the shells off, we found the powder with which the cartridges were charged had become pure gold dust. This afforded us some valuable data. Lead was transmuted more quickly than copper, and semi-metallic substances like gunpowder were apparently even more susceptible than pure metals, though the powder’s granular form might have sped its transmutation.
“We drove the bearers like slave-masters that day, and they were on the point of open mutiny when evening came. Poor devils, if they’d known what lay behind there’d have been little enough need to urge them on.
“Camp had been made and we had all settled down to a sleep of utter exhaustion when I first heard it. Very faint and far away it was, so faint as to be scarcely recognizable, but growing louder each second—the rumbling whistle of a wind of hurricane velocity shrieking and tearing down the passes.
“I kicked Clendenning awake, and together we made for a cleft in the rocks, yelling to our Bhotias to take cover at the same time. The poor devils were too waterlogged with sleep to realize what we shouted, and before we could give a second warning the thing was among them. Demonical blasts of wind so fierce we could almost see them shrieked and screamed and howled through the camp, each gust seeming to be aimed with dreadful accuracy. They whirled and twisted and tore about, scattering blazing logs like sparks from bursting firecrackers, literally tearing our tents into scraps no larger than a man’s hand, picking up beasts and men bodily and hurling them against the cliff-walls till they were battered out of all semblance of their original form. Within five minutes our camp was reduced to such hopeless wreckage as may be seen only in the wake of a tornado, and Clendenning and I were the only living things within a radius of five miles.
“We were about to crawl from our hiding-place when something warned me the danger was not yet past and I grabbed at Clendenning’s arm. He pulled away, but left the musette bag in which the Pi Yü was packed in my hand. Next moment he walked to the center of the shambles which had been our camp and began looking around in a dazed sort of way. Almost as he came to a halt, a terrific roar sounded and the entire air seemed to burn with the fury of a bursting lightning-bolt. Clendenning was wiped out as though he had never been—torn literally to dust by the unspeakable force of the lightning, and even the rock where he had stood was scarred and blackened as though water-blasted. But the terrible performance didn’t stop there. Bolt after bolt of frightful lightning was hurled down like an accurately aimed barrage till every shred of our men, our yaks, our tents and our camp paraphernalia had not only been milled to dust, but completely obliterated.
“How long the artillery-fire from the sky lasted I do not know. To me, as I crouched in the little cave between the rocks, it seemed hours, years, centuries. Actually, I suppose, it kept up for something like five minutes. I think I must have fainted with the horror of it at the last, for the next thing I knew the sun was shining and the air was clear and icy-cold. No one passing could have told from the keenest observation that anything living had occupied our campsite in years. There was no sign or trace—absolutely none—of human or animal occupancy to be found. Only the cracked and lightning-blackened rocks bore witness to the terrible bombardment which had been laid down.
“I wasted precious hours in searching, but not a shred of cloth or flesh, not a lock of hair or a congealed drop of blood remained of my companions.
“The following days were like a nightmare—one of those awful dreams in which the sleeper is forever fleeing and forever pursued by something unnamably horrible. A dozen times a day I’d hear the skirling tempests rushing down the passes behind and scuttle to the nearest hole in the rocks like a panic-stricken rabbit when the falcon’s shadow suddenly appears across its path. Sometimes I’d be storm-bound for hours while the wind howled like a troop of demons outside my retreat and the lightning-strokes rattled almost like hailstones on the rubble outside. Sometimes the vengeful tempest would last only a few minutes and I’d be released to fly like a mouse seeking sanctuary from the cat for a few miles before I was driven to cover once more.
“There were several packs of emergency rations in the musette bag, and I made out for drink by chipping off bits of ice from the frozen mountain springs and melting them in my tin cup, but I was a mere rack of bones and tattered hide encased in still more tattered clothes when I finally staggered into an outpost settlement in Nepal and fell babbling like an imbecile into the arms of a sowar sentry.
“The lamas’ vengeance seemed confined to the territorial limits of Tibet, for I was unmolested during the entire period of my illness and convalescence in the Nepalese village.
“When I was strong enough to travel I was passed down country to my outfit, but I was still so ill and nervous that the company doctor gave me a certificate of physical disability and I was furnished with transportation home.
“I’d procured some scrap metal before embarking on the P. and O. boat, and in the privacy of my cabin I amused myself by testing the powers of the Pi Yü. Travel had not altered them, and in three days I had about ten pounds of gold where I’d had half that weight of iron.
“I was bursting with the wonderful news when I reached Waterbury, and could scarce
ly wait to tell my wife, but as I walked up the street toward my house an ugly, Mongolian-faced man suddenly stepped out from behind a roadside tree and barred my way. He did not utter a syllable but stood immovable in the path before me, regarding me with such a look of concentrated malice and hatred that my breath caught fast in my throat. For perhaps half a minute he glared at me, then raised his left hand and pointed directly at my face. As his sleeve fell back, I caught the gleam of a string of small, red beads looped round his wrist. Next instant he turned away and seemed to walk through an invisible door in the air—one moment I saw him, the next he had disappeared. As I stood staring stupidly at the spot where he had vanished, I felt a terrific blast of ice-cold wind blowing about me, tearing off my hat and sending me staggering against the nearest front-yard fence.
“The wind subsided in a moment, but it had blown away my peace of mind forever. From that instant I knew myself to be a marked man, a man whose only safety lay in flight and concealment.
“My daughter has told you the remainder of the story, how my wife was first to go, and how they found that accursed red bead which is the trade mark of the lamas’ blood-vengeance clasped in her hand; how my son was the next victim of those Tibetan devils’ revenge, then my daughter Charlotte; now she, too, is marked for destruction. Oh, gentlemen”—his eyes once more roved restlessly about—“if you only knew the inferno of terror and uncertainty I’ve been through during these terrible years, you’d realize I’ve paid my debt to those mountain fiends ten times over with compound interest compounded tenfold!’”
Our host ended his narrative almost in a shriek, then settled forward in his chair, chin sunk on breast, hands lying flaccidly in his lap, almost as if the death of which he lived in dread had overtaken him at last.
In the silence of the dimly lit drawing-room the logs burned with a softly hissing crackle; the little ormolu clock on the marble mantel beat off the seconds with hushed, hurrying strokes as though it held its breath and went on tiptoe in fear of something lurking in the shadows. Outside the curtained windows the subsiding storm moaned dismally, like an animal in pain.
Jules de Grandin darted his quick, birdlike glance from the dejected Arkright to his white-lipped daughter, then at me, then back again at Arkright. “Tiens, Monsieur,” he remarked, “it would appear you find yourself in what the Americans call one damn-bad fix. Sacré bleu, those ape-faced men of the mountains know how to hate well, and they have the powers of the tempest at their command, while you have nothing but Jules de Grandin.
“No matter; it is enough. I do not think you will be attacked again today. Make yourselves as happy as may be, keep careful watch for more of those damnation red beads, and notify me immediately one of them reappears. Meantime I go to dinner and to consult a friend whose counsel will assuredly show us a way out of our troubles. Mademoiselle, Monsieur, I wish you a very good evening.” Bending formally from the hips, he turned on his heel and strode from the drawing-room.
“DO YOU THINK THERE was anything in that cock-and-bull story of Arkright’s?” I asked as we walked home through the clear, rain-washed April evening.
“Assuredly,” he responded with a nod. “It has altogether the ring of truth, my friend. From what he tells us, the Pi Yü Stone which he and his friend stole from the men of the mountain is merely some little-known form of radium, and what do we know of radium, when all is said and done? Barbe d’un pou, nothing or less!
“True, we know the terrific and incessant discharge of etheric waves consequent on the disintegration of the radium atoms is so powerful that even such known and powerful forces as electrical energy are completely destroyed by it. In the presence of radium, we know, non-conductors of electricity become conductors, differences of potential cease to exist and electroscopes and Leyden jars fail to retain their charges. But all this is but the barest fraction of the possibilities.
“Consider: Not long ago we believed the atom to be the ultimate particle of matter, and thought all atoms had individuality. An atom of iron, for instance, was to us the smallest particle of iron possible, and differed distinctly from an atom of hydrogen. But with even such little knowledge as we already have of radioactive substances we have learned that all matter is composed of varying charges of electricity. The atom, we now believe, consists of a proton composed of a charge of positive electricity surrounded by a number of electrons, or negative charges, and the number of these electrons determines the nature of the atom. Radium itself, if left to itself, disintegrated into helium, finally into lead. Suppose, however, the process be reversed. Suppose the radioactive emanations of this Pi Yü which Monsieur Arkright thieved away from the lamas, so affect the balance of protons and electrons of metals brought close to it as to change their atoms from atoms of zinc, lead or iron to atoms of pure gold. All that would be needed to do it would be a rearrangement of protons and electrons. The hypothesis is simple and believable, though not to be easily explained. You see?”
“No, I don’t,” I confessed, “but I’m willing to take your word for it. Meantime—”
”Meantime we have the important matter of dinner to consider,” he interrupted with a smile as we turned into my front yard. “Pipe d’un chameau, I am hungry like a family of famished wolves with all this talk.”
3
“TROWBRIDGE, MON VIEUX, THEY are at their devil’s work again—have you seen the evening papers?” de Grandin exclaimed as he burst into the office several days later.
“Eh—what?” I demanded, putting aside the copy of Corwin’s monograph on Multiple Neuritis and staring at him. “Who are ‘they,’ and what have ‘they’ been up to?”
“Who? Name of a little green man, those devils of the mountains, those Tibetan priests, those servants of the Pi Yü Stone!” he responded. “Peruse le journal, if you please.” He thrust a copy of the afternoon paper into my hand, seated himself on the corner of the desk and regarded his brightly polished nails with an air of deep solicitude. I read:
GANGLAND SUSPECTED IN BEAUTY’S DEATH
Police believe it was to put the seal of eternal silence on her rouged lips that pretty Lillian Conover was “taken for a ride” late last night or early this morning. The young woman’s body, terribly beaten and almost denuded of clothing, was found lying in one of the bunkers of the Sedgemoor Country Club’s golf course near the Albemarle Pike shortly after six o’clock this morning by an employee of the club. From the fact that no blood was found near the body, despite the terrible mauling it had received, police believe the young woman had been “put on the spot” somewhere else, then brought to the deserted links and left there by the slayers or their accomplices.
The Conover girl was known to have been intimate with a number of questionable characters, and had been arrested several times for shoplifting and petty thefts. It is thought she might have learned something of the secrets of a gang of bootleggers or hijackers and threatened to betray them to rival gangsters, necessitating her silencing by the approved methods of gangland.
The body, when found, was clothed in the remnants of a gray ensemble with a gray fox neck-piece and a silver mesh bag was still looped about one of her wrists. In the purse were four ten-dollar bills and some silver, showing conclusively that robbery was not the motive for the crime.
The authorities are checking up the girl’s movements on the day before her death, and an arrest is promised within twenty-four hours.
“U’m?” I remarked, laying down the paper.
“U’m?” he mocked. “May the devil’s choicest imps fly away with your ‘u’ms,’ Friend Trowbridge. Come, get the car; we must be off.”
“Off where?”
“Beard of a small blue pig, where, indeed, but to the spot where this so unfortunate girl’s dead corpse was discovered?” Delay not, we must utilize what little light remains!”
The bunker where poor Lillian Conover’s broken body had been found was a banked sand-trap in the golf course about twenty-five yards from the highway. Throngs of morbidly
curious sightseers had trampled the smoothly kept fairways all day, brazenly defying the “PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING” signs with which the links were posted.
To my surprise, de Grandin showed little annoyance at the multitude of footprints about, but turned at once to the business of surveying the terrain. After half an hour’s crawling back and forth across the turf, he rose and dusted his trouser knees with a satisfied sigh.
“Succès!” he exclaimed, raising his hand, thumb and forefinger clasped together on something which reflected the last rays of the sinking sun with an ominous red glow. “Behold, mon ami, I have found it; it is even as I suspected.”
Looking closely, I saw he held a red bead, about the size of a small hazelnut, the exact duplicate of the little globule Haroldine Arkright had discovered in her reticule.
“Well?” I asked.
“Barbe d’un lièvre, yes; it is very well, indeed,” he assented with a vigorous nod. “I was certain I should find it here, but had I not, I should have been greatly worried. Let us return, good friend; our quest is done.”
I knew better than to question him as we drove slowly home; but my ears were open wide for any chance remark he might drop. However, he vouchsafed no comment till we reached home; then he hurried to the study and put an urgent call through to the Arkright mansion. Five minutes later he joined me in the library, a smile of satisfaction on his lips. “It is as I thought,” he announced. “Mademoiselle Haroldine went shopping yesterday afternoon and the unfortunate Conover girl picked her pocket in the store. Forty dollars was stolen—forty dollars and a red bead!”
“She told you this?” I asked. “Why—”
”Non, non,” he shook his head. “She did tell me of the forty dollars, yes; the red bead’s loss I already knew. Recall, my friend, how was it the poor dead one was dressed, according to the paper?”
The Devil's Rosary Page 13
