The Project Gutenberg eBook of White Lily
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Title: White Lily
Author: John Taine
Illustrator: Hans Waldemar Wessolowski
Release date: October 16, 2026 [eBook #79804]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Experimenter Publications Inc., 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79804
Credits: Greg Weeks and Mary Meehan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITE LILY ***
White Lily
By John Taine
_Author of: "The Purple Sapphire," "The Gold Tooth,"
and Various Scientific Papers_
Illustrated by WESSO
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1930.]
_Although "John Taine" is a new name among our growing list of
good authors, he will probably need no introduction to a great
number of our readers. His scientific fiction novels, "The Purple
Sapphire," "The Gold Tooth," and "The Greatest Adventure," have
been rated, by lovers of this type of literature, as being equal to
A. Merritt's story, "The Moon Pool." Until now it was impossible
for Mr. Taine to submit any of his manuscripts to AMAZING STORIES
on account of his contract with his publishers. We are very glad
to be able to give you "White Lily," another full-length novel of
scientific fiction, complete in this issue. Besides writing novels
based on science, Mr. Taine has also written several scientific
papers of considerable importance, for he is a scientist of no mean
ability and reputation. In this particular story, the author deals
with the chemistry of dyes and what an accidental combination of
certain dyes might result in. Like A. Merritt, Mr. Taine realizes
the importance of character study, and like him also our new author
has an almost uncanny ability for drawing character pictures. We
know you will anticipate, with us, seeing more creations from this
well-known author._
Part I--Bunglers
CHAPTER I
Foundered
Something was moving about the house. It was not alive, nor was it
being propelled. Yet it moved. Such was the flesh raising impression
Mrs. Lane got first as she started up in bed and groped for the
electric lamp. Her fingers moved without feeling over the small table
by the head of the bed, upset a tumbler of water, and found nothing.
The house was as still as the crypt of an unviolated pyramid, and as
dark.
Failing to find the lamp, Mrs. Lane remembered with ghastly exactness
where she had left it. Too tired to read that night before going to
sleep, as was her custom during her husband's numerous absences on
duty, she had left the lamp on the dressing table by the door, a good
ten feet from the bed.
Should she prove that she was a soldier's wife by getting out of bed
and turning on the light, or would it be more prudent to acknowledge
that she was just an extremely frightened young woman, and bury her
head under the pillow? Instinctively she breathed her husband's name,
"Bob!" as if her extreme terror could pierce a hundred miles of
darkness and recall instantly her natural protector.
Captain Robert Lane, asleep on the U. S. transport _Sheridan_ rushing
him and his marines to China, dreamed neither of his wife nor of his
four-year-old son, but of legions of revolutionary Chinese bent on
making Shanghai interesting for tourists. His wife and son were safe
in Los Angeles. Why should they visit him in sleep? He and his machine
guns, his leathernecks and their ugly steel tanks, had a stiff enough
job ahead of them to keep the international peace, without worrying
about any trivial domestic explosions that might brew in their absence.
A cruel Chinese face without head or body behind it swam like a saffron
bladder toward the captain's; a pair of dead eyes fastened with cold
hatred upon his own; the slit that was a mouth in the yellow, floating
thing opened as if to spit a curse, and Bob Lane turned over with a
groan, his nightmare broken, but not by his young wife's horror of the
clammy darkness that clung to her like a shroud.
Why had the black silence of her bedroom suddenly taken on an unearthly
chill? Surely the air was drifting slowly over the bed, and flowing
silently into the other room where her son slept in his cot.
"I must see! I must see!" Mrs. Lane muttered to herself, not daring
to put her foot to the floor and slip out of bed. "I'm not a coward."
She spoke the words aloud, as if challenging the sooty cold to deny
an obvious truth. Then an impersonal being, a passionless embodiment
of the primitive, unaging logic of things material, spoke with the
terrified woman's voice. "There is something in that room," it
whispered, "that is neither dead nor living. It is not a spirit, for
it never breathed. I know this is true, because I feel it. Whatever is
in that room is trying to live, but does not yet know how." Mrs. Lane
recovered her mental balance. "Nonsense!" she commented tersely, but
without conviction.
The voice that had spoken was the forgotten danger signal of an all but
eradicated instinct, so early rooted in the very tissues of life that
its existence has passed unsuspected for ages. When the first uncouth
parodies of living things took shape in the primeval slime, that same
voice uttered its already ancient warning to the crystals and colloids
that blundered their slow way toward life and evolution. Age after age
that secular fear had whispered, to remind the nascent races of plants
and animals how precarious was their grasp upon the fleeting dream
called life, and how insecure their temporary dominion over death.
"It is an accident, no more, that you, not I, have life," the nameless
instinct seemed to whisper, speaking for the uncreated lives behind the
fear; "yet, in the end, my kind shall destroy your kind."
Mrs. Lane had at last recovered her courage. "I shall find my slippers
and see what it is," she declared, making no move to carry out her
intention.
"Mother! Mother!"
The terrified scream of Young Tom cut through her indecision like a
razor. Instinct shot Mrs. Lane out of bed, through the icy darkness,
into her small son's room. Isabel Lane was twenty-five, healthy and
supple. She had not tarried over her slippers. Whatever might be in her
boy's room, inhuman monster or mere burglar, might expect no more than
swift and painful justice from her tense fingers.
"What is it? Oh----!"
Before she could switch on the electric light, it--whatever it may
have been--had happened, appallingly, horribly. There was a crash, a
multiplied, incredible crash, of falling, splintering glass, as if a
massive old-fashioned ballroom chandelier had shattered itself on the
floor. That was all. Not even a subsiding tinkle of fragment on broken
fragment lent coherence to the insane dream. There was no chandelier
or gaudier hanging abomination of glass in the house, much less in the
boy's bedroom.
She snapped on the light. Was it all a nightmare? Then why had her
son screamed, in the utter extremity of unnatural terror, and why
was he now crying so lustily? She would not believe her dazed eyes.
On the smooth oak floor she saw absolutely nothing, not even a trace
of impalpable dust. And yet, with her own ears, she had heard the
thing--whatever it may have been--fall. Not only had she heard it
crash to destruction; the sound of its sudden dissolution was but the
momentary echo of a definite, prolonged and terrible death. The thing,
now dead and invisible, had gone out in agony. Only its pain lingered.
The boy, crying in her arms, could tell her nothing. "I'm afwaid, I'm
afwaid," was all he could say to express an emotion which it might
have baffled the most subtle of psychologists to analyze. The fear,
which chilled him no less than his mother, was older than instinct,
more ancient than the human race. The insentient cells of his young
body, the inert minerals of his bones and the traces of iron in his
blood had answered to the immemorial fear which all living beings
experienced when first they gained, by a hazardous survival, the right
to live. That right was now, after unnumbered millions of years, being
challenged by a forgotten enemy, whose defeat in the beginning of
creative time made the miracle of life an unexplained reality.
Still but half awake, in spite of the sudden shock to her nerves, Mrs.
Lane had a cold, clear knowledge that the vanished anomaly--she did
not call it this, because she was too dazed, nor did she account for
her crystal intuition--had perished in its first, infantile attempt to
walk. A subdued, all but inaudible sound of stealthy motion stole back
through the silence of her memory, and she seemed to recall that the
darkness before the crash had not been a dead nothing, but a stifled
clamor of pain and abortive movements. The tentative, almost forgotten
sounds of the motion of the thing, before it crashed and dissolved into
nothing, were strangely like those of a baby venturing its first steps.
* * * * *
All of these impressions were on a deeper level than that of memory
or intuition. They were immediate knowledge, such as mystics claim
to experience, conveyed directly from one material thing to another.
Mind did not speak to mind, but matter to matter. That silent message
of fear in the night was more ancient than any mind. What misshapen
mistake of time had found its way up through the darkness of forgotten
ages, only to blunder in its first crude movements to an agonized
death, in search of the light it could not reach? For the thing
suffered an equivalent of pain, although it had no mind; the intensity
of its agony still congealed the silent air and froze in the memory
of its end. That also was immediate experience, a thing not known or
sensed, but lived, from one dead atom to another. Whose careless head
had flung back the bolts shutting off this half-created thing from the
life it dumbly coveted?
Mrs. Lane, deciding to consider the incident a nightmare, although fast
within her bones she felt that it had been singularly real, carried
the boy back to her own bed and soon had him asleep. She herself
could not sleep. To establish her courage she switched off the lamp,
now restored to its usual place on the table by her bed, and debated
whether she should get out in the dark to put the lamp back upon the
dresser, just to prove conclusively that she was not afraid. Prudence
conquered, and she cuddled up to her son. There might be another
nightmare--she carefully avoided giving the disturber of her sleep any
more tangible designation--in the house, and she did not wish to be
unprepared for emergencies. The sense of a nameless fear, and with it
the unaccountable chill, had definitely departed, as if the cause of
the "nightmare" were indeed dead and less than dust.
Shortly before daybreak she began to doze off. How long she lost
touch with the world of living things, Mrs. Lane cannot guess, but
she imagines it was less than three-quarters of an hour. She awoke
with a start, feeling that she was about to be strangled. A faint but
unmistakable odor of corruption tainted the air. A brilliant oblong of
sunlight on the floor of her boy's room at once caught her eye through
the door which she had left wide open. Tom was fast asleep at her side,
apparently in perfect health, although he breathed somewhat loudly.
Instantly alert, his mother noticed in almost the same glance that
the patch of sunlight shone with a peculiar brilliance, and that her
boy's upper lip, where the breath from his nostrils played over it, was
discolored a distinct yellow. Her first thought, although she could
give no logical reason for it, was that the kitchen gas range was a
leak and filling the house with deadly carbon monoxide.
Not stopping to verify any leaks, she rushed out of doors with Tom.
Then she returned to fling open all the doors and windows of the
bungalow. Everywhere that faint breath of decay poisoned the air, most
noticeably in those rooms brightened by the early morning sun, barely
perceptible in those where the sun had not yet penetrated, and just
distinguishable in the dark closets.
It was still but a few minutes after sunrise. Moreover, it was a Sunday
morning--Easter Sunday at that. It was out of the question to call a
plumber or a man from the gas company to examine the range. Mrs. Lane,
resourceful as are most women whose husbands must be away from home
half of their lives, took the Fire Department into her confidence and
appealed for help. The man on duty yawning at the other end of the wire
promised to send two men immediately. While the help was on its way,
Mrs. Lane had time to get Tom and herself partially but presentably
dressed.
The two firemen who came to render first aid were skeptical, not to
say cynical. They nosed about with a sophisticated air, found nothing
wrong, and said so plainly.
"Last night the first your husband was away?" one of them asked to
corroborate Mrs. Lane's story as she had told it.
She acknowledged that it was, but added that being alone was nothing
unusual in the life of an army officer's wife.
"You've got a fit of nerves, that's all," the fireman assured her. "Get
one of the neighbor women to stay with you tomorrow night. There's no
gas leaking here."
"Very well," she replied, feeling a little foolish. Then suddenly
she experienced a sharp sense of danger, and decided to tell the men
all about the "nightmare," which till now she had not mentioned. The
firemen listened respectfully, with not more grinning than might pass
unrebuked. But when the agitated young mother concluded her recital
with a frankly feminine appeal that one of the men look under the cot
in her boy's room, they burst into a guffaw.
"All right, lady," they agreed, "we're game."
When they saw the cot, standing about three feet high, with a rare
Mexican valance of woven horsehair concealing its legs, they roared.
The thought that any burglar or other beast of prey could secrete
himself successfully under a baby's bed proved too much for their sense
of humor. Nevertheless they had promised to rescue a distressed mother,
and they now stuck like firemen to their word. One on either side they
got down on all fours and poked their heads under the hanging valance,
still gurgling like young bulls with repressed mirth. Then suddenly
they collapsed and stiffened. Mrs. Lane dragged their unconscious
bodies out to the veranda and telephoned for a doctor.
The men recovered before the doctor arrived.
"What hit me, Joe?"
"What hit me?" his companion countered. "Did you get it, too?"
"I sure did. Say, lady, I guess you were right about the gas. It must
still be hanging about the floor."
"But you said all the fixtures are in perfect shape," Mrs. Lane
demurred. "It can't be the gas."
"What was there under that kid's bed, then?" one of the men demanded
suspiciously. "I ain't knocked clean out by nothing."
"There was nothing under the cot that I know of. Unless," she added as
an afterthought, "you count an egg."
"An egg? What kind of an egg?"
"Just an egg--an Easter egg. I hid one of the dozen we colored
yesterday under my boy's cot, for him to find this morning."
"Oh, so it's just an Easter egg breakfast you've invited us to?"
the fireman queried sarcastically. "It struck Joe and me like a
bootlegger's picnic. What brand of eggs do you use in your business,
anyway?"
"Hens' eggs, of course. Did you notice if the green one was under the
cot?"
"The green one!" Joe echoed disgustedly. "Say, what are you handing us?
I've a good notion to call a cop."
Joe was interrupted by the arrival of the doctor.
"You are too late, fortunately," Mrs. Lane explained. "The men are
better."
* * * * *
In answer to the doctor's queries, Mrs. Lane and the firemen succeeded
in giving him a confused impression of a wild Saturday night party
unduly prolonged into Easter Sunday. Although too suave a gentleman
to express his suspicions openly on so delicate a matter, the doctor
privately diagnosed the trouble as a mild case of alcoholism. Still,
he admitted to himself, Mrs. Lane looked all right; and the firemen
exhaled no tell-tale odor.
"Perhaps I had better see for myself what is under your boy's bed," he
suggested, with just the right inflection to indicate that he suspected
Mrs. Lane of hysteria.
"Watch him get his," Joe whispered.
"Is the green egg there?" Mrs. Lane inquired expectantly, as the
doctor lifted the horsehair valance to peer under the cot. "Why," she
exclaimed to herself, "what's become of the floor mat?"
"Green egg?" the doctor echoed incredulously in e dazed voice. "You----"
Then he too collapsed. When he revived in the cool air of the veranda,
he was somewhat dazed and quite crestfallen.
"There must be gas on the floor," he declared. "Is there a connection
for a heater in that room?"
The firemen assured him that there was not. As experts, they agreed
that escaping gas had nothing to do with the case.
"Did you see the green egg?" Mrs. Lane persisted. She had an obscure,
half-formed intuition, which she would not have trusted to words for
any bribe, that some evil thing had hatched out of that innocent
looking Easter egg in the night, and was now polluting the clean
morning air with its unholy, nocturnal exhalations.
"What green egg?" the doctor demanded, consciously hearing of its
existence for the first time.
Mrs. Lane explained in detail. Intuition, mother instinct, or whatever
we may choose to call supersense, prompted her to be explicit. The egg,
she felt, was not so innocent as most eggs usually are. But she did not
confide her suspicions to the three men. As yet her doubts were too
nebulous to be taken seriously.
"Just an ordinary hen egg?" the doctor quizzed with a disappointed air
when she finished her story. "Sure it wasn't a bad one?"
"It may have been," she admitted. "You see, it was a storage egg. The
other eleven that we dyed were guaranteed fresh laid."
"Ah!" the doctor exclaimed, brightening. "That explains this mysterious
odor that you say you noticed."
"Odor, nothing," Joe interjected decisively. "Did you ever see three
healthy men knocked out by one bad egg?"
"But you say it isn't gas," the doctor agreed. "Suppose we have a look
at that egg--if there is one." He rose, deliberately cut off a long
pole of green bamboo from the clump by the steps, and proceeded to
Tom's bedroom. Half ashamed of their expectant curiosity, the three
watched the doctor fish under the cot for the guilty egg. Standing bolt
upright as he cautiously explored the floor with the pole, the doctor
took no chances of encountering a second gas attack. Presently his
persistence was rewarded. Out trundled a beautiful, grass-green Easter
egg.
"Don't touch it!" he ordered. "The thing may be poisoned. I don't half
like its color. Is there a shovel about the place?"
Mrs. Lane fetched the garden shovel, and the doctor, accompanied by the
gaping firemen, gingerly bore the suspected egg out of doors.
As he tipped the egg off the shovel, a fourth spectator joined the
charmed circle. This was Hoot, the Lanes' enormous yellow family cat.
From what region of space he now materialized himself is not known; he
just appeared, as he always did, when interesting events were about to
happen.
"Don't let him sniff it!" Mrs. Lane implored.
But the doctor, acting in the interests of impartial science, gently
restrained her and let curiosity earn its reward. His own curiosity
was piqued. The firemen were content to permit the doctor to handle
the case. Like Hoot and the doctor they too were now imbued with the
scientific spirit.
Hoot's elaborate caution in attacking the problem availed him nothing.
First one testing paw patted the egg and found it docile, then the
other. It was safe, according to the cat's expert judgment, and would
not bite him. Very delicately he elongated his neck and sniffed the
virulent looking green shell. He received worse than a bite. With a
dismal, croaking howl, as if he were about to be deathly sick, he
staggered groggily away, to sink down in a heap at his mistress' feet.
"Poor Hoot," Mrs. Lane exclaimed, picking up the limp form. "Never
mind; you'll soon recover--the doctor and the firemen did. Tom! Keep
away from that egg."
She rescued her son just as his four-year-old curiosity was about to
overmaster him. One of the practical firemen seized the shovel.
"Don't smash it!" the doctor snapped, knocking the poised shovel aside.
"That's the most interesting egg in California. Poisoned, beyond a
doubt." A wavering blotch of sunlight played over the villainous egg as
the leaves of the walnut danced in the morning breeze, and the doctor
continued his theorizing. "Look at that vile color. Did you ever see
so hideous a green? Something new in the way of poisonous dyes, I'll
wager. It isn't a copper green, nor yet an arsenic. I'm going to have
it analyzed by the city chemist."
"Yeh," Joe agreed, "it's sure poisoned. Well, we've got to be getting
back to the station. Good morning, everybody."
The doctor stood doubtfully regarding the egg. How pick it up safely?
"Of course you will destroy the rest of the eggs you dyed?" he
suggested.
Mrs. Lane nodded. "Have you any idea what kind of poison it is?"
"It acts like concentrated carbon monoxide plus hydrocyanic acid, but
I doubt whether it is. Otherwise that cat would probably be dead. And
he's not."
As if to confirm the doctor's verdict, the supine Hoot made a heroic
effort to throw off his stupor. The huge cat rolled over in his
mistress' arms and deftly wriggled his way to freedom.
"Keep away from that egg!" the doctor warned, as Hoot made a beeline
for the enemy. "Isn't once enough?"
Before they could catch him, Hoot was gratifying his instinct for
scientific research. The full, strong sunlight had now been bathing
the bright green egg for several minutes. The cat sniffed once,
tentatively, then again, thoroughly. Nothing happened. With an air
of intense disappointment the enormous Hoot turned his back on the
contemptible enemy that was too proud to fight, and stalked away on his
morning business.
* * * * *
For a moment the poison hypothesis seemed to have exploded. Then the
doctor hit upon the obvious explanation. His simple theory was in
perfect accord with sound common sense. Its one defect, not revealed
until some weeks later, was that it was quite wrong. This, however,
is nothing against it. A physical theory that is not smashed nowadays
within ninety days survives merely because it is not worth smashing.
The egg, he declared, had obviously lost its evil cunning because
the poisonous principle of the green dye, being exceedingly volatile
at blood heat, had all evaporated in the full sunlight. It was as
incorrect as it was plausible. Before carrying off the egg to be
analyzed for traces of poison, the doctor obtained its full history, so
far as known, from Mrs. Lane.
The essential facts are these. Captain Lane and his wife spent their
last morning together doing odd jobs about the house and dyeing their
son Tom's Easter eggs. As Tom insisted that he could dispose of a full
twelve, Captain Lane went out and bought a dozen fresh eggs from a
neighbor, instead of using those already in the house. Those which they
had on hand were preserved in water glass--the liquid silicate commonly
used by housewives for the purpose. Although these might be considered
fresh, at least theoretically, the Lanes decided to play no pranks on a
baby's stomach, and got an honest dozen. The Easter dyes they bought at
the corner grocery store. There was no reason to suspect anything wrong
with the colors, as they were a standard brand, guaranteed harmless to
man or animal.
All went well till they came to the eleventh egg. Captain Lane, who
was doing the dyeing, not being very skillful in handling such fragile
things as eggs, tried to be too delicate with his technique. As a
result there was a casualty. The eleventh egg eluded his grasp and
committed suicide on the tiles of the kitchen floor. Young Tom began to
howl. To a child's discerning ear there is a golden magic in the words
"a dozen Easter eggs," which is hopelessly tarnished if eleven, or even
twelve, be substituted for the mysterious dozen. Argument, reason,
exhortation to be a man and not a cry-baby, all failed. There must be
one dozen, no more, no less. To pacify their clamorous son the Lanes
replaced the ruined egg by one "just as good"--although it wasn't--from
the crock of waterglass, with the compromise that this egg, the
eleventh, was not to be devoured like the rest, but merely admired. So
that there should be no mistake about the identity of the sophisticated
egg, Captain Lane mixed a special dye for its identification. From
equal parts of sky blue and sunflower yellow he brewed a dazzling,
virulent golden green that shrieked. Tom prized this egg above all the
others, and insisted that his mother "hide" it under his cot, so that
he should be sure to find it before she got up.
During all these ceremonies the captain of course got himself rather
messy. By the time the job was finished he was more gorgeous than a
rainbow. In fishing the substitute egg out of the waterglass he managed
to splash his army shoes, his tunic, his face, and his arms up to the
elbows with the slithering mess. It took his wife the best part of an
hour to get him and his uniform clean enough to pass inspection.
If the doctor's theory of poison had any truth in it, Captain Lane was
a pretty dangerous enemy by the time his wife was through with sponging
him and his clothes, and she herself was not entirely innocuous. But,
as appeared later, the doctor's theory was too simple to be quite
right. Nevertheless, a truly cautious health officer from a wiser
planet might reasonably have quarantined the whole family for at least
five years. And the same experienced officer, knowing more about life
in general than do we earth dwellers in our own Narrow range, would
undoubtedly have forbidden Captain Lane to change his shirt at the last
moment, because one of the spots on the left sleeve persistently defied
soap and water, hastily cram the discarded shirt into his kit, and jump
into a taxi on the first lap of the long journey to Shanghai.
Having satisfied himself that he had all the facts in the case, the
doctor left, carrying with him the guilty egg. Only by promising to
send young Tom a bigger and greener one within an hour was the doctor
permitted to bear off his booty. He felt confident that the chemist's
analysis would disclose traces of some complicated poison in the dye
which would demote the guilty egg from its interesting status as an
inexplicable mystery, and reveal it as nothing more than a rather
common accident.
It may be recorded here that the good doctor was bitterly disappointed.
The following afternoon he received the chemist's report. The green dye
was quite harmless; a child might swallow a quart of it and ask for
more, if he happened to like the stuff. Rather ashamed of his part in
the affair he tried to doubt that he and the two firemen had suffered
more than an attack of nerves in sympathy with Mrs. Lane. Although he
never quite succeeded, he wisely decided to forget the incident for the
sake of his professional reputation.
* * * * *
After church on that fateful Easter morning, Mrs. Lane and Tom left Los
Angeles with some friends for a three days' auto trip to the desert
to see the wild flowers. The winter had been warm and wet, so the
display promised to be more than usually splendid. As there are neither
telephones nor telegraph stations in the desert, Mrs. Lane missed the
first report of the tragedy that made America wish it had kept out
of China's private affairs. It is perhaps just as well that she did
not hear the first and worst report. Later news made the tragedy more
bearable--for a few.
At eleven o'clock in the evening of Easter Sunday, Pacific time, the
country received its first shock.
"Extra! Extra! All about the disaster at sea," the newsboys piped from
San Francisco to Boston. "Transport _Sheridan_ founders at sea. Read
all about it! Great loss of life; read all about it; extra, extra!"
It was true. The _Sheridan_ had foundered less than three hundred miles
from Los Angeles, with nearly all hands, before her sister ship, the
_Sherman_, could come to her aid. The one fact that seemed clear was
that the tragedy had actually happened. In its details the disaster
stood out alone, without precedent or parallel, one of the mysterious
riddles of the sea. And this was but the first of a rapid sequence of
apparently inexplicable mysteries that puzzled certain curious persons
for weeks, until an unpractical dreamer verified his guess at the truth.
At first certain of the reports were received with open ridicule, as
the too ambitious efforts of publicity seekers. This was true, in
particular, of the strange tale told by the two "desert rats" who
drifted into Los Angeles, half insane from what they had seen in the
desert, two days after the _Sheridan_ went down. It seems strange
now that no one had sufficient imagination to link up these true but
incredible reports into one simple chain of cause and effect. The fact
is, however, that it required extraordinary penetration on the part of
one keen-eyed old man to see what was as glaring as the sun.
CHAPTER II
What the Rats Saw
Of the entire human cargo of the _Sheridan_ but sixteen men were saved.
These included Captain Lane and three other commissioned officers
whose quarters were far forward on the upper deck. At the time of the
"wreck"--about nine p. m.--Captain Lane, fully dressed, and three
lieutenants were playing bridge in his quarters. The transport sank
stern first. The sixteen who escaped managed to launch one of the life
rafts just as the ship foundered. In all, twenty men tugged at the raft
to get it free of the plunging vessel before they all were hurled into
the black water. Four perished in the desperate struggle to reach the
raft before the suction of the sinking ship spun it like a chip in a
millrace, making a boarding impossible. The wireless operator went down
with his ship, after having summoned the _Sherman_, steaming through
the night on her course, less than five miles to the east.
When the _Sherman_ reached the scene of the wreck she found nothing
but the raft with sixteen dazed men, drifting helplessly in a calm
as placid as that of a mountain lake on a warm summer day. Among the
survivors were two noncoms, who had been standing watch when the
_Sheridan_ foundered. Their depositions are the only account of what
happened.
Their story is told in three words. "The ship burst."
That was all that cross-examination and a bluffing threat of
court-martial could get out of them. Elaboration was not forthcoming.
They stuck obstinately to their simple assertion of fact: without
warning the _Sheridan_ simply burst. Steel rivets in her plates cracked
by thousands like the rattle of a battery of machine guns; the whole
ship seemed suddenly to sit down in the water; she sank. There was no
explosion, no smoke, no smell of burning. In fact, there was nothing
beyond the indisputable fact that the _Sheridan_, steaming on her way
as peacefully as a ferryboat, plunged to the bottom of the Pacific less
than four minutes after the first rip of the rivets gave warning that
the plates had burst asunder. Thirteen of the men who escaped were
jolted from their bunks by the first wild plunge, picked themselves up,
and scrambled for the clear deck, to fall over the first life raft.
They launched it automatically, somehow, not knowing what they were
doing or what was happening, except that the ship was going down in
record time.
In response to a wirelessed request for orders, the _Sherman_ absorbed
the sixteen survivors into her own companies of marines and proceeded
on her course to China, as if nothing had happened. Such is life in the
army.
The families of the survivors were of course notified; the rest it
was unnecessary to notify, except such as were entitled to widows'
pensions. Captain Lane resumed his duties within eight hours, too
dazed to be thankful for his escape or to make guesses concerning what
had caused the inexplicable disaster. He had lost his kit, and had
now only the uniform in which he stood. Not until he reached China
did he fully recover his senses. What happened to him in China, with
him an unwilling and unsuspecting spectator of the drama, all but
made him lose his senses for good and all. But it happened with such
devilish casualness at first, and with such an illusory appearance of
being merely an unexpectedly interesting detail of his duty, that he
completely missed the sinister point of the play until it was almost
too late to divert its climax. In the meantime, while he and his men
marched resolutely and unwittingly to meet their destiny, Mrs. Lane and
Tom enjoyed the excitement nearer home, and old Jonathan Saxby, retired
geologist, found much to interest him in the eccentric antics of the
desert.
Just as the sun set on Easter Sunday, Mrs. Lane, Tom and their friends
found the ideal camping place in the desert at which to spend the
night. They had driven hard all the afternoon, and had now penetrated
to the very heart of the desert. A sharp outcrop of limestone provided
adequate shelter from the strong east winds which freshened as the
sun dipped swiftly to the horizon, and several acres of flat slabs
suggested the ready means of improvising a camp kitchen. A thorough
search of the chosen site confirmed the general opinion that it was
still too early in the season for rattlesnakes, so the party set about
preparing supper. Dead sage brush gave all the fuel necessary, and in
half an hour Mrs. Lane had a hot meal ready. They dined by firelight
before the moon rose, cleaned up, thrust the refuse into a cleft
between two limestone slabs, made up their beds, and in ten minutes
were fast asleep. The following morning, half an hour before sunrise,
they were on their way farther into the desert to see the best of the
early flowering cacti.
The California deserts are more than alluring mysteries to tempt
holiday makers. They are heavily mineralized wastes that have trapped
scores of prospectors for life. Before Mr. Ford put padded leather
cushions and twenty miles an hour within reach of anyone with fifty
dollars to spend for a second-hand car, the old-timer used to tramp the
desert for weeks, from one spring or water hole to the next, leading
by its halter his sole companion, the patient, long-eared burro.
Occasionally two or three of these inveterate prospectors would travel
together, sharing the hardships and playing poker for the winnings--if
any; but the majority pegged along alone. Conversation, human
companionship, having to think at every step what the other fellow
wants, become intolerable bores when civilization is left behind. A
couple of sides of bacon, enough flap-jack flour, coffee, beans and
salt to last a month or six weeks, a burro to pack the outfit, and
the ideal prospector was complete. Most of them were sinewy, grizzled
men, long past middle age, with stubby white beards stained by tobacco
juice, their skins the rich brown of old mahogany. Many had tramped the
desert for fifty years, and all believed that they should find King
Solomon's mines before they dropped in their tracks, to become russet
husks like dried frogs.
* * * * *
Not one in twenty ever found anything of value in the desert. In the
credulous cities, however, even the poorest prospector could always
unearth at least one flush sucker--usually a stock broker or bond
salesman, eager to put up two hundred dollars to grub-stake the next
jaunt in search of the mystical mines. As a rule the real old-timer
was shrewd, sanguine, and superstitious beyond belief. When the Ford
cars began skipping like sandfleas all over the desert, the genuine
prospector passed them up with silent scorn, and stuck like a brother
to his faithful, plodding burro that never ran out of gas or water, or
got itself punctured on the cactus thorns.
Shortly after Mrs. Lane's friends had left their limestone camp ground,
old Dan O'Brien puffed up to it leading his burro. Dan had not yet
breakfasted. The flat slabs offered a luxurious table. As he approached
the outcrop--which he knew to its last chunk from innumerable previous
visits, his expert eye automatically estimated the number and social
status of the departed visitors. He read their standing from the signs
of their visit as accurately as if he were silently criticising them in
a hotel lobby. Although they had cleaned up before quitting the place,
they had left tracks and crumbs enough to broadcast their entire life
history to a seasoned prospector like old Dan.
"This durned place is gettin' worse'n a city park," the pessimistic
"rat" grunted, as he mixed his batter for his morning flapjacks.
Not a soul was in sight in the dazzling dawn, and no flivver bounded
over the vast beds of purple and crimson, of lavender and yellow, that
were the desert's springtime. Yet the poor old rat, true lover of holy
solitude, believed that the place was defiled and no more private
than a brawling, smelly city street. He felt sad. Not that he saw the
astounding beauty of the desert aflame with exotic flowers, for old Dan
probably had never seen a flower of any kind in his fifty-five years in
the desert. His beauty was elsewhere--in his soul, in his taciturnity,
and in his passionate desire to be alone. Why the devil, he pondered,
couldn't these damned tourists stick to the paved highways?
His flapjacks tasted sour. Probably they were. But this was a spiritual
sourness, quite distinct from the wholesome acidity to which long years
of inefficiency had accustomed him, and to which he unconsciously
looked forward with an eager zest. As he scoured the frying pan with
clean, gritting sand, he gazed disconsolately out over the rolling
billows of blinding colors that flowed in diminishing brilliance to
the far, azure horizon, and wondered if anywhere on this earth there
is still a desert that does not charm the idle. A tiny cloud of white
alkali dust, five miles to the west, shone mistily in the blue haze.
But this, thank Heaven, was not the nimbus of a flivver.
"That must be Jake," he muttered. "Guess I'll be sociable-like and
wait."
Old Dan waited, as motionless as a lizard basking on a hot rock, till
his venerable friend Jake plodded up with his burro. The desert rats
had known one another intimately for at least forty years. In all that
time they had exchanged, perhaps, a thousand words, no more. They were,
in fact, boon companions.
"Morning," said Dan.
"Morning," Jake responded and sat down. He had long since breakfasted.
He just sat, enjoying that luxury as only a man, who sees a chair or a
really comfortable rock but once or twice a year, knows how to enjoy
sitting. Conversation languished. Presently Dan got up to go to work.
His "work" consisted in exploring every crevice of the outcrop for
evidence of ores.
Although it was a geological improbability that the weathered limestone
could contain gold, and although Dan O'Brien knew this fact as well
as any professor of geology, he never neglected an opportunity of
thoroughly prospecting those barren rocks. He must have examined every
slab at least a hundred times in the past fifty years. The task always
gave him something to do, and it also proved an inexhaustible source
of "reports" to the successive generations of credulous city folk, who
grubstaked old Dan's innumerable expeditions to the desert. In this
respect the limestone outcrop was incomparably more profitable to Dan
O'Brien than any gold mine he could possibly have discovered. For if
he had been so unfortunate as to locate a real gold mine, some slick
promoter would instantly have skinned him out of it.
Jake spent an equally busy day prospecting the gritty sand that
abounded in the vicinity of the outcrop. It might be monazite, rich in
osmium, cerium, iridium, thorium and half a dozen other precious metals
that come small and sell big, but Jake knew perfectly well that this
plebeian trash was not worth two cents a ton. He also was expected to
"report," and the old chap wished to be as honest as the proprieties
demanded.
Sunset found them tired, taciturn and happy. Without a word they
adjourned to the oozing spring that seeped out of the limestone at
its highest point on the north side. There they watered and fed their
burros, prepared their respective rations of beans and bacon in
silence, ate their suppers without conversation, either necessary or
unnecessary, cleaned up, and turned in for the night. It was still
indecently early according to city standards--barely seven o'clock.
If there were anything in the adage about "early to bed," Dan and Jake
should have been practically immortal, richer than Rockefeller and
wiser than Solomon, for they never stayed up later than seven, and were
always out of their blankets before three forty-five. On the whole,
considering their almost perfect lives, one might say that the proverb
is more true than false.
The moon was full that night. Through its soft radiance the subdued
hues of the desert flowers shone mistily in vast beds, like the
gardens of a dream, but the tired men were too old to care. Had they
been awake to see, they would have noticed nothing but the promise of
another scorching day in the serenity of that unearthly landscape.
Old Dan stirred uneasily in his blankets, turned over with a muttered
sigh, and sank into a deeper sleep. He was used to complete silence
and absolute stillness at night. His rest had been disturbed, but as
yet not sufficiently to break his iron slumber. Presently he lashed
out pettishly with one leg, toward what he imagined was the general
direction of Jake.
"Quit movin' around, will ye?" he quarreled in his sleep. But Jake was
snoring softly, almost inaudibly, like an old and comfortable cat.
He lay like a log, too tired to toss. Dan forgot his unrest, except
subconsciously. The two slept on, weary to the bone.
The hobbled burros began to snort. Something that they did not like
was moving in the desert, where it had no business to move. Keener of
muscular sense than the men, they apprehended the unnatural movements
long before the sleepers began to dream uneasily of charging cavalry
and regiments of braying mules. As daintily as geisha girls the two
burros teetered off in the moonlight, to seek safety at the south end
of the outcrop. The men slept on.
Jake woke first. His wild yell brought Dan shaking to his feet.
"Earthquake!"
A steady, creeping noise, as of millions of growing things sending
out their brittle tendrils over the desert floor, rustled through
the night from the farther side of the limestone ridge, and the rock
slabs vibrated rapidly in unison. The air was as cold as midwinter;
a slow, icy breeze drifted past the terrified men toward the source
of the sound. Then in rapid succession a series of appalling noises
shattered the silence of the desert for a radius of twenty miles.
First a terrific report, sharp as a pistol shot, whanged through the
air. Instinctively the two men dropped flat on their faces to miss
the imagined shell. Then two almost human screams from the strayed
burros, the unmistakable sounds of terror from animals about to be
done to death, froze the blood in the old men's hearts. Their beasts
were being killed, inhumanly, unnaturally, and they were powerless to
help. A terrified crashing drowned the last screams like the instant
collapse of a cathedral of brittle glass on a pavement of steel. The
inexplicable clamor ceased instantly, like a summer thunderclap, and
only the steady, horrible creeping noise made the ghastly moonlight
hideous.
Half paralyzed with fright the two desert rats reeled away to what they
imagined was safety. Glancing back involuntarily Dan saw the pursuing
"thing" almost upon him. For perhaps two seconds he halted in his
tracks, stiff with fear, staring up at a shape which no man could name.
It glistened in the moonlight like a colossal octopus fresh from the
sea, its uncouth tentacles angular and jagged, shooting erratically
in every direction, as if the thing were feeling its way into space.
Unlike a living creature, this monster was all but transparent. Strange
purples and greens pulsed and flickered through its inchoate mass like
a subdued play of phosphorescent flames; a hundred dazzling pinnacles
glittered like gigantic broken diamonds on the advancing crest, and
from each of these points of light a score of zigzag, angular tentacles
flashed into instant existence. The thing seemed not to move but to
grow toward its prey. The main mass did not advance, but planted itself
more firmly on the desert floor and conquered distance by lateral
growth.
[Illustration: _Half paralyzed with fright, the two desert rats reeled
away to what they imagined was safety. Glancing back involuntarily Dan
saw the pursuing "thing" almost upon him._]
At the risk of his own sanity Jake turned back and dragged Dan away.
Then they fled panting into the silence of the desert, blundering into
cacti and stumbling over rattlesnake holes till they sank from utter
exhaustion. They lay where they fell, huddled together in stupor till
the endless night ended and the dawn broke.
* * * * *
They agreed that it was not a dream. But what of it? They were old,
incurious men, used all their lives to nature at first hand, and not
easily moved by the wonders that take the tourist's breath away. This,
however, was new, beyond even their experience of earthquakes and the
vagaries of desert storms. The thwarted curiosity of two long repressed
lives suddenly burgeoned in those withered old hearts, and they became
inquisitive to the point of sheer fool-hardiness.
"Guess I'll go take a look," Dan remarked, picking himself up.
"Me, too," Jake seconded.
Without further parley they made their way back to the limestone ridge.
"Smell something?" Jake inquired as they drew near the first outcrop.
"It's the burros," Dan theorized.
"Couldn't smell like that after just a few hours. The sun's only been
up a short spell." This was probably the longest speech Jake had ever
made. Dan reproved him by reiterating his terse theory.
"See anything?" the loquacious Jake demanded as they drew near the
exact spot of their mutual vision. Dan deemed a reply unnecessary.
There was nothing to be seen.
They stood staring incredulously at the slabs of rock.
"There's no smell now," Dan ventured. Jake took his revenge by ignoring
this superfluous remark. Unabashed, Dan chattered on like a vivacious
flapper.
"Them scratches warn't there yesterday."
He indicated several fresh, deep grooves in the soft limestone. Jake
nodded.
"The sage brush is all tramped down over yonder, too," he observed.
"Let's find the burros."
Exploring the environs of the ledge they found abundant but
inexplicable evidence of unaccountable doings in the night. In some
places for a distance of fully a hundred yards from the ridge, the
sage brush was flattened and broken as if a fleet of battle tanks had
passed over it, and the alkali was pitted with huge pockets or scarred
by short, deep furrows where some heavy object had apparently dragged
itself forward a foot at a time. The furrows were comparatively rare,
the pockets much more numerous. Although it was difficult to decipher
this strange evidence, the old-timers silently agreed that some massive
body had rested on the dirt, and by its sheer weight sank the impress
of its irregularities deep into the dust and conglomerate.
At the inner edge of one of these devastated bays in the sagebrush they
came upon the carcasses of the burros, or rather upon what was left
of them. Two sickening smears of crimson, an indescribable tangle of
lacerated flesh, as if the wretched animals had been cut to ribbons in
a slicing machine, propounded their tragic riddle to the silent sky.
The poor old desert rats almost wept. They had loved their burros.
Their aged eyes stared pityingly at the shocking spectacle.
"There are no bones," Dan remarked, a note of superstitious terror
creeping into his voice for the first time.
"They were crushed," Jake hazarded.
"Where are the pieces?" Dan demanded.
"Don't know. Let's see."
Cold with a morbid fear, they set about their gruesome search. It was
thorough. Not a splinter of bone and not a single tooth was found. The
horny husks of eight hoofs, all but crushed out of recognition, lay
in approximately the positions that might have been expected from the
general appearance of the remains.
When the fact that the bones had vanished was finally established
beyond any reasonable doubt, the shaken old men stood silently staring
into one another's eyes. Neither dared to speak for fear of giving
himself away. Their superstition was like the ordinary decent man's
religion--an experience not to be mentioned in public. Each knew what
the other was thinking, and each considered the other rather a fool for
his thoughts. In silence they made their way back to the outcrop, to
the spot where they had met the previous morning.
Here another freak of the night's orgies greeted their bewildered eyes.
A gaping fissure five feet broad and about three hundred long parted
the main body of the limestone into two irregular masses by a jagged
chasm. It appeared as if the solid rock had been suddenly burst asunder
by a deep-seated and violent explosion. The snap of the parting rock
undoubtedly was the "pistol shot" they heard before the obliterating
crash sent them fleeing into the desert. Of what had caused that crash,
like the smashing of a million bottles, they found not a trace. Yet it
had seemed as real and vivid as the screams of the slaughtered burros.
Not being used to expressing themselves in speech, they acted. It was
tacitly agreed that they should return at once to civilization and
"report." As fast as their old legs could carry them they made for the
desert highway, confident of hitching a lift from sightseers returning
in their flivvers to Los Angeles.
Just before they flagged their chosen victim, Dan spoke, breaking the
charmed silence of a six hours' strenuous hike through the broiling
heat.
"We'll get our pictures in the paper," he prophesied with lickerish
glee.
"Both of us," Dan agreed.
They did.
CHAPTER III
Saxby's Experiment
Dan and Jake had no difficulty in getting a sympathetic specialist from
a Los Angeles paper to listen to their story. They made all the usual
mistakes of the beginner in journalistic adventures and told the polite
young fellow a great deal they did not know they had said. He promised
to give them a good write-up. Technically he kept his word. The "story"
was genuinely funny. The poor old desert rats did not know that the
professional humorist of the United Press had been turned loose on
them. With such a start as Jake and Dan gave him, the humorist romped
his easy way to a classic of slapstick wit. The town roared; the rats
cursed. So good was the story that it was syndicated. Within a week it
had been read and enjoyed by twenty million intelligent human beings,
not one of whom saw the point. It was not the laughing matter those
twenty million readers thought it.
The disillusioned prospectors became notorious over-night in Los
Angeles and its environs. An ambitious gentleman from Hollywood offered
them a fabulous sum for a three months' tour in vaudeville. Dan and
Jake were now thoroughly enraged. Their exact account had been laughed
out of court. Now they burned with a righteous anger to vindicate
themselves. They signed the contract. Being familiar from long
experience with business methods of a certain kind, they insisted upon
a fifty per cent cash payment in advance. It was well that they did.
Their "act" was a complete flop. At the end of the week the gentleman
from Hollywood was glad to send them back to the desert with his
blessing and the fifty per cent.
It is rather remarkable that of all those who became familiar with the
story, not one thought of verifying the details of the scratches on
the limestone and the deaths of the burros. In preferring talk to the
simple act of seeing, the twenty million only repeated on a small scale
the dreary annals of the human race.
When Mrs. Lane returned to Los Angeles on the Thursday following Easter
Sunday, she glanced over the headlines of one of the accumulated papers
to see what had happened during her holiday in the desert. She did this
hastily on the veranda, before she and Tom entered the cottage. The
funny story of the two desert rata and their novel spree caught her
eye--it was heavily featured. Skimming the lively skit she failed to
catch its sinister meaning. It was too funny. She bundled up the papers
and looked in the mail box.
"Well, Tom," she remarked, "we can't expect a letter from him yet, but
let's see if there is one, just to be sure. Why! Here's a telegram."
She tore it open and took in the curt message at a glance, without
comprehension.
"_Captain Lane proceeding safely to China on U. S. transport Sherman._"
This consoling but mysterious message was dated at San Diego and signed
by a staff officer of the U. S. Army. What could it mean? Mrs. Lane
hastily entered the house, sent Tom away to bring back Hoot from a
neighbor's, and began a systematic search of the newspapers. She soon
found all she wanted.
"He's safe," she sighed, "That's all that matters."
She sat thinking in silence, wishing Bob were out of the army. As
her mind roamed half dreaming over their happy past together and the
doubtful months ahead, the subconscious part of her went busily to work
on the rich, curious feast which she, unknowingly, had spread before
it. The Easter Sunday "nightmare," the "bursting" of the _Sheridan_,
the ludicrous yarn told by those imaginative old prospectors, all
seemed curiously interlined, although strangely unfamiliar and
individually incomprehensible. What was the silly phrase that humorous
newspaper man had used in repeating Dan's story? "Bombarded by
billions of beer bottles." The asinine alliteration almost analyzed
the astonishing antics of the anomalies--this absurd rejoinder flashed
through her mind. She came out of her daydream.
"That's curious," she said, not knowing exactly to what she referred.
"I must read that bit about those prospectors again."
On this reading the badly distorted account cleared up with startling
lucidity. Even that humorous genius had not succeeded in disguising
the eerie truth beyond recognition. The crash which Jake and Dan had
attempted in their halting way to describe must have been very similar,
although on a much larger scale, to that which she and Tom had heard in
his bedroom. Like her, the desert rats had failed to find any traces
of broken glass. Yet, if the "bombardment" were not a bad dream but
something more substantial, the old men should have found tons of
shattered glass on the limestone. The strange coincidence between her
dream and theirs took on an oppressive, evil significance. Mrs. Lane
suddenly felt an overpowering desire for fresh air. She went out to
the back garden to wait for Tom and Hoot. The old men, she recalled
uneasily, had also reported a smell of decay that dissipated as the
morning advanced. What could it all mean? The rock, they declared, had
"burst." Suddenly, too, like the _Sheridan_. Again a coincidence, or
was it more?
The injustice of the ridicule accorded those poor old men, who had done
their humble best to tell the truth, however strange, made her pulse
beat faster. Isabel Lane, like her husband, was a born fighter when the
cause was a just one. Her indignation rose.
"I shall write to the editor," she declared, "and tell him exactly what
I think of his lying paper."
She darted into the living room and dashed off a red hot protest to the
editor. Unfortunately Isabel was so angry when she wrote the letter
that she made it excruciatingly and unintentionally funny. It beat the
professional's effort on behalf of Dan and Jake.
"There!" she said, slapping down the inoffensive two-cent stamp, "that
will let him see he isn't as smart as he thinks he is." In the rash
heat of her wrath she had given a short but complete account of her own
experience of a "noise" on Easter Sunday, to prove that the desert rats
were not suffering from delirium tremens as was hinted by the funny
man. "I myself," she added, "never touch alcoholic beverages, and I am
sure that my four-year-old son is not a drunkard. He heard it, too."
When the editor read Isabel's letter he sat speechless in an enchanted
ecstasy. Finally he found words.
"Call up this woman," he directed his stenographer, "and offer her
fifty a week for half a column a day. She's a pippin, a red-hot mama.
Oh, boy!"
Isabel's response was an indignant No. She could spark for principle
but not for lucre.
"May we print your letter, Mrs. Lane?"
"If you don't, you're cowards."
"Thank you, Mrs. Lane. You will find your letter on the front page
tomorrow morning. Goodbye."
* * * * *
The letter duly appeared, and the country enjoyed another laugh.
This time, however, journalism did accomplish something useful.
Isabel's letter was the essential link in a strong chain of evidence
which, without it, might never have been closed. Undoubtedly old
Jonathan Saxby could have got on without the letter, but its singular
significance gave him a flying start of at least a week. This early
start was extremely important; with it, he almost succeeded in wrecking
Asia; without it, he might have stayed at home and wrecked the United
States.
Jonathan Saxby, formerly professor of geology at the leading university
in America, was now in his sixtieth year and at the apex of his keen,
analytical powers. Although he was commonly known as "old" Saxby, he
was elderly only in appearance--resembling Mr. Pickwick as that sage is
usually portrayed in his later years. In mental agility he was about
twenty-five. In physical endurance, according to his easily exhausted
young colleagues, old Saxby beat the devil. He did not know what it was
to feel tired, either in his laboratory study or on his summer rambles
up precipices and over all but infinite wastes of drifting sand. He ate
but once a day, but when he did dine, he depleted the commissary. In
the matter of drink he was equally abstemious. Three bottles of wine,
not too light, taken with his dinner, satisfied him for twenty-four
hours.
When he retired from teaching, Saxby hesitated long between Italy and
California as the perfect haven for old age. He could afford either, as
he had made a huge pot of money as geological consultant for three of
the luckiest oil corporations. These rewarded him amply. Old Saxby was
no fool at business. At fifty-five he found himself with "all the world
before him where to choose," and he chose California.
It was not without regret that Saxby abandoned the rosy dream of Italy.
His strange hobby cast the deciding vote. Saxby was an inveterate
and passionate collector. His collection was probably the weirdest
that acquisitive man has ever made. It consisted of thousands of
earthquakes, all neatly tabulated, classified, cross-indexed and
resolved into their simplest harmonic components. To such a collector
California offered obvious advantages over Italy--although California's
notorious modesty might restrain her from bragging about it. Outside
of Japan, possibly California does afford the collector of earthquakes
the most efficient and best organized seismological service in the
world. When old Saxby learned also that the California vineyardists
retail a delicious, virginal blend of three grape juices at the price
of one good song per forty-gallon cask, and that nature will do what is
necessary for nothing if you merely pull the bung out of the cask and
let it stand for three weeks, he hesitated no longer. He settled down
in Los Angeles to spend the next sixty years of his life collecting
earthquakes and eating one meal a day.
Old Saxby was a confirmed bachelor, in both theory and practice. He
tolerated a fat old colored mammy as cook only because he almost
never saw her. If Jemima had been so rash as to venture out of her
own quarters into the master's presence, she would have been fired
on the spot. His more intellectual wants were ministered to by a
so-called secretary, usually a young Japanese, Chinese, or Filipino.
The secretary's formal duties consisted in keeping the thousands of
earthquakes straight in the filing cabinet, and in improving old
Saxby's mind with quaintly frank and heathenish views on all Christian
customs.
Saxby had hired Buddhists, Confucians, Taoists and plain infidels in
his time, and once he had tried a Moslem. The last nearly proved his
undoing. This swarthy young man was a brilliant geological chemist, an
International Research Fellow, and just the collaborator Saxby needed
at the time in his classic investigation of the basalts. He was obliged
reluctantly to discharge this paragon of secretaries because the fiery
zealot preached incessantly against the Christian vice of wine-bibbing,
which to a Moslem is the filthiest of all habits. Old Saxby felt that
if he kept the pest he must inevitably be reformed.
The present incumbent of this moat desirable secretaryship in the world
was young Mr. Yang, a Chinese Government student with his Ph.D. from
Columbia. Yang also was a hybrid between geology and chemistry, but
unlike the eloquent Moslem, he was the soul of circumspect discretion.
Yang had but one fault; he obstinately maintained that old Saxby's
topaz wine was not fit to drink when one could get the crystal clear,
volatile Chinese gin. Saxby could not convert him.
It was but natural that old Saxby's dragnet method of fishing for
earthquakes should haul up the Dan-Jake episode. In addition to
receiving weekly reports from all the seismological stations of the
world, Saxby subscribed to at least two clipping bureaus in each
civilized country. These were instructed to comb the daily press
for the slightest mention of anything even remotely resembling an
earthquake. The clippers had their lists of key words, such as temblor,
tremor, shake, quake, landslide, and a hundred others, by means of
which they sifted the daily tons of facts and misinformation dumped
upon a suffocating and helpless world.
Occasionally their gleanings drove old Saxby to profanity. Thus, at
election time, he received under the caption of "landslide" several
tons of clippings celebrating the latest victory of the invincible
grand old party. Again, under "shakes" he was wont to be deluged with
advertisements for ague cures, and once under "temblor," the bureau in
Mexico City sent him minute instructions for the self treatment of an
unmentionable weakness to which he had never been a slave. The Dan-Jake
account was gathered in under the captions "shake," "tremble" and
"crash." This wild yarn, Saxby decided, would bear further inspection.
He instructed Yang to file it away in the incubator--the technical term
for the cabinet containing reports of embryo earthquakes that might
hatch out into vigorous, adult shakes. Yang was also to inspect the
local press daily for further details.
* * * * *
The extraordinary disturbance in the desert, if an earthquake at all,
was of a new species. Old Saxby almost prayed that Dan and Jake might
prove as truthful in the end as they now seemed not to be. The one
piece of evidence in their account which might be of scientific value
was the splitting of the limestone rock. That sounded like science,
although it probably was only another lie. Before taking a jaunt out
to the desert to see for himself, Saxby decided to wait for further
details. There was one particularly suspicious circumstance about
the whole alleged miracle. The extremely delicate Anderson-Smith
seismographs at the Pasadena observatory had failed to record any trace
of a disturbance on the night of the supposed event. Therefore, Saxby
concluded, it was probably no more than an unusually interesting fake.
When the efficient Yang duly laid the clipping containing Isabel Lane's
indignant letter before his employer, old Saxby rubbed his eyes and
grunted.
"There's something in it. I'm going to call on this lady. You may dine
without waiting for me this evening, Yang. I shall lock up the gin
before I leave. And I shall take the key with me. So don't waste time
hunting for it. Goodbye."
* * * * *
When Mrs. Lane answered the door bell, she looked straight into the
shrewd, questioning blue eyes of an elderly, carelessly-dressed man,
whose loose alpaca suit bagged in every conceivable way in which
clothes can, and whose hatless bald head blushed with a charming pink
like a newly bathed baby's back. The rather rotund figure concealed the
stocky, well-knit frame of a powerfully built man. In his thirties old
Saxby was as strong as a draft horse; in his first sixties, although
somewhat shrunk, he gave the impression of great muscular power and
inexhaustible endurance. His bland, childlike smile as he gazed up
into Isabel's eyes was wholly disarming. She took him for an itinerant
mender of umbrellas.
"Thank you," she said, hoping to get rid of him as quickly as possible,
"I have nothing today."
"Not even an earthquake, by any chance?" old Saxby suggested innocently.
"An earthquake? What on earth do you mean?"
"Why--ah--an earthquake, of course," Saxby replied as if it were the
most natural thing in the world to ask for one. "You see, ah--you see,"
he continued, laboring to explain his mission, "I collect them. And I
read your most interesting letter in the paper. So I thought--naturally
I thought--that you might still have some interesting details which you
did not tell the paper. You see I am--ah--I'm Jonathan Saxby."
Isabel scanned the childlike face doubtfully. The old chap seemed sane
enough. Should she invite him in? Hoot, materializing noiselessly from
nowhere, brushed confidently against old Saxby's baggy trousers and
stalked majestically into the house. It was clearly an invitation.
"Won't you come in, Mr. Saxby?" Mrs. Lane suggested.
"Thanks, I think I will. I think I will. Now, about your earthquake,"
he began when he was comfortably seated; "you are sure it happened?"
"But there was no earthquake," Isabel protested. "I very carefully
avoided giving any suggestion of a shake in my letter to the paper.
What Tom and I heard was quite different. It was like a shower of
broken glass."
"'Bombarded by billions of beer bottles,'" old Saxby quoted softly.
Yang had underlined that poetic phrase in the clipping which he laid
before his master, and it had captivated old Saxby's sense of beauty.
"What do you mean?" Isabel demanded sharply. "If you are going to
insinuate anything about me, as that smart Alec did about those
prospectors, you may leave now."
"Not at all, not at all," he murmured deprecatingly. "I just thought
what a beautiful phrase it is. Now this earthquake--or shall we say
bombardment?--really was an earthquake. Those old men felt the rock
shake."
"I don't believe it. Nothing in this house moved, although something
_tried_ to move."
"Really!" Saxby exclaimed, leaning forward. "How extraordinary. You are
a human seismograph, Mrs. Lane. You see you felt the earthquake before
it happened--no, that's not quite it. You felt the tension of the rocks
that almost gave way to cause an earthquake. You must be singularly
sensitive."
"For a sane man you talk the most extraordinary nonsense I ever heard."
"I know I do," he admitted blandly. "I always have, you know. That's
why I am who I am and not, for instance, the poor old peddler you
thought I was when you opened the door. But, to come back to your
earthquake, or whatever you like to call it. Please tell me everything
that happened. You corroborated the prospectors in their account of a
tremendous smash and a bad smell. But I feel ah--I feel that you are
concealing something, Mrs. Lane."
"I am. An egg."
"An egg? How extraordinary. And why didn't you tell the paper about the
interesting egg?"
"Well," Isabel admitted, "I didn't wish to appear ridiculous, for
one thing. For another, I thought my husband--he's a captain in the
Marines--might be court-martialed if I did."
"Court-martialed?" old Saxby echoed in bewilderment. "For an egg? It
isn't done, Mrs. Lane, I assure you."
"It _hasn't_ been done," Isabel corrected. "But it might be if the
staff officers knew enough to put two and two together."
"Have you been doing arithmetic, Mrs. Lane?"
"I have. A lot."
"And what answer do you get?"
"None. I'm not good at figures. But I know enough to hold my tongue."
"Oh, come now. You can trust me. I don't know any army men--I don't
even know a policeman. And if I did I shouldn't tell him anything, even
my own name. What about this egg?"
"It was just a green Easter egg."
"Do you still have it?"
"No. The city chemist destroyed it after analyzing the green dye. It
was quite harmless."
"It would be," old Saxby commented drily. "I don't see what your green
egg has to do with any of this, but let me tell you a little story.
It is quite true. About forty years ago some very great professors
of chemistry in Germany made a beautiful theory to account for all
sorts of chemical reactions. They could explain almost everything.
When an experiment came out wrong, and instead of getting a nice,
clear liquid or a respectable precipitate, they got a slimy mess
that was neither liquid nor solid, they put the beaker up on the top
shelf behind the door, because it contradicted their theory. There
had been a stupid 'experimental error,' they declared. Soon the top
shelf was all cluttered up with glass jars of blue and green and brown
slime--experimental errors. Then they used the next lower shelf, and so
on. Finally they had to use other shelves not hidden by the door, and
at last, after twenty years, they had to move out of the big laboratory
to a smaller one. Then a young fellow, who had no beautiful theory,
was assigned to the dirty old laboratory as his workshop. The messes
in those jars interested him, and he began pottering with them. When
he finished, there was nothing left of the theory, and he had made
slime fashionable. It is quite all the rage now in chemistry. Need I
point the moral? When the city chemist finds your green egg harmless
and wholesome, don't believe him. He has probably made an experimental
error."
"I am glad you think so. Although I know nothing of science, I feel
with my common sense that there was something radically wrong with that
egg. The cat--you saw him, the big yellow--sniffed at it and became
unconscious. A similar thing happened to three men, one of them a
physician."
"This sounds interesting," Saxby commented, "Won't you tell me the
whole story?" he begged. "I give you my word I shall not tell anyone if
you would rather I didn't. I hate publicity, anyway."
"Very well," she agreed. "You may be able to see the connection between
all these freaks of nature. I can't. First, my husband was one of the
sixteen men saved from the wreck of the _Sheridan_. Have you read about
it?"
"I can't say that I have. You see, earthquakes are my hobby, and I have
no time for newspapers. The clippers send me all I read. I never see a
whole paper."
"Well," Isabel continued, "the ship simply burst. Suddenly. Those two
prospectors say the rock in the desert burst with a sound like a cannon
going off. They also smelt the same kind of odor that Tom--my boy--and
I did. That is one pair of coincidences. The sound of breaking glass is
another. There are several more if you will follow everything."
* * * * *
She gave him an accurate account of all the facts, from the dyeing of
the Easter eggs to her letter to the paper.
"Now," she concluded, "if you can make anything of it, you are a lot
smarter than I am. What became of that floor mat by Tom's cot? Who
would steal a dollar's worth of cotton?"
Old Saxby's eyes glistened.
"I wonder," he muttered.
"What about?"
"Everything. I make no theories. You say you replaced the broken egg by
one that was preserved in waterglass?"
"Yes. My husband and I used them. They were all right, but we always
got new-laid ones for Tom. Some doctors think the preserved eggs lack
vitamins."
"I see. May I take a look at that crock of waterglass?"
"I'm very sorry. I threw it out."
"Why?"
"Because it had gone bad."
"How 'bad,' Mrs. Lane?"
"It was all stringy and full of milky bluish spots."
"And you threw it away?" Saxby cried, a note of anguish in his voice.
"Oh, what a pity! Another of those priceless 'experimental errors,' I'm
afraid. Where did you put it?"
"In the can with the wet garbage. The men collected the stuff this
morning."
Old Saxby groaned. "What a pity! An irreparable loss. Unless," he
exclaimed, brightening, "we can find it. Where do they dump the
garbage?"
"It is burned."
"Oh, dear! Hopeless. You should have been a professor in a German
university--Berlin, or Leipzig. I have daydreamed of this very thing
for years. And now, when it happens, a German professor throws all my
experiments into the garbage can. Thank Heaven I never married."
Although Saxby's devout gratitude was not very complimentary to Isabel,
she accepted it with a smile.
"If the city chemist could analyze an egg, you should be able to get
along with the crock."
"Oh you blessed woman. You did not throw away the crock?"
"Of course not. We aren't millionaires."
"Then it will still be dirty--chemically I mean. May I borrow it?"
"Certainly. Are you going to check up the prospectors' story?"
"I am. Tonight. If newspapers are good for anything, someone at the
office should know the exact location of that limestone outcrop and how
to reach it by automobile. May I use your telephone?"
"It is in the dining room--there. I have been thinking," she continued
slowly, "that I should see that place, too."
"Perhaps you should, although I see no earthly reason why. Still, I
never professed to understand women. Come with me, if you like."
"Thanks, I shall. While you are telephoning I'll hunt up Tom and leave
him at a neighbor's."
When Isabel returned, she found that Saxby had obtained all the
information necessary from the efficient newspaper office. He had also
telephoned for a good car and a driver.
"We shall be there before midnight," he announced. "You are sure
Captain Lane will not object when he hears of our trip?"
"Why should he?" Isabel retorted casually, much as she might have
alluded to Hoot.
Old Saxby muttered something about "modern women" and suggested that
they snatch a dinner at a lunch counter on the way. Isabel agreed.
"Do you want that crock now?"
"I shall leave it with my Chinese secretary. He is a chemist, you know.
It won't be much off our road."
The crock was duly left with Yang to be examined chemically, and the
machine sped away toward the desert highway. At first Isabel did not
recognize the road in the declining light as they entered the desert;
but presently one landmark and then another made it certain that the
car was taking the same route as that which she and her friends had
followed. The man drove straight ahead, sure of his way, for five
hours. When the moon rose he slackened the pace.
"It must be over there to the east about five miles," he said. "Shall I
let you out here, or will you risk a puncture? I have four spares."
"Chance it," Saxby ordered. "I'll pay."
The car left the road and cautiously picked its way around the cacti.
Within half an hour they made out the dim blue mass of a low ridge
directly ahead of them in the moonlight.
"That's it," Saxby exclaimed. "We can walk the rest of the way. Wait
here for us," he directed the driver.
On reaching the outcrop they found the jagged fissure immediately. The
desert moonlight etched every detail in glaring relief.
"This is the first check," Saxby remarked.
Isabel did not reply. She was staring at her surroundings, strangely
unfamiliar in that light, not yet certain of her surmise. She walked
over to a cleft in the rock and pushed aside the small flat slab
covering it. The desiccated refuse of the meals she had cooked was
still there.
"This is the place," she said slowly, cold with a strange fear, "where
we ate our supper and breakfast. I must have sat directly over that
fissure. And I remember now," she continued, "there was a long crack in
the limestone just where we sat. Tom called our attention to it when he
saw a small lizard run out of it in the morning. I did not recognize it
fully in the moonlight. We went to sleep before the moon rose."
Saxby said nothing immediately. He was thinking and using his eyes.
"Two and two," he commented. "And here is the four. Do you notice these
fresh scratches in the limestone?"
He got down to examine them.
"Most interesting," he commented. "You can find any combination of
minerals you like to name in this desert. This rock is sandstone
speckled with particles of coarse quartz sand. Calcium carbonate and
silicon dioxide. Common enough, both of them. But most interesting."
"Is there anything unusual?"
"Not a thing. Let us see what that curious fissure looks like. It may
give us an idea for an experiment that should have been tried a century
ago. But we were all professors together, and we put away the really
interesting things out of sight on the top shelf--where they couldn't
make us think."
"What sort of an experiment will you try?" Isabel asked as they reached
the lip of the fissure.
"Hard to say. I shall know better when Yang finishes analyzing the
inside glaze of that crock. But I shall begin it tomorrow morning in
any event."
"We sha'n't be home till morning," Isabel reminded him. "And you will
be all tired out."
"I never sleep when I'm working. Well, this crack is the most
interesting thing yet," he continued from his knees.
"Why?" Isabel demanded, again going cold with that unaccountable fear.
"Because it is just like the rest of the rock except for one detail.
All the particles of quartz have disappeared." He struck a match, "See
for yourself. The limestone is peppered with little holes--all empty.
There's not a particle of quartz sand visible."
"Promise," Isabel said suddenly, "never to tell a soul that I know of
this place, or that I was ever here."
"Very well," Saxby agreed. "On account of your husband, I suppose?"
She nodded. "There may be no connection between the wreck of the
_Sheridan_ and what those prospectors saw. But it is safer to say
nothing."
"Undoubtedly. There may be no connection. More likely there is. I shall
know definitely after I finish my experiment. Never mind; Captain Lane
sha'n't be court-martialed. Now let us check up on the rest of the
story. I want to see exactly how those burros were killed."
They soon located what they sought. The weather had been hot. Saxby
was about to go on alone when he stopped suddenly. The faint rumor of
an all but inaudible sound had almost crept over the threshold of his
hearing. Listening consciously he heard nothing. He went on in the
glaring moonlight, hurrying to get his unpleasant task done. He had
gone perhaps twenty yards when he stopped instantly, half paralyzed by
an instinctive fear.
"Good God!" he ejaculated. "What's that?"
* * * * *
Although he was in no position to realize the truth in that awful
moment, his intended experiment had already started and was now
progressing at a terrific rate. A dry, creeping rustle, like the gentle
friction of innumerable withered snake skins being slowly rasped over
one another, whispered aridly through the moonlight. It was the same
sound as that which the prospectors had heard and which they had vainly
striven to describe to the humorous reporter. To Saxby it was an
unexpected horror; the prospectors had succeeded only in describing the
shattering crash which ended their vision.
Slowly turning his head he stared back toward the ridge and saw Isabel
transfixed by fear before something that seemed to move. It was dimly
self-luminous with a milky, palpitating radiance that rhythmically
oscillated between purple and green, and the whole mass was utterly
shapeless. Its form, if it had any, was beyond analysis. But even as
he watched the flickering phosphorescence the dim bulk began to assume
definite shape and became angular at a thousand glittering points.
Whatever the thing might be, it was striving to come to life. Sensing
the intensity of that dumb struggle to live, Saxby came to his senses.
He darted forward toward the almost living mass and dragged Isabel
away. She was fully conscious, and she knew now what had frightened her
four-year-old son half out of his mind.
Expecting at every instant to hear the annihilating crash of the
thing's destruction they raced for the car. The crash never came, at
least in their hearing. Their failure to hear the thing's end filled
them with a new fear. Was it alive? And if so, how long would it live?
Could it move? If it did not overtake the car before its exit from the
desert, in what shape would it appear in some city or village? And what
was its food, if indeed food was necessary to its continued existence?
They remembered the burros. But these had been merely slashed to
ribbons, not devoured, unless the failure of the prospectors to find
a trace of the animals' bones accounted for some unnatural manner of
feeding.
They stumbled into the car exhausted.
"Home, as fast as you can go!"
They sat tense and silent, waiting for the echo of a crash which never
came. As they shot out to the highway, Saxby recovered his curiosity.
"I wonder," he muttered, "whether I carried that crock into my house
with both hands or only one?"
"You carried it in one hand. I remember because you had to open the
door with your key."
"Then my fingers must have come in contact with the glaze on the
inside. That explains a lot. Gad! I hope nothing has happened to Yang.
Can't we go a little faster?"
Saxby's fears were unfounded. Nothing had happened to Yang.
CHAPTER IV
Yang's Dinner
"Yang," old Saxby inquired, one morning about two weeks after his
return from the desert, "do you think I could learn Chinese at my
age?" Yang, who spoke an almost faultless English after his exhaustive
linguistic purging in both Canton and New York, considered the problem
dispassionately. His delicate, intellectual features bore a slightly
pained expression.
"No," he answered simply.
"Why the devil not?"
"Because," the truthful Yang replied, giving his answer an unintended
twist, "I do not know how stupid you are, Mr. Saxby."
"You don't, eh?" old Saxby snorted. "Well, I can't say the same for
you. Here you've been messing about for a fortnight with that analysts,
and you haven't found a thing."
"There are heavy traces of silicon," Yang reminded him reproachfully.
"Naturally. There would be. Especially after I told you there was
waterglass in that crock before Mrs. Lane scoured it out with boiling
water. What would you have found if I had told you she used the crock
for making home brew?"
"Traces of alcohol," Yang replied promptly. "I am one expert chemist."
"You seem to be one expert diplomat, too," Saxby remarked.
"Oh, no, Mr. Saxby. I should find whatever you told me Mrs. Lane kept
in the crock because you are like the great George Washington. You
never lie. May I inquire why you wish to learn Chinese at your age, Mr.
Saxby?"
"Because I want to study the geology of China at first hand."
Yang received this information with a dead silence that was eloquent.
To Saxby's ears that respectful silence announced that George
Washington had stepped off his monument.
"As you don't believe me," he continued, "I may as well tell you the
truth. You would find out sooner or later anyhow. I must overtake
Captain Lane and induce him to spend a few months in China. There
is no telling how long your fellow countrymen may be fighting among
themselves. That isn't our affair. But I have a strong suspicion that
our men will be withdrawn as soon as all American citizens are safely
out of the danger zone. Lane may be on his way home in one month, or
two, or three. I must get to him before he starts back to the United
States. His wife and I agree that he had better not come home just yet."
"Mrs. Lane would like a divorce?" Yang inquired blandly.
"You unscientific idiot! Why must you always jump to the most
ridiculous conclusion?"
"Because I have lived in America six years. I know the customs of the
country," he added proudly. "And you call on Mrs. Lane every day."
"Well, you've slipped up this time. You have an oriental mind. Mrs.
Lane is twenty-five. I'm sixty and no fool. I am more interested in
Captain Lane's clothes than I am in his wife. Do you know anything of
the province of Kansu in China?"
"I know everything about it," Yang admitted modestly. "I was born
there."
"That's good. We shall probably be leaving for Kansu some time next
week, if I can get passports for one of the English concessions on the
coast."
"Captain Lane is going to Kansu?"
"Of course. I expected you to draw that conclusion. It's obvious. Mrs.
Lane had a cablegram from the Chief of Staff in Hong Kong saying that
her husband had been ordered to lead an expedition into Kansu to rescue
a nest of British and American missionaries at Teng-shan. He is on his
way there now. I've got to follow at once."
"I think it will be very dangerous," Yang remarked with an engaging
smile. "Probably you will be killed."
"I doubt it. How am I to get permission to start for the interior? The
military authorities will coop me up on some stuffy battleship. I can't
even begin to get killed, as I see it. That's the crux of the problem.
Now, if I could learn enough Chinese to ask my way intelligibly, I
could go alone after your friends do for you. If only I can get past
the busybodies at the seaports I shall find my way somehow to Kansu
and join Lane there. You will have to think of some way of getting
me in and well started. After that I can shift for myself. I've been
in worse places than China, and I'm not dead yet. And I'll wager the
Chinese in Kansu, or anywhere in the interior, won't hear a word of
all this revolutionary fuss till five years after the row is peaceably
settled. You are still as primitive as the early Israelites once you
get away from your westernized coast cities. Now, Yang, I put myself
unreservedly in your hands. Get me safely started for Kansu and I'll
remember you handsomely in my will. If I return to Los Angeles with my
own head on my shoulders, I'll give you a cash bonus of exactly double
what you would get otherwise. So it will pay you to treat me tenderly.
Do you accept?"
Yang made a formal bow.
"I accept, Mr. Saxby," he said. "My father is a very old man. I have
not seen him since I left Kansu to enter the Christian College in
Canton."
"All right, Yang. It's a go. How will you get me through the lines?"
"We shall walk through. I think you overestimate the difficulties, Mr.
Saxby. Am I to know why you wish to catch Captain Lane in Kansu?"
"Eventually you will have to know. So shall I. But as I am not exactly
clear yet in my own mind, I can't very well enlighten yours."
"It may be what you call a wild goose chase?" Yang delicately suggested.
"Possibly. In a way I hope it does turn out so. Then again I pray that
it may not. Curiosity is the one vice that I have not yet overcome. I
never cared much for the others--eating, reforming people, and so on."
Old Saxby sighed. "I wish I were a cat or something of the sort with
nine lives. There's so much to be pried into."
Saxby sat dreaming for a few moments while Yang busied himself with the
daily crop of earthquakes. Suddenly he started up as if stung.
"Why didn't I think of that before?" he exclaimed, seizing the
telephone. "Taxi at once," he ordered when he got his number, and gave
the address. "Of course," he continued to Yang, "you found nothing but
traces of silicon in your analysis. I see it all now. Clear this mess
out of the way as fast as you can. I'll be back in an hour with work
enough to keep you busy till we leave for China."
When Saxby returned, he presented Yang with two cartons full of neat
little packages of dyes for Easter eggs. He had bought out the entire
stock of the neighborhood grocery where the Lanes had obtained their
half dozen packages. The man assured him that this stock was that from
which he had sold for the past season. It had been put away in the
storeroom to wait for the next Easter week.
"There's your work," Saxby announced. "Analyze the lot. Don't overlook
anything. Get the results accurate to a tenth of a per cent."
Yang groaned, but dutifully set to work. It was a routine job such as
any competent senior in college could have done easily, and Yang hated
routine.
"Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing," Saxby continued
lightly. "Mix this blue with an equal amount of the yellow in tap water
and analyze the mixture."
Yang sighed and set out his apparatus on the laboratory table by the
west window of the room.
* * * * *
While Yang toiled twelve hours a day at the multitude of little
packets, old Saxby used all his diplomacy to obtain passports for
himself and his secretary. On the third day he succeeded. Within a
week they would be on their way to China. In the meantime, while Yang
slaved, he could run out to the desert for a farewell inspection. He
invited Isabel to accompany him, but she was forced to decline, as Tom
was suffering from the effects of a surfeit of watermelon. Saxby set
out alone, this time early in the morning, with a competent driver,
on a small truck. He chose this unusual and jolty conveyance because
its solid tires eliminated the danger of punctures. He wished to drive
right up to the limestone outcrop and be able to leave in a hurry if
necessary.
They reached the ridge shortly before noon. A shimmering heat haze
hovered over the slabs of rock, and regiments of lizards scurried
over the scorching surfaces with their tails up and heads erect. From
the care free manner in which they pursued their avocations it was
evident that no ponderous enemy had recently marched over their barren
territory. Bidding the driver wait with the truck at a convenient spot,
old Saxby began a systematic exploration of the whole vicinity.
The fissure was apparently unchanged since it had first opened nearly
three weeks previously. Saxby confirmed his discovery that all the
quartz particles in the limestone walls of the fissure had disappeared.
Searching the surface of the slabs in the neighborhood of the deep,
fresh grooves, he noted a similar peppering of small cavities that must
have contained silicates.
The important point was, when were these pockets emptied? Before or
after the prospectors heard the "shot" that announced the fracture of
the limestone? And if the former, precisely how long before? Although
he all but went into a trance thinking of possible ways and means,
Saxby could devise no experiment to fix the age of those holes. There
must be some simple method, he reasoned, of deciding to within one
per cent of the exact age the length of time that a rock surface has
been exposed to the air and sunlight. Pondering this simple riddle, he
almost broiled himself before reluctantly abandoning the outcrop to the
lizards, who seemed to enjoy being fried.
His next task was to examine the spot where the burros had perished.
Sun and the desert air had removed practically the last trace of the
animals. The eight shells of the hoofs alone remained. Saxby raked
every foot of the dust in the vicinity with a stick of dead sagebrush,
but found nothing more. There was not a trace of the animals' bones. If
the bones were indeed in that dust they must have been pulverized to
the fineness of flour.
Trained by long years of scientific work to exact observation and the
cool sifting of evidence, old Saxby sat down in the dust to recall
every detail of the prospectors' story before leaving the spot. Had he
checked every point? What else, besides the animals' bones, should he
naturally expect to find in the place where they had been killed? What
were they doing when they met their deaths? An obvious but singular
fact, whose significance had escaped the shrewd, practical intelligence
of Dan and Jake, leaped into old Saxby's mind.
The prospectors related as a matter of course that their burros were
hobbled for the night. They had strayed at the first hint of danger.
Dan and Jake even theorized a bit. They remarked that, had the poor
beasts been free to run, they could easily have escaped. With their
front fetlocks tied together, so that they could move forward only six
inches at each step, the animals were helpless before their enemy.
What, Saxby asked himself, had become of the ropes that hobbled the
burros? They were not where they should have been. To eliminate
guesswork as far as possible, Saxby searched every yard of the terrain
from the spot where the hoofs lay to the oozing suring on the north
side whence the burros had strayed. At the end of a four-hour search he
concluded that the ropes had gone the same way as the bones--whatever
that might be.
"This," he remarked with a smile of satisfaction, "probably explains
why the _Sheridan_ burst. Still, I mustn't jump to conclusions. Yang
hasn't found anything, and I half hoped he would."
He next made a careful inspection of the spot where Isabel and he
thought they saw the luminous apparition. He found nothing suspicious
except two slight depressions in the alkali dust. These, however, might
have been mere natural accidents or rabbits' sleeping places. Whatever
they might be, Saxby judged that they were too doubtful to have any
value as evidence.
"If I could only put together the pieces I have," he pondered, "I could
probably solve the whole puzzle now. Unfortunately I don't quite see
how all the pieces fit together. I hadn't allowed for the missing ropes
last week, and I thought then I saw a probable way through. It follows
that what I think I know now is probably not so."
As he strolled back to the truck he toyed with a possible explanation
which Isabel had shown him, with some indignation, the previous
day. One of the leading psychologists of America had sent her a
marked copy of the _Weekly Psychological Bulletin_, current issue,
with a learned article by himself adorning the place of honor. The
title of this metaphysical attempt to be scientific was _Collective
Hallucinations_. In it the eminent author proved (or said he proved)
that two or more persons in the same place at the same time can, and
should, see the same thing when it isn't there. He cited the recent
story of Dan and Jake, also Isabel's and Tom's similar experience in
confirmation. Carried to its limit, this theory would prove that life
is a morbid succession of multiple nightmares. Saxby weighed it and
found it wanting. The ingenious author of course did not know that the
hallucination was triple, not merely double; Saxby had not advertised
his adventure with Isabel in the desert. Therefore the psychologist may
be pardoned for rushing into print with a half-baked theory.
Even the most careful observers will sometimes overlook a significant
detail in the investigation of a brand new problem. In summing up
his day's work Saxby thought that he had accounted for all the vital
possibilities. He climbed up with the driver, and the truck started
home, jolting over the stunted cacti and smoke trees just as the sun
set. Saxby had overlooked the most obvious of all the facts in the
prospectors' experience, in his own and Isabel's, and in the wreck of
the _Sheridan_. What is even more remarkable, when we consider the
singular sagacity which Saxby exhibited in this strange investigation,
is that he completely missed the same obvious fact in Yang's
"hallucination"--for Yang also was to bear out the psychologist's
fantastic speculation.
The morning of Saxby's second expedition to the desert, Yang set to
work at seven and slaved through the day till seven at night. He was
determined to get the last of those exasperating little packets of
gaudy colors analyzed before his master's return. There remained only
the blues and the yellows and the bright green dye made by mixing the
two. As he expected, and as was but natural, several rather delicate
complications arose when the blue and yellow were mixed in ordinary tap
water. Of course the specific chemicals responsible for the respective
colors reacted to form new and more difficult compounds than either
presented individually. In spite of himself Yang began to become
interested in his analysis.
The problem before him was a good example of an extremely difficult
type of manipulation. The numerous compounds formed by the union of
the blue and yellow dyes were extremely unstable. A difference of a
tenth of a degree Centigrade in the temperature of the mixture permuted
these unstable compounds through long series of allied substances. It
was an exceedingly ticklish job at any stage of the game to isolate a
particular one of these compounds, and it required even more delicate
skill to keep the initial substance constant throughout the analysis
and prevent it from slithering into one of the others. Yang almost
began to enjoy himself.
* * * * *
Noon came and passed, but he never thought of lunch. At three o'clock
black Jemima stuck her head cautiously into the laboratory to ask if
he were going to eat. Her best corn fritters had twice been thrown
out, but she would make a fresh batter if Yang so desired. Yang said
something snappy in Chinese. Then, repenting of his profanity, he
instructed the humble Jemima to prepare him a real Chinese dinner for
seven o'clock--soup, pork, fish, rice and six hard-boiled eggs. He
continued his pursuit of the elusive twentieth compound.
At seven-fifteen, while his master was still jolting homeward on the
truck, Yang sighed, washed his hands, and took a last look around the
laboratory before going to dinner. He had not succeeded in capturing
his prey. The twentieth of those subtle compounds still reposed
undisturbed in its beaker. The table by the window was in a rare mess.
By habit a tidy technician, Yang as a rule left everything in apple-pie
order. This evening, however, exhausted by twelve incessant hours of
the most exacting work, he knocked off without setting everything to
rights, planning to return after dinner and clean up. The soiled towel
on which he had dried his hands he carelessly tossed into the glazed
earthenware crock, which Mrs. Lane had used for preserving eggs, and on
which he had wasted nearly two weeks in a futile attempt to discover
something of chemical interest. Dog-tired he locked the door of the
laboratory after him as a matter of habit and went to dinner.
The first course, a really excellent subgam soup, somewhat revived
him. He began to long for more stimulating conquests. The wistful
quart of old Saxby's topaz wine did not attract him. He wondered
whether Saxby, in the excitement of an early start, had forgotten to
lock the sideboard. In the true scientific spirit he left the table
to investigate. Old Saxby had forgotten. With a short exclamation of
triumph, Yang extracted a full wicker quart of his favorite Chinese
gin, and removed Saxby's offensive grape juice from his range of vision.
The first moderate cocktail acted merely as an inspiration to Yang's
appetite for roast pork. The second and third spurred him to great
deeds on the fried fish. By the time he had downed the thirteenth he
was calling shrilly for another half dozen hard-boiled eggs. Thereafter
he became somewhat confused and upbraided the perspiring Jemima for the
bushels of rice which she insisted he had ordered.
By nine o'clock he was very serious. A high sense of duty impelled
him to set the laboratory to rights before his master's return. Saxby
might be expected now at any minute. Before leaving the table he peeled
another egg, ate it, and stuffed four into the pocket of his coat to
sustain him in the laboratory.
After considerable experimenting he managed to unlock the laboratory
door. His logic now became somewhat erratic. It seemed to Yang that the
most important thing to be done first on entering the laboratory was
to lock the door after him. Otherwise old Saxby might come and catch
him. Not that Yang felt guilty or intoxicated; he merely had a strong
intuition that Saxby would jump to an unjust conclusion and give him
the devil for nothing. The locking of the door in the dark was a long
and complicated operation. It never occurred to Yang that it would
have been much simpler to have turned on the lights before attempting
to find the keyhole. Having succeeded at last he groped for the light
switch. It was on the wall to the west of the door. Yang was now in
that sublime state when "east is west and west is east and never the
twain shall meet." He began swearing volubly in his native tongue as
he sawed blindly for the switch. After five minutes of knocking over
stools and smashing glassware that had no business being where it was,
Yang lapsed into cold English.
"Oh hell," he muttered, on the verge of tears, "what's the use? All
damned things are against me."
He tumbled over to the one fairly bright spot in all that hostile
darkness, the dimly outlined rectangle of the west window by his work
bench. The slim sickle of the setting moon and the blaze of icy stars
shed a doubtful half light on the clatter of beakers and ring stands
on the table, rendering their barely visible outlines mistily unreal.
Yang lurched for the stool which was not where it should have been,
missed it, tipped over a full beaker of bright green dye, and came down
heavily on his side. A crunching in his pocket announced the tragedy.
His four priceless hard-boiled eggs were ruined. To Yang in his fuddled
condition this loss took on the vast proportions of a cosmic injustice.
The stars, that wisp of a moon, the darkness and the treacherous stool
on which he had jarred his jawbone in falling, all were against him. He
was too deeply hurt for tears. Pulling himself up to the edge of the
work-bench, he covered the stool and slumped down on it.
To console himself he fished the ruined eggs out of his pocket and
tried in that feeble light to salvage some of the yolks at least. For
his pains he got a gritty mouthful of egg and broken shells. With a
pettish gesture of impotence he hurled what was left of the eggs into
the one receptacle that loomed huge in the semi-light above all its
lesser neighbors--Mrs. Lane's glazed crock into which, three hours
previously, he had tossed the soiled towel. Then, baffled and defeated
by the brutal injustice of the universe, he sank his weary head on his
arms and sought solace in oblivion.
Only the faint radiance of the stars comforted him, and only the cold
light of the sickly moon gleamed uncertainly on his glossy black hair,
but he dreamed with agonizing intensity of blinding suns that pulsed
with a baleful green, or glowed evilly with a ruddy purple like the
living hue of some unnatural blood.
About half past ten Saxby returned. Jemima did not dash out to greet
him and trumpet the disgraceful tidings of Yang's orgy. She knew
better. Like the essentially catty female that she was, in spite of her
two hundred and fifty pounds of shoggling, good-natured flesh, she had
left the empty gin bottle in a conspicuous place on the dining-room
table. It could not fail to catch old Saxby's eye where it stood,
directly under a sixty-watt electric light going at full blast.
"That damned Yang is drunk again," Saxby exploded when he beheld the
mute betrayal. "Why can't he learn to drink good wine like a Christian?"
Believing that the dissolute Yang had gone to bed to sleep off his
indiscretion, Saxby prepared to do likewise. There would be time enough
in the morning to attend to Yang. For once in his life, Saxby looked
forward to going to bed. His tramping in the desert and the jolting
ride had left him rather tired.
Saxby's bedroom was on the second floor, directly over the laboratory.
As he turned off the light before getting into bed, he glanced out of
the open window, over the low, distant hills behind which the sharp
horns of the setting moon were just dipping. The unearthly beauty of
the night landscape gripped him for a moment, as he stood motionless,
trying to fix permanently on his consciousness its elusive appeal. His
whole body, not merely his reasoning memory, seemed to sense a new
quality in this sudden strangeness of a familiar, commonplace world. He
experienced a feeling of intimacy, not with the spirit of the night,
but with the solid bulk of those massive hills behind which the moon
was fast setting.
"What a beastly sensation," he exclaimed aloud, turning his back on the
window. "Nerves, that's all. I felt as if the earth of my grave were
feeling through my flesh to get at my bones."
Going to bed with such a thought as that would be sufficient to give
almost any man a nightmare. Old Saxby was no exception. For ten
feverish hours he tossed in a torment that his drugged will strove
vainly to end. Part of the time he was half awake and conscious that he
was dreaming, yet he could not shake off the lethal stupor poisoning
his mind. The dreams were strangely unnatural and yet more strangely
real. There was a curious, insanely illogical but yet inevitable
sequence in the meaningless panoramas that rolled past his vision like
an infinite succession of thunder clouds, each of them instinct with
some forgotten significance which he struggled to recall.
* * * * *
The isolated fragments were the least endurable. A small, shapeless
thing would materialize out of an infinite void, seem to expand and yet
not to expand, till finally, in some appalling sense, it reconciled
its own self-contradiction by ceasing to exist. Again and again this
motif recurred and each time that the void prepared to give it birth,
the helpless spectator rehearsed the sight he dreaded a million times
before it happened. A second recurrence of a different kind was almost
as bad. Like the pulsations of a vast aurora a slow rhythm of dull
purple and green throbbed maddeningly through the whole of infinite
space, coming and going with discordant regularity. This also was
self-contradictory; yet it existed and was real. Through all that
horrible dream a voice kept chanting monotonously. "This is not a
dream; this is not a dream; these things have happened; you felt these
older things before you had a mind."
When he finally threw off the incubus that oppressed him, Saxby felt
like a wet towel.
"What a night," he groaned, feeling under the pillow for his watch.
"Great Scott! No wonder I had a nightmare. Serves me right for lying in
bed ten hours."
But, as he began to dress, he felt with every bone of his body that
he was unwell and that his awful dream was not merely the result of
over-exhaustion. It had been too real. Some definite, physical thing
must have caused it. A faint odor caught his attention. He sniffed the
air critically.
"That infernal woman has been putting the garbage can right under my
window," he snorted. "If she wasn't such an artist at cooking I'd fire
her before dinner tonight. Hang it! I'll have to speak to her." He
shaved and hurried downstairs to do his disagreeable duty by Yang and
Jemima.
On reaching the dining-room he relented so far as Yang was concerned.
The empty gin bottle still squatted blatantly in the exact center of
the table. The table was set as usual for breakfast for one, although
it was long past Yang's customary hour. Old Saxby concluded that the
wretched Yang had taken one look at the table and bolted back to
bed to sleep off his headache. At any rate the fellow was honest,
he reflected; he had not tried to hide the empty bottle and lay his
indisposition to the weather or overwork. Saxby forgave him and rang
for Jemima. She came, waddling, expecting a crown of gold for her
perfidy in the matter of the gin bottle.
"Jemima," Saxby exploded without any priming, "I want you to stop
putting the garbage can under my window. It is one of your most
disgusting customs."
Jemima called upon her Lord to bear witness that she was innocent.
Saxby, invoking his own gods, declared that he had smelt Jemima's
offense with his own nose. The debate degenerated into a shouting
match, wailing and tearful on Jemima's part, vigorous and vociferous
on Saxby's. At last, getting nowhere by such means with the obstinate
woman, Saxby assented to her plea that he look for himself.
The can was in its usual place on the north side of the house.
"Uh," Saxby grunted as the victorious Jemima waddled back in triumph to
her kitchen. "There must be something dead under my window." He walked
round to the west side of the house to inspect.
The windows of Yang's laboratory were directly under those of Saxby's
bedroom. At the first glance Saxby thought the laboratory windows were
open. At the second he stopped short. The morning breeze was blowing
into the laboratory, but the windows were down and locked. The panes
of glass had vanished. Not a splinter remained in the putty, and there
was no mark of any implement, either on the putty or the surrounding
frames, to give a clue to the manner in which the panes had been lifted
clean out of their beds.
"What the devil?" he muttered, going up to examine the window frames.
Then he staggered back as if shot, suddenly sick and faint. He had
seen what, less than ten hours before, was Yang. Now it was only a
shapeless lump of flesh draped over a work-table and flowing down over
a four-legged stool. It looked more like a squid than a man.
[Illustration: _He had seen what, less than ten hours before, was Yang.
Now it was only a shapeless lump of flesh draped over a work-bench and
flowing down over a four-legged stool._]
Saxby's first thought when he recovered his senses was of the coroner.
There would have to be an inquest. He had seen enough to know that
half an hour after any inquest that might be held the whole country
would be paralyzed with fear. All the facts would have to come out, and
the public was not yet prepared to receive them intelligently. Saxby
himself did not understand the half of them. What good could come of
throwing the country into a panic? To warn the people would be futile.
They had no means of protecting themselves. Until he or someone else
succeeded in tracing the evil to its source, it would be sheer insanity
to advertise its existence.
Looking round to make sure that Jemima was not where she had no
business to be, Saxby returned to the window of the laboratory. The
high tile wall, the shrubs and trees of the garden, secured him from
the curious eyes of passers-by on the street. He climbed in at the
window. It was essential to his plan that Jemima, the only possible
human witness, should believe that he had not entered the house.
As he had half anticipated, he found the laboratory door locked on the
inside. He did not unlock it. Poor Yang had apparently shut himself in
for fear of being caught by his employer in his usual evening haunts
about the house. The old-fashioned wooden shutters were still intact.
Saxby set about his task. The odor of decay was still strong but
bearable.
There was no time to examine all the inexplicable havoc in the
laboratory. One detail, however, was obvious on the most casual
inspection. Every particle of glass had disappeared. Multicolored
messes still dripped from the shelves as the chemicals from the
vanished bottles mingled, and neat little piles of rainbow-hued salts
marked the places of innumerable glass containers that had simply
ceased to exist. All metallic objects were apparently normal.
Going over to the work-bench Saxby picked up Yang's laboratory notebook
and glanced rapidly through the pencilled entries of the preceding day.
Although much was half obliterated by the bright green dye which had
drenched the open book and soaked into the porous paper when Yang in
his fall upset the beaker, short jottings and long chemical equations
told the brief story of the nineteen successful analyses. Then followed
a disjointed sequence of tentative guesses and abandoned trials on the
twentieth compound generated by the reactions of the blue and yellow
dyes upon one another.
Saxby slipped the notebook into his pocket and explored the work-table
in detail. From the tangible evidence before him it was not difficult
to reconstruct Yang's last day on earth. The soiled towel in Mrs.
Lane's crock and the crushed fragments of the four hard-boiled eggs,
one partly eaten, told their own story. Yang had wiped the composite
green dye off his hands on the towel, and he had brought back the eggs
for a late supper after returning intoxicated from dinner. By some
drunken mishap he had smashed them, tried to eat one, and thrown them
away. The smears on the black surface of the work-table marked the
places where the test tubes and beakers had disintegrated like the rest
of the glass in the laboratory.
Struck by the singular fact that the glazed crock seemed to have
survived intact, Saxby reached for it to examine it carefully. It fell
to powder in his grasp. The towel also, still discolored by the stains
of the dyes, became a pinch of white dust as he tried to pick it up.
* * * * *
It was necessary to examine Yang. At the first touch his clothing fell
apart like the towel. The whole of it now weighed perhaps as much as an
open handful of uncrushed thistle-down, and it crumbled to dust at the
lightest touch. On the body itself there was not a scratch. Thus far
it seemed perfectly normal. But its solidity was gone. In a horrible
manner it was shapeless and without resistance, like a lump of melting
jelly, held together only by its skin like water in a thin rubber bag.
So far as Saxby could force himself to explore, he found no trace
of a bone in all that shapeless lump. Yang's bones had vanished as
completely as had the glass. His hanging lips disclosed gums that were
toothless.
Saxby executed his grewsome task as quickly as possible and set about
his more practical work of preventing the inquest. Cautiously opening
one shutter, he slipped out of the window, closed the shutter after him
and walked round to the kitchen door.
"Where is Mr. Yang?" he asked.
"He done been sleeping off his gin in the laboratory," Jemima replied
promptly, glad of the chance to unbosom herself at last. Saxby laughed.
"All right," he said. "Don't disturb him till seven o'clock. He
should be pretty hungry by that time. By the way," he added as an
afterthought, "I want some fresh crabs for dinner. Go down to the fish
market and pick out a dozen big ones. They must be fresh. If they're
not, I'll fire you."
Jemima began to grumble. It was a good hour's ride on the street car to
the fish market, and Jemima was too fat to get into a taxi.
"Get along with you," Saxby ordered. "What do you think I'm paying you
for? I want those crabs. I'm going out myself in a minute or two, but I
shan't leave till I see you on your way with a basket."
When Jemima was safely round the corner, Saxby dived into the cellar
and brought up a five-gallon can of gasoline which Jemima kept for
cleaning and other household purposes. This he hurriedly transported
to the laboratory, entering by the window as before. With the chairs,
tables, the wooden shelves and two cabinets, it was easy to arrange the
materials for a very hot and quick fire. The large metal cans of highly
inflammable mineral oils, which Yang had kept on hand as a matter of
course for use in his work, also about fifty pounds of the proper
chemicals scooped off the shelves, and four large cans of thermite,
added greatly to the potential heat. Saxby then drenched the body in
gasoline and sprinkled what was left over the highly inflammable stuff
piled around and over the body. Finally he tore several pages out of
a book and placed them on the floor about a foot away from the pile.
The laboratory supply of white phosphorus--two dozen long, cheesy
sticks--was then taken out of its can, where it had been submerged in
water, and carefully disposed on the paper. Before Saxby was through
the window the phosphorus was already fuming.
"I could get life for this, I suppose," he remarked as he darted into
the kitchen. "Well, I can't help it. This is the lesser of two evils."
The house was at least two hundred feet from its nearest neighbor. The
smoke and flames issuing from the shuttered window of the laboratory
should be seen by the neighbors five minutes after the fire started,
and the firemen would be on the spot in another five minutes. There
was no danger to the neighboring houses, but Saxby's rambling frame
structure would probably burn to the ground. One thing was certain;
the firemen would not succeed in extinguishing the furnace in the
laboratory until what was left of poor Yang had evaporated in smoke.
The heat of the themite fire would preclude any immediate attempt to
recover the body--provided its presence were suspected. When Jemima
returned, she of course would tell the neighbors that Yang had been
burned to death in the laboratory. His intoxication would account for
the fire and his being overcome before he could escape or call for
help. They would search the ruins for his calcined bones and find
nothing, not even his teeth. Saxby considered his alibi perfect. Yang's
disappearance would merely become a newspaper mystery for a month.
Well, let them theorize. They could say he had gone back to China or
Mexico, while under the influence of liquor.
With a last look of regret at his beloved earthquakes in their stacked
filing cases, Saxby slipped his passport into his pocket, opened the
front door, and walked out. At the corner he glanced back to ease his
conscience with regard to the neighbors' houses. There was no danger.
If the worst came to the worst, and his own house was burned to the
ground, the firemen could easily play on the others, the nearest of
which was in but slight danger of falling sparks. Old Saxby sighed. He
hoped the firemen would save the front room and his earthquake. The
filing cabinets were steel, but that wouldn't help much in a really hot
fire.
He hailed a taxi and gave the driver Mrs. Lane's address. Easy lies the
head that has a perfect alibi.
He first heard that his house had been burned to the ground as he sat
sipping tea with Isabel. The afternoon paper featured the spectacular
blaze. None of the neighboring houses were harmed. The hectic neighbors
had broken into the front room when they first saw the flames shooting
up from the laboratory and they had saved all of Saxby's earthquakes.
"God bless them!" he ejaculated as Isabel read him that bit.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she consoled. "Were you insured?"
"Heavily. But it doesn't matter. I'll be in China in four weeks from
today."
Part II--Amateurs
CHAPTER V
White Lily
Einstein has remarked that any blockhead can draw correct conclusions
from a consistent theory, but that it requires genius to deduce the
truth from one that is full of contradictions. On such authority we
cannot deny that old Saxby had genius. Although his theory was not
utterly wrong when he left Los Angeles for China, it was a tissue of
holes and glaring inconsistencies. Nevertheless, as events proved, he
drew the right conclusions.
His hypothesis was what the mathematicians call necessary but not
sufficient. Quite logically, and equally inadequately, he reasoned as
follows: Tom's Easter egg started everything. Yang, apparently, had
been so unfortunate as to reproduce the exact circumstances which had
initiated all the trouble. These included Mrs. Lane's glazed crock.
Since all of those necessary--as he thought--conditions now no longer
coexisted, having been destroyed together by fire and otherwise, it was
extremely improbable that anything further of interest could happen in
or near Los Angeles. Captain Lane, however, was still open to grave
suspicion. He, no doubt, was still "infected"--Saxby used the word for
want of better, although it failed to express his thought. Therefore
China called him, not Los Angeles or the desert.
Old Saxby should have remembered that as in love, so in science. Unless
the time, the place and the girl, or their equivalents, get together
somehow there is nothing doing. He had neglected, among other things,
the essential element of time. But he was so eager now to seize the
likeliest opportunity of verifying his hypothesis and seeing it work
before his very eyes, that he hastened to overtake Lane before the
latter should lose all his fascinating dangerous qualities.
With a parting assurance to Isabel that nothing much was likely to
happen to California in his absence, and a promise that he would never
give her husband's unconscious secret away, he packed his grip and
caught his steamer. The earthquakes were loaned to the South-western
Museum until his return. His bank undertook to look after his affairs
while he was in China.
"If I don't come back within ten years, the Society of Earthquake
Lovers of California is to get everything. You will find the details in
my will. Goodbye."
On his way across the Pacific, Old Saxby had ample time to ponder his
sins of omission and commission. Yang's laboratory notebook was the
first cause of Saxby's qualms. Although by no means the chemist that
Yang had been, Saxby was quite respectable and indeed an expert in all
the chemistry that pertained to geology. His chemical classification
of the basalts, for example, marked an epoch in the science, and his
bold theory concerning the origin of the silicates, although openly
scoffed at by jealous or leas imaginative rivals, at least arrested the
attention of chemists. Saxby was nothing if not daring, in thought as
well as action. Yang, on the other hand, was a more conservative type
of genius, in spite of his weakness for gin. When he theorized--which
he rarely did--his speculations had an awkward trick of turning out
right. The last, in modern physical science, is almost a miracle. So
when Saxby at last thought he understood the pencilings which Yang had
scratched on the last page of his notebook, he began to doubt his own
wisdom because it contradicted Yang's.
"I wish I had locked up the gin that morning," he sighed. "Poor Yang
might have solved the whole problem if he had stayed sober enough to
keep out of the laboratory after dark. If there is anything at all
in these guesses of his--well, it is too late to turn back now. What
a pity Yang died without knowing what he was looking for, or what
he found. I wish I had given him a hint. Another of those infernal
experimental errors. Confound my luck. I'm always making them."
While Saxby stewed and fumed, another great man of about his own age
was also doing his unconscious bit toward the making of history. The
venerable Hu--"Hu the Good" as he was called by his followers, was
within a year or two of sixty. He looked eighty. For one thing he
was pure Chinese; for another he was much too fat, and finally his
kind old face was wrinkled like a wad of crumpled parchment. This was
the prophet and uncrowned king whom Captain Lane had been ordered to
interview.
Long before Lane and his escort of marines reached the Holy Caves where
Hu the Good dispensed blessings and absorbed communist propaganda, the
footsore men had nicknamed him Who the Devil. It was indeed but a poor
play upon words, yet it eased the feelings of the men as they tramped
endlessly over sand and rock, or sweated like cattle in unspeakably
dirty river boats. Whom the devil they were to civilize, and exactly
why they were to do so, were the questions they debated endlessly. Hu
the Good had a bad reputation with the Marines weeks before his friends
welcomed them to his sanctum.
Hu was truly a good soul. He was benevolence itself and one of the
most temperate men that ever lived, even in a peace-loving, moderate
China. By faith he was a Moslem, as his fathers before him had been for
generations. Indeed his one vanity was the boast, probably just, that
it was one of his direct lineal ancestors who first brought the true
faith to China.
The children of Allah, as all the world knows, are a warlike pack,
always spoiling for a fight in order to convert the unbelievers--to
_their_ faith, Hu the Good would have none of this muscular
Mohametanism. He detested it, declaring that it was his mission to
bring peace, not a sword, to the farmers and bandits of sleepy old
China. Yet, in spite of himself, as his powers waned and ever mounting
billows of fat submerged his common sense, he began to waver as he
approached old age. After all, he declared, there might be something
good in this notion of a jehad--the technical term for a holy war (if
such a thing is not a contradiction in terms) of the Mohametan brand.
Were not the unbelievers, white, brown and yellow, tearing one another
to pieces in an endeavor to prove that might is right? Why not give
all of them a practical demonstration of their own doctrine? They were
weary and ripe for instruction. It would be easy to teach them the
truth in their present exhausted condition. Then there would be no more
infidels. It almost seemed as if Allah himself had turned schoolmaster.
And Hu the Good would be Allah's first assistant to teach all Asia,
and possibly the whole world, the letters of the Mohametan alphabet.
It was at least as worthy an object as the promotion of free trade. If
successful it would open the door, not to China, but to Heaven.
By himself, even in his premature old age, Hu was incapable of hatching
so venomous a reptile out of an innocent egg. It is a pity that he grew
so fat after he passed fifty. Had he weighed only two hundred pounds
it is likely that his mind would have remained as shrewd as ever when
the agents from Moscow sought by flattery and sham respect to seduce
it. But all his vitality was drawn off to keep the blood circulating
through a quarter of a ton of solid flesh. Hu's bulk almost equalled
his benevolence, and his senescent feeble mindedness surpassed the sum
of both. It was but a sorry pair of rogues that succeeded in debauching
what was left of the poor old man's intelligence, but they were the
best that Moscow could spare. In his prime, when he weighed only a
hundred and eighty, Hu could have swindled them out of their souls in
his sleep.
* * * * *
That precious pair of rascals, Liapanouff and Markoff, were the two
parasites from Moscow who battened upon poor old Hu. It will be
observed that both of them had perfectly good Russian names. Neither
was a Russian.
Liapanouff was a fairly able, well-read man of about thirty. He was a
dank-haired, pimply, unwholesome looking man, stoutish, with a flat,
round face like an underdone pie. He habitually wore enormous, unrimmed
glasses with thick lenses that made his humid dark-brown eyes glow like
a myopic moth's.
Markoff was about forty. He had resided nine years in London, where
his name was Marks, ostensibly as a waiter. His true profession is not
mentioned in decent society. In personal appearance Markoff was not
absolutely repulsive. His tan hair had not thinned, and his sparse
mustache was as youthful as ever. Doubtless he wore it because he had
sense enough to know that his mouth gave him away. It was as cruel as
a rattlesnake's. His pinched nose recalled a vulture's beak, and his
all but transparent ears, pointed like those of a lynx, stuck close to
his bulging, bony skull. Taken piecemeal, Markoff was an unattractive
mongrel; in the ensemble he made quite a striking impression,
especially upon women. Unlike Liapanouff, Markoff was an ill-informed,
narrow-minded, bigoted ignoramus. Such were the vampires who hung like
a pair of parched bats to the enormous Hu, draining him of his common
sense.
The gist of Liapanouff and Markoff's mission to Kansu was childishly
simple. The "Kansu mission" was delegated to them because they had half
mastered spoken Chinese in the shortest time. They were, technically,
"provocative agents" on a grand scale. The technique of such agents has
seven main operations.
First, find a large class of human beings whom you hate and who are
being oppressed by a more powerful class whom you envy. Second,
ingratiate your way into the friendship and confidence of the
oppressed. Third, incite the oppressed to attack the oppressors against
whom they have not a worm's chance of victory. Fourth, betray all the
secrets and plans of the oppressed to the oppressors, thereby winning
the confidence of the latter. Fifth, join the oppressors in their
overwhelming counter attack upon the oppressed, but be careful not to
venture within a hundred miles of the actual fighting. Sixth, find a
more powerful class than that with which you are now affiliated, and
repeat the preceding program indefinitely. Seventh, if at any stage
of the application of the rules a finite limit is reached, so that
no further treachery is possible, swallow your capsule of cyanide of
potassium, as the only logical conclusion.
Markoff and Liapanouff were as yet only at the second stage. They
had convinced a large mass of the christianized Chinese that their
more numerous heathen brothers were walking all over them with wooden
clogs. The Mohametan followers of Hu the Good outnumbered those of the
Christian missionaries and their converts twenty to one. The Buddhists
and Confucians in their turn were dozens to one against the Mohametans.
After Hu had wiped out the Christians, he and his followers were to get
their own medicine.
In all this the westerners would of course suffer heavily. Bourgeois
Britain and capitalistic America would be drawn into the row on a
huge scale. Asia would end by fighting the rest of the world. The
Liapanouffs and the Markoffs would be on the winning side when the
gas and flames cleared away, and the statesmen took out their jeweled
fountain pens to autograph the treaties. Then the "provacation" would
begin all over again, and the victors would find themselves going
the way of King Herod. The grand objective for the present was the
communization of Asia.
Throughout this vast game Hu the Good was merely a pawn, but the Moscow
agents were unduly contemptuous of poor old Hu. They forgot that chess
as played by masters often turns upon the gain or loss of one humble
pawn. Hu had been a master in his day; old Saxby still played a pretty
good game, while Liapanouff and Markoff were handicapped by Markoff's
petty vices which somewhat dulled the expected brilliance of his moves.
The queen of the board was Hu's eighteen-year-old granddaughter, whose
pretty Chinese name is equivalent in English to White Lily. She spoke
only Chinese. Markoff was endeavoring to teach her enough Russian to
make conversation salaciously interesting. As the instruction always
took place under Hu's watchful eye, Markoff found his pupil rather
dull. He did not get very far with her.
Hu the Good cherished White Lily more tenderly than anything else on
earth. Even his religion took the second place when she was near.
Small and well formed of body, White Lily was perfect of her kind.
Her youthful grace was evident even under the flowered blue of her
tunic, and her delicate, oval face was as quaintly piquant as a Chinese
fairy's. Her father was Hu's son, her mother a commoner undistinguished
for anything but good nature and the fading remains of a once great
beauty. Hu's son was just a law-abiding, hardworking farmer on his own
land. The shrewd, subtle mind which was Hu's in his prime had skipped a
generation. White Lily inherited it. She had an added advantage, which
Hu had never possessed. There was never any mistake about him--until he
grew too fat. He always looked his proper part--wise, strong, calm and
benevolent. White Lily was such a pretty girl that strangers--and many
who had known her for years--mistook her for nothing more. Consequently
she usually did what she liked with people, and did it charmingly. They
frequently were too dazed to know what had happened until long after it
was all over.
Under the pretense of seeing that she was becomingly educated--White
Lily needed no education--Hu borrowed her from her parents and kept
her by his side. As his powers waned, hers waxed. It solaced and yet
saddened him to see himself rising from the grave in a beautiful
reincarnation. For in his secret thoughts in the long, sleepless
silence of the nights, he knew that the great man he had been was dead.
White Lily reciprocated her grandfather's affection. If she did not
think much of his technical faith, and still less of his ability as a
prophet, she kept her doubts to herself. She was content to let him
enjoy his little foibles. They were an old man's weaknesses of no
great moment. Provided no cloud rose between them to chill the warmth
of their perfect understanding, Hu might start his precious jehad
whenever he felt inclined. She herself did not greatly care for the
cocksure coolies and beggars who bragged incessantly that they had been
converted to a better faith than hers, and who missed no opportunity of
telling her that she and the good old Hu must fry forever in Hell. If
the jehad should succeed in letting the offensive conceit out of some
of these boorish braggarts in this life, she and Hu would gladly take
their chances in the next. The converts no doubt were oppressed. On the
other hand they were not conspicuous for humility. Therefore White Lily
remained, on the whole, neutral.
She knew exactly what the thin-lipped, persistent Markoff was trying
to do to her. It rather amused her to think that he believed in
his ability to succeed. But it grieved her that Markoff was not a
Christian. There could be no equitable grounds for eliminating him
in the jehad. Liapanouff she rather liked. He never talked to her of
Russian love, which disgusted her, but conversed quite entertainingly
of Western culture--its politics, its science and its literature. His
Chinese, too, was much better than the intense Markoff's, although the
latter's was not half bad. From Liapanouff she also learned--without
his knowledge--enough Russian words to follow the general trend of
the private conversations between the two agents, particularly when
they concerned her. And yet Liapanouff, like Markoff, found her
exasperatingly dull in her pitiful attempts to learn Russian. The pasty
Liapanouff was more of a dilletante scholar than a diplomat, while
Markoff knew too much about women ever to sense when one was making a
fool of him.
White Lily turned the pair inside out and read their private weaknesses
as readily as the old augurs used to decipher the entrails of an ox.
Ostensibly she was on their side. She saw the spectacle they were
making of poor Hu, but kept her knowledge to herself. If the playmate
of her babyhood wanted his fun in his second childhood he should have
it, for she loved him. So she thought while it was all only a nebulous
theory.
* * * * *
Thus the jehad brewed while Lane and his men strove by forced marches
to reach Kansu before it was too late, and Saxby fumed and fretted to
overtake Lane on what, after all, might turn out to be a fool-hardy
wild-goose chase. Revolution and counter-revolution made Lane's going
delicate and difficult. Warring factions of inflamed patriots tore
pacifist old China to pieces for their own gain, and religious hatreds
shouldered like a chain of volcanoes about to erupt. Europe and America
watched the trouble uneasily, but not altogether passively, while Great
Britain tried not to see the end of white domination in Asia. All in
all it was as busy and as black a day in human affairs as this troubled
planet has suffered.
Yet all of this furious fuss was but the mere disorderly running
to and fro of an excited community of ants beneath a gigantic foot
about to descend and smash them flat. Like the voracious nations of
insects, who lack the imagination to combine their armies against
their common enemy, man, and who miss their easy victory by fighting
among themselves, the swarming hordes of human beings were striving to
exterminate one another, all unconscious that their desired ends could
be more easily attained by a coalition against their universal enemy,
brute nature.
Would the foot descend? Nature is impartial, or perhaps indifferent. A
sudden impulse in another direction might urge her aside and let the
busy ants live. But if not, and if she kept to her present blind way,
the ants would be crushed. Saxby, if urged to bet, would have placed
his money against the ants. Nevertheless he was on his way to do the
best he could for them.
To a moderately critical mind, he was used to assert, when feeling
blue, the whole sweep of organic evolution, human and otherwise, must
appear as the aimless dream of an idiot realized in meaningless action.
It remained in this instance to be seen whether nature and evolution
can be directed by human intelligence. If not, the stupid game would
come to an end forever; if so, it would be the beginning of an end of
pessimism.
Such was the setting when Hu the Good brought ten thousand boils to a
head by officially prophesying a jehad. The prophecy was equivalent to
a command to all faithful followers of Mohamet to slaughter the infidel
missionaries and all their converts. The blaze thus started in remote
Kansu was--so Hu prophesied--to sweep all China like a grass fire. The
holy heat of China was to kindle all Asia, and Asia's conflagration in
turn was to sweep the world and consume utterly the last unbeliever.
Hu's fat had at last gone to his head.
The prophecy was vouchsafed from the innermost shrine of Hu's vast
sanctum, near Teng-shan, in the once famous limestone caverns of Kansu.
White Lily smiled fondly on the old man who took his self-imposed
office so seriously. His artless importance and his sudden flash of
belief in himself were cheap at the cost of a dozen jehads. He was
happy. Liapanouff blinked his moth's eyes and moistened his slack lips.
Markoff's fanatical face set like a rattlesnake's about to strike. The
agents' first task was accomplished. In a few days they could safely
start the second by betraying Hu.
At the very beginning of the holy war a slight difficulty arose that
threatened to abort the whole jehad, until Markoff's masterly mind
found a way out. A jehad is nothing if not swift and vigorous. It must
go with a punch or it peters out. Now, unfortunately for Hu's prophecy,
the Mohametans had no firearms and no swords. A few antiquated,
inefficient pikes of the seventeenth century were all they could
muster. The governor of Kansu had long since sent all the more Modern
weapons to a personal friend, at the time a general in the army of the
revolution. How in the name of Allah were the infidels to be converted
under these deplorable conditions? It would take forever, even if the
Mohametans, unarmed, should be strong enough and sufficiently numerous
to round up all the unbelievers and feed them a dozen at a time to the
pikemen.
Markoff wriggled up to the enormous Hu and whispered a few short
sentences, glancing behind him from time to time toward the far
darkness of the eastern wall of the cavern. Hu nodded. He had
prophesied. If the jehad should fall flat before it even started, Hu's
authority as a prophet was over. With a guilty glance toward White
Lily, who stood a few yards away demurely trying to overhear what
Markoff was whispering, he assented. His reputation would be saved,
Markoff slipped away like a snake, and began whispering to Liapanouff,
who squatted yellow and damp on the floor of the cave like a diseased
toadstool.
White Lily smilingly advanced to coax the truth out of her errant
grandfather. She knew that he was feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself.
"Tell me what he said," she entreated, like a child begging for a toy.
Poor old Hu looked troubled, and a slight tremor agitated his vast
bulk, to die out in broken ripples on his huge hands.
"It was just a political matter," he muttered in the folds of his chin.
"Was it about the jehad?"
Hu the Good tried to lie. But he could not. All her life White Lily had
heard nothing but the truth from his lips. Habit now overmastered him.
"Yes," he admitted. Then, after a pause, "Would you be sorry if my
prophecy should turn out to be false?"
"Of course I would. But you are always right, so the jehad must happen.
Did Markoff tell you _how_ to make it happen?"
Hu did not deny that the thin-lipped reptile had given him more than a
hint toward making the prophecy a fact. But, having found his courage
again, Hu thought it better to tell his granddaughter only the half of
Markoff's brilliant scheme.
"These caverns have many chambers, and they are sacred," Hu rumbled as
if he were prophesying again. "All the infidels of Kansu might gather
in the least of these holy places that my fathers blessed, and be but
a handful of sand on the floor. Here, in these hallowed caves, shall
the unbelievers hear from my lips that Allah is God and Mohamet his
prophet. Then, if they still hug their unbelief, I can do nothing more
for them.
"You will not destroy them?"
"How can I? The governor of Kansu has robbed the faithful of their
arms."
White Lily was but half convinced. Against reason she hoped that her
good old grandfather had at last recovered his sane benevolence. She
knew that he had hated bloodshed all his life. Was it too much to
believe that the cataracts of old age had rolled back from his eyes for
a moment, giving him a vision of his true self?
"There will be no jehad?" she questioned doubtfully.
"I did not say so. But this jehad will be bloodless."
"Even after all the shameful insults those arrogant beggars have flung
at you--and at me?"
"Yes, even after all those, and after all their brawling self
righteousness that has stirred up hatred and riot in Kansu."
She gave him a long look, but he did not wince. Then, wondering whether
she had lost him at last, she turned away without a word.
Markoff and Liapanouff stopped whispering when they saw her coming
toward them. She halted within a yard of the squatting pair. Like two
whipped curs they furtively watched her face with their eyes, not
daring to raise their heads. Liapanouff moistened his loose lips;
Markoff's bony jaw set.
"Stand up," she commanded.
They shuffled to their feet, and stood slouching with their hands
behind their backs.
"Is there to be a jehad?" she demanded.
The reptilian Markoff, after a swift glance at Liapanouff's mushroom
face, took it upon himself to reply. "There will be a bloodless jehad,"
he answered.
White Lily saw that it would be merely wasting breath to question them
further.
"Remember," she warned them, "that I am my grandfather's brain and I am
his right hand. What his brain thinks of your jehad will determine what
reward his right hand shall give you."
Turning her back abruptly on them she walked rapidly away toward the
far crescent of bright yellow that was the sunshine on the hillside
beyond the entrance to the cave. Sweating with a cowardly fear they
watched her dwindle and pass under the vast arch, a toy figure no
taller than a match. The very indefiniteness of her threat, and their
uncertainty as to the exact meaning of the idiomatic Chinese in which
she had uttered her warning, only multiplied their terror. A cold
shiver ran up Markoff's back and his jaw set convulsively.
"Shall we go back to Moscow?" Liapanouff suggested.
"If we go back unsuccessful, we shall be shot." Markoff's snake mouth
closed viciously. "We can get away at once after it is over. What can
she do? She is a Moslem. The Buddhists and the rest won't listen to
her--no! The governor has promised to help us. The Moslems will be
wiped out, and she with them, a week after we finish. I shall ask the
governor," he concluded with a bestial leer, "to spare her life for a
day or two."
Liapanouff, the sedentary scholar and man of zero physical courage,
began to suffocate.
"Let us get out of here now and go to the coast. Japan, anywhere----"
"Tch!" Markoff cut him off. "The governor is a fool and a friend of
ours. Let us take a walk through the caves instead," he suggested with
a cold, ophidian smile. "Over that way."
Linking his arm through the cheesy Liapanouff's, Markoff dragged the
cowardly lump of flesh off toward the shadowy vastness of the cavern's
eastern wall.
While the two agents flitted silently as bats from cave to darker cave,
dispensing with the torches which long familiarity with their objective
made superfluous, White Lily walked unhappily and alone through the
afternoon sunshine.
* * * * *
For the first time in her eighteen years White Lily was crossing the
great gulf between theory and practice. As long as her grandfather's
jehad was only something to be talked about in a large, philosophical
way, she had aided and abetted him in his harmless foolishness.
Searching her mind now she realized that she had always hated the thing
itself, and that she had never dreamed of it actually happening. Hu
was after all only a benevolent dreamer, a prophet in the true sense,
not a stupid firebrand. And now these vile agents, with their flattery
and their incessant suggestions, preying upon the old man's senility,
had debauched his intelligence. They had even so far degraded his high
honesty that he was now not above putting her off with a half truth.
The bloodlessness of the prophesied jehad did not for a moment deceive
her. What devilish thing had that snake whispered in her grandfather's
ear? All her young sagacity deserted her and she found herself as
helpless as a baby before a mathematical equation. She could not solve
it. Nevertheless she knew that it had a solution, and an evil one.
What should she do? The true spirit of her grandfather had indeed
descended to her. Her hatred of salvation by force of arms was as
fierce as ever old Hu's had been. To avert that "bloodless" jehad was
her one passion. It should not happen. But how was she to prevent it,
when its very nature was unknown to her? At least she could warn the
white missionaries to leave Kansu with their converts while there was
yet time. She approached the Christian school nestling in its grove of
firs at the foot of a long slope, and entered the main room without
knocking.
The missionary, a gray-bearded, dreamy-eyed Scotchman, was just about
to dismiss the last batch of his young pupils for the day. Seeing the
pretty Chinese girl hesitating by the door, he left his class for a
moment to ask her what she wanted. He addressed her in Chinese, as
White Lily knew no English, never having attended one of the Christian
schools. To his inquiry she replied that the Moslems were about to
start a crusade of extermination against all sects but their own.
"I have heard such rumors," the missionary replied. "They are just
gossip."
"They are not. The jehad has been prophesied. Do you understand what
that means to the Moslems of Kansu?"
The gray-bearded face set like the death-mask of a martyr.
"'I fear no evil, for He is with me.'"
"But your women, and your children?"
"They will be true to Him."
White Lily shot him a brief, oblique glance of contempt.
"I tell you there is time to escape to the hills where you can hide
till your friends come for you. You can bring them to you by the
talking wire"--White Lily's description of the electric telegraph which
still, presumably connected the main towns of Kansu with the seaports.
Unfortunately the revolutionists had destroyed the first three hundred
miles from the coast inland, and Kansu was now completely isolated.
The missionary drew himself up.
"Shall I forsake my Christ and my God?"
White Lily turned her back on him and walked out.
CHAPTER VI
Hu's Folly
Lane's flying squadron did not fly very fast. Transport, never
strikingly efficient In the interior of China, was almost hopelessly
disorganized by the revolution. Pinched between two hostile armies the
marines proceeded most of the way by sufferance only, and were glad to
take at any price what the Chinese officers left. Lane's orders were to
reach Kansu and rescue the missionaries without firing a shot unless
driven to the extreme of self defense. Any other course would have been
suicidal; either of the rival Chinese generals could have annihilated
the intruders with a gesture. So long as the Americans minded their own
business they were free to go as they pleased. Should some get plugged
by stray bullets it was no more than they could expect, and the fault
would not be China's. The column was armed only with rifles; tanks
and machine guns were left behind, partly to humor the Chinese army
officers, partly to make speed at least half way possible.
The telegraph service, like the transport, was practically
non-existent. Either the native operators had been shot by one faction
or the other, or each side had tried to better its rival's record in
pulling up poles and cutting wires. There was of course no wireless
for the use of outsiders. Not till he was in far western Shen-si,
within fifty miles of the border of Kansu, did Lane succeed in getting
a message through to Teng-shan. The last fifty miles of the line were
intact, as was also the beady-eyed Chinese boy tapping the key. Lane
asked the operator to call the Protestant mission station at Teng-shan
and ask how things were going. The day operator at the other end,
evidently a Moslem, replied cheerfully that the province of Kansu as a
whole was doing as well as could be expected, although perhaps a little
too slowly.
"The jehad of Hu the Good," the operator concluded blithely, "will not
leave one infidel's head upon his neck."
"All right," Lane remarked to his first lieutenant, "we shall have to
hoof it. No stop till we get there--except for chow."
The men had done twenty-six miles on their feet that day over sand and
gravel. Most of them were now dead to the world. On falling out they
had dropped off to sleep without waiting for their rations. Before
giving the order that set the column into motion like a well-oiled
machine, Lane briefly explained the reason for the apparently absurd
command. Military discipline did not require that the men know why
they were being treated like machines, but common sense did. Lane knew
from long experience that an occasional descent to the level of human
decency will get the impossible out of a company that is just about
done. The column moved briskly off, cursing Hu. The first twenty-five
miles before them was a steady grind uphill from 1,500 feet to 6,000
over one of the poorest apologies for a road in all of western China.
At midnight the column halted for thirty minutes at the last telegraph
station east of the Kansu boundary line. Lane, his first lieutenant and
the interpreter went in search of the operator. They located him in the
village gambling den betting on a cockfight.
"What news from Kansu?" Lane asked through his interpreter.
This boy was a Christian convert and knew a few words of English.
"Damn bad," he replied. "You going to Kansu?" he inquired of Lane
through the interpreter.
Lane explained his mission and asked whether it would be possible
to raise anyone at that hour in Teng-shan. The operator was greatly
interested. As a sporting venture he offered to bet that Lane and all
of his men would be killed the next day. The stakes could be left in
the hands of the gambling den boss. Yes, he thought he could raise
the night operator in Teng-shan, provided the Moslems had not yet
martyred him. The night operator also was a Christian convert. When
the cockfight ended suddenly in the deaths of both combatants, the
telegrapher rose obligingly to see what he could do.
In ten minutes he was back, smiling, with a reply. It appeared that the
Teng-shan night operator had been trying for four hours to communicate
with the outside world. Hearing from his Christian brother over the
border in Shen-si that an American column was on its way to rescue
the missionaries, he sent them this simple greeting, "For God's sake
hurry." The column fell in and proceeded immediately up the barren pass.
No matter what the prize, or what voice calls, there is a limit beyond
which human endurance cannot pass. The column went to pieces all of a
sudden at sunrise, just as it was about to descend the pass into the
first long valley of Kansu. Its objective, Teng-shan, was still twenty
miles distant. To preserve the proprieties and save at least the shell
of military discipline, Lane ordered a four-hour halt. The men flung
themselves upon the jagged rocks where they stood. They were asleep
before they hit their stony bed. In those four hours, while the men
slept, the prophecy of Hu the Good was in part fulfilled.
While the exhausted men slept on the mountain page, old Saxby, more
than a thousand miles away in Shanghai, began definitely to play his
part in the drama which was now sweeping to its climax. For the moment
he was being buffeted from one unsympathetic official to the next in an
almost hopeless attempt to get started on his way after Lane.
"I've been in worse messes than this," he reiterated to keep up his
courage. "I'll get there."
* * * * *
The chilly welcome accorded him and his interpreter by the Chinese,
American, French and British alike, had its inevitable effect. In
spite of himself, Saxby fell a victim to the blackest pessimism. He
began to doubt his theory and to suspect that his reward at the end
of his intended journey--if he ever got there--would be a large and
empty mare's nest. Why the dickens hadn't he stayed in Los Angeles?
The desert, the Lane's bungalow, the ashes of Yang's laboratory--any
of these offered greater chances of success than anything he might get
from Lane. Wishing himself anywhere rather than in China, he dropped
into the Army and Navy Club and ordered a bottle of port. As he sat
gloomily sipping his wine he went over every detail of his theory with
critical disgust. One possible check that he had overlooked in his
previous analyses emerged from this searching examination.
"It is probably as wide of the mark as the rest of my guesses," he
muttered as he finished the bottle. "Still, I overlooked it. That's
bad. If there's nothing in this hypothesis I may as well take the next
boat home. Well, it's easily verified one way or the other."
He rose to go in search of the president of the club. It was the
president who had introduced old Saxby to the club and got him a
"distinguished visitor's" privileges for the length of his stay in
Shanghai. When the president saw Saxby coming he tried to dodge.
The eminent geologist had made rather a nuisance of himself with his
persistent buttonholing of anyone who might possibly help him on his
way. Failing to escape, the president made the best of it.
"Not off for Kansu yet, Mr. Saxby?"
"No. And I doubt whether I shall go."
The president brightened. Saxby explained his impending change of heart.
"It all depends on what the Nautical Almanac has to say about the moon
for the third of last month. I know you and the rest of the men here
think I'm a lunatic. I am. And to prove it I want to borrow a Nautical
Almanac--you must have one. If the almanac says it was impossible for
the moon to shine into the east windows of a house in Los Angeles on
the third of last month at any time between the hours of ten at night
and five the next morning, I take the next boat home and leave you in
peace. But if the moon did shine into the windows between those hours,
I shall be forced to pester you till you send me to Kansu or till I
start walking there. You might ask one of the younger naval officers to
give me a hand with the necessary calculations while you are about it.
You know I'm crazy. Better humor me."
The president humored him. With the help of a dapper young ensign Saxby
soon found what he wanted. The moon did shine into the east windows on
the third till approximately two hours after midnight, when it passed
the zenith and threw the east sides of the houses into shadow.
"That settles it," Saxby exclaimed to the apprehensive president. "I
must go on now to Kansu even if I have to walk."
"What has the moon to do with it?" the president asked. Old Saxby did
not look like a lunatic, and in ordinary affairs he seemed sharp enough.
"I'll tell you when you talk the Army or the Navy into giving me an
escort and an interpreter who won't run home when he hears the bullets
singing. How about it? Can't you see I'm no fool? I tell you, on my
word of honor backed by the full force of my scientific reputation--you
can check up on that much--that I know what I'm talking about. This
potty little revolution that all you fellows are making such a fuss
over is nothing to what _may_ happen if I don't get to Kansu in pretty
short order. Mind, I don't say that it will happen; I only say it
_may_. And further, the moon may have nothing to do with the case. It
is a mere hypothesis that I overlooked. Still, since the moon does not
contradict me, I feel more confident that I'm on the right track. Half
an hour ago I was clear down in the dumps. Now I feel that I'm right in
the main, although possibly wrong on every detail."
The president and the ensign exchanged a furtive glance. The emphatic
old chap was clearly daft. How could they rid the club of him without
raising a scandal?
"I suppose you can't give us any hint why all this secrecy is
necessary?" the president suggested.
"That much is easy. As you can verify by looking in _Who's Who_, I
have been a bachelor all my life. I know nothing about women. Still,
I believe it is not the thing to let a woman down when she honors you
with her confidence. Anyhow, I'm an easy mark for any woman who asks
me to do something for her. I promised one that I would never tell on
her--"
"Ah," the ensign and the president commented in unison. Here was
something they thought they could understand. "Husband," Saxby
concluded.
"Oh," they remarked, somewhat crestfallen.
"Because," Saxby continued, "he would probably be shot if I did. There
you have it all. If I tell all I know, an innocent man, technically
guilty, may lose his life. That is one reason I hold my tongue.
Another, more important, is this: If I go off half cocked, there will
be a blue panic all over the United States and Asia. My objective is to
destroy the very real grounds for such a panic--if they still exist--as
quietly as possible. Any army or navy man knows what a panic among the
civilian population will do to the forces at the front when the enemy
is about to start his grand offensive. My situation is exactly similar.
Now, when can I get away for Kansu?"
The president's efforts to "humor" his guest were only half-hearted. He
was beginning to believe that this self-assertive man should be taken
at his own valuation.
"I don't see what the moon has to do with your problem," he concluded,
"unless it helps you in some way to fix the date of a crime--say the
theft of an important document." He shot Saxby a keen glance. "The
Moscow reds are not mixed up in all this by any chance?"
The activities of the communist agents in all departments of the
Chinese armies during the revolution were common and disquieting
knowledge not only to military men but to every civilian on the
streets. Moscow was more feared than the whole of China, and for
obvious reasons. Was Saxby hinting at some vast communist plot which
he alone was in a position to nullify? If so, why had he not come with
proper credentials from the United States Government? Was he perhaps
a secret agent of the Government, on a mission so delicate and so
dangerous that no Government department or cabinet officer could risk
sponsoring him and being found out if Saxby should fall down on his
job? Saxby was not blind before his ludicrous opportunity. The anti-red
nervousness of all Americans, British and French in China had delivered
the president and his military friends into Saxby's hands.
"I can say nothing as to that," he declared guiltily.
Old Saxby, of course, was speaking the literal truth. He could not say
anything about the possibility of the Moscow communists being involved
in his project because he knew nothing whatever about them and, until
the president obligingly mentioned them, had never given them a
thought. He now concentrated his whole mind on Moscow, bolshevists,
communist propaganda and the redder shades of anarchy, in order to look
as guilty as possible. The ensign and the president were studying his
face as attentively as if it were a map of the whole world's future
history.
"You couldn't even drop a hint, I suppose?" the ensign suggested.
Saxby mumbled something indistinct in which the sacred phrase "word of
honor" seemed to occur. He looked as if he were about to be hanged.
In a burst of candor he glanced up suddenly and looked the president
squarely and manfully in the eyes.
"You understand, however, that I must get to Kansu in the shortest time
possible, don't you?"
The president would not admit in so many words that he did.
"I shall have a talk with General Maitland," he promised vaguely.
"May I urge," old Saxby begged, his face as solemn as an undertaker's,
"that you do so without further delay? Although I can tell the general
no more than what I have told you, I shall be glad to lay my case
before him. You will find me in the lounge when the general wants me."
He marched off to the lounge before the president could say yea or nay.
In half an hour he was paged, as he had expected to be. He was now
thoroughly primed for his part.
Old Saxby knew "Hard-boiled Maitland" well by reputation. Maitland was
a queer mixture. When not actively fighting, but only planning to
fight, he was a martyr to nerves. In these trying interludes he earned
a fearsome reputation for drastic severity with his men. The least
infraction of discipline meant court-martial. So heavily addicted was
he to this form of relief that his more level-headed colleagues on
the staff used to call him "court-martial Harry" behind his back. But,
in spite of his faults, Maitland was a competent soldier, if not a
brilliant general. Given a definite, hard task to perform, he snapped
into action and forgot himself and his nerves. As it was Maitland's
personal eccentricities that, in the last analysis, encouraged Nature's
worst, and as the same idiosyncrasies helped in no small measure to
undo the damage in the final phase, he may be given at least a positive
mark of merit for his share in the crisis. Many a better known man came
out of the World War with only a doubtful zero.
The interview was an extremely harassing experience for the general.
At dropping nebulous, disquieting hints old Saxby proved himself a
past-master. In all the six hours he spent that evening conferring with
the general and his staff, Saxby said precisely nothing that meant
anything definite. The very vagueness of his attitude was its most
disturbing quality. More than once in that long grilling the general
glanced uneasily round the room as if to detect Russian spies behind
the Chinese silk hangings.
When the boy entered with a tray of highballs for which the general
himself had rung, Maitland demanded in a loud, military tone why the
devil the boy kept wandering in and out of the room without knocking.
It was a hectic night for an overwrought man whose duty compelled him
to sit on the safety valve of half a dozen anarchistic revolutions. To
aid the general in acquiring a proper frame of mind, Saxby waited till
his host's head was turned and then shot his glass to the tile floor.
Applied psychology is a great force for good--if applied at the right
time. The general jumped as if bombed from below. Thereafter he was old
Saxby's meat.
* * * * *
Lane's footsore men, refreshed by their four hours' sleep and a full
meal, were swinging down the pass toward Teng-shan, still fifteen miles
distant when Markoff, with a thin smile, turned to the pasty Liapanouff
and gave him his parting instructions.
"Now for that fat fool Hu. Stay here and talk to him while I go to the
governor. Don't let White Lily run away. She looks as if she needed
attention," he concluded with a leer, nodding toward the girl. Her
huddled body lay prostrate with grief and horror at her grandfather's
feet.
Liapanouff blabbered some reply and moved off to do his dirty duty. He
walked slowly, for his knees felt as weak as water. No mere remorse
for what he and Markoff had done caused his debility. A lively
apprehension of what might happen to his own flabby neck, should the
fanatical Moslems take a fancy to him, made him the sweating pulp he
was. For he too was an "infidel" to the Mohametans. The vast caverns
of the outer caves were now packed with yelling mobs whose fanatical
hatred Liapanouff himself had helped to fan into flame. Now he would
have given ten minutes of his life--not the proverbial ten years, for
Liapanouff was too great a coward ever to visualize himself voluntarily
letting go of life--to put out that bloodthirsty, flesh-hungry fire of
his own kindling. His greatest chance of safety was at the side of the
prophet Hu.
The old man sat dazed and blind in the glare of a thousand torches,
trying to recall what in God's name he had done, and wondering why in
the name of God he had done it. Liapanouff approached like a bloated
leper and laid one damp, white hand on Hu's vast fore-arm. The huge
face turned and loomed before Liapanouff's. Through the Russian's
clouded mind flashed a memory of a setting sun he had once seen when
a boy on the wintry steppes. The prophet's face flickered in the
torchlight as that watery sun had flickered before it abandoned the
world to the iron grip of a merciless cold. Brushing the memory aside
he began to babble. Hu gave no sign that he comprehended either the
agent's sickly flatteries or the fanatical shouts of his faithful
followers. He turned away his face from the Russian's and stared
stonily at the misty eastern wall of the cavern.
Liapanouff moistened his lips and swallowed nervously. He had had
enough. The certainty that he would get more if Markoff's negotiations
with the governor of Kansu should miscarry in a certain detail,
impelled him to mercy. The chance of failure on Markoff's part was
all but negligible. Still, Hu _might_ escape with a body of followers
sufficient to repay one debt before he died. Better risk Markoff's cold
anger than face Hu's Chinese fury if the one chance in a million should
mature. The Chinese mind has a natural genius for devising strange
forms of death. Liapanouff did not wish to be Hu's inspiration in case
the improbable happened and Hu escaped for a day or a week. He stirred
White Lily fearfully with his foot.
Thinking it was her grandfather who had touched her, she looked up, her
eyes dim with tears, and saw Liapanouff. With a shudder of disgust she
buried her face in her arms. Liapanouff bent over her, shaking in the
uncontrollable uprush of a dozen clutching fears.
"Leave the caves at once," he whispered in her ear. "Markoff--"
He could say no more, choked by his cowardice. After all, Hu could not
escape. Markoff would succeed. If Liapanouff let White Lily go, his
life would be at Markoff's mercy--and Markoff had none. Liapanouff had
assisted at the jehad and he knew. White Lily did not stir. Liapanouff
ventured no second effort to warn her. His own skin was too sensitive.
Hour after hour that strange trio, the broken girl, the stunned old
man and the half-fainting agent of a new gospel, remained motionless,
while the victorious hosannas of the faithful clanged and reverberated
through the vast caverns like a dream of hell, and Markoff rallied
his legions for the next betrayal. The "bloodless jehad of Kansu" was
already history, and Markoff dwelt by preference in the present and the
future. Already he was on the march.
* * * * *
That memorable jehad, now but a troubled memory that would not sleep,
had been imagined, put into action, and finished in the short space
of forty hours. It began with Markoff's whispered suggestions to Hu.
While White Lily fared forth alone to warn the missionaries and earn
her rebuke from the lips of one of them, Markoff explained the details
of the bloodless jehad to Liapanouff. The two agents wandered far into
the secret places of the mountains in complete darkness, footsore and
unafraid, confident of every step of the black way they had traveled a
hundred times.
For fifty black miles or more the vast caverns of Kansu honeycombed the
limestone mountains with a chambered labyrinth of calcite corridors
and pillared halls, each shadowy antrum loftier than the nave of a
great cathedral, curiously carved and hollowed from the living rock by
water seeping drop by drop down to the subterranean rivers for ages. A
tattered tracery of stalactites depended from the arched ceilings of
these silent halls like the bleached banners of long forgotten armies,
and massive pillars of all but transparent whiteness soared from the
undulating pavements to bell out and vanish in the banners. Through
some of these halls the distant rumor of rushing water echoed drowsily,
but most were as soundless as the midnight of a desert. In others
the oppressive stillness palpitated with a deeper silence, as if the
blackness fell away to a bottomless void. These were the "forbidden
caves," where the faithful never wandered.
The wise decree that forbade the curious to explore the forbidden caves
was an ancient tradition that needed no enforcement. The torches of the
first explorers who discovered them revealed these silent caverns for
what they were: unsounded wells of darkness. No echo rose when a stone
was thrown into those black gulfs. The scream of the condemned criminal
hurled down one of those wells thinned and dwindled to silence long
before the wretch who emitted it died. Hu the Good abolished this form
of capital punishment which his fathers had sanctioned for generations,
and the forbidden caves were roped off in eternal darkness.
In preparation for the jehad that was to be bloodless, Markoff and
Liapanouff, feeling along the pitchy corridors, found the copper pins
driven fast into the rock walls. They undid the knotted ropes, pitched
them into the blackness ahead, and laughed. No slap of rope on rock
answered. Silently as bats the two agents turned carefully around where
they stood and felt their cautious way along the wide corridor of
death, back to the main gallery, and thence to the audience hall of the
prophet. They had prepared the road; they must now guide the destined
travelers.
Without venturing to inform Hu that all was in readiness, they hugged
the eastern wall of the audience chamber and flitted out under the
crescent of the exit just as the evening shadows fell athwart the
eastern hills. Turning to the north, they followed the path that White
Lily had taken less than two hours previously.
While the agents toiled that evening to bring about the jehad, Hu sat
dreaming alone in the vast entrance hall. For generations the Moslems
had dwelt in these sacred caves. Every foot of the very hall in which
the old man dreamed was hallowed by the blood of martyrs who had died
for their faith. At first a persecuted handful, the faithful had fled
in seasons of massacre to these friendly caves till the blood madness
of their enemies abated, when the starving remnant would emerge to cry
once more that "There is but one God and Mohamet is his prophet."
The indifference that sooner or later breeds tolerance on all sectarian
hatreds preserved the Moslems. They multiplied and prospered. But they
never forgot the holy caves that had saved their faith when it scarcely
breathed, and the entrance hall became their Mecca. As the decades
passed the feeling of awe and reverence mellowed to affection. The
faithful found in the caves a warm shelter from the bitter mountain
storms, and a haven of peace and comfort for themselves and their
beasts. They stabled their cattle and stored the harvest of their
fields in the dry caverns, and gradually found themselves living
in the caves. The whole vast honey-comb in the limestone mountains
became their citadel and their populous metropolis. Mindful of their
harried past, the faithful, with a new appreciation of the good things
of this life, depreciated the itch for martyrdom, trusted nobody,
and cultivated human prudence. The narrower entrances were walled up
against possible enemies. Only two secret exits, opening miles away on
the mountain side, were left unclosed for emergencies. All that entered
the subterranean city of the Moslems must pass under the crescent
of the audience chamber, where the uncrowned king of forty thousand
faithful reigned.
* * * * *
They had prospered and multiplied. But they never forgot their martyrs,
whose unavenged blood was still visible by torchlight on the rose
quartz floor of their holiest place where, once a year, they celebrated
the feast of the dead. Nor could they lightly forget that their first
prophet, Mohamet the implacable, put infidels to the sword. A rival,
gentler faith, proclaimed the way of peace. Its cocksure converts
belied its humane teachings by prophesying eternal fire for those who
rejected it, and by riotous brawls among themselves to settle minute
differences of doctrine. These blustering braggarts were ripe for
chastisement. Hu had prophesied. They should be chastised and corrected
without the shedding of blood, in accordance with their own professed
faith.
"It is good," Hu rumbled as he nodded drowsily, exhausted by the
incessant labor of keeping the blood circulating through the
mountainous billows of his flesh.
"'There is but one--'"
But he was fast asleep. The battle cry of Islam expired in a futile
puff on his lips.
While Hu dreamed of a whole world purged of infidels, Markoff and
Liapanouff extended the olive branch of mutual understanding and love
to the missionaries and their converts. All that evening, and late into
the following afternoon, they labored to spread the glad tidings that
strife between Moslem and Christian was forever at an end in Kansu.
They were spiritual ambassadors, the two agents declared, from Hu the
Good, to announce a perpetual truce between the warring sects. More,
they offered their late enemies the healing balm of brotherhood. Would
not all come early on the morrow to the audience chamber of Hu the
Good, to seal the bond of a new friendship and celebrate the same with
a feast of love in the less stately caverns? Not only would love in
abundance be provided for their refreshment, but succulent food without
stint. For a busy week had the most skilful cooks among the followers
of Hu the Good toiled to prepare a feast worthy of the occasion and of
the hospitable traditions of old China.
This greeting, larded and made enticing to the ragged with liberal
promises of bounties beyond belief, was carried joyously by the smiling
ambassadors from school to school, from one missionary residence to
the next, and from squalid hovels to squalider market places. By the
invisible telegraph system of all primitive peoples, the invitation
swept the villages for a radius of thirty miles before the ambassadors
of a new era of love had lied eight hours.
By nightfall the mean roads and trackless hillsides were a crawl with
a moving multitude converging toward the crescent mouth of the sacred
mountain. By dawn of the appointed feast day the caverns of Kansu
were jammed by a milling mob that clamored for the feasting to begin.
Markoff and Liapanouff had returned before dawn, but they were not in
the yelling crowd.
Not all who were invited to the feast accepted. The Christian
telegrapher was not credulous. He stuck to his post and tried to
call the governor of Shen-si. Many who would have come gladly were
bedridden. Many more were too young to toil up the steep mountainside
for a feast of love they could not understand, and more were too heavy
to be carried by their mothers. There also were some few cynics who
stayed away. Others had plenty to eat at home and did not hunger for
heathen love. Of the white missionaries more than one hesitated long
before subduing their unworthy doubts of a fellowman's offer of love,
and consented only with reluctance to shepherd the glad pilgrimage of
their converts. Three refused outright to go. If Hu had repented it was
his business to come to them for forgiveness. Two who got as far as
the crescent entrance turned back, unable to force their way in. One
dreamy-eyed man with a gray beard, who had entered early and who stood
near the exit, fled when the killing began.
It was a bloodless jehad. Not a sword was drawn, not a shot fired. An
authoritative shouting and concerted waving of flares from the eastern
wall of the cavern gained the momentary attention of the clamoring mob
in the reception hall. The Moslems were inviting their brothers-to-be
to begin the feasting. The flares receded into the gloomy cavern behind
the announcers and a river of humanity streamed into the darkness.
Presently the flaring torches reappeared at the sides of the black
entrance as if to mark the hospitable portal. The volume of the mob
moving slowly but irresistibly forward urged those already in the
corridor of death onward to their doom. To the very lip of the black
well the broad sluiceway was lit up by flaring torches stuck securely
into copper sockets on the white, glittering walls. Within a hundred
feet of the fall the crest of the advancing mob damned up in sudden
panic. Their shouts of terror were drowned in the clamor of the main
torrent. All knew now that they were betrayed. A tempest of fanatics
armed with staves and stones broke upon the rear and flanks of the
packed mob in the audience hall, herding the unarmed multitude to their
slaughter. The crescent exit was barred by a regiment of gigantic men
yelling the battle cry of Islam. There was but one motion possible,
forward. As the tide vanished into the insatiable maw, the cohorts
of the prophet swept the adjacent caverns clear of the curious, the
laggards and the timid who had come early to explore, and who had
dispersed like fallen leaves before the wind down the vast galleries
when the feasting began.
Once more the tide in the audience hall swelled to its full volume,
and again dwindled to a feeble eddy. Again and again as the sweepers
worked farther and farther into the labyrinth of caves the living tide
rose and fell monotonously. Crest after crest of the human river leapt
the lip of the bottomless well to flutter out on the void in tattered
spray. Not one drop of blood was shed.
* * * * *
Only the memory of it remained. Drunk with victory, the faithful danced
before their prophet who had purged Kansu of infidels. He did not hear
their hosannas. A sharper clamor, now stilled forever, beat incessantly
upon his tortured soul. When it was too late Hu had realized his folly.
The sudden onslaught of his fanatical followers, when they burst like
a whirlwind upon the flanks of the helpless mob, awoke him to the full
horror of what he had done. His prophecy had engendered the slaughter.
Rising to his feet he had lifted his mighty voice in all the strength
and thunder which his older followers remembered from their youth, and
which had not been heard in Kansu for forty years. For ten minutes Hu
was young again, strong and dominant as he had ever been. But he could
no more have quenched the mad fury of his followers than he could
have put out the fires of all hell with his tears. He commanded, he
besought, he prophesied, he wept; they were deaf. Not Mohamet himself
could have stemmed that merciless slaughter. Exhausted by futile
entreaties, Hu surrendered to his senility and sank back, an old and
defeated man, staring blindly at the constant ebb and flow of the human
tide. The rise and fall of that struggling mass no doubt had some
significance, but what it might be Hu was too old to remember. At last
the tide rose no more. The monotonous recurrence of ebb and flow gave
way to an eternity of noise. He seemed to be alone in space, isolated
in time. Once a white face seemed to be looking up in the extremity
of fear into his own. It was a man's face, and familiar. But Hu could
not recall whose it was. A huddled body lay at his feet; why did it
not move? He knew that it was alive. The world had crashed and gone to
pieces. Why did not the interminable echo of its ruin come to an end?
The celebrants petrified suddenly in their mad dance. Had they heard
aright? Yes! The gigantic guards at the crescent entrance were shouting
a warning that froze the blood in the hot veins of the dancers.
"The yellow banners!"
Markoff was returning with his new friend and dupe, the governor of
Kansu. And after him marched a disciplined horde of armed men, who were
neither Christian nor Mohametan, but merely Chinese. This was the fine
flower of three months' masterly treachery. The Chinese Moslems had
annihilated the Chinese Christians and their white friends; the Chinese
of the older faiths would wipe out the victors. The yellow banner of
the dragon in its turn should go down to defeat.
The advancing horde was well armed. In sending to his friend, the
revolutionary general, the arms of the Moslems, the governor of Kansu
had squeezed a tax of one rifle in every four. The arms of his own men
were thus augmented by enough to swell his forces by two regiments.
They advanced up the sunny mountainside singing.
The sudden cessation of the shouting in the audience chamber roused Hu
to his senses. At his feet White Lily still lay like a crushed flower.
She had heard the shout of the guards and she knew the meaning of the
yellow banners. She did not stir. Why flee? By lying where she was she
might drink deep of oblivion and win eternal peace before the hour was
out. As Hu bent down to lift the wilted form the whole of what he had
done flashed upon his mind. He straightened up lest his hand defile her.
Liapanouff, hearing the singing of the advancing Chinese, started to
creep toward the crescent of yellow sunshine. Hu's huge bulk leaped
after him. Again he was a young man. One enormous hand grasped the
Russian's right arm and dragged the limp coward back to where White
Lily lay. The audience hall was already deserted but for Hu, White Lily
and Liapanouff. Like panic-stricken rabbits the Moslems had vanished to
seek safety by hiding in the darkest caverns.
"White Lily," Hu said, "if you ever loved me, stand up!"
She stood, but avoided her grandfather's eyes.
"The yellow banners will be here in a few moments," Hu continued. His
voice was that of a young man. "I know that you fear them no more than
I, for sleep is sweet. If all your love for me is not dead, do what I
ask. Take food and water for three days' journey and leave these caves
by the hidden way that you know. Make your way to Shen-si and seek out
the governor. Tell him all that has happened and ask him in my name to
come here and make peace between my people and those who follow the
yellow banner of Kansu. There must be no more killing. Blood cannot
wipe out blood. I am guilty and I will pay. My people must be spared.
Hasten, or you will perish."
She flung herself in his arms.
"I will not leave you. Your death shall be my death."
"Go, if you have ever loved me!"
"I cannot, unless you come with me."
"How can I? This great body of mine would stick in the narrow places.
But I will follow by another way."
"You promise?"
"I promise. It is a longer way, but I will join you when I am free.
Hurry! They are almost here. Remember my message. Goodbye, my White
Lily."
She ran to one of the caves where food and water might be found. Hu
watched her out of sight. Confident that she was safe and would bear
his message of mercy to the governor of Shen-si, Hu turned to his
immediate task. Disregarding the screams and frantic struggles of the
thing in his grasp, he dragged it with him toward the eastern wall
of the cavern. The first of the avengers leaped through the yellow
crescent just as Hu strode like a colossus into the black corridor of
death. He shook the breath out of the limp rag in his hand.
"Be quiet! You have earned the wages of folly. If I should kill you I
should do no wrong, for you are neither beast nor human."
An occasional torch still glowed somberly in its socket. The pair
marking the lip of the well were flickering out fitfully the last
remnants of their life.
"Open your eyes and look down," Hu commanded. For perhaps ten seconds
he held the white face over the black void. "Have you seen?"
Crazed with fear Liapanouff screamed incoherent prayers which he had
not uttered since he was a boy.
"Whatever you say is a lie," Hu cut in coldly. "No man can see the
bottom of this pit."
A patter of hurrying footsteps sounded along the corridor behind them.
"Your friends would save you," Hu remarked. He threw the struggling
wretch face down on the stone floor and planted one enormous foot
firmly on his back. "I am Chinese," he continued calmly, as he quickly
divested himself of his prophet's robes and tossed them far back into
the corridor. "My people say it is good for a man's soul that he should
die slowly with his eyes open. It is a long way to the bottom of this
pit."
He stiffened, listening intently. The rabble of pursuit, headed by the
panting Markoff, burst out of the darkness into the dying glow of the
torches. Just before he stumbled headlong over the prophet's robes,
Markoff saw the naked form of Hu bend swiftly down and grasp Liapanouff
by an ankle. For an instant the gigantic Hu dangled the screaming
wretch over the abyss. Then he opened his hand. Liapanouff shot from
sight and his screams dwindled to silence.
[Illustration: _For an instant the gigantic Hu dangled the screaming
wretch over the abyss. Then he opened his hand. Liapanouff shot from
sight and his screams dwindled to silence._]
Stepping back five paces to gain momentum, Hu raised his arms high
above his head like a swimmer about to dive. Leaping forward he plunged
into the black well without uttering a sound.
CHAPTER VII
The Dragon
Two miles from Teng-shan, and about three-quarters of a mile from
the entrance to the caves, Lane's men met the first survivor. A
gray-bearded man, evidently a missionary judging from his clothes,
marched along the road waving his arms and singing, in a high falsetto,
shrill snatches of hymns. When he saw the column of marines swinging
toward him he stopped and peered intently through the late afternoon
sunshine as if to read fine script. Having deciphered the invisible
words, he broke into a shout of laughter and yelled at the men,
"Mahomet is God and Allah is his prophet!"
Lane halted the column and, with his first lieutenant, captured the
man. They got nothing out of him beyond curious perversions of the
battle cry of Islam, an incoherent torrent of words, and the remark,
whispered with an air of great secrecy, that he had denied his master.
They turned him loose to wander at will.
"There seems to have been a massacre or something," the lieutenant
observed. "Crazy as a loon. Acts as if he were shell-shocked."
Lane agreed, and the column marched on to the cracked singing of
"Onward Christian Soldiers" by the madman. He was still singing when
they rounded a buttress of the foothills and swung into full view of
Teng-shan and the entrance to the caves.
"It still seems to be going strong," the lieutenant remarked, referring
to the jehad. A sharp order brought the men to the double, pounding
over the rubble in an oblique ascent to the crescent entrance. The last
regiment of the army with the yellow banners was just about to stream
into the caves. That tail-end alone outnumbered the marines five to one.
Lane's orders were to provoke no bloodshed. They seemed ludicrously
superfluous in the present circumstances. The Chinese were fully
armed. One flick of the dragon's tail would wipe Lane's column off the
hillside. The huge body of the brute, its real fighting strength, was
of course out of sight in the caves. What remained visible was an ample
warning to use common sense. Lane decided to halt.
Leaving the column in charge of his subordinate officers, he
went forward alone with the interpreter to parley. A white flag,
handkerchief or other mark of truce seemed unnecessary. If the Chinese
wanted to fire, a piece of cloth wouldn't stop them. Why should it?
Lane argued, mistakenly imagining that these men were butchering the
missionaries and their converts.
The crawling dragon tail ceased moving. The Chinese officers had
noticed the strange troops arriving on their private battlefield. They
were too astonished to order a volley, even if such seemed the best
policy. The interpreter showed signs of nervousness.
"They will shoot," he muttered, and bolted like a rabbit down the
mountainside toward Teng-shan.
Lane paused long enough to speed the fugitive with a parting curse
and proceeded toward his objective, wondering how the devil he was to
make himself understood. As he was to learn in a moment he needed no
interpreter.
A lean vulture of a man in European civilian clothes emerged from his
station at the entrance to the caves and advanced to meet the captain.
"Looks like a Russian," Lane remarked to the hillside in general.
"Probably a red at that. Well, I guess the boys are in for it."
Markoff opened hostilities at once. It was no accident that had posted
him on sentry duty outside the caves while the Chinese marched in.
Having witnessed the end of his fellow agent, and not being a man of
outstanding courage, Markoff deemed it prudent to return to the exit
and wait outside until the last of his new friends entered. He was off
with the old love forever, but the old love had not yet been heard
from. A sudden flurry of Moslems might well do to him what Hu had done
to Liapanouff. Like all diabolically cruel men, Markoff was a physical
coward from skin to marrow. He now studied Lane's uniform minutely.
"American?" he screeched.
"Can't hear. Come closer."
"Are you Americans?" Markoff demanded from the comparative safety of
thirty feet.
"Marines. Looking for white missionaries. Know any?"
Markoff ignored the inquiry. His rattlesnake jaw set and a mask of
fanatical hatred froze on his cruel face.
"The governor orders me to tell you that he will tolerate no
capitalistic aggressions in the province of Kansu. Your presence under
arms here is an act of war. Surrender unconditionally or be shot down."
A startlingly vivid image of a bungalow in Los Angeles slowly
crystalized on the air before Lane's eyes. He saw Isabel reading on the
veranda. Four-year-old Tom was dangling a piece of paper at the end of
a string before the indifferent nose of the lofty Hoot. Isabel laid
her book aside and got up to shift the sprinkler from the lawn to the
bed of marigolds. The colors dissolved and the curiously real mirage
vanished.
The inconsequential interlude cleared the captain's mind. He could not
afford to get killed. Nor could the boys behind him. They were worth
more than their life insurance. He must use his head and bluff it out
somehow.
"From Moscow, aren't you?" he asked casually, as if Markoff had not
delivered his awkward ultimatum.
"Surrender or be shot!"
Lane appeared to consider. He realized that an appeal to the governor
would be futile. Without his own interpreter he was helpless. This red
fanatic would translate Lane's questions concerning the missionaries
into a declaration of war upon China by the bankers of America.
Surrender probably meant death by torture. He temporized.
"Not so fast. All we want is to get track of the white missionaries and
escort them back to Shanghai. We met one about a mile back on the road.
Where are the rest?"
"In there."
Markoff jerked his head in the direction of the cave. He could not
restrain the smile that twisted his lips like a grinning snake's. Lane
guessed, but guessed wrong.
"Being killed?"
"No. They're all dead."
"Then what's all this fuss about?"
"A punitive expedition. The Moslems massacred the Christians. These
soldiers are Chinese--neither one sect nor the other. The governor is
in command. He will stand no religious riots in his province."
"That's a sound policy. Where do you come in?"
"The Moslems murdered my fellow adviser to the governor of Kansu."
"And what was _he_ doing?"
"What business is that of an American like you?" Markoff screamed.
"Capitalist robbers and murderers! Surrender unconditionally, or I
advise the governor to open fire at once."
"All right. I guess what you say goes with him. My orders are not to
fire until we are deliberately fired upon. Now, just this for yourself.
Those boys behind me will put up one hell of a scrap when you do give
the signal. Don't bite off more than you can chew. The whole United
States army and navy are behind us. You know what that means, I guess."
* * * * *
Markoff was listening. Encouraged by the beginning of success, Lane
tried a little bluffing. Had the Russian been as sure of himself with
the governor as his ultimatum seemed to imply, he would have ordered
the firing to begin immediately, instead of listening to a speech.
"The rest of the marines are just a few miles east of us in Shen-si.
They will be here tonight or early tomorrow morning. If they find us
missing they will hang the governor and chase you as far as Moscow--if
you're a good runner. Then one of them will stick a bayonet into
you where it hurts most. Better reconsider your ultimatum. Tell the
governor we only want to look for the missionaries. Give him my promise
that we leave without firing a shot the minute our job is done."
Markoff leered in the captain's face.
"You tell him yourself."
"I would, like a shot," Lane replied indifferently, "if I knew any
Chinese."
"Where's your interpreter?"
"Back there with the boys. He was too scared to talk, so I left him
behind."
"Call him now."
"Too much bother. You speak English like an Englishman anyway, so
what's the use?"
"None. I'll be your interpreter. Come with me."
"No, thanks. If those Chinks shoot me in the back before I reach my
men--look out. They'll get you, too."
"I don't think so. Your men are good, but they can't shoot round a
corner. I shall retire to the cave. Goodbye."
Lane turned and sauntered unconcernedly back toward the column. The
game was up. Well, if he failed to reach his immediate objective the
boys would give a good account of themselves. Too bad it had to end
this way. If that damned interpreter hadn't bolted things might have
gone differently. He glanced up at the blue sky, involuntarily, like a
man about to be executed. The field of his vision included the dip in
the mountains which marked the pass from Kansu into Shen-si. Could be
believe his eyes? An exclamation burst from his lips. He turned in his
tracks and shouted to the retreating Markoff.
"Look there! Coming down over the pass. That's ours!"
Already a faint hum droned on the evening air. The Chinese stood
paralyzed with fright. The drone rapidly swelled to a whirring roar
and the wings of the huge creature became visible to their staring
eyes. With yells of terror their regiment broke and scattered in panic
down the mountain side. Not one of those dwellers in primitive Kansu
had even seen a flying dragon that roared and smoked as it outflew the
wind. The huge bombing plane swooped directly toward them, circled
thrice at full speed low above their fleeing rabble, and soared
suddenly upward with a rush to spy out a safe landing place. The
terrified Chinese, governor, officers and all, lay stiff with fear
where they had fallen, or crawled mechanically over the rubble in
search of safety.
"Into the cave!" Lane shouted, not waiting to see where the plane
landed.
The marines rushed the entrance without opposition. Markoff, however,
had preceded him. Lane caught a fleeting glimpse of him in the dim
light trailing the Chinese who fled in all directions into the blacker
shadows. They, too, had heard the awful roar of the dragon. In fact
the cave acted as a resonator to intensify that terrible sound a
hundredfold. In five minutes the marines had the audience hall to
themselves. The governor of Kansu was among those who had retreated to
Teng-shan.
Lane lost no time in digging in. Guards were posted at the entrance of
all the caverns opening into the audience chamber and a double guard
at the crescent entrance to the whole vast labyrinth. They located the
stores of torches, flares and food. Comfortable beds were dragged out
of side caves, and half the men at once turned in for a four-hour sleep
while the others mounted guard. It was better than being in barracks at
home.
The governor's soldiers were not the only victims of panic caused by
the roaring, smoking dragon. A few minutes after sunset White Lily
emerged from the inconspicuous secret exit. This was a black hole, no
bigger than a large badger's burrow, in a desolate jumble of shattered
rose quartz that had burst through the ancient limestone. Exhausted of
body by her long crawl through the last miles of the narrow burrow, and
still stunned by the memory of the jehad, she sank down on the rocks
and fell fast asleep. Although she had planned to travel all night
she could not go on. The natural reaction of her flesh after a day of
horror overcame her spirit.
In that brief, deep slumber she lived again the whole eighteen years
of her life, including the last day. The clamor of the victims in the
cavern again rang in her ears. Then it became a strong, resonant voice
prophesying doom for all whose bloodlust makes them lower than the
brutes. The voice of her dream gathered volume and prophesied that the
innocent brutes who slaughter one another for natural sustenance, and
not for the sake of righteousness, shall also perish from the earth.
The prophecy became a destroying roar that foretold the end of all
plant and animal life. Suddenly she woke in terror, conscious that she
was not merely dreaming.
The golden twilight still lingered on the evening air. She must have
slept for a few moments. Gleaming like burnished copper in the yellow
light the huge body of some strange flying creature cleft the air
directly over her head, and straight as an arrow shot with the speed of
a dream down the pass toward the entrance to the caves.
She had no conception what it was, or what might be its purpose. A
false instinct, bred by her vivid dream on the black memory of the
morning, whispered that this monster had left its lair beyond the
mountains to avenge the slaughter of the Christians. Did not their
teachers prophesy that the angels would descend with flame and sword
and judge and damn all unbelievers? She had heard this from the very
beggars who threatened her with everlasting fire. Her grandfather was
guilty. With his own lips he had sworn to pay the price of his guilt.
This fiend of the air had come to collect that price.
"I will pay," she cried. Filled with a new strength she raced down
the mountain side and ran as she had never run in her life toward the
crescent entrance, "Wait, wait! I am coming."
* * * * *
About half an hour after Lane had posted his sentries, the man on
outpost duty in front of the entrance heard resolute footsteps
crunching up the mountain side in the dark. At his peremptory challenge
the footsteps halted instantly.
"Take me to Captain Lane," a voice shouted through the darkness. "I'm
sent here by General Maitland. From my voice I guess you know I'm
white. As I know nothing of military etiquette you'll have to use your
common sense and pass me. My business is urgent."
After the usual formalities Maitland's messenger was brought before the
captain, who stared in astonishment at the hatless, baldheaded elderly
man in a baggy alpaca suit.
"May I ask who you are, sir?"
"Jonathan Saxby. Personal messenger from General Maitland. I must
deliver my message in private."
"Very well. Come this way."
When they had withdrawn out of earshot of the men, Saxby plunged into
the middle of things.
"General Maitland instructed me to convey this verbal order to you:
'If Russian agents cause you any trouble, eliminate them, but use
discretion and employ all means in your power to avert a clash between
Russia and the United States.' Now," Saxby continued, "I suppose it
is clear why General Maitland chose to transmit that order by word
of mouth rather than on paper. Code is too easily deciphered. And if
you are the man he takes you for, you won't go shooting reds in broad
daylight on the village streets."
"All that is obvious enough," Lane remarked. "But what I can't see is
this. How did General Maitland know there was a Moscow agent within a
thousand miles of here? The Chinese prohibit the use of wireless by
foreigners, and the telegraph lines are out for three hundred miles."
"General Maitland didn't know," Saxby replied, "until I told him."
"And how did you find out?"
"Intuition," old Saxby chuckled. "By the way, are there any Russians in
the neighborhood?"
"One that I know of. There seems to have been another, but the Moslems
eliminated him."
Old Saxby burst into a roar of laughter.
"Well, I'm hanged," he choked in his spasm. "There is something in what
I made Maitland believe after all. When you get back to Shanghai tell
him from me always to act on his nerves."
"Didn't you know of these agents?"
"I? How could I? Moscow means nothing to me. Anyway, I'm here." He
stopped suddenly and stood staring at the floor of the cave. All his
mirth had evaporated. "This is bad," he said. "The ideal conditions
again--limestone and quartz. How long have you been walking about in
here?"
"Since your plane landed," Lane replied, thinking he had to deal with a
lunatic. "You got us in for the first time."
"Is that the uniform you had on when you left Los Angeles?"
"No." The captain was too dazed to resist answering.
"What did you do with the other one?"
"As the salt water had ruined it--I was pitched into the sea, I suppose
you know, when the _Sheridan_ sank--I borrowed some clothes from one
of the officers on the _Sherman_ and chucked my own overboard. Then in
Shanghai I got a complete new outfit."
"Shirt, shoes and all?" old Saxby demanded tensely.
"Yes. But what is all this about, anyway?"
"Another experimental error!" Saxby groaned. "I might have known. Of
course the immersion in salt water would ruin your clothes. I'm as
blind as a bat. Why in thunder didn't I see that before I left Los
Angeles? Here endeth my wild-goose chase. Thank Heaven the Russian
agents didn't turn out to be a myth. I'll have something to tell
Maitland. Well, I had better be going."
He started toward the exit of the cave. In one stride Lane overtook him.
"You might tell me what it's all about before you leave. I'm curious.
You don't look cracked."
"I'm not. Merely a bungler, that's all. Oh, by the way, I almost
forgot. Your wife asked me to give you her love and tell you to take
care of yourself."
"Thanks. But you didn't fly over a thousand miles from Shanghai just
to tell me that, did you? According to your own account you went to a
lot of trouble to fool the general in order to get here. Again, my wife
knew you were coming. There's a big rat under all this. Sergeant!"
The sergeant stepped briskly forward and saluted.
"Put this man under arrest."
"What the devil do you mean?" old Saxby shouted. "I'm not in the army."
"From now on you are. And until you find your tongue you clean the
cave--or boil rice."
"I _can't_ talk."
"All right. Shut up."
Bedding was found for the prisoner and, protesting vociferously, a bed
was made up on the floor. The guard was no amateur at swearing, but
old Saxby almost made him blush. Finally the guard had to silence him
forcibly as he was disturbing the men asleep. Saxby neither slumbered
nor slept.
Barely had Lane disposed of this problem when another was presented
to him. Two of the sentries half led, half carried an exhausted young
Chinese girl before him. Her blue tunic was torn and her shoes were
mere tatters of rags. One of the men held up his torch so that the
captain might see her plainly. He looked into a pair of eyes that had
seen death and a face of great beauty that would never lose its fixed
tragedy.
"What's the trouble," he asked gently.
In reply she wailed over and over again some phrase in Chinese.
"She evidently knows no English. Damn that interpreter! Bring the
prisoner here."
Old Saxby was walked up under guard.
"Know any Chinese?" Lane demanded.
"Not a word."
"Did you bring an interpreter with you?"
Saxby shook his head.
"The pilot and the mechanician are both young fellows in the navy. But,
if I may offer a suggestion--"
"Go ahead."
"The telegraph night operator says he is a Christian. He seems to know
some English. I left him trying to talk to my boys. They stayed with
the plane of course." He scanned White Lily from head to foot. "This
girl seems about all in. If I weren't under arrest I would suggest that
you give her my bed. Her feet are nothing but bleeding pulp."
Lane looked down.
"Put her In the prisoner's bed and get hot water to wash her feet. The
prisoner will attend to her."
* * * * *
Old Saxby fished into his capacious coat pocket and drew out Yang's
notebook and two clean handkerchiefs.
"I've had enough arrest," he remarked, opening the green stained
notebook and extracting a small folded paper. "I know when I'm licked,
and I'll talk any time you care to listen. This may help you to
believe me." He handed Lane the slip of paper. "Is this your wife's
handwriting?" He carefully restored the notebook to his pocket.
Lane examined the writing minutely and nodded. The note read, "Believe
what the bearer of this paper tells you."
"You are no longer under arrest, Mr. Saxby. I must attend to this
first."
The captain ordered the sergeant to take two squads down to Teng-shan,
find the telegraph night operator, and bring him at once to the
audience chamber. Rejoining Saxby he found the latter standing
doubtfully by the side of White Lily's pallet with the handkerchiefs in
his hand. A dish of water and antiseptic stood ready by her feet.
"It has just occurred to me that I had better not touch her," Saxby
explained. "My hands and these handkerchiefs may be infected. She
has evidently run a long distance over flints and broken limestone
practically barefoot. I can't take the risk of touching her. Not so
long ago I saw a Chinaman come to a very bad end. It is just beginning
to dawn on me what may have been directly responsible for his peculiar
death. The circumstances of this girl's injuries are much like those of
the other case. Hadn't your surgeon better attend to her?"
"He's asleep, all in. Here, I'll do it. I asked you rather than one of
the ambulance men to do it because you are older than any of us, and
somehow it seemed more decent. Some of these oriental women don't like
young men doctors. Let me have your handkerchiefs, will you?"
Saxby hastily thrust them into his pocket.
"That's just the point. I'm convinced now that they're badly infected.
So are my hands. I'll explain later. Tear off a piece of her own
clothing. She's only half conscious."
Lane tore off a piece of her sleeve and did the best he could.
"That will have to do until the surgeon wakes up. I suppose she's a
Christian convert. Naturally she would run to us for protection. There
seems to have been a hell of a row--the Russian implied as much. We're
too late to be of much use I guess."
They left her moaning. It was not physical pain that distracted her.
"I will pay," she repeated in her own tongue, believing she knew what
price would be demanded of her, and not fearing it. She would suffer
anything to pay her grandfather's debt and thereby win mercy for her
people and eternal oblivion for herself.
"Now," Lane remarked to Saxby, "let's hear what you have to say. First,
exactly how did you ever get here?"
Old Saxby, not without a ruffle of pride, recounted how he had worked
upon General Maitland's nerves and how the nerves had done the rest.
"The upshot of it was that he packed me off in a bombing plane at six
in the morning, Shanghai time. We should have been here two hours
earlier--it's only a little over a thousand miles--if the pilot hadn't
lost his way in the fog over the mountains. It was all plain sailing
as long as we could see the rivers. After that it was dead reckoning.
Still, he did a good job."
"He saved us. That infernal Russian would have told the Chinese to
fire. We might have shot a few hundred before cashing in our chips; but
we hadn't a dog's chance of routing them. And I doubt if we can hold
this place if they have machine guns--which they probably have. The
Russians have been arming the Chinese for the past two years. Well, we
shall see. Now what about the rest of it? Why did my wife write that
note?"
"First let me explain why I should prefer to hold my tongue, and why I
tried to until you put me under arrest. What I have to say may disturb
you about the safety of your own family. In such a mental condition
you wouldn't be fit to lead the band at a Sunday school picnic, much
less an expedition in a hostile country. You almost certainly would run
into danger by not being able to concentrate on your job. Before going
farther, I want to emphasize that there is not the slightest ground
for worrying about anything in Los Angeles. It was all quiet there
when I left, and I feel sure it will remain so. My theory _must_ be
right that far. Again I didn't want to tell you anything because it was
unnecessary. The more people who know about what may happen somewhere,
somehow, the worse for us all. If one lets it out prematurely the whole
world will hear of it. Now, have patience with me. I'm trying to break
it gently. I don't want any panic. Must you have the story, or will you
let me go back to Shanghai in the morning--provided we have enough gas
left?"
Lane laughed. "Let's have the story. From your hints I judge it will be
exciting enough to keep me awake. I dare not turn in till daylight--if
then. Shoot."
"Very well. You are sitting opposite a man who is more dangerous than
a billion tons of dynamite. I may explode at any minute--how, exactly,
I don't yet know. But I may. You noticed, of course, that I did not
touch the girl? And have you noticed that I am very careful not to
touch anything with my hands?" The captain nodded. "All right. I must
ask you to lend me a pair of leather gloves. Some of the men must have
a pair--any kind will do. I can't hold my hands up indefinitely. The
gloves must be leather."
Thinking again that he had to do with a lunatic who needed humoring,
but who might have information of some value, Lane sent an orderly to
fetch a pair of leather gauntlets from his own kit. When they were
brought Saxby held out his hands for Lane to put them on.
"Safety and prophylaxis first. I mustn't touch the outsides. My hands
may be infected. If there is a fight and I get killed, don't bury me
near sand or limestone. See that my body is burned in the hottest fire
you can make, and keep the fire going for at least forty-eight hours.
Don't forget. Your wife told you to believe what _I_ say. The first
thing I say is this: I am not crazy. The second--"
He was interrupted by a sudden disturbance at the entrance. Lane
hurried to see what was happening. Saxby followed. They found two of
the guards wrestling with a man apparently out of his mind.
"I must see the Commander!" the man shouted, struggling to get free.
"Take me to him. Ten thousand Christians will be slaughtered if--"
"I am in command here," Lane said quietly, confronting the man. "We met
you on the road late this afternoon. You were singing. Remember? What's
on your mind? Is there going to be another jehad?"
"Another?" the missionary repeated in a daze. "Has there been one?"
"I don't know. A Russian told me there had. He said the dead are in
here, somewhere in these caves. They may be, for all I know. We can't
search till we find out how strong the enemy is. What do you know about
it all? Come over here and sit down."
* * * * *
The gray-bearded man followed obediently. Lane passed within a few feet
of the spot where White Lily lay, and went on some yards so that their
talking might not disturb her. Glancing back to see if he was followed,
he saw the missionary standing like a statue of haggard old age at the
foot of White Lily's pallet, staring down at her. Lane joined him.
"Ever seen her before?"
"How did she get here?" the man muttered hoarsely. "I left her just
before sunset and I know she did not overtake me on the way. I ran."
"Come over here and tell us about it. Things will straighten out as
you talk. Now," he resumed when the dazed man had seated himself on an
outcrop of ancient granite, "begin at the beginning and let us have it
all."
The missionary's account was coherent and apparently straightforward
as far as it went. The dates, however, were inverted. He said that two
Russians, Liapanouff and Markoff, had issued an invitation to all the
Christians of Kansu to seal a pact of perpetual peace with Hu the Good
and his Moslem followers. He went on to relate that the Chinese girl,
now lying exhausted but a few feet away, had warned him of treachery,
saying that the Christians, once enticed into the caves, were to be
massacred. She had told him so that very evening. The jehad, she
declared, was to take place the following morning. He had come, the
missionary declared, to intercede with the Moslem soldiers and to lay
down his life, if necessary to warn all converts away from the trap.
"You are sure the girl warned you?" Lane asked. "Possibly at the risk
of her own life? Her people, I take it, will kill her if they hear of
her treachery. That's what it is, you see, from their point of view.
Sure this is the same girl?"
"How could I forget her after what she told me?" He stopped suddenly,
staring into Lane's face as if he saw a spirit. "Where have I seen
you?" he whispered.
"On the road. Just before sunset. Don't you remember?"
The man shook his head, struggling to pierce the black clouds that
baffled his memory.
"Ask him if he speaks Chinese," Saxby suggested in a low tone. "Most
probably he does, unless he has forgotten how."
"I'm coming to that," Lane replied under his breath. He addressed the
missionary. "Perhaps the Chinese girl can tell us something. You speak
the language, of course?"
"Like a native. I have taught the gospel fourteen years in Teng-shan."
"That's fine. See what this girl has to say. Ask her what happened
after she left you. By the way, you said the names of the Russians were
Liapanouff and Markoff?" The man nodded. "One is a lean fellow," Lane
continued, "with a sort of hawk face and a ratty mustache--brown, like
his hair. Which is he?"
"Markoff."
Lane turned to Saxby.
"That's the bird behind us somewhere in these caves with an army of
crazy Chinks. I think I'll act on General Maitland's orders and shoot
Markoff on sight. He seems to be a pretty bad egg."
The missionary was bending over White Lily, peering into her eyes.
Seeing who confronted her, and imagining that the avenger of the
Christians had come to lead her to death, she sprang up with an eager
cry.
"What does she say?" Lane asked quietly.
"She says she will pay."
"For what?"
In reply to the dazed old man's cross-questions White Lily told him
with ghastly brevity exactly what had happened. They might kill
her, she concluded, if they would spare her grandfather. He was not
responsible for the jehad; he had tried to stop it when it began. He
was an old man, not strong of mind. She was more to blame than he,
for she had humored his childish fancy when Markoff and Liapanouff
corrupted him by months of flattery and suggestion. In exchange for
her life she asked that they promise not to harm her grandfather, and
that the governor of Kansu be made to prohibit any killing of Moslems
in reprisal. Hu himself had said that blood cannot wipe out blood, also
that he alone was guilty. She, not Hu, was guilty; let her punishment
settle the score forever. They might throw her into the well of
darkness at once. She was ready, and would be glad to forget it all.
When the missionary finished his translation Saxby and the captain
cross-examined White Lily sharply concerning the details of the jehad,
asking finally for an estimate of the number slaughtered.
"She says ten thousand."
"Clearly an exaggeration," Lane commented. "There never were that many
converts in the whole of western China. The rest of her story hangs
together. She hasn't contradicted herself once on cross-examination."
"Not once," Saxby agreed. "Her ten thousand is natural enough. To
anyone with the instincts of a human being the number must have seemed
practically infinite. If this is the sort of thing our race--for these
fiends were men like ourselves--is capable of," he continued savagely,
"I feel tempted to let nature take its course and wipe out our kind
forever. The only excuse for not doing so is the fact that occasionally
our human race does breed something better--like this Chinese girl. We
must prevent these Chinamen from butchering the Moslems next. She has
earned that much from us."
He was cut short by the ecstatic singing of the madman.
"'Ten thousand times ten thousand
Are clad in robes of white--'"
"Shut up!" Lane ordered. "Tell this girl that neither she nor her
grandfather will be killed. My men will permit no reprisals. Tell her
we do this merely because she has shown us how."
"Are the guilty not to be punished?" the missionary demanded.
"Certainly. But not by murder, either wholesale or retail, with one
possible exception. The Russian agents seem to be responsible. One is
dead. The other will be captured. We shall give him all the rights
of a court-martial. If he is found guilty he will be executed. If
you have an ounce of common sense you will see that the girl, or her
grandfather, is right. The moment the governor's men start killing
the Moslems--at the very first reprisal--a religious war will break
out here and it won't end till the whole of Asia, including Russia,
and most of the rest of the world is drenched in blood. I'm going to
use my horse sense. Never mind the law of the case. Now give the girl
my message and give it straight. If I find out that you have made any
mistake I'll put you under arrest. I expect another interpreter of my
own here by sunrise or very shortly after."
As surely as a bear the scowling madman translated Lane's message.
When she grasped its meaning White Lily flung herself at Lane's feet.
"You did it," he said. "I wish you could understand English. Don't
thank me."
They left her to herself.
As they walked away, the madman began expostulating.
"I shall go to the governor myself!" he finally shouted in an insane
passion.
"No you won't," Lane snapped. "Corporal! Put this man under arrest. He
is not to be let out of this cave until we leave. Treat him decently.
He's sick in the head."
"What will you do if the governor attacks?" Saxby asked when they were
alone.
"He won't. I have other plans. But, if the worst comes to the worst,
you must fly back as far as your gas will take you and make the rest
of the journey any way you can. Tell General Maitland the whole story.
He will know what to do. But I doubt whether the full threat of the
whole American and British armies and navies will be able to put out
the fire if it once starts. I'm betting that it won't, but I'll have
to step lively to prevent it. You stay here and keep an eye on that
missionary. If he starts making speeches, clout him. I don't want the
boys to get a false view of the situation. They'll fight the Chinese
better if they don't know the whole story. If those men return with the
telegraph operator before I get back, take charge of him, too. Now,
there's nothing to be frightened of while I'm away. This place is a
natural fortress and we're on the inside. The first lieutenant will be
in command. He has a level head. In case of trouble, do exactly what he
tells you to do, and do it in a hurry. Well, I'm off."
"Where are you going?"
"Tell you when I see you."
Saxby watched the captain waken twenty picked men to accompany him
on his hazardous mission. They marched out of the cave just as dawn
streaked the sky.
CHAPTER VIII
Lane's Cards
Like many of the greatest commanders in history. Lane believed firmly
in taking the offensive and keeping it. The Chinese outnumbered the
marines at least a hundred to one. Should the governor of Kansu order
an attack as soon as his men recovered from their fright, the Americans
would be wiped out in half an hour. Although the captain had declared
to Saxby that the position of the marines in the cave was impregnable,
as a soldier he knew better. A few machine guns in the hands of
strategically placed Chinese would clear the entrance in two minutes
and then would keep it clear. A resolute leader who did not mind the
loss of some hundreds of his men--provided his own life was not thereby
endangered--could take the cave in a rush any time he cared to give the
order. Lane and his twenty men were now on their desperate mission to
plant a bomb under the governor's probable strategy.
On a long, smooth slope about half a mile south of Teng-shan they spied
the bombing plane resting comfortably on the stubble like an enormous
grasshopper. Ordering the men to proceed to the town slowly, so that he
might overtake them, Lane detoured to interview the pilot. The plane
had the sunny slope to itself; not a sightseer was visible.
The mechanic was on guard. He saw Lane coming and woke the pilot. Lane
went straight to the point.
"How much gas have you left--how many miles?"
"Enough for seventeen hundred under good flying
conditions," the pilot replied. "Less, of course, against
strong headwinds."
"Fine!" Lane exclaimed. "You have plenty to fly back to Shanghai and do
five hundred miles of stunts. I may want you to stage a show here. You
can see the entrance to the caves. One of you keep an eye on it with
your glasses all day. Take it in spells. I'll be going back in about
an hour. You know how to read our wig-wag signals? All right; there
will be a man with a white flag posted outside the cave. If he starts
signaling get the message and act on it immediately."
"Can you give us some idea of what we shall have to do?"
"No, because I don't know myself. It may be nothing. Be prepared for
anything. By the way, have you any bombs?"
"Four. But our orders were to drop none unless we were attacked by
anti-aircraft fire in flying over the Chinese lines."
"Never mind that. Technically you will be attacked if I call for bombs.
Most likely I shall need only some fireworks to scare the tar out of
the Chinese. If I call for stunts, do your damndest and put on a real
show. Scare the livers out of them. I'll send you rations and fresh
water as soon as I get back to the cave. Keep the Chinese away by
starting up your engine and making all the noise you know how if they
get curious."
He hurried off to overtake his men. Entering the town they met the
exhausted sergeant and his two squads, still searching fruitlessly for
the telegraph operator. Lane explained that they now had an interpreter
at the caves and ordered the men to return there and rest. As he and
his twenty men marched up what seemed the main street, indifferent
Chinese slouched to the doorways and followed the foreign devils with
lacklustre eyes. Not a Chinese soldier was in sight. "It looks like a
trap," Lane remarked to himself. Then, to a corporal, "follow that line
of telegraph poles."
Guessing that the operator would be in his place of business, Lane
kept his eyes open for the telegraph office. He found it without
difficulty by noting where a small cable connected a shabby building
with the wires. The door was not locked. Striding in, Lane bagged his
bird, or rather a brace. His own recreant interpreter was chatting
with the night operator, whose "watch" lasted till ten o'clock. The
captain contented himself with a single well-placed kick and turned
the deserter over to his men. From the night operator he learned the
location of the governor's palace.
"You come along and show us the way," Lane ordered. "You say you're a
nice missionary boy. Now prove it by not getting lost, or I'll show you
a short cut to Heaven."
Nearing the governor's palace on the outskirts of the town they
understood why they had seen no soldiers on their search through the
streets. The entire tail of the governor's army was camped around
and in the palace grounds to protect his sacred person from foreign
aggression. The governor had not yet recovered from his fright at the
smoking dragon. He realized now, of course, that it was no supernatural
monster, as the inquisitive and cultured telegraph operator, who knew
all about airplanes from the missionaries, had told him so late the
previous evening. But he rightly suspected it of being some devilish
new kind of war bird capable of laying more infernal eggs than any that
even a Chinaman has dreamed of.
The Chinese sentries promptly halted the marines. Lane played his first
card. Through his interpreter he ordered--he did not make the mistake
of asking--the officer in charge of the sentries to tell the governor
that the commander of the American forces demanded an instant audience.
The officer obeyed. He was absent fifteen minutes. During that
uneasy wait Lane took time to note that the Chinese had more machine
guns--evidently of Russian make--than they could possibly require,
also that their rifles were of the latest pattern. Their supply of
ammunition was ample, not to say prodigal. The wooden boxes containing
the reserve supply were stencilled with both Chinese and Russian
characters.
When the envoy returned, he informed Lane through the interpreter that
the governor would receive him on two conditions. First, Lane and his
interpreter alone would be admitted to the august presence provided
they left all their arms with the Chinese sentries at the gate. Second,
during the conference, the Americans at the gate were to surrender
their arms to the Chinese sentries.
Lane accepted these terms without argument. He felt that the governor
would offer no better.
"If I'm not back in twenty minutes," he told the men, "walk away as if
nothing had happened. Go back to the caves. I shan't be following."
The governor, attired in a loose yellow robe, gorgeously embroidered,
was seated behind a long teakwood table in a large, heavily beamed
room as bare as an empty barn. Behind him a fully armed guard of six
men stood stiffly at attention. Taking no chance on the interpreter's
nerves, the captain grabbed him by the arm and hustled him to the table.
"Tell the governor this," he ordered. To emphasize his remarks he
banged his fist on the table directly under the governor's nose and
began shouting in the angriest tones at his command.
"You have let your people murder American missionaries. I place
you under arrest and I order you now to come with me and stand
court-martial in the cave where you butchered them."
The governor, who had jumped six inches when Lane banged the table,
turned the color of his robe when the interpreter translated the bluff.
His reply was a feeble attempt to prove an alibi.
"He says the Moslems killed the missionaries."
"Tell him," Lane roared, "not to argue! The Moslems who killed the
Christians are Chinese. As governor of Kansu he is responsible."
The governor's color improved somewhat. He turned a purplish green.
The blood was finding its way again to his brain. He pondered Lane's
legal theories in silence. Then, having glanced behind him to see that
the guards were still there, he put his simple, disconcerting question
through the interpreter.
"Why should I go to the caves?"
With the air of a humane judge informing a murderer precisely why it
was his painful duty to impose the death penalty, Lane explained in a
level voice.
"Tell him this, bit by bit. Tell it slowly, so he will understand it
all. First, if I am not back at the airplane within a certain time,
the two men in it have orders to blow Teng-shan off the face of the
earth. They will fly high and drop their bombs out of a clear sky. The
people of Teng-shan, including the governor of Kansu, won't even see
the plane--it will be so high. But they will know it is somewhere in
the sky when the first bomb hit this palace. Second, if I pass the
plane without the governor, and if a single one of his soldiers is
seen following me and my men back to the cave, the plane will at once
fly back over the pass into Shen-si. We are only the advance column of
a very strong American force--easily able to wipe out the Kansu army
in a morning engagement. But our main army will probably not have to
advance at all. There are five hundred bombing planes with it. The
planes will fly back and forth over the pass for a week, or for longer
if necessary, until they have bombed every farm house, village and town
in Kansu into a dusty hole in the ground. That's all."
* * * * *
From the expression on the governor's face as he absorbed sentence
after sentence of the ultimatum, Lane believed that the bluff had
worked. With an air of unconcern he sauntered toward the door,
expecting the governor to follow him. The governor, however, did
nothing of the kind. To his horror, Lane heard the governor and the
interpreter exchanging a rapid cross-fire of questions and answers.
What could it mean? The interpreter suddenly shot past on his way to
the door.
"Halt!" Lane shouted.
Involuntarily the interpreter halted. Taking two strides forward Lane
grasped him by the back of the neck and shook the wind out of him.
"Where are you going?"
"I can't tell."
"Why not? Spill it, or I'll break your neck!"
"The governor's soldiers will shoot me if I tell. Let go!"
Lane felt himself seized from behind. The governor's guards were not
asleep. One banged the butt end of his rifle down hard on the captain's
wrists and the interpreter bolted. The governor was not only more or
less of a gentleman but also an extremely cautious man. At a word from
him the guards let Lane go. It would be unwise, the governor believed,
to abuse this blustering American until the exact value of his threats
was ascertained.
Presently the interpreter returned, followed closely by the telegraph
night operator. In a flash Lane saw what was about to happen. He
played his last desperate card. If this failed to take the trick he
was cleaned out. The telegraph operator had declared that he was
a Christian convert. His knowledge of English, however, was not
extensive. Gambling on the chance that the boy would understand, and
that he was indeed on the side of the missionaries, Lane deliberately
chose the simplest words he could find to phrase his plea to the
operator.
"Tell this man," he pointed to the governor, "the truth. The man in
Shen-si will tell you we have a big army there with five hundred
airplanes. Tell him this when you come back." Lane was careful not to
let his own interpreter overhear.
An all but imperceptible flicker of an eyelid is more eloquent than
volumes of oratory. The operator caught Lane's. He understood exactly
what he was being asked to do. Would he do it, or had the missionaries
ruined his native genius for lying? Lane silently prayed that the
operator might still be an artless child of China. The governor was no
fool.
"What did the American say to you then?" he demanded.
A look of almost angelic piety lit up the operator's face.
"He told me to tell you the truth."
"Then ask him for me whether there is time for you to telegraph to
Shen-si before the plane begins to drop bombs."
Lane replied that he thought there would be time. The governor took
the chance, but told the operator to run all the way to the telegraph
office and not to dally on the way back.
Either by instinct or from a Chinese sense of humor the operator took
all the time he needed in the office. Lane expected him back in forty
minutes. A full hour passed. The captain began to smile. He glanced
suggestively at his wrist watch. The governor fidgeted. Lane believed
the operator was having his little joke on the governor. The more
intense the suspense the greater would be the relief with which the
governor would choose court-martial instead of bombing. But as the hour
lengthened to two, Lane felt that the joke was going too far. By signs
he prevailed upon the governor to send one of his guards to see what
had happened to the operator. They met just outside the door.
"Is it true?" the governor demanded.
The operator, breathless from his long run, struggled to reply.
"It is true," he panted. "All western Shen-si is full of American
soldiers. They have big guns and five hundred airplanes."
The governor rose hastily. With an air of well-controlled anxiety Lane
pointed to his watch, then to the beamed ceiling of the room. The
governor ran. At the door Lane glanced back at the operator.
"Come to the caves tonight. We'll take you back with us."
The operator's face was a beautiful mean between the Mona Lisa smile
and a subtle Chinese grin. He had told the truth as he saw it, and he
was pleased with himself. The big guns were his own contribution.
"You not know me," he remarked. "Other night I tell you over wire in
Shen-si for God's sake hurry."
At the palace gate Lane and the shaken governor found the twenty
marines hanging about and looking sheepish. Two hours had passed.
"I thought I told you to go back to the caves," Lane snapped, "if I
didn't come out in twenty minutes."
"Our watches all stopped five minutes after you left, sir," the
corporal informed him, offering his as evidence.
"Fall in, and march ahead of us to the caves," Lane ordered sharply.
He thought it best to ignore the remarkable coincidence of twenty
watches stopping simultaneously. The men grabbed their rifles from the
governor's guards and obeyed.
Forty minutes later, old Saxby, anxiously scanning the slope up from
the town through the lieutenant's field glasses, made out Lane's men
marching rapidly toward the caves. A few paces behind the men Lane
was trying to keep up. A stoutish man whose resplendent yellow robe
outblazed the morning sun was leaning heavily on the captain's arm and
impeding his progress, Saxby guessed.
"By Jove!" he shouted to the sentry behind him, "the captain has
captured the governor of Kansu."
Old Saxby had become panicky at the long absence of Lane's party, and
had left White Lily in charge of the surgeon, to go out and keep watch
for the captain. In case of visible danger in the town he was to report
at once to the lieutenant in the cave. Seeing that all was now rather
better than well, he sprinted back to the cave to tell the lieutenant.
"They ought to make him a field marshal or something for this," he
concluded enthusiastically. "That boy has a head on his shoulders. With
the governor in here as hostage we can send the missionary into these
black holes to tell the Chinese to come out. Then the governor can send
them all home. We'll keep him till we don't need him any longer--say
half way across Shen-si. And we needn't let him go until he gives us a
cast-iron guarantee that he won't touch the Moslems when he gets back
to Teng-shan. We--"
"Zing!" a bullet sang as it just kissed Saxby's ear and passed on.
The staccato commands of the lieutenant were drowned in the instant
uproar that burst upon the silence of the audience chamber from a
hundred black galleries. Mobs of yellings, shouting Chinese soldiers
boiled into the chamber from the caverns like a sudden eruption of
vermin swarming over a carcass. The guards at the entrance to the
rock caverns were swept aside like chips and hurled back against the
walls. Saxby found himself isolated a few feet from White Lily. His
instinctive thought was of her safety. She was small; he was strong,
and his blood was up. He tucked her under one arm, seized a heavy torch
with his free hand, and started to follow the main body of the marines
who were retreating toward the eastern wall of the cavern. This chanced
at the moment to be the nearest objective offering protection for their
backs.
"Hold your fire!" the lieutenant shouted, seeing Saxby and his burden
directly in the line of fire.
The front of the advancing horde parted in the middle and a flying
wedge of gigantic Chinamen issued from the gap and shot like an arrow
toward Saxby; a sudden surge forward of the right wing of the enemy
completely cut off his retreat. Saxby found himself with his back to a
thousand yelling Chinese and his face to the racing wedge. He dropped
White Lily at his feet and grasped the torch with both hands. The head
of the wedge misjudged its mark. The leader saw only an old man with a
stick. He saw nothing more, because Saxby's torch caught him full whack
on the side of his skull and broke his neck. The next got a shattered
arm. The third, quick witted, and more agile than his predecessor,
swooped low, grasped White Lily's tunic with one hand, snatched her
to his body, and fled like a streak before Saxby could swing at him.
Two more were disposed of before the torch snapped in his hands. For a
sixty-year-old man he had put up a pretty good fight. He realized that
it was all over. His one regret was that he did not have a revolver.
For it had not escaped his notice that the flying wedge carried no
arms. Their orders, therefore, were to capture, not to destroy the
enemy. Saxby guessed who had given the order. From Markoff's record in
the caves it was but reasonable to expect an unpleasant death.
[Illustration: _Two more were disposed of before the torch snapped in
his hands._]
Instinct forced him to fight to the last ounce of his strength,
although reason coolly told him it was useless to struggle. Obedient
to their orders, and anticipating a prolonged feast of cruelty, the
Chinese took great care not to injure their captive. They produced
short cords, trussed him up like a turkey about to be roasted, and
carried him off swinging from a pole between two sturdy porters.
* * * * *
A sudden lull in the pandemonium presaged the coming of the storm in
all its fury. What had preceded was but a preliminary gust announcing
the tornado. It broke with terrific violence from all points of the
compass at once. Unable longer to restrain their hatred of their
ancient enemies, who had kept them bottled up for sixteen hours in
the damp and dark, the Moslems hurled themselves upon their Chinese
brothers. The Moslem who dies in battle fighting for his creed goes
straight to the Moslem paradise.
The vast system of caverns became a black hell of milling humanity
churning itself by sheer, brute weight to pulp. The enemies were too
intimately engaged for firearms to count. The Chinese soldiers dropped
their rifles or had them ripped from their hands. In the half light of
the vast entrance hall, where men could distinguish ally from enemy,
the killing at first proceeded with some discrimination. In the other
caverns each gouged whatever came to his hand. The floors of black
caves that no foot had trod for a generation grew slippery under the
incessant patter of innumerable feet, and the steady splash of sullen
water drowned the cries of faithful and infidel alike as they plunged
by hundreds into the unseen subterranean rivers.
Through it all the marines stood with their backs to the eastern wall
of the entrance, not firing a shot. It was not their fight. To attack
would be wanton suicide. A concerted rush from that infuriated mob
would sweep them like chaff into one of the black caverns behind them,
or crush them to death against the rock walls between the black holes.
Retreat to the crescent exit was impossible. The Chinese soldiers had
blocked that possibility at the start.
Gradually the mere numbers of the Chinese soldiers in the audience
hall began to count. The indiscriminate trampling set in a definite
direction like a football scrimmage gaining--or losing--headway. The
whole mass moved slowly away from the entrance toward the main caverns.
As the soldiers gained ground those on the outskirts of the mob picked
up rifles from the floor and took up their position in the rear. They
knew what was coming. Shots zipped at random over the heads of the
mass. These had the intended effect. Unarmed and exhausted, the Moslems
broke, became a rabble, and fled yelling into the darkest caverns.
The audience hall now belonged to the Chinese soldiers and the marines
in the ratio of about four to one. The disparity would have been much
greater had not the main body of the soldiers been busy elsewhere.
The insane fight still raged with unabated fury in the pitch darkness
of the labyrinth. Under the orders of their officers the Chinese in
the audience hall retired to a line about a hundred yards from the
eastern wall. One hundred yards happened to be precisely that range at
which they habitually made their best score in target practice. Their
officers, of course, did not withdraw to the new line by mere chance.
"Steady," said the lieutenant. He felt that the marines' turn was next.
It was. As the red tongues leapt from the rifles of the Chinese the
marines dropped as if shot to the floor. A spatter of bullets rained
upon them from the wall behind. The rest whined harmlessly into the
black holes.
"Rush them when I say, Go." The lieutenant gave the order as coolly as
if they were enjoying a Fourth of July sham battle in a city stadium.
"Are you ready?"
Before he could say "go" a volley from the entrance crashed into the
cave. Against the brilliant sunlight of the crescent, Lane's twenty
men looked like a regiment to the imaginative Chinese. They retreated
another hundred yards. Then they stood their ground. Safety, in the
shape of numerous black caverns within a minute's fast run behind them,
gave them courage. They also were curious to learn the exact strength
of the enemy. To their surprise they saw two figures detach themselves
from the thin line across the entrance and walk boldly into the cave.
"Where's the missionary?" Lane shouted.
"Here, sir. Behind us."
"Send a man forward with him."
When the madman was brought up, Lane studied his face critically.
"I suppose you are rather upset by all the shooting, but pull yourself
together. Who is this man?" he asked, indicating the governor.
"Pontius Pilate," the missionary replied promptly.
"Snap out of it! This is the governor of Kansu. Tell him this for me.
He is to order all of the Chinese over there to come forward, ten at
a time, and surrender their arms. If he does not, I will shoot him,
myself. Translate!"
To emphasize the threat Lane held his revolver pressed against the
governor's back while the latter shouted the order for disarmament at
his men. The Chinese hesitated.
"What did the governor say?" Lane demanded of the missionary.
Before the missionary could reply the high, piping voice of a Chinese
officer was heard expostulating vociferously.
"Catch everything that man says," Lane ordered. "It may cost us all our
lives if you don't."
The officer was objecting to the governor's order. Why should the
Chinese lay down their arms? Just give them half a chance and they
would clear the cave of every American in it in two minutes. The
governor began to sweat. If his men mutinied now he was one dead
Chinaman.
"Tell the governor," Lane ordered, "to explain to his men how strong
our main army in Shen-si is. Tell him not to forget the five hundred
bombing planes."
On this wholesome advice the governor became quite eloquent. His speech
evidently impressed the soldiers. The first ten marched forward,
deposited their arms at the governor's feet and retired. Soon a huge
stack of rifles and another of cartridge belts and bayonets rose like
hastily improvised earthworks before Lane and the governor. In half
an hour the Chinese in the audience chamber were disarmed. Such is
the creative power of a vivid imagination working on credulity. True
fighters would have seen the marines in Hades before complying with
such an order.
The Chinese were to enjoy a stronger taste of discipline. At an order
from Lane the marines rounded up the mob and set them at fatigue duty.
First the magazines of the rifles were emptied of their shells. Then,
through the governor, fifty of the vanquished were ordered to carry all
of the shells and cartridge belts, under an escort of marines, into the
place of massacre and pitch the lot into the black well. This done, the
rifles followed. The Chinese were then ordered to police the labyrinth
and round up all the followers of the governor. At his command all were
to come at once to the audience chamber and bring not only their own
arms but also any they might stumble over in the dark.
This, of course, was a long job, and doubtless many stragglers,
firearms and all, remained in the less accessible caverns.
Nevertheless, the disarmament must have been at least ninety per cent
efficient. It was to be still more thorough. Lane ordered the governor
to explain to twenty of the superior officers exactly why the Chinese
troops were being disarmed. He added that they were under no compulsion
to obey orders but if they refused, the American army would annihilate
them on the following day and, on the day after that, destroy every
building in Kansu by systematic bombing from the air. If on the other
hand, they chose the part of common sense and obeyed, and if, further,
they gave sufficient guarantees that they would leave the Moslems in
peace, the United States Army would withdraw at once without a single
reprisal for the slaughtered missionaries.
* * * * *
It worked beautifully. The last act in the mopping up took over two
hours, but it paid. Under a guard of marines the governor and the
twenty officers he had instructed were hustled back to Teng-shan.
There, as fast as possible, they despatched small contingents of the
soldiers still camped about the palace, with all the military supplies
they could stagger under, to the caves. Unopened boxes of ammunition,
machine guns and hundreds of new rifles were pitched into the well of
the massacre.
By four o'clock in the afternoon the disarmament was practically
completed. The governor stood near the entrance, inside the cave,
watching the last contingent of Chinese toiling up the slope. These
men brought nothing but half a dozen machine guns and forty or fifty
wooden boxes of ammunition for the guns. Lane and his first lieutenant
stood beside the governor. They were tired, Lane particularly. The job
was about finished and it was well done. For sheer lack of ammunition
and arms the anti-Moslem Chinese would be unable for at least a year to
trouble their turbulent brothers.
Lane and the lieutenant were laughing and joking over the ease with
which they had worked the bluff. Bit by bit--for the captain was a
modest man--the lieutenant pried out of him the whole story of his
bullying of the governor and the effective myth of a huge American army
with five hundred bombing planes just beyond the pass into Shen-si. At
the moment the rear of the Americans were far back, supervising the
Chinese in the audience hall and in the gallery leading to the pit.
"Your imaginary army," the lieutenant laughed, "has done a quicker
clean up than the whole U. S. A. and U. S. N. combined could have done.
And we have only lost twelve men, including Mr. Saxby." These all
occurred in the first rush, when the Chinese swept the guards off their
feet.
"You will lose them all in the next hour," a thin, dry voice remarked
directly over their heads.
They spun round and saw nothing but a smooth, enigmatic wall of
limestone. Instantly the same voice harshened and lapsed into Chinese.
"Markoff!" Lane shouted, making a grab for the governor. But the
governor had heard the first Chinese sentence in the air, and it was
enough.
"The Americans were lying about the army and their bombing planes in
Shen-si," said that airy Chinese voice.
Before the captain could stop him the governor was racing down the
slope, yelling orders at his men with the machine guns. It was too late
to shoot him. The machine gunners were already bursting the ammunition
boxes with the heaviest stones they could lift.
"Shall I shoot?" the lieutenant yelled.
"No!" Lane shouted back as he ripped off his tunic. "If he's killed it
means war with China. Get the men out before the Chinks start firing!"
The Chinese were already feeding the first strings of cartridges into
the machine guns. Lane leapt back to the entrance and, with frantic
haste, signalled with his tunic a short, desperate order to the pilot
in the bombing plane. Were the two in the plane watching the entrance
to the cave as he had ordered? And if they were, would they be able to
take his message? The first machine gun rattled into action. Before the
bullets sprayed the rock ten feet to the left of where he stood, Lane
saw the smoke shoot from the exhaust of the plane as the huge insect
sprang forward for the take-off. Lane leaped back into the cave, out of
reach of the machine guns, just as all six began spitting as one. He
had played his last card. It looked like the joker.
CHAPTER IX
Markoff's Theft
Under the Czars, Markoff most likely would have been a chief of secret
police. He was that type--cold, cowardly, and sensually cruel. Under
the Moscow communists he found his true trade. As a confidential agent
to China he had opportunities for betrayals and wholesale murder on
a scale denied him in Moscow. The natural genius of the Chinese for
inhuman forms of punishment incited him to jealous competition. They,
after all, were but amateurs; he rather conceitedly classed himself
as the expert professional. If such men as the infamous Letchine and
certain of the bloodier czars, generals and prelates of old Russia
were not commonplace, amply documented historical personages, Markoff
could be dismissed as an impossibility. The historian of a thousand
years hence will look back on these men and, with a superior smile,
deny that they ever existed. Their common disorder seems to have been a
queer type of perversion, which after all is not so rare, even outside
of Holy Russia. In the prolonged infliction of pain they experienced a
voluptuous pleasure. If unable to enjoy both, they preferred massacre
to love in any of its more usual forms, and one and all they were
physical cowards of the lowest type. Incessant brooding upon what might
happen to their own hides, and imaginative exaggerations of every
trivial pain, drove them over the verge of insanity and lashed them to
more violent excesses. Mad dogs are shot on sight; the Markoffs and the
rest achieve eminence in statecraft of a sort.
While the Chinese were engaged in sweeping one another into the
subterranean rivers, Markoff was in the singularly happy position of
having everything he wanted. He had enjoyed one massacre and hoped
shortly to witness another, and his love was within easy reach. He
might take what he had coveted for months any time the girl came out of
her silly faint.
White Lily, as a matter of fact, had not fainted. She was not that
kind. The brain in her was better than Markoff's vapor of brutish
instincts, and she knew how to use it. So long as she lay on the
limestone floor like a dead rabbit, and as uninteresting, she knew
she was safe. Her captor would not pester her till she came to life.
In the meantime he was getting a great deal of pleasure out of old
Saxby. Should Saxby's impotent rage pall on the insatiable Markoff,
White Lily might try a trick or two which Hu the Good had taught her.
She could take care of herself--for a while, anyhow. Markoff and Saxby
conversed in English, so White Lily missed the gist of their remarks.
Nevertheless she guessed that the old American, who somehow reminded
her of her grandfather, was in a great fright.
Saxby was indeed scared half out of his wits. You may succeed in
temporizing with the executioner, or you may be able to argue the
inquisitor out of giving the rack an extra twist, but you cannot reason
with an ignorant fool. There is but one way to reach a brain like
Markoff's, and that is with a bullet. Saxby had only his eloquence. It
made not the slightest impression on the void of Markoff's Intelligence.
The cave where Markoff "questioned" his prisoner was one of the two
which the earliest Moslems had enlarged on either side of the crescent
entrance. Originally these caves were mere pockets in the limestone
wall of the entrance, reached by tortuous, narrow burrows from the
audience hall. When the persecuted followers of the Prophet first began
using the caves as a refuge in time of massacre, they cut a peephole
in the wall of each pocket so that the invisible sentry might spy on
all who sought to enter the caverns. The peepholes could be closed by
little slabs of limestone which fitted perfectly. Later the pockets
were enlarged to capacious, airy guard rooms and liberally provided
with food, torches, water and sleeping accommodations. At the same
time the astute Moslems blocked the ancient waterways which were the
original means of communication with the hall, and scooped out of the
soft limestone an elaborate maze of narrow tunnels connecting the guard
rooms with the audience chamber. The guards, of course, never lost
themselves in these mazes; it was hoped that enemies might, or at least
be heard by the guards in time to be knocked on the head.
As political and spiritual advisors to Hu the Good, Markoff and
Liapanouff soon learned the shortest way to each of the guard rooms. In
fact the two agents believed they knew all about the caves long before
they ordered the jehad. Hu told them much; personal explorations told
them more. They knew of one secret exit in case of extreme danger.
Hu either forgot to mention the other to them, or kept it to himself
as an old man's secret to be shared with no one but his pet. Neither
Liapanouff nor Markoff was told of the secret way by which White Lily
left the cave when Hu told her to go and seek out the governor of
Shen-si. The snakelike Markoff might easily have crawled through it;
the puffy Liapanouff was too gross. The other secret exit could readily
have extruded Liapanouff, had not Hu the Good shown him a broader and
quicker way out.
Either of the guard rooms by the crescent entrance offered Markoff
the ideal cubbyhole from which to direct operations while the marines
occupied the audience chamber. The instant the marines rushed the
caves when the bombing plane routed the tail end of Chinese army,
Markoff, already half way down the audience chamber, hastily collected
a bodyguard of three superior Chinese officers and bolted with them
for an inconspicuous black hole in the north wall of the chamber.
Presently he and his panting escort found themselves in the comfortable
guard room at the north side of the entrance. The peephole gave them a
view of the entrance, of the long, rocky slope leading up to it from
Teng-shan, and of at least a part of the interior of the audience
chamber. Markoff followed with interest practically everything
the marines did. He witnessed the arrest of old Saxby by Lane and
speculated on its significance. Were the damned capitalists divided
among themselves? Before he had solved this thorny puzzle to the
satisfaction of his reptilian instincts, Markoff saw White Lily arrive
breathless and with bleeding feet and, a few minutes later, he observed
Saxby and the captain consulting over the girl, apparently on the best
of terms. At this point of his observations Markoff moistened his thin
lips with his bright red tongue. He determined to possess White Lily,
then and there.
Markoff's desire begot the Chinese attack that came within an ace
of sweeping all the marines off their feet. At his orders the three
Chinese officers departed to round up enough of their men to launch an
effective offensive. The flying wedge was Markoff's conception. White
Lily was to be brought to him alive. The American in civilian clothes
also was to be captured, if possible. His person in any event was
to be bound and carried as intact as feasible to the guard room for
Markoff's inspection. Markoff's theory was that the old civilian who
had come by airplane must be a figure of some weight in the councils
of capitalism. Probably his clothes were rich in documents which would
expose the United States as the secret enemy, not only of liberty at
large the world over, but of communism in particular. And not unlikely
there would be found on this person detailed plans for the invasion of
Mongolia, Russia and China. The lieutenant in command of the marines
was ignored. Eventually he was to be slaughtered with the rest, of
course, but he probably was of no importance. Markoff had seen Lane
leave the caves and, in a general way he had guessed the captain's
mission. Being a one hundred per cent coward himself, Markoff could
not conceive of another man taking his life in his hands for a forlorn
hope. Therefore, Markoff reasoned, the American forces in China must be
strong and not far from Teng-shan. He would wait until the captain's
return to decide upon his further strategy. In the meantime he could
pass the hours profitably with the imagined ambassador and pleasantly
with White Lily.
The flying wedge of Chinese under picked officers did its work
well. White Lily, unfortunately in a dead faint, and the capitalist
ambassador were delivered whole at his feet. Having borrowed a
bayonet from a Chinese officer, Markoff dismissed all of his faithful
followers, closed the peephole and proceeded to business.
White Lily gave no trouble. Her "faint" was so deep that she scarcely
seemed to breathe. She knew how to play "possum" better than the animal
itself. Saxby was a tougher problem. He must be made to talk without
being given a chance to make himself heard by the sentries who might
march past the closed peephole. When Saxby was flung down by the guards
he let out a roar that might have been heard in Teng-shan, had not the
Chinese in the audience hall been raising such a prodigious racket at
the moment.
Markoff easily solved the problem. He ripped off half of Saxby's shirt
and stuffed most of it into the captive's mouth. Old Saxby, of course,
did not open his mouth wide at Markoff's invitation to accept the gag.
The agent was compelled to force the prisoner's mouth open with the
bayonet. Then, to teach his captive the folly of future resistance,
he heated the tip of the bayonet red hot in the flame of a torch and
proceeded to use it. Saxby was so tightly bound that his struggles
quickly exhausted him. When Markoff got through with his discipline,
Saxby could not have shouted if he had tried. Before removing the gag
Markoff cautioned the prisoner that if he raised his voice above a
whisper, the bayonet, then resting with its point on Saxby's throat,
would instantly cut off his remarks before he could finish them.
Markoff's first question concerned the fighting strength of the
"American force" which Lane, in his parley on the slope, had told him
was on the march in Shen-si. Saxby's whispered denial that he knew
anything about it earned him a short repetition of the third degree.
Seeing that his prisoner might lose his mind if pressed too far,
Markoff, like the experienced inquisitor he was, desisted. Saxby by
this time was pretty much of a wreck. The things that one civilized
human being will think of to do to another would pass the belief of
almost any undomesticated beast. The beasts kill their prey or their
enemies and let it go at that. Markoff, heir to a more cultivated
taste, enjoyed himself. Nevertheless, he got precisely nothing out of
old Saxby that might give him the slightest clue to the real strength
of the Americans. Therefore, he must wait until the captain returned,
when the subsequent proceedings would probably enlighten him.
* * * * *
Having exhausted his ingenuity to make the prisoner talk, Markoff
turned to the easier problem of picking his victim's pockets. Saxby was
now but half conscious. His condition was quite genuine, not feigned as
was White Lily's. Markoff therefore thieved without a protest from the
thieves. Like a gorged condor he flopped down on the limestone floor
beside his prey and fished for tidbits.
Markoff was not avaricious. The gold watch did not even tempt him.
Greed for material goods is not one of the communist vices. The loose
change he also cast aside. A sheaf of receipted club bills and a
steamer ticket first claimed his attention. The incriminating letter
head "Army and Navy Club, Shanghai," told the excited agent a great
deal that was not so. The date of the steamer ticket also filled
him to the gullet with fat, plausible lies. Finally, a typewritten
circular letter announcing the date of the next meeting of the National
Scientific Council in Washington, D. C., with Saxby's name typed in
the proper place, completed the evidence. Saxby stood, or rather lay,
convicted of being an important personal agent of the President of the
United States. He had been sent to Shanghai with secret orders to the
capitalist generals at the Army and Navy Club, Shanghai, and possibly
also to the large army of the international bankers in Shen-si. Such
was the astute agent's reasonable but somewhat puerile deduction.
Here Markoff began to sweat. If the American forces from Shen-si
arrived in Kansu before he escaped from the caves, he would be
court-martialed and shot for having "questioned" Saxby. If, on the other
hand, he destroyed the evidence against himself, he would be accused of
having murdered the American. Then he would be shot, probably without a
court-martial.
Suddenly he saw a happy way out. The moment the marines left the
caves--they would probably evacuate when their main force came up--he
would induce the Chinese officers to take the roped prisoner and send
him to join Hu. The officers, disliking the capitalist Americans as
much as he, would gladly do their part and enjoy the joke. While they
were laughing at their pleasantry, Markoff himself could slip out of
the cave by the secret exit known to him, and leave the Chinese to
settle for his little joke. Once safely on the mountainside, miles from
Teng-shan, he felt that he could easily escape and make his way back
to Moscow to report. What a report that would be. Flushed with proud
anticipations of his chief's praise, Markoff resumed his systematic
thievery with zest.
Rolling the still unconscious victim over on his side, Markoff brought
the unexplored coat pocket into view. With a sibilant exclamation like
a snake's hiss, he pounced upon the bulging pocket and clawed out a
fat, untidy notebook blotched all over with virulent looking green
stains. The evil color had soaked into the pages in half circles and
long, fingering streaks, as if someone had spilled a full bottle of
green ink on the half-opened book. Nearly every page had its green
blob; some were completely dyed.
As he fluttered the leaves of Yang's notebook, pausing at every other
page in a hopeless endeavor to understand the apparently meaningless
jumbles of numerals and chemical equations. Markoff almost regretted
that he was an ignorant enthusiast with but a vestigial brain. But he
actually was incapable of such regret. He lacked the necessary nerve
connections to beget such an emotion. He merely fluttered the leaves
like an illiterate idiot. All these letters and figures must mean
something, the more so as they had come out of the prisoner's pocket.
But what? That was the painful question. Markoff almost laughed as the
ready means of solving his puzzle presented itself. Seizing a dish of
water he dashed the contents into the prisoner's face.
Saxby did not come out of his stupor at once. When at last be groaned
and opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Yang's notebook in
Markoff's right hand. Instantly he forgot his pain in alarm at what the
ignorant vulture before him might do with that green curse.
"Put that back in my pocket!" he shouted.
Markoff reminded him that he must not raise his voice. Saxby continued
in a lower voice.
"You utter fool! Put it back where you got it, I say! You don't know
what you are doing. Put it back!"
Markoff, convinced now that he had captured the enemy's most important
military document, ignored the insult.
"This is important?" he taunted, fluttering the pages in Saxby's face.
The barrage of curses and abuse which he drew in reply but strengthened
his superstition. He became crafty and coldly cruel. With a smile he
picked up the bayonet.
"You read this for me."
He indicated a green page of chemical formulas and simple mathematical
calculations. To his surprise Saxby capitulated at once. The string of
names which the prisoner reeled off, of course, made no impression on
Markoff's vacuum.
"You are lying," he said.
"I read you exactly what is written there. Don't you recognize a few
elementary chemical names when you hear them? They can't be so very
different in your own language."
"Chemistry?" Markoff snapped like a rattlesnake. He knew about
explosives and poison gases, and he knew also that chemistry was at the
bottom of them. That much he had gathered from the military experts
during the endless round-table discussions at headquarters in Moscow.
"These are military documents?"
"No. Purely scientific. No military value whatever."
"You must think I am a child," Markoff sneered. "If I cannot see the
military value of this I know men in Moscow who can. As soon as your
men leave this cave I am going out by another way. And I shall go
straight back to Moscow. With this."
"You damned fool! You'll never get half way. That book is more
dangerous than all the explosives and poison gases of all the armies of
the world. Put it back in my pocket before you drop it. Look out---!"
Saxby's frenzied shout was brought out by Markoff's blundering with the
book. Trying to handle the bayonet and turn the pages at the same time
he had almost dropped the green abomination on the floor.
"Be quiet!" he snarled, as he slipped the book into his pocket.
Saxby closed his eyes and groaned.
"You unutterable fool. You will never know what you have done. If I
told you it would do no good. You have no mind. But for your own sake,
if not for the sake of the world, take that thing a thousand miles out
to sea and drop it overboard if you _must_ steal it. Never put it down
anywhere. Leave it in your pocket. Don't touch anything with your hands
after handling that book. Treat it like the plague--"
"A new poison?" the dull-witted agent queried. He was too stupid to
keep his hand out of the pocket into which he had stuffed the book.
"Oh, what's the use?" Saxby groaned. "What good is it to tell you that
it is probably more dangerous than a thousand Asiatic plagues? You are
rotten with it already."
Markoff smiled a silly, cruel smile.
"And after I return from Moscow," he scoffed, "the United States of
America will be rotten with it, too. One of the generals was talking
of something like this a year ago. Diseases; they shall be our new
weapons. You capitalists were coming over here, through China, to try
them on us. Now I understand you. I see why the Army and Navy Club
in Shanghai sent you in an airplane. You need no soldiers to invade
our country. One page of this book in a lake or river that waters our
people, and you have conquered them."
Markoff became almost lyrical over the imagined possibilities. In spite
of himself he began to prophesy and to take a lascivious pleasure in
the slaughters he predicted. Here was something that spoke directly to
his cruelty, and it found him eloquent.
"But the capitalists," he concluded, "not we, shalt die by millions."
"I grant you the first," Saxby flung at him. "As to the second, I doubt
it. You yourself may be the first to go."
"I think not," Markoff smiled. "You shall precede me, but by another
way. As I told you, I am going to Moscow. But, before I leave, you will
join Hu the Good."
With brutal brevity he described to Saxby the end of Hu the Good as he
had witnessed it in his futile attempt to save Liapanouff.
"You will join him," he repeated.
* * * * *
For some moments Saxby made no reply. His burns and the weals from the
cutting ropes were about as much as any sane man could endure and keep
his sanity. His excitement over, pain gained the upper hand and took a
grip on his usually clear mind. His reply was not that which he would
have made in his senses. Nevertheless, it may be recorded for what it
may be worth.
"After seeing you," he said, "and after thinking in cold blood of
what has happened in these caves, I believe it will be better for the
world if nature does take the other course. You, after all, may be the
greatest benefactor the human race has ever known."
"I know it," Markoff agreed, visualizing in his sublime ignorance
a conquest of the world by red disease in the hands of his present
friends, and later, in the happy future, their own extinction by civil
strife of a similar kind. "And do not forget," he reminded Saxby, who
showed signs of relapsing into unconsciousness again, "that you follow
Hu."
White Lily stirred, all but imperceptibly. She had heard her
grandfather's name mentioned several times by Markoff, and she could no
longer control herself. Her muscles betrayed her. The slight movement
did not escape Markoff's keen, reptilian eye. Instantly he was at her
side, bending over her, gabbling in Chinese. The one word that she
had understood so far was her grandfather's name. Now she could no
longer feign unconsciousness. She knew that Markoff was aware of her
deception. And less bearable than the thought of what probably would
happen to herself was the agony to learn what had happened to her
grandfather. Springing to her feet she confronted her tormentor.
"What have you done with him?" she cried.
Saxby swore, cursing himself for his inability to understand Chinese.
The girl's distress spoke a universal tongue which any man could
comprehend, and here he lay, powerless and dumb to shout her even a
word of warning. For all he knew she might be swearing away her soul to
the evil beast leering into her face.
Markoff found himself on the horns of a ticklish dilemma. To tell the
truth might kill her on the spot and rob him of his lust. To refrain
from torturing her would let slip an exquisite pleasure that could be
had for the taking. A trick of memory cast the decision. He remembered
her threat when he and Liapanouff had told her that the jehad was to be
bloodless. As he remembered vividly the icy fear which had shot up his
spine at the vagueness of that threat. So she was Hu's right hand, was
she, to reward him for his share in the jehad? He jeered in her face.
He would tell her where Hu's body was, and exactly how it got there. It
would be the most tingling cruelty of his career.
She heard it to the end without a movement and without expression on
her face. If any shred of her heart was still unbroken it broke then.
"I would have paid," she said, and turned blindly to make her way back
to the audience chamber.
Markoff's talon of a hand detained her.
"Not yet," he murmured ingratiatingly. "You are too beautiful in your
sorrow." He remembered the remark from a Russian drama.
Although he understood none of the words, Saxby read Markoff's
intentions easily enough. To distract the fiend's attention, he began
shouting. Instantly Markoff was upon him. But he had not relinquished
his grip on White Lily's arm. The listless girl, already dead in
spirit, was dragged after her possessor. With his free hand Markoff
stuffed the gag back into Saxby's mouth. Now he was free to do what he
pleased. Before doing it, however, he decided to take a look through
the peephole and see how things were going with the Americans.
He removed the small slab of limestone just in time to see the
Chinese, in the cleared cave, line up for their hundred yard shot at
the marines. This was too good to be missed. Keeping a firm grip on
his prey he abandoned himself to ecstasy. When the marines dropped to
the floor at the volley he mistakenly imagined they had been shot to
a man. His disappointment at seeing them rise to a crouching position
lasted but a moment. He guessed that they would rush the enemy. Then
there would be sport worth seeing. He licked his lips, and all but bit
his tongue in two when Lane's men stepped into his field of vision and
delivered their salvo that saved the minute--if not the day--for their
side.
Fascinated between alternate hope for a sudden massacre and fear that
the American army had arrived and was deployed on the mountainside
beyond his field of vision, he stood for hours watching every
incomprehensible detail of the disarmament. When White Lily struggled
to get free he put a hand over her mouth and whispered that if she did
not keep quiet he would kill her--horribly. He knew how.
As the day wore on and the machine guns began to follow the rifles
into the pit he became almost insane with fear. The Americans must
have captured the whole province. They would shoot him--or would they
hang him? He couldn't live to go through that. Rather than stake his
lean neck against the one chance in millions of escape he would be his
own executioner. His free hand stole to his vest pocket and his numbed
fingers fumbled for the slippery capsule. Then, like voices in a dream,
he heard two men talking directly below him on the other side of the
limestone wall. Their every word floated up to the peephole. They might
have been addressing their remarks to him. Knowing that he was saved
he bided his time, waiting for the strategic moment. The fewer armed
Chinese abroad after the grand finale the safer his own skin. He waited
till the last possible moment. Then he spoke.
Leaving the peephole he sat down by Saxby to rest. He would defer
pleasure till all business was out of the way. The Chinese were already
attending to that.
CHAPTER X
Paid
Markoff sat and waited, smiling at the rattle of machine guns and the
crack of rifles which penetrated the thin limestone partition between
the entrance and the guard room. He dared not enjoy himself at the
peephole for fear of getting a wild bullet in the eye. In fact he began
to perspire freely at the thought of some more energetic slug piercing
the barrier of his ambush. He of course knew nothing of Lane's signal
to the bombing plane. It had not even occurred to him that the plane
might carry bombs. In his superstitious questioning of Saxby, he had
overlooked the only practical details.
In signalling his order to the pilot Lane knew exactly what he was
doing and how desperate was the chance he took. Intuition told him that
where Markoff was there also would be found Saxby and White Lily. It
was to be a case of kill or cure. There was no alternative.
Remembering the captain's instructions the pilot made all the noise
mechanically possible. With a deafening racket he soared up the slope,
flying at about twenty feet from the ground, and shot roaring directly
toward the knot of machine gunners. They were on the shortest line to
his objective anyway, so he took them in. Screaming with terror the
Chinese gunners bolted. One died on the spot from an overworked heart.
The plane shot on; the gunners were not its meat.
The terrific roar of the plane's approach became plainly audible in
the guard room. Recognizing that muffled drone as the angry voice of
her dream on the mountainside, White Lily, in an access of superhuman
strength, wrenched herself from Markoff's grasp and fled down the black
tunnel toward the audience chamber. The instinct for self-preservation
snatched her away; her lacerated feet were insensible to pain. Stunned
by the rapidly increasing roar, Markoff got to his hands and knees.
Slavering with fear like a mad dog he started to crawl toward the
tunnel. His elbows turned to water and he collapsed like a snake with a
broken back. He dreaded nothing definite, yet he believed that his end
was upon him. Saxby feared nothing at all, for he had not the slightest
anticipation of what was about to happen.
It happened all at once. A thundering impact on the roof directly over
Markoff's head was swallowed instantly in the overwhelming rumble of
an avalanche of shattered stone. Half a mountainside, jarred from its
equilibrium by the simultaneous explosion of four huge T.N.T. bombs,
roared down the slope, burying the crescent entrance and leaving the
guard rooms open to the evening sky. Tons of splintered rock crashed to
the floor and flying fragments whizzed past the heads of the two men.
They escaped with only a few cuts and bruises.
Like many a costly shell explosion in the trenches the net profit was
an overpowering racket that quickly died and the utter destruction of
a work that had taken years, or centuries, or ages to perfect. The
ruin of the crescent entrance was total; that of the guard rooms, now
gaping like a couple of hollow teeth at the arch of the sky, followed
as a mere corollary. Markoff lay paralyzed with fear, unable to move a
muscle, gibbering like an idiot. Saxby, bound and powerless, held his
tongue and wondered in his daze what it was all about.
By a natural enough combination of blunders, the shot achieved at
least half a success. Lane's signal to the pilot read "Drop bombs
north entrance"--meaning to drop the bombs one at a time on the slope
directly over the mouth of the entrance. But, exposed as he was to
the fire of the Chinese machine gunners, Lane had no time to signal
more explicit orders. He intended that the pilot should drop one bomb
as directed and, if lucky, shatter only the outer wall and part of
the roof of the cave in which Markoff was hiding. Then, if luck still
favored him, and the first bomb merely opened the cave without blowing
it to bits, the pilot was to observe his hit. Lane gave him credit for
that much foresight before releasing the second bomb. If the pilot saw
his late passenger, Saxby, in the cave, he of course would not drop the
second bomb. Saxby, according to Lane's lightning-calculated theory was
to scramble out of the opened cave and be picked up somewhere by the
pilot.
Unfortunately the pilot was a well-trained young man from the Navy,
accustomed by tough years of rigid discipline to obeying orders on
the jump and to the letter. When Lane signaled for bombs the pilot
naturally assumed that he meant _bombs_, not a bomb. Hence he dumped
the lot all at once. No one was to blame; Lane had no time to explain,
the pilot no license to argue an order. The men in the plane assumed
that Lane had heard of a safe back door to the caves and was signaling
for them to block the front against the Chinese and their murderous
machine guns. They hopped to their supposed job with a will and
executed it to the President's taste.
It was thorough. The whole Chinese army would need two weeks to clear
away the rubbish and force an entrance. Long before the Chinese could
enter, the marines would have given their enemies in the cave the
slip and be well on their way back to Shanghai. Such was the not
unreasonable theory of the pilot. What Lane anticipated in case the
first bomb exploded in the guard room, or merely stove in the roof,
need not be dwelt upon here. He believed that Saxby would prefer such a
fate to being left alive and sensitive to the mercy of Markoff.
As the plane roared back to pursue the Chinese into Teng-shan before
resting to await further orders, Saxby came out of his daze. From where
he lay he could see Markoff still helpless with fear. In the evening
light the interior of the shattered guard room shone with a blinding
brilliance after the comparative murk of the torchlight. The black
entrance to the tunnel leading to the audience chamber gaped unblocked.
If only he could get free of the ropes cutting his very bones he might
escape before Markoff recovered control of his muscles.
Like a torpid snake thawing out on a rock in the April sunshine,
Markoff began to writhe. His bony skull rolled over horribly and his
glassy eyes fixed upon the bayonet. To his crazy vacuum it was now
proved conclusively that the five hundred bombing planes in Shen-si
were not a capitalistic myth. He had questioned, not to say tortured
and robbed, the high ambassador of the United States. Therefore, if
the victim escaped, he, the inquisitor, would hang. There was yet time
to dispose of the evidence. He need not kill the prisoner in the guard
room; he could drag him into one of the black passages and do the job
there. Then he could swear to the American officers that he had seen
Saxby, crazed by fear, running from the Chinese directly into one of
the corridors leading to the subterranean rivers. If only he could
summon the strength to his watery muscles he might yet save his neck.
But his strength ebbed as he crawled.
His fingers at last touched the handle of the bayonet. The cold contact
of the murderous steel was like an electric shock to his flabby flesh.
An icy current of determination flowed into his cold soul and the old
lust for cruelty filled him with a new strength. He felt that he would
not hang.
* * * * *
Suddenly, like a snake about to strike, he raised his bony skull and
stared with maniac eyes at the wall behind him. He had heard hesitant
feet feeling their way down the darkness of the tunnel. Relinquishing
his grasp upon the bayonet he involuntarily clutched at his throat.
Crazed beyond all memory or reason by his fear he forgot the capsule in
his pocket that might save the hangman his trouble. His one instinct
was the hunted animal's to seek safety in concealment. A superhuman
terror put strength into his muscles and he dragged himself behind a
huge fragment of the shattered roof.
Saxby recognized those footsteps, although they halted, lame with
pain. A white face appeared in the darkness of the tunnel and ceased
to advance. He nodded his head vigorously. Swiftly, and as noiselessly
as she could, White Lily slipped into the shattered guard room and
looked fearfully about her. Behind his rock Markoff was invisible.
Saxby's eyes, fixed upon the bayonet, and his compressed lips were more
eloquent than speech. As quietly as possible she picked up the bayonet
and cut the cords. Saxby was free, but he could not move. Seeing his
plight, she laid the bayonet on the floor, grasped the helpless man
under the arms, and began dragging him toward the tunnel.
The noise of Saxby's body being dragged over the loose fragments acted
like a douche of cold water on Markoff's cowardice. Peering round
the corner of his rock he saw in a glance what was happening. Its
implications for him, if successful, were obvious. And it had just
struck him for the first time that White Lily could tell the American
interpreter all the details of the "questioning" in the guard room.
Automatically he was on his feet. His star was still high; this girl's
stupid humanity had delivered her into his hand. With her and the
American "ambassador" eliminated he could defy any court-martial in
China. He tottered toward the bayonet.
Saxby saw his intention. Unable to stand, much less to walk or fight,
he could only raise his arm and point to the bayonet. White Lily saw.
In a flash she had snatched the steel. By a strange coincidence she
flung at Markoff almost the identical words which Hu had addressed to
Liapanouff.
"You are neither a man nor a beast. If I kill you it is not a killing."
She sprang after him like a tigress. With a strangled cry Markoff
blundered into the tunnel. She followed him in a flash, as silent as a
stroke of lightning. The horror of an imminent death by sharp steel,
now infinitely greater than the fear of being hanged, put wings to
Markoff's feet as he fled through the pitch black labyrinth.
Instinct saved him. Hearing his pursuer pass the end of his corridor he
stopped dead. She raced on. Presently he heard her stop. She had lost
him.
She did not search long. It may have been solicitude for the old
American who reminded her of Hu, or it may have been the memory of her
grandfather's command that the killing cease, that quelled her fury. It
quickly died. Cold and shaken, she hurried back to the guard room.
Saxby was recovering. As the blood began to circulate through his
stiffened muscles he put forth all his strength and will-power. He
walked, although the effort cost him excruciating torture. When White
Lily entered, he glanced involuntarily at her hands. She still grasped
the bayonet. It was clean.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "I would rather have had my throat cut than
let you do that, no matter what he has done. Your kind isn't made every
day. I wish I knew Chinese--or even your name."
He took the bayonet from her hand and hobbled after her. This time he
made no mistake. They did not venture unarmed into the black maze. If
they passed Markoff's hiding place on their way to the audience chamber
he gave no sign. Even a stupid girl and a stupider capitalist, he
imagined, would learn from one such lesson as he had given them. As for
himself his only safety lay in keeping strictly out of sight until the
Americans left.
On emerging into the audience chamber they found it deserted by the
Chinese. One and all, forgetful for the moment of their bitter feuds,
had sought safety in the farthest recesses of the caverns. The terrific
concussion of the exploding bombs, and the immediately following
thunder of the avalanche of stone, were to them the beginning of
the end of all things. The big joss of the Christian converts after
all was more than a myth, and he had come, as prophesied, in wrath
to judge the world and personally damn all unbelievers. Had not the
gray-bearded missionary been too stunned by the concussion himself
to grasp his unique opportunity, he might have followed the fleeing
Chinese--Moslems, Confucians and miscellaneous infidels--into their
distant caverns and converted them en masse. But he hovered like a gray
ghost on the flank of the marines oblivious of time and of eternity.
Of all that startled knot of men he was the one who kept his serenity.
The poor fellow was too badly deranged to realize that his companions
considered themselves broken beyond all possibility of patching. As
they inspected the blocked exit by the dull flare of their smoky
torches they said nothing. Words seemed superfluous.
Lane drew his first lieutenant aside.
"We seem to be bottled up. Unless there is another way out we may
as well call it quits. It won't be long before the Chinese get over
their scare and boil out on us. I am going to send you with a squad to
explore for an escape."
"That Chinese girl probably knows of another exit if there is one," the
lieutenant suggested.
"Yes, but where is she?"
"Probably where Saxby is. I shall try to find a way into that cave by
the entrance first."
"Small chance. Saxby, Markoff and the girl are probably buried under a
ton of rocks. Well, it was my only chance. I'd take it again under the
same conditions. Saxby and the girl are probably better off dead. As
for Markoff, I can't say."
Saxby spied the marines in the far distance by their moving torches.
Just as the lieutenant was about to gather his men for the search,
Saxby let out a shout.
"Captain Lane! Where's your interpreter? The Chinese girl is here."
Lane met them half way with the missionary.
"Never mind how we escaped," Saxby began. "That was a brilliant idea of
yours--if it was yours--about bombing a way out. Now, I don't want to
be officious and seem to be giving orders. But we must get out of this
cave at once."
"Check," Lane agreed grimly. "Know a way?"
"Ask the girl here. She's on our side. She just saved my life from that
Russian agent. He's alive somewhere behind us."
* * * * *
Through the missionary, Lane put his question to White Lily. She told
him at once of the two secret exits, one easily traveled by any man
of only ordinary size, the other impossible to any but the slightest
and most agile. There was but little danger of a check from any of the
Chinese then hiding in the inner caverns, as the entrances to these
secret tunnels were well hidden and not likely to be stumbled upon by
accident. At Lane's request she guided the marines to the easier way
out. He decided that it was time to retreat, and that without delay.
As the men lined up to pass one at a time into the well concealed,
small black hole, White Lily held a torch high and estimated each
candidate for escape. Presently she began pulling one man after another
out of the line. Lane made a gesture of protest. Saxby, standing beside
him, caught his arm.
"Let her alone. She knows what she is doing. Look at that last man she
jerked out. He weighs two hundred at least. The slim fellows will make
it, the others may not. She's not taking any chance of blocking the
tunnel at the very beginning."
When the last and fattest marine had been passed in Lane turned to the
missionary.
"You're next," he said. "You refused to take your proper turn. Now you
get what's left. In with you."
A fanatical gleam flickered over the madman's eyes.
"I denied my master twice. Shall I deny him thrice?"
"You can do as you please about that." Lane seized the man by the
collar of his coat and the seat of his trousers. "I may need you to
talk for us. After that you are your own boss. Saxby, you're next."
Saxby obeyed without comment. He might have gone earlier as far as
bulk was concerned. Lane granted him his request to be one of the last
as Saxby feared he might hold up the line. His burns and his general
stiffness made each step a torture. There remained only White Lily. The
captain motioned for her to precede him. She shook her head.
"Interpreter!" he shouted into the tunnel. "Saxby, send that missionary
back."
Saxby himself had to back out in order to accommodate the interpreter.
"Tell her," Lane ordered, "that I shan't force her to come against her
will, but that I think she will be safer with us than by herself. For
all we know some of the enemy--or of her own people--may have found
their way into the narrower tunnel."
The missionary reported that White Lily declined their protection.
"Then tell her to hurry as fast as she can to the other secret exit. I
will detail a patrol to look out for her on the mountain as soon as I
get out myself."
White Lily's translated reply was illuminating.
"I will stay here with my people and with those who hate them. Hu the
Good said there must be no more killing. Unless these people are shown
the way out they will starve, and that is slow killing. Without me they
would never find this way."
Lane saluted.
"Tell her," he said, "that I respect her wish, and regret that my duty
to my men prevents me from staying to help."
"I'll stay," Saxby announced quietly. "My damned feet hurt so that
I can only hobble, anyway. Lend me your revolver. Markoff is still
abroad somewhere."
"But," Lane expostulated, "if any of the governor's soldiers catch
sight of you they'll murder you. The girl is Chinese. She probably will
know how to handle her own race much better than you or I would. If
they turn on her she can bolt for the other secret tunnel and escape. I
don't see what good you will be. However, I shall let you stay if the
girl wants you. This is not a military matter, although technically I
could order you to come with us. Put it up to her."
Saxby insisted that the missionary emphasize to White Lily her possible
danger from Markoff. With an armed man accompanying her on the search
of the distant caverns she would be safe until her own people assembled
in sufficient numbers to protect her. Saxby avoided transmitting his
private dread that her own people, blaming her and Hu for their present
plight, might turn against her.
To Saxby's offer White Lily replied with evident distress. She would
have none of it. She would be quite safe. There was no danger in what
she proposed, either from Markoff or from her own people. In their
gratitude at escaping they would protect her, and she would be safe
in the caverns, which she knew far better than Markoff did. Her last
request to Saxby was personal.
"Go," she said, "with your friends. When I see you I see on image of my
grandfather, and I would not have him here."
She was inexorable. With a sigh Saxby turned to precede Lane into the
tunnel. White Lily had earned her right to do as she thought best; it
was not for him or any other man to disregard her wishes.
"Ask her what her name is," Saxby directed.
The missionary gave the Chinese.
"What does it mean in English--if anything?" Saxby asked. "I might
forget the Chinese."
"White Lily."
Assured that the friend who reminded her of Hu was safely on his
way--provided he and the others in front of him could squeeze through
the narrow places--White Lily kindled a fresh torch from the old and
left the spot, as she thought, forever. The little that must be done
before she might seek and find her heart's desire would not take long.
Holding the torch like a beacon high above her head she walked rapidly
from cave to vaster cave in search of her people. Only the quick patter
of her footfalls broke the black silence and died in the vastness
without an echo. Indifferent to everything but the peace that before
long would be hers, she felt no pain from her lacerated feet, and even
the dull ache of her heart was swallowed up in a timeless void where
there is neither joy nor sorrow.
She had never believed in the paradise of her grandfather; it was an
old man's dream, a fable of his second childhood, to be tolerated but
not mocked. The object of her secret contemplation was more serene than
any paradise of the prophet's, and soon it would be hers as it was his
even now. That he had grasped the only good thing in the very act of
reaching for what he imagined was a better, was the kindest fate she
could have wished him. The thing he thought he desired could never
have satisfied him. Although he would never know it, he was happier
than he had ever dreamed he should be. He had attained the supreme
good blindly; she knew what she desired, and she would seek it with
understanding.
Reaching the deepest cavern she stopped and sang her message into the
darkness.
* * * * *
"The crescent entrance is choked with stones. You cannot pass out that
way for many weeks. Send me ten of the men you trust and I will show
them a secret way out of these caves. They shall be your guides. All,
the people of Hu the Good and the soldiers of the governor of Kansu,
must pass out in peace. There must be no more killing. This is the
command of Hu the Good to his people. He took your guilt upon himself
and paid with his life. Send me ten men or you starve. You see my
torch, and I feel you in the dark places about this cave."
For perhaps a minute no sound answered. Then a shrill voice screamed
through the darkness.
"Is this another trap? You and your grandfather betrayed us to the
governor. Why should we believe you?"
"To save your own lives."
"We are safer here, and here we stay."
"As you will. I care no longer what you do, for I heard a voice on the
mountain prophesying the end of all your strife. I brought you the word
of Hu the Good because I promised him that I would. Does it matter if
you are as deaf as he is? Your hunger will not last long. Then you will
forget and be forgotten. Does any man come with me?"
"No!"
The angry shout from a thousand throats hoarse with hatred reverberated
through the vast cavern and died without an echo. They disowned her,
and would have torn her to pieces had not their fear that she was a
decoy sent by the governor held them in leash.
She retraced her steps to the audience chamber. There she kindled a
fresh torch, picked up a bundle of the larger ones, and hurried into
the void of a vaster cave on the further side of the hall. Having
promised Hu that she would avert bloodshed if possible, she kept her
word to him, although she believed that he would never know she had.
Yet, although he had ceased to exist, she felt his presence in those
dark caves. Not till she had carried his message of mercy to the
deepest of them would the memory of him be appeased.
In some of the caves she heard the stealthy stirring of men all about
her beyond the narrow circle of the torchlight, but none answered her
summons. Either they disbelieved her like the men in the first cave,
or they were too dull-witted to foresee their inevitable end. The
plentiful stores of food in the dry caverns were more eloquent than
the thin whisper of a distant hunger. If what she said was true they
could dig a way out before they starved. The immediate risk of a second
betrayal paralyzed their imaginations and they reasoned with their
bellies. In two of the smaller caves the response was similar to that
in the first, but angrier.
At length, shortly after midnight, her fruitless labor came to an end.
She was free now to do what she longed to do. In her joy at the serene
knowledge of freedom from all obligations to the dead or the living
she quickened her weary steps back to the audience chamber. Physical
exhaustion all but overcame her, but her will conquered the desire to
sink down on the smooth rock and sleep.
As she entered the audience chamber she broke into a run. The far
eastern wall and the long corridor where ten thousand had trodden the
way she was to take echoed to her coming. She heard the patter of her
own feet multiplied in her ears, and it was music. Then, as from a
world already forgotten in the headlong plunge to oblivion, she heard
other feet racing to intercept her.
A tense, lustful face, red in the glow of the smoking torch, peered
into her own. Instinctively she swung the torch at that mask of hatred
and desire which froze the blood in her veins. She missed. The torch
shot from her hand and the glowing coal of its tip bounded through the
darkness, to expire in a constellation of crimson sparks. She felt her
persecutor's claw of a hand upon her shoulder and his cold breath like
a blast of death upon her cheek. Frenzied with loathing she wrenched
herself free. He was between her and her heart's desire; to escape him
she could only flee into the universal darkness.
But half conscious of where she was going she raced toward what she
guessed was the cavern leading to the narrower secret exit. The very
unconsciousness of her actions aided her. Where deliberate thought
would have confused her, the lifelong habits of her unfeeling muscles
took control automatically and urged her body unerringly toward its
nearest safety.
Markoff did not make the mistake of immediate pursuit. He had watched
and waited too long and too patiently for his opportunity to risk it in
a confusion of blundering chases in the dark. Until certain of the way
she was taking he could listen as coldly and as motionlessly as a dead
snake. The inevitable change in the timbre of her footfalls would tell
him when she entered a corridor, and the focussed sound of her flight
would guide him unerringly to his prey. Every nerve of his lean body
listened, as the sounds dwindled steadily in the distance, straining to
detect the slight change in quality as she passed under an invisible
archway. Presently he caught the change. Turning his head slowly from
side to side he fixed the direction of the sound. His muscles stiffened
and he leaped into pursuit.
He had watched her every movement in the audience chamber, from the
moment she led the marines out of it till the instant she reappeared
after her last fruitless mission to the hiding places of the Moslems.
During her long absences he speculated on her mission, imagining that
she was gathering her people for an assault upon the shattered exit, or
to lead them to freedom by the tunnel she had shown the Americans. To
attack her while still uncertain of her friends' whereabouts would be
fool-hardy. Her cries might well be his death warrant. Only when she
was almost to the eastern wall did Markoff feel safe in accosting her.
Only the forbidden caves lay that way; she could not possibly summon
help from them. The ambushes of her people all lay far underground and
a mile or more to her rear. Her attempt to kill him with the bayonet
had inflamed his passion to the point of insanity. Love and cruelty are
indistinguishable to men of Markoff's kind, and passionate hatred is
their equivalent for ungovernable desire. He would possess her now in
his own way.
Creeping after her into a low corridor he heard her groping along its
wall. Evidently she was feeling for some entrance she knew well. The
sounds ceased. Stealing forward a step at a time Markoff felt every
foot of the cold hall till he touched a void. Like a rattlesnake he
squeezed silently into the narrow tunnel after her.
Before long she knew that she was followed. While she still had
strength to crawl she would not fall into his hands. The roof of the
cramping tunnel sloped rapidly down toward the floor. Progress was
possible only on hands and knees. She heard him gaining. He was filled
with an insane endurance; she, all but exhausted.
The limestone slope became as slippery as iced glass where the tunnel
passed under the bed of a subterranean stream and the water dripped
incessantly from the roof. Markoff slipped in the slime, cursed, and
lost twenty yards. Mad with rage at his mishap he wallowed in the slimy
muck till his clothing and the green notebook in his coat pocket were
soaked in the ice-cold limewater. Bracing his elbows against the walls
of the tunnel he dragged himself up an inch at a time like a wounded
snake trying to crawl out of a gopher hole.
White Lily was now fifty yards ahead. If her strength lasted another
hour she would beat him to the exit. Then she might find her
friends--they had offered to wait and look for her before she refused
to escape as she was now escaping. Surely they would be within hail on
the mountainside, and they could destroy or hold her tormentor till
she escaped forever. Her senses clouded and she struggled through the
last terrible hour in an agonized dream, too exhausted to know whether
Markoff still followed or whether he had suffocated in the slime.
Her dream was more vivid than any reality. With an awful immediacy she
knew that it was not a dream, but the shadow of a living horror that
brooded on her mind. Powerless to shake off her nameless fear, even
when the tunnel permitted her to straighten up and run, she resigned
herself to its clutch and wondered if she must be conscious of it
forever. Did Hu suffer now as she was suffering? Were the converts
right? Was this the eternity they had prophesied for her and her
grandfather? She stumbled up the last steep slope, crouched to pass
under the shelving roof, and dragged herself up to a moonlit desolution
of shattered quartz. Instantly her mind cleared in the untainted air
and she knew that the damnation prophesied by the converts was a lie.
Her rest would be deep and dreamless.
Until her friends found her she must stay in the vicinity of that black
hole in the quartz to see what issued. She would not venture to return
to the audience chamber by the broader secret way until she knew beyond
all doubt that the narrower had voided its snake. For all she knew
Markoff might have crawled back to the caves. If at dawn he had failed
to emerge she would hasten to the other exit and ask two of her friends
to see her safely back into the audience chamber.
She climbed a jagged pinnacle of quartz, found a ledge where she might
rest, and scanned the moonlit mountainside for traces of her friends.
Half a mile away a more massive outcrop of quartz had burst through the
limestone. The tunnel she had shown Lane ended there, beneath a great
rock in a small cave no larger than a panther's lair. This exit was
well concealed beneath a loose jumble of huge blocks on the floor of a
natural amphitheatre of quartz and limestone. It was in fact a replica
on a grander scale of her own surroundings.
Half way down the moonlit slope of the farther outcrop she made out
dark shadows that seemed to move. Were these her friends? Two black
figures rose on the crest of the amphitheatre and dwindled down to the
slope to join the others. From the build of the shorter she guessed it
to be the old American who reminded her of Hu; the other might be the
commander. They were safe. When Markoff emerged she could run across
the intervening mountainside and soon be on her way in safety.
* * * * *
While White Lily watched for him, Markoff labored ever more slowly up
the last hundred yards toward the moonlight and the clean night air.
He, too, was troubled by fitful dreams of an all but supernatural
reality. In his career as a seeker of pleasure he had experimented
with certain of the rarer oriental drugs, only to abandon them all
after one or two trials. They intensified his morbid fear of death to
such a pitch that he gladly let them alone. The dreams--if they were
dreams--that tortured him now were a million times worse than the
worst any drug had ever induced. He began to mutter in Russian that he
must be very ill; that White Lily had poisoned the tunnel with some
Chinese drug of unnatural potency, and that he would never again see
the sunrise. He experienced no pain--otherwise he would have shrieked.
Nevertheless he felt horribly diseased to the very marrow of his bones.
The girl must have poisoned the tunnel. He could smell the stuff now.
Until this moment he had not noticed the faint odor of decay that
crawled with him like an aura. He stopped, panting. The smell had
suddenly become a suffocating stench that made his reeling brain spin.
Without the slightest premonitory twinge an infinite pain gripped every
nerve of his being, and he fell instantly from the human state to a
writhing thing that was neither human nor beast.
The inhuman shrieks that suddenly burst in appalling volume from the
black hole in the rocks tattered the silence of the night to shreds.
Half a mile away the sentries heard them and went as cold as ice. Even
in battle they had never heard such sounds of agony. White Lily tumbled
down the steep side of her lookout and, with her hands to her ears,
fled across the slope to the Americans. No matter what the fiend had
done he should not suffer like that. She must get one of the soldiers
to shoot him.
Half way to her destination she met Lane and Saxby running to meet her.
She could only point behind her. They raced on, hardly less fearful
than she, while she fled with all her strength to outdistance those
terrible sounds.
Stumbling down into the smaller ampitheatre they saw what looked like a
man writhing its way out of the black hole. Freeing itself the welling
thing flopped and bounded over the rocks with horrible contortions that
bent its back double.
"Shoot him!" Saxby shouted.
Unnerved by those awful sounds of torment Lane fired six times and
missed. Expert marksmanship and a cool head might have put an end to
the agony of that thing bounding over the jagged quartz like a fish
jerked from the water. Lance had neither. He tried to reload but
dropped the shells. Suddenly the thing collapsed like a jellyfish. Its
sounds of pain increased beyond all endurance. Before he could seize a
stone, Saxby saw Markoff's right hand, limp as the flipper of a dead
seal, fumbling at a vest pock. Evidently the man could still think.
He still had memory, and he remembered the capsule in his pocket. The
fumbling fingers crumpled and bent back double; the wrist curled up and
the limp arm flowed down on the rocks, as an invisible decay progressed
swiftly through the bone from finger tips to shoulder socket. The bony
skull suddenly settled like a collapsing balloon; the sounds of agony
ceased instantly; the whole sprawling body lost its rigidity and became
a sagging bag of pulp.
Unable to move, the two men stood staring down at what had been a human
being. Like a recurrent dream the next act of a tragedy older than the
human race began slowly before their eyes. As if he were following a
once familiar change that he had witnessed a thousand times only to
forget, Saxby anticipated each event before it happened. The sequence
was stark reality itself; although each individual act contradicted
the accepted harmony of nature. These things, too, were natural, but
in an order of nature more ancient by æons than the beginnings of
evolution. Lane, knowing less than Saxby of what lay before them, felt
more. It was his first experience with the older order. The foundering
of the _Sheridan_ was too abrupt to reveal its true significance to
men battling for their lives in black waters. He felt more than Saxby
now, because the changing substance of the dead man's body communicated
directly with his own flesh and bone without the intermediary
sophistication of thought.
The clothes of the dead man began to glisten in the moonlight as if
stiff and brittle with hoar frost. Yet the night was sultry. A sleeve,
rotted at the shoulder of the coat, crumbled and fell away. The
frostiness of the rest thickened to a glittering fur of thousands of
needlelike crystals. The rotten fabric collapsed under the increasing
weight as the crystals grew, and fell with a tiny, fairy chime of
tinkling glass to the quartz, exposing the shapeless arms and legs. A
coat pocket collapsed. Yang's notebook, glittering with crystals, fell
open, face down upon the quartz. On the bared flesh of the legs and
arms, as delicately as an expert artist, an invisible worker rapidly
etched the outlines--of the skeleton as the completely dissolved
substance of the bones sweated through the flesh. Simultaneously
the flattened head became a bejewelled hemisphere of densely packed
crystals that grew and multiplied visibly. Within twenty seconds the
entire body was crusted over with a bristling pelt of glittering
needles, whose steady growth filled the moonlit amphitheatre with a
creeping, metallic rustle.
[Illustration: _The clothes of the dead man began to glisten in the
moonlight as if stiff and brittle with hoar frost._]
The rate of growth began doubling twice in every second. The air grew
deathly cold and a slow breeze stirred among the rocks. Spears of
splintering glass sprang from the quartz surrounding the body; the
whole amphitheatre seemed to burst into crystalline life multiplying
upon itself in explosive growth, and the rocks groaned and split
asunder in travail to bring forth a new life.
"Out of it!" Saxby shouted, dragging the captain with him.
They fled for their lives back to the camp. Words were superfluous,
even if they had had sufficient breath to utter them. Even Lane, who
lacked Saxby's fuller knowledge, realized that Markoff, in discharging
his debt to the world, had succeeded in passing his last bad check.
Dead, he was infinitely more dangerous than he had ever been while
living. In his crawl through the secret tunnel he had infected an
entire mountain range with hellish life.
On reaching camp they were hailed by the missionary exulting like a
madman.
"The Chinese girl has gone back to the accursed caves by the way we
came out. She told me to tell you," he shouted at Saxby, "that she has
gone to join her grandfather. 'Vengeance is mine, saith--'"
Saxby knocked him down.
CHAPTER XI
Buried
For the two hours that remained till dawn the men were ordered to
sleep--if they could.
"You may march far," Saxby grimly informed the sergeant, "when you do
start. So make the best of what is left of this hellish night. Better
obey the captain's orders. Mere noises will mean nothing unless I yell."
Saxby and Lane kept watch with the sentries, never once taking their
eyes off the wall of the farther amphitheatre. They had been watching
about an hour when they saw a gleaming pinnacle suddenly rear its
glittering spire above the wall in the moonlight, only to totter almost
instantly and disappear. Three seconds later they heard the crash of
a million tons of shattering glass. The men leapt to their feet and
snatched their rifles. They had not slept. That appalling sound of
destruction seemed to last for centuries. Instead of diminishing it
increased with an incredible crescendo till it seemed that the whole
mountainside must be an avalanche of brittle crystals smashing to bits.
Then, as abruptly as a thunderclap, the racket ceased absolutely.
"Well?" said the captain. "Had we better be going?"
Saxby shook his head.
"Better rest. Tell the men it's over for tonight. That's the end of the
stuff we saw growing."
"How do you know?" Lane felt strangely cold.
"I started to tell you in the cave when that crazy missionary over
there butted in with his prophecy of a jehad that had already taken
place. How many thousand years ago was it? Do you remember? I don't. It
never happened or, if it did, it was utterly unimportant compared with
what may happen next. That was merely a squabble among a few thousand
Chinamen about a triviality. If it ever mattered--which I doubt--I have
a feeling that it will never matter again. We may be about to fight an
enemy the human race has never faced. But I trust not. If that terrific
conflict does materialize--as it may--we shall find it wise to forget
our petty brawls for a while. For if it breaks out it will be one
against all and all against one. I have seen a shadow--no more--of what
may be almost upon us. That is what I started to tell you about. You
wouldn't have believed me, in spite of your wife's unsigned note. And I
scarcely expect you to believe me now when I tell you why she did not
sign that message. She was afraid of incriminating you through me. You
alone were responsible, you know, for the wreck of the _Sheridan_."
Lane stared at him.
"I don't wonder that your mind is temporarily unbalanced. Am I seeing
things, too? Did I see Markoff die? Or was it just my imagination
running wild after all that hell in the caves?"
"You saw that pinnacle fall a few moments ago," Saxby reminded him
quietly. "So did I. And the men heard it as well as we. If you don't
believe me, see what a devil of a time the noncoms are having to make
the men lie down again."
"What did my wife ask you to tell me?" Lane demanded in a low tone.
"Better not speak too loud. That sentry is on the jump as it is."
"Just this," Saxby began. "First, if you are questioned, to deny that
you ever had anything to do with dyeing your boy's Easter eggs. That
seems to have started everything--exactly how, I don't yet see. As a
matter of fact I don't think you will ever be suspected. Your wife,
Tom, and I are the only ones who know. Isabel has bribed the boy to
forget. She says he has sense and can be trusted. Now, let me give you
a bald outline, without any theorizing, of precisely what has happened
since you mixed that green dye. After seeing Markoff die and hearing
one crash yourself you should be able to believe the rest."
Saxby then briefly detailed the unexplained circumstances surrounding
Tom's fight, the "vision" of Dan and Jake, Yang's strange death and
Isabel's experience in the desert.
"Yang," he concluded, "was mercifully stupefied by gin when the disease
got him. Markoff was sober, in full possession of his senses. From his
end we may guess that the disease--if it is such--is extremely painful
in at least one of its forms. From my analysis of what has happened so
far, I deduce as a working hypothesis the existence of two distinct
types, and possibly a third. Again, as a tentative guess only, I find
it suggestive to imagine that those crystals we saw growing, also the
others in the desert and in Los Angeles, have some form of life. This
may not be a very good hypothesis. Perhaps we had better say they
have proto-life. This proto-life is not the common property that all
crystals have of growing in their mother liquid. It is more closely
akin to animal or plant life--to life in the ordinary sense. I do not
believe these growths have intelligence as we commonly understand the
term. A psychologist of the extreme behaviourist school would, of
course, say that they have as good a claim to 'intelligence' as we
have. Their actions are their minds, and their minds are nothing more
than their actions. However, we can defer metaphysics till the fight is
over--if we are still alive to argue.
"All I wanted to point out is this. These crystalline masses that grow
at such a prodigious rate seem to be of at least two distinct species.
One feeds, if I may put it so, on silicon compounds as well as on lime
compounds; the other seems to require cellulose. The mineral feeders
find their nourishment in sand, quartz, lime--in fact in practically
any kind of rock containing silica or calcium; the cellulose-feeders in
such stuff as wood, clothes or fabrics containing cotton, and so on.
For anything I know to the contrary either kind may be able to live,
for a short time at least, on the other's proper food. Now, I take it
as practically certain that there were considerable quantities of lime
in some form or another in the hold of the _Sheridan_?"
"We carried several tons of chloride of lime for sanitary purposes in
camp."
"Check! Calcium chloride--that's what you had. The chlorine in the
compound doesn't seem to count. The calcium does. What were those
rocks in the outcrop where the burros were killed? Limestone--calcium
carbonate. Again you have it. What about the bones of the burros?
And what about the shell of Tom's green egg? Lime again. And so in
Markoff's case. The crystal brutes that overgrew the burros were
silicon feeders. The sheer weight of the crystal masses, nothing more
nor leas than huge cutting machines of brittle glass, sliced the
carcasses to ribbons.
"On Tom's Easter egg there may have been a growth of both silicon-
and lime-feeders and cellulose-feeders, although the cellulose kind
undoubtedly predominated--witness the total disappearance of the
cotton mat. There was, however, a characteristic odor of decay in this
instance, as in that of the desert. I infer, therefore, that mineral
feeders were also present. Probably they fed upon the dust that is
under even the most sanitary bed. What interests me is this. There
must have been a third kind present, a combined mineral-cellulose
feeder, which crashed when it tried to walk. Some of the same variety
must obviously have come to grief over there just a few moments ago;
Markoff's clothes provided the cellulose, the rose quartz, the silicon.
In the case of the egg I infer that the silicon-cellulose feeders have
a more durable 'heart' than the pure silicon feeders. Otherwise your
cat would not have been knocked out when he first sniffed the egg.
As the full sunlight worked on this thin layer of living crystals
they disintegrated--just as the mineral-feeders do. The essential
characteristics of all are the same; they are truly different kinds of
one and the same life.
"What part the calcium compounds play in the life of these crystal
brutes I don't yet see clearly. I suspect they are the necessary
'enzyme' that starts the terrific growth--the yeast, as it were. In
each case so far there has been calcium present when the crystals began
multiplying like a madman's nightmare. Even in the case of Yang we have
it. Those four hard-boiled eggs murdered him. Their shells were mostly
limestone. It was a silicon-feeder that got him. All the glass bottles
in the laboratory were gone--vanished completely."
"I still don't see how you fit Tom's egg into your theory," Lane
objected. "If you can't explain that, you will have to change
everything."
"The thing in your boy's bedroom was mainly a cellulose-feeder," Saxby
reiterated with some heat. "The cotton mat by the side of his bed had
disappeared."
"But," Lane interrupted, "you say the green egg was found under the cot
where Isabel put it."
"It was. The mat, when she hid the egg, was partly under the bed. She
is not sure, but she thinks she remembers putting the egg on the corner
of the mat under the bed."
"If your theory that lime starts the growth is correct, that egg should
have had a shell left when the doctor found it."
"Not necessarily. I'll come to that in a minute. Only a very thin layer
of the shell need have 'evaporated' to start the growth. The city
chemist of course, not being told to look for anything of the sort,
observed no suspicious thinness of the shell. He was concerned only
with analysing the green dye. So with Yang's four crushed eggs. I had
no time to examine carefully what was left of the shells."
"I think you'll find," Lane remarked, "a fourth kind of feeder among
your infernal crystals. Call it a pure calcium eater."
"Not till I find it. I see certain evidence for another explanation.
The calcium, I'm willing to bet, is responsible for the sex of these
brutes. Oh, I know I'm crazy--have been all my life. That's why I have
done some things better men couldn't do. These crystals, I suspect,
have three kinds of sex--male, female and bisexual. The last correspond
to certain kinds of plants or flowers. The other two are more like most
animals. All this, of course, is only a crude analogy, for the crystal
monsters are neither plant nor animal. They're far more ancient than
either."
"What I want to know is how are we to stop them breaking out again?"
"Possibly we have seen the end of the whole story. If a certain theory
of mine is correct, we have."
"Then why did you insist that we may be in for the greatest fight in
history?"
"Because my optimistic theory may be wrong. Any man with a scientific
training knows that even the most perfect and most logical theory is
likely to be smashed at any moment by a single apparently insignificant
fact. I can put mine to the test now. I believe these crystal brutes
can breed and grow only in light of a certain quality. Direct sunlight
is fatal to them. Total absence of light prevents them getting a start
toward life. Moonlight, direct or diffused, seems to be just right.
The actinic rays of the sunlight are either not present or are so
diluted as to be negligible in the light reflected from the moon. You
can't take much of a photograph by moonlight. The crystal brutes must
have their light weak or they don't breed. If it is too diluted, they
perish. In total darkness they don't even seem to begin to live. They
seem to be fastidious about their light as animals and bacteria are
about their temperature and humidity. Unless both lie in very narrow
ranges your animal dies. Now, in all instances so far, the crystal
brutes have come to birth, bred and lived only in moonlight.
"Both the quality and quantity of light present seem to determine
the period of gestation of these crystal brutes or, if you prefer,
the term of incubation. _When_ your wife infected the rock outcrop
in the desert is not known. I suspect it was _not_ when she prepared
supper, but early the following morning, while cleaning up to leave
camp. The refuse may have been the plague spot, although Mrs. Lane
thinks the rock was infected by her clothes. If so, the infection did
not reach the silicon in the crack which Tom observed until some time
the following day. The full sunlight held the life of the crystals in
abeyance all that day; the moonlight started them breeding, and the
'rats' got the full benefit.
"Again, as to Tom's egg. Before leaving Shanghai I verified that the
moon was shining into your boy's room the night all this started."
"Did you ever see Tom's cot?" Lane asked quietly.
"No. Why do you ask?"
"Because it has a heavy Mexican horsehair valence all around it clear
to the floor."
"So much the better for my theory. The brute in his room cannot have
been nearly so large as any of the others. It seems to have been a
pretty feeble specimen; it tottered and crashed of its own weight. It
was like a rickety child deprived of direct sunlight. The amount of
light that could diffuse through the slit between the valance and the
floor by reflection from the walls would be practically negligible.
The egg was almost, but not quite, in total darkness. Its infernal
offspring, generated from the cellulose of the cotton mat, was
therefore a puny little devil with no stamina--luckily for Tom."
"All right," said Lane. "I won't argue with a scientist. What about the
_Sheridan_?"
"You mean how did the moonlight diffuse into the hold and start things
going? That's simple. Through the portholes, of course. The diffused
moonlight started the spots of dye on your shirt. Your wife told me you
changed it at the last moment before starting. It was in your dunnage
bag, of course?"
"Suppose it was. What then?"
"It must have been in the hold, probably, although you would not know,
not far from your supply of chloride of lime. Then we have simply a
repetition of the essential conditions of Tom's bedroom. With hundreds
of dunnage bags, themselves cotton and stuffed with clothes also mostly
cotton, the cellulose-feeders had an ideal propagating place."
"And they grew at such a rate that they quickly burst the ship?"
"Precisely. A pan of dough swells to several times its initial size
when the yeast gets to working well. These tons of cotton bags
and clothes grew so fast into crystal masses that the effect was
practically a silent explosion. From my observation of the thing in the
desert, I conclude that the crystals are strong, extremely brittle,
and _hollow_. Certainly some of them were filled with some substance,
probably like the neon and mercury gases in these new electric signs,
that glows from blue to red. The crystals at first are probably almost
solid throughout. As they grow they hollow progressively and fill with
gas. The gas, I take it, is the equivalent, in their kind of life, of
the blood of animals or the chlorophyll of most plants. Being a mere
shell when full grown, the bulk of the crystal would be thousands of
times that of the compact food from which it grew. An enormous pressure
would be exerted by a rapidly growing mass of such crystals before they
all suddenly collapsed."
"Yes, and then what? Why didn't Isabel find any trace of the thing
after it smashed? And why didn't you or those prospectors find any
broken crystals in the desert?"
"Easy. One of these living crystals dies instantly if it is broken.
Scratch certain kinds of glass and they fly to pieces."
"You always find the pieces."
"Of course. But suppose that condition was intensified a millionfold.
There would be nothing left but a very fine dust. If colorless, as it
probably is from these crystals, it would be difficult to detect. That
explains, possibly, why Isabel noticed no dust on the floor of Tom's
bedroom."
"It may."
"You are no more skeptical than I am. It is more probable that when
a living crystal 'dies' it ceases to be a solid and sublimates
instantaneously to a gas. That accounts for the terrible smell that is
always present. The odor is characteristic, although unlike any with
which I am familiar in chemistry. Yet, I am willing to believe almost
anything about the smell of a silicon compound, and there are some
pretty tough ones that can be generated from cellulose as a base. Most
dabblers think the sulphur compounds are the worst. An expert in other
elements knows better--or worse, according to the way you feel about
such things."
"All right," Lane remarked. "Let us go back to the _Sheridan_ for a
moment? How did the green dye on my soiled shirt ever come in contact
with the chloride of lime? You say calcium compounds are necessary to
start the crystals living."
"Contact is unnecessary. See what happened to the glass bottles
in Yang's laboratories. It is sufficient that the subtle gas, or
emanation if you like, from the green dye shall diffuse and attack
the lime---which may be a hundred feet away. The effect would be very
slight, judged by any scale the layman might apply, yet chemists and
physicists work habitually with traces of gases as dilute as those
required by our theory, and even with quantities much smaller. It is
not the size of things that is important; it is their qualities. This
is a commonplace of everyday life. Seventy years ago the 'authorities'
would have locked you up in an asylum if you had told them that you
could wipe out a whole population with a pinprick. Yet, that is all
that is necessary today, and you experts may be using just that sort
of a weapon in your next human war. Your apparently clean pin may be a
thriving metropolis of carefully selected disease germs. Infect one man
under the right conditions and your grand offensive is launched toward
a devastating victory. Only," he added with a wry smile, "nature may
stop us before we can start that sort of thing."
"There is one objection to your theory," Lane remarked, ignoring the
compliment to the foresight of certain leaders in his own profession.
"This emanation from the green dye never got a chance at our chloride
of lime. The lime was all packed in airtight cans."
"Airtight? A lot you know about cans. I'll bet the lids on half of
them were as loose as ashes. Probably one or two had even slipped
their covers completely in the manhandling of loading. I've watched
stevedores at work. After spilling half a can over the dunnage bags the
men slapped on the cover and let it go."
"Well, I can neither prove nor disprove what you say. I'm willing to
accept the loose lids on those cans."
"So am I. They must have been loose. Otherwise the _Sheridan_ would be
afloat now."
"And you say this green dye is probably some sort of a freak that may
not turn up again in chemistry for millions of years?"
"I hope so. It is probably a highly complex compound that is formed
only under an extremely rare combination of circumstances--correct
heat, proper concentration, and perhaps fifty more.
"When you dyed Tom's Easter eggs, you hit the right connections
by accident. Yang was an expert. He was one of the most skilful
technicians in the world. When he saw queer chemical reactions
happening before his very eyes, he babied and encouraged them in every
way to be themselves. They gave the hints; he merely followed to the
best of his ability. His notebook shows that." Saxby stopped abruptly.
"By the way, what has happened to that infernal notebook? Is it still
in the caves?"
"I saw it fall out of Markoff's pocket when his coat rotted. Didn't
you?"
"No. I couldn't take my eyes off his head. Are you sure you saw it?"
"Positive."
"Then we must go back and get it at once." He glanced at his gloved
hands. "Thank Heaven Markoff let my hands alone. You mustn't touch it.
The gloves may not be any real protection. Still, we know what happens
when flesh that has been in contact with limestone or limewater touches
the green dye. The emanation penetrates the flesh and rots the lime of
the bones to liquid. If that isn't exactly what happens the fact is
equally unpleasant."
"But what can you do with the infernal thing?" Lane demanded.
"I'll fly back to Shanghai with it. Then I'll take another plane and
fly a thousand miles out to sea and drop it. You needn't come now. I'll
get it and be back by sunrise."
"Just a word before you go. Your theory seems to be off so far as the
_Sheridan_ is concerned. There was no smell of decay as she sank."
"Of course not. She went down before all the crystals had time to
sublimate. You smelled nothing because you were too excited trying to
swim to the raft. Such gas as had already been given off in the hold of
the ship dissolved in the water. Probably the gas is more soluble in
water than ammonia. Anyhow, the facts indicate that it is."
"Very well. There is just one more point. You said those living
crystals couldn't breed in total darkness or in full sunlight. And you
supposed there was enough moonlight diffused through the portholes to
start the breeding of the emanation on the lime and the cotton clothes.
Again I say all right. Now for the awkward fact that demolishes your
theory. The dunnage--all those clothes--and all of the chloride of lime
were stored in the lower hold, far below the water line. There was not
a single porthole in that hold. The very faint light required by your
theory was in the sea water no doubt, even at the depth of the lower
hold. But there was no possible chink or hole by which it could have
filtered through to the dunnage."
"What about the hatchways between the upper and lower holds?" Saxby
snapped.
"All closed tight as drums with hundreds of tons of military supplies
holding them down. I guess your theory is sunk like the _Sheridan_."
"Not at all! Modified, that's all, and most beautifully. There must
be a third species of crystal monsters, a cellulose-feeder, that
breeds in the dark. Why, my theory is better than ever! I don't have
to tinker with diffused moonlight to account for what happened under
Tom's cot. Don't you see? There may be only two essential species
after all--a darkness-breeding cellulose-feeder and a moonlight-loving
silicon-eater. But if there is a third--"
"Wrang!"
* * * * *
It was not a sunrise gun from Teng-shan that cut short Saxby's rather
unscientific defense of his optimistic theory. The ear splitting shot
that seemed to pierce the very brain was the characteristic note
emitted by the sudden fracture of a vast body of rock under tension.
Those who have never enjoyed the experience of such a sound may get a
faint echo of it by sticking their heads into a bathtub of water while
a friend bangs two sledge hammers together, under water, within an inch
of the ear. That shot was heard in Teng-shan and in all the villages
within a radius of fifty miles of it. The governor, recovering slowly
in his palace, had a bad relapse. The wretches imprisoned by thousands
in the caves heard in it the voice of their doom. The pilot of the
bombing plane stiffened his muscles and gave his bird the gas. The
marines had difficulty in making their legs behave. The earth jarred
slightly, but there was no earthquake. The most important consequence
of that report was the conspicuous hole which it shot through the
middle of Saxby's theory.
"That happened half a mile underground," he remarked when Lane could
hear. "Markoff infected his tunnel thoroughly when he squeezed through
it with that infernal notebook in his pocket. And it must have been
pitch dark in there. I guess you're right. One kind at least of the
living crystals does breed in absolute darkness. I suspected that this
might prove to be so. This makes the whole situation worse than I
expected. The caves will be polluted for years and Kansu will become
the plague spot of the world. What I hoped would not happen has
happened. Nature has declared war on the human race. We had better get
out of here and warn the people of Teng-shan as fast as we can."
"What about Yang's notebook?"
"It may as well stay where it is. I probably should not be able to get
it before the big smash comes anyway. Keep your head and make the open
plain as hard as the men can go. Don't wait for me. I'll follow at my
own pace."
Lane shouted an order. The men fell in, and the column thundered
by on its way to the plain. The missionary, Lane, and Saxby stood
watching them pass. The sun rose, and with it the morning breeze.
Almost suffocating them, a foul odor of decay drifted over from the
amphitheatre. Their brains reeled.
"Take the interpreter and hurry to the governor," Saxby advised Lane.
"No. Don't hang back for me. My feet are all right if I should have to
run. I'm taking a professional interest in this," he called after the
retreating figures. "I've been a collector all my life. See you later
in Teng-shan if it's still there."
He followed as fast as he could, deliberately ignoring the pain from
his burns. "Well," he remarked to himself, "if it must come, it will
be worth seeing. I wouldn't sell my ticket to the show for a million
dollars, even if I shall never see another sunrise for staying. Nature
is greater than mere life; nature is infinite, life finite."
When, an hour or so later, Saxby hobbled down the last ten yards of
the slope, he felt sorely disappointed. Nothing whatever had happened.
Had he sent the marines on a fool's errand? They were to warn the
governor and assist in evacuating Teng-shan of its inhabitants. For
what? Perhaps nothing. Although humanely concerned about the possible
fate of the Chinese, Saxby could not repress a sigh of regret that
the finest specimen in his collection had failed to materialize. It
remained only a hypothesis. He felt like an entomologist awakening from
a dream of grabbing purple butterflies a yard square only to find a
slapped mosquito in his hand. He trudged on to the village, resolved
never again to theorize so long as he lived. Metaphysics is better left
to the next world. It is worse than gin.
While the marines hastened to Teng-shan and Saxby trudged after them,
the pilot of the bombing plane soared above the mountains searching for
his fellow Americans. Never having heard the crack of snapping rock
before, he interpreted the shot that altered Saxby's theory as the
explosion of a huge military mine. Somehow, he thought, the marines
had captured the entire store of explosives of the Chinese and were
blasting their way out of the caves. Since bombing the guard room
and blocking the caves, he and the mechanician had spent some pretty
anxious hours. Had they done what Lane really wanted? It seemed so rash
that they doubted. Worse, the Chinese gunners, headed by the governor
in person, had paid a brief visit of inspection to the plane. The
plane's forward and aft machine guns were observed by the visitors.
They kept a respectful distance. Nevertheless their superstitious
fear of the monster was rapidly evaporating. The pilot could not help
feeling that, when they retired, they left merely to devise some
practicable method of attack. He did not feel justified in leaving the
spot until the captain sent definite word. The marines might still have
need of his services. When the supposed mine explosion shattered the
dawn, he shot over the mountains looking for the crater. Hoping to find
it soon he planned to circle it, making all the racket he could, to
scare off the Chinese till the marines escaped.
Forty minutes of criss-cross flying over the range revealed nothing
remarkable. The aviators became puzzled. Surely there should have
been a column of dust after the explosion? They began to fear that
the explosion was of Chinese origin, deep in the caves, and that the
marines were its victims.
* * * * *
A sudden shout from the mechanician, acting as observer at the moment,
caused the pilot to look down. On the floor of a natural amphitheatre
directly beneath the place he saw unmistakable evidence of bloodshed.
The outline of a solitary human body encrimsoned the rock. No other
evidence of a conflict was visible. After a short consultation
they decided to land and investigate. A mile and a half from the
amphitheatre they spied a safe landing place on the slope and came down.
Revolvers in hand, although they expected no ambush, they hurried up
the mountainside. Not a soul molested them. As they drew near the wall
of the amphitheatre they noticed a faint odor of decay.
"There's been fighting here," the pilot remarked. "Watch your step.
Take that way up--to the left, and keep your eyes peeled."
"That's no battlefield smell," the mechanician retorted, picking his
way over the huge blocks of quartz. "It's different and a sight worse.
It smells like rotten metal. Don't you get it?"
"Get it? I'll say I do." They were passing through the shadow of a tall
pinnacle at the moment. "Makes you feel groggy, doesn't it? Do you
suppose the Chinese are using a new gas?"
"Smells like it," the other agreed as they emerged into brilliant
sunshine. "That's queer. It's completely gone now."
"Must be a heavy gas that evaporates in the sun," the pilot hazarded.
"We had better keep out of the shade after this. I'll bet the Chinese
have a new explosive, too. These are its fumes."
"Look out!" the mechanician yelled. "We're stepping slap into a bath of
snakes. Well, I'm hanged! They're all dead--bushels of them."
Before them lay a deep rock basin just under the lowest point of the
rim. It was full of hideous snakes of all sizes and colors, tied into
still knots of frozen pain. Evidently the whole reptile population
of the amphitheatre had boiled out of its dens in a futile attempt
to escape a sudden peril. They had instinctively chosen the shortest
way over the dip, only to writhe into the basin from which they were
powerless to escape. Even a snake cannot get very far without bones.
The mechanician, who prided himself on being a hard-boiled guy, grasped
one of the largest snakes just behind its flat, evil head, and yanked
it free of its twisted brothers.
"I guess it's dead, all right," he grinned. He cracked it like a whip.
"Limp as a kelpie. Here, let's see your teeth, old boy."
For the first time he noticed that the vicious jaw, unlike the resolute
firmness of the average snake's mouth, hung limply apart.
"Look here!" he exclaimed to the pilot, "it's some sort of a sucker. It
has no fangs."
"Nor bones, I guess," the pilot added, pinching the horny lips
together. "Snakes usually have jaw-bones, don't they?"
"Sure, to hold the fangs in place when they bite. I wonder what killed
them?" He sniffed the cold skin. "Fresh as a mountain trout," he
commented critically. "I guess the Chinese gassed them. We'd better
look out."
Before passing over the rim they inspected twenty or more of the
snakes. Not one had bone or fang in its limp body.
"Well, I'm glad they're dead," the pilot remarked, "even if they
couldn't bite."
A shout of horror burst from his throat. He had seen Markoff. What
looked from the air like a man lying on his back in a crimson pool
appeared from a closer view as nothing that had ever been human. Only a
darker pattern on the shapeless stain recalled a blurred outline of a
thing with arms and legs. The living crystals had done to Markoff what
they did to the burros in the desert.
The men forced themselves to investigate; the remains might be those
of an American. What they first found was sufficiently puzzling to men
who knew nothing of the circumstances of Markoff's death. Their find
consisted of two leather boots and exactly ten metal buttons. Whoever
had slashed his victim in this incredibly shocking manner had evidently
first stripped the wretch of his clothes, for not a vestige of clothing
remained. But why had the murderer discarded the metal buttons? Ten
buttons won't hold a man's clothes together. The others had evidently
taken the assassin's fancy. He seemed to have kept them. Indeed "he"
had, although the men could not guess why. The remaining buttons were
of bone. They concluded that what lay before them was the work of a
madman.
It was the mechanician, still subconsciously impressed by his handling
of the snakes, who first observed that there were no bones under those
red strands. The discovery sickened him. The supposed madman had
murdered his victim for the skeleton. But, as the pilot soon discovered
by looking in two of the four likeliest places, the assassin had thrown
away the victim's nails. There were exactly ten. Had he looked in the
grotesque leather boots he might have found ten more.
The pilot slipped. His foot kicked a small, oblong object free of the
meas. The thing tinkled as fragments broke off in its skip over the
uneven quartz. For all the world it looked exactly like a stone book,
which is precisely what it was.
The book was open at its middle page. The pilot took out his
handkerchief and picked up the book. The open stone pages wiped easily.
They were as smooth as glass, evidently of pure quartz. As an object of
art the thing was priceless.
At first the men thought it represented the lifelong labor of some
infinitely patient Chinese artist in crystal. In the museum at Shanghai
they had seen miraculous carvings in rock crystal, but this surpassed
them all. Its thin pages could not be turned, of course; otherwise
they were perfect, each an individual work of art. Its coloring, too,
apparently natural, was exquisitely delicate. The open pages were
mottled with a Chinese green like the rarest jade, and the edges of the
fast shut pages showed that every one, though invisible, was equally
beautiful. On the open pages a curiously regular pattern of extremely
faint, metallic gray enhanced the irregular green as if it had grown
there. This pattern seemed to be embedded in the thin pages.
The pilot was a college graduate with a degree in mechanical
engineering. The suspiciously "human" regularity of that gray pattern
fascinated him, and for a moment he forgot his surroundings. He found
himself slowly deciphering what he saw.
"I'm crazy," he muttered. "Here, see if you make anything out of this."
He indicated a cloudy gray spot in the middle of the page. The
mechanician had good eyes.
"243.7," he read slowly. "I'm not sure about the decimal point."
"That's what I think I see. So I'm probably right about the rest."
He read aloud, a letter at a time, a short chemical equation. "Now I
know," he remarked in a strained voice, "what that mess on the rocks
is. It is what is left of Mr. Saxby."
"How do you know?"
"This is the book he kept pulling out of his pocket and reading when he
thought we were going to crash in the fog."
"But his book was paper--just a common notebook."
"I know. This is the same book. I saw him studying it in Shanghai while
you were tuning up. There's no use arguing. I don't understand what all
this is about. It has happened. That's all."
"What had we better do?"
"Hanged if I know. If Mr. Saxby got out, probably the others did too.
There's a hole. They may have come out that way. If they did, they
weren't killed here, I suppose we had better continue the search till
our gas gets too low. Then we may as well fly back and tell General
Maitland."
"He'll call us liars."
"I'll take the book along. It proves something, but I don't know what.
I wish we could bury that."
"There's no dirt within a mile. Come on; I'm sick."
Looking up at the cloudless blue before they took off, they saw four
black shapes, wheeling slowly above the amphitheatre on motionless
wings in the morning sunshine.
"He won't need burying," the mechanician remarked. "What a sight to see
before breakfast! Give her the gas!"
Part III--The Professional
CHAPTER XII
From the Grave
It was no cynic, but one of the world's most humane poets, who observed
that the evil men do lives after them, while the good is buried with
their bones. For obvious reasons the scavengers of the air could not
infer Markoff's good with his bones. This, however, did not nullify
the first part of Shakespeare's profound theorem with respect to him.
Markoff was dead, indeed; his evil was still as lusty as four vultures.
In fact, as the day wore on, it almost seemed as if Markoff himself
were rising from the dead. It is only a slight coloring of the sober
facts to say, metaphorically, that he rose from the grave a few minutes
after eight on the evening of the day following his fleshly burial.
When the bombing plane soared aloft from the place of death to
reconnoiter for the marines the morning was still young. The aviators
flew first toward the pass into Shen-si, thinking that the marines,
if indeed they had escaped, would be getting out of Kansu as fast as
possible. Their job with regard to the missionaries having evaporated,
there was no reason why they should linger to tempt the touchy Chinese.
Just as the aviators flew over the pass, nature fired her second shot
in the war against living things, or rather she fired a volley. In
rapid succession a series of ear-splitting concussions jarred the air
like titanic battering rams hammering at the steel barriers of an
impregnable fortress, as stratum after stratum of the subterranean
rocks suddenly split and burst asunder.
[Illustration: _Just as the aviators flew over the pass, nature fired
her second shot in the war against living things._]
Knowing that the marines could not have marched farther than the pass,
the aviators wheeled about and whizzed back toward Teng-shan. Glancing
down they saw a succession of furrowed billows racing with incredible
speed over the plain from the mountains of the caverns to the far
horizon where they seemed to break. Farms and villages rose and fell
like helpless rafts as the long furrows swept under them on their race
to the northern deserts. Each volley fired by the snapping strata
sent a fresh train of earth waves speeding over the plain in parallel
ridges, till, without warning, the forces of nature opened their grand
offensive from four fronts at once, and four furrowed tides fought
to possess and destroy the battlefield. The waves in each of those
tidal armies swept on in parallel regiments, but each army pursued its
own direction from the base of the mountains out over the plain. As
the crests of one tide reenforced those of another the heaving earth
suddenly shot upward on a crest twice the height of either; as hollow
met hollow, farms and villages were snatched from sight faster than
they could have fallen down a void; where four crests met the brown
earth was tossed high into the air in blocks of shattered spray a mile
square, and where three or four hollows crashed together rocks, men,
trees and cattle--everything was pulverized and ground together into
paste.
The roar of the conflicting tides drowned the sharp crescendo of the
snapping strata; huge fissures miles long crossed and criss-crossed the
choppy sea one instant only to vanish the next, and slowly the whole
mountain range of the caverns, with a shudder that shook the very sky,
slipped from the core of rock to which it had been moored for a million
years and began to flow over the plain. Momentarily the tides subsided.
The steady roar of the advancing tidal wave of earth and rock--a whole
mountain range in motion--gathered volume as the moving mass slowly
gained momentum and marched upon the shattered plain to submerge it
in a deluge of crumbled rock. No man-made noise could survive above
the thunder of that billow curling over the wash of stone avalanches
that prepared its way and made its flow smooth; the men in the bombing
plane, hovering over the column of dust that had been Teng-shan, no
longer were aware of their own incessant racket.
When the first shock came, Saxby and the captain had just concluded
their interview with the governor of Kansu. The last words of that
skeptical Chinaman were addressed to Saxby through the missionary.
"Why should I warn the people of Teng-shan and the farmers of Kansu
to flee? This man," meaning Lane, "has lied about the Americans in
Shen-si. I questioned," here he smiled significantly, "the Christian
telegraph operator. He told me everything before he died. He was a
truthful boy. So when you say there is to be an earthquake that will
shake Kansu from the mountains to the desert, I think you are lying.
When we run away you stay behind and loot. Markoff has told me that all
Americans are liars and capitalists. I believe him. You came to Kansu
to rob us. The missionaries were an excuse. I am justified in executing
you and all of your men, and I shall do so. You have rifles, but no
machine guns. Last night my soldiers carried back their machine guns
that you tried to rob them of, and strengthened the defenses of this
palace. Your men are now trespassing on my grounds. They do not see
the machine guns, for my men are well hidden. If Kansu is to suffer an
earthquake, as you say, you will never know it."
The governor himself knew what happened. The missionary had not quite
finished translating the governor's speech--the details of Lane's and
Saxby's sentence had not yet been translated--when a heavy beam from
the ceiling smashed the governor's table to splinters, brained him,
squashed the missionary and two of the guards, and totally disabled the
remaining four.
Saxby and the captain found themselves in the governor's private garden
just as the palace collapsed. They remembered a wall that suddenly
opened like a door, a leap, and nothing more. The marines, standing at
ease under the mulberry trees, were not crushed by falling buildings
as were the Chinese soldiers tensely waiting to open fire at the
governor's order.
As for the rest of Teng-shan, it experienced all the usual freaks that
accompany major earthquakes. Out of a group of twenty human beings,
all apparently exposed to precisely the same hazard, nineteen would
be killed outright while the twentieth escaped without a scratch. One
man too terrified to run would weather the cataclysm unharmed; his
more prudent friend, abandoning him to his fate, stepped instantly
into a gaping chasm, not two feet away, that opened to receive him and
closed immediately. One squad of marines, reeling after another to a
supposedly safer spot, saw eight men vanish without ever knowing where
they went.
Of Teng-shan itself not one stick of house or hovel remained in the
place where the builders had put it, and, literally, not one stone or
brick was left upon another. They were pulverized. Yet hundreds of
human beings came through as sound as ever, or with only minor injuries.
* * * * *
The great mass of the population was destroyed in the first two
shocks; the succeeding waves alternately buried and disinterred the
victims with a sublime cynicism as indecent as any of nature's franker
brutalities. Restraint and reason are for human beings, in order that
nature may drug them into a false security; she herself has no other
use for either. Science would seek to put a bit in her savage mouth;
she submits, to delude her dupes, and then, when they least expect it,
tramples them underfoot and goes unhindered on her way.
Yet man, the Incorrigible optimist and practical opportunist, discounts
the worst nature can do. The major shocks of that terrific earthquake,
the maddest prank that nature ever played on a superstitious race,
had barely subsided before the survivors were stripping poor trifles
of silver and jade from the fingers of the dead and rifling their
clothes for cash. In earthquakes, in fire, and in shipwrecks the rule
is the same; at least some of the survivors demonstrate their fitness
to survive by plundering those who have perished. And why not, these
children of nature ask; what use has a corpse for rings or money? Their
logic is as irrefutable as Mother Nature's.
The marines lost a third of their force. The rest, as soon as the
ground stopped heaving sufficiently to permit them to stagger, began
systematically searching the ruins of the palace--for imprisoned
survivors only. They found none. Lane reorganized his force with the
purpose of similarly combing the ruins of the whole town. The Chinese
themselves, except those engaged in looting, were incapable of any
rational act. Orders had to be given by signs and shoutings into ears;
the rumble of the oncoming billows of shattered rock made any other
means of communicating impossible. They heard the stupendous roar, of
course, and guessed that worse was to come, but they could not imagine
what was happening. At the moment they were at the bottom of a vast pit
that formerly had been the palace grounds. They could not see over its
rim as they were too close to the steepest part of the wall.
Saxby scrambled up first and saw what was about to overwhelm the ruins
of Teng-shan. By frantic signals he brought the men out of the pit
in record time. They did not stop for a second look. The first was
sufficient to send them fleeing from the oncoming wave, every man for
himself and the devil take discipline.
Saxby himself could not run. Not that he was paralyzed with fear,
or too stiff from his painfully healing burns; he simply lacked the
volition to run. All his mature life he had collected and loved
earthquakes, and now he saw one the like of which the world had never
witnessed in historic times. The "Kansu catastrophe," as it has since
been named, was unique, and Saxby, the connoisseur of earthquakes,
realized instantly the rarity of the spectacle. Lane, thinking Saxby
was following, pursued his routed troops.
It was a sight to make any lover of nature pause. The stupendous volume
of sound, as that crashing symphony of destruction rose and fell with
the periodic surge of the shattered rocks, alone would have stunned the
average spectator into helpless immobility. But Saxby was not average.
He stayed where he stood because he wanted to enjoy it to its last
avalanche of crushed rock and its last splitting discord. It was nature
at her mightiest, trampling the world like an ant hill, irresistible,
ungovernable, and her admirer would witness her triumphal march if it
cost him his life.
He had witnessed the puny efforts of men to destroy their own kind, and
the sight had nauseated him; now he would see nature demolish herself,
impartially, completely, and cleanly. As far as the eye could reach the
spectacle was continuously sublime. In serried billows a whole mountain
range rolled forward, toppling over upon itself when some unshattered
core of rock offered a moment's futile resistance to the onrushing
flood, surging forward majestically over the wash of the avalanches
that fingered their way forward to feel out the terrain, leaping
skyward, when the obstruction yielded, tumbling and curling forward in
vaster volume, again damming up over some more obstinate resistance,
and again conquering, mightier than ever. A shriller, brittle din
pierced the roar of the stone billows, as if millions of tons of glass
were being ground to powder beneath the flood, and Saxby knew what was
coming, invisibly, before it arrived.
Nature, human, animal or other, is incomprehensible. The French
peasants gathered their harvests while all the hell of the West
Front girdled their fields with a sea of fire. Between Teng-shan and
the marching mountains a sturdy, shaggy little Chinese pony tried
courageously to keep its legs on what had once been its pasture--now
a jumbled desolation of disinterred rocks and chaotic clods as big
as houses. Though the jarring earth tumbled stones and clods all
about it, the persistent pony stuck like a burr to the one patch of
turf in all that heaving wilderness. Its legs straddling wide apart
like a spider's, with determination worthy of a general resolved to
hold the front line at the cost of a hundred thousand of his men if
necessary, the courageous pony cropped the grass. In spite of himself
Saxby admired the little beast's obstinate, natural, ignorant courage.
He even felt a sympathy for it; the pony refused to run because of
the hunger of its belly; he, the man, was risking his life to appease
the cravings of his esthetic nature. Suddenly the pony collapsed as
if pole-axed. It did not even kick. If not done for it was at least
knocked out--cold.
Saxby felt that it was time to retreat. The pony's collapse was exactly
like that of the firemen and the doctor when they stuck their heads
under Tom's cot. A heavy gas, colorless and lethal, was creeping
forward in advance of the tide. Thus far there had been no odor; the
sun had not yet volatized the corruption that seeped from the base of
the rotting mountains. The gas of course was only a hypothesis. Saxby,
however, believed in it sufficiently to turn his back on the grandest
of all the avalanches he had so far witnessed, and run as hard as he
could in the opposite direction. When he noticed also that a cold
breeze, colder than the wind from an ice floe, was blowing in his face,
he doubled his speed.
"Gad!" he panted, "what a fool I've been. I guess I'm dished this time."
Doubtless he deserved the worst, but he did not get it. The pilot
of the bombing plane had early located the Americans with his field
glasses and had followed their precipitate retreat from the pit. He had
also observed that one of their number, possibly because too scared to
move, stayed behind. For forty minutes the pilot had been endeavoring
to attract the laggard's attention by all the noises at his command,
as he wheeled in a narrow circle a thousand feet above the loiterer's
head. His noise was nothing in competition with nature's, and Saxby,
with no eyes for anything but the greatest earthquake in history, never
thought of looking up at the zenith. Seeing that the loiterer had at
last found his legs, the pilot swooped low and flew in front of him,
guiding Saxby to his invisible companions floundering in a vast crater
two miles away.
* * * * *
Saxby's best was not quite good enough. Glancing back the pilot saw him
stumble and fall just as a fresh avalanche roared down from the main
mass to within a hundred yards of the fallen man. From his observations
on the progress of the tide the pilot estimated that it would be only
about four minutes till the tottering crest followed the wash of the
avalanche to sweep clean over it and gain a quarter of a mile in a
single surge.
Saxby was on his feet again, but not running. He could not; even his
iron endurance had almost reached its limit. The pilot had to act
instantly or abandon the man to his doom. He acted. By the kind of
miracle that favors the courageous, he brought the careening plane to
rest on the hummocky ground all cluttered with ruins, just ten feet
short of a crevasse that would have swallowed it, and within running
distance of Saxby. The mechanician was over the side and on his way
before the plane stopped. The pilot climbed out and by brute force,
exerted on the tail of his bird, slewed it round for the take-off. A
quarter turn brought it into position for a start that might not end in
a smashed propeller or a plunge into a fissure--if they were lucky.
When the mechanician saw who it was that he was rescuing, he yelled.
"You're dead!" he shouted.
Saxby didn't hear, and the mechanician, ready to believe that this
too was merely an incident in the general nightmare, did not stop to
argue. He hustled Saxby to the plane and into it. One shock more to the
pilot's nerves meant little. He accepted Saxby as a fact and took off,
mentally balancing the probability of a smash from the rear against
an equally likely crash ahead. The tide roared after them just as the
plane moved forward; half a ton of shattered rock burst like a bomb
against the fuselage and jagged fragments shot past their heads as they
ducked or dodged, but they made it--how, they never knew. Take a chance
and win is the airman's motto.
They could not land in the marines' new crater; one miracle a day is
enough. Flying on at a low speed they found a practicable stretch
of alluvial dirt, not too violently furrowed and fissured by the
earthquake, about five miles beyond the crater. Landing, they waited
for the others to overtake them. Eventually only Saxby waited; the
aviators departed in haste ten minutes after they stopped.
At this distance from the stone tide it was possible to carry on a
conversation by shouting. The first thing the pilot wished to know was
who the dead man was.
"What dead man?" Saxby shouted.
The pilot described the place where they had found the mess. Saxby
informed the aviators that it was a Russian agent--the man responsible
for all the trouble with the Chinese.
"The Chinks got even with him. They cut him up and boned him like a
chicken tamale," the mechanician bellowed. "Made me sick."
Saxby recognized the symptoms.
"It's a new disease," he shouted. It would have taken hours to state
the facts adequately. To his intense astonishment the pilot broke the
startling news that they had thought the remains were Saxby's.
"Why?"
"Because we found your book--or one just like it--made of glass or
crystal. See here."
The pilot led Saxby back to the plane and produced Yang's crystallized
notebook. Saxby got the shock of his life.
"Don't drop it!" he yelled. "Keep it away from any kind of earth--put
it back in the plane! That's the cause of all this. Put it back, I say!"
Somewhat bewildered the pilot obeyed. So many insane things had
happened already that one more might be accepted as part of the
nightmare. Saxby continued, speaking rapidly.
"I was going to wait for Captain Lane to give you your flying orders.
General Maitland ordered you to do as I directed; I'll not wait for
Lane. Don't think I'm crazy--I'm not. Lane would order you to do
exactly as I say. I predicted the earthquake from my knowledge of
that book. We were warning the governor when the first shock verified
my prediction. If that infernal book comes in contact with lime and
silicon dioxide--common sand, quartz, granite--almost any mineral--it
may start another earthquake worse than this, I don't know whether it
will or not, but I'll take no chances. This terrific earthquake is only
the least of what may be coming. Fly back to Shanghai with that thing,
and don't stop till you get there. Don't touch anything but your plane,
and don't take the book out of it. You must not get out of the plane.
Send for General Maitland and tell him that I advise this.
"First, your plane is to be refueled for a flight to the most
convenient American war vessel that is not less than five hundred miles
from the nearest land. You are to fly at once to it--you can do it as
an endurance test if you must. When you see the war vessel, relieve
one another while you both strip to the skin and pitch your clothes
overboard. Then drop the book in the sea--to be sure it sinks and does
not float with the plane. Come down in the water. Hang on to your plane
as long as you can, and souse every part of your bodies, particularly
your hands. If you can't manage a thorough job that way, don't let the
sailors lug you aboard till you are exhausted. Get them to tow you for
an hour or more. Your plane is to be blown to bits and sent to the
bottom. General Maitland will give all the necessary orders if you tell
him what you have seen and say that I back my advice with my scientific
reputation. I gave him one straight steer; this is a straighter. Tell
him that, and tell him that the Russian agents beat us to our objective.
"Finally, he is to cable at once to the United States for the ten best
geological chemists in the country. The National Scientific Council
will select them and send them at once if he gives my name and says it
is to avert a world disaster. In the meantime he is to send me all the
chemists and geologists he can collect in the foreign concessions in
China and rush them here by air. He must communicate with me daily by
air until the danger is past--if it ever is. Now, beat the record back
to Shanghai!"
Ten hours later Kansu had stopped shaking, except spasmodically, and
the shattered mountains had apparently flowed their limit. The marines,
officers and men, slept the sleep of exhaustion in a large plantation
of stunted firs, whose fallen needles made the ideal bed for weary
bones. Saxby alone kept watch, although there was no necessity for him
to do so, as there was not a hostile human being within miles. After
a short foraging expedition through the ruined and deserted farms to
salvage dead pigs, hens and cattle for their supper, the marines turned
in to the last man. Even the captain could not have kept his eyes open
to see the greatest bombardment in history. Saxby volunteered to act
as sentry and they accepted. He wished to keep his eye on the expiring
earthquake. The characteristic odor of decay that had followed them all
day while the sun was up had gradually dissipated. Saxby felt, however,
that the danger was not yet past.
Events so far had confirmed his theory in the main, although modifying
it in some details. The thing, or more accurately one of the things,
that destroyed Markoff was evidently a cellulose feeder. The
transformation of Yang's notebook from wood-pulp paper to rock crystal
threw a flood of light on the habits of at least one species of the
living crystals. Anxious to observe further evidence in support of his
theory Saxby could not have slept had he tried. His lonely vigil was
no hardship, especially as the intense, unnatural cold fore-warned him
that nature had not yet done her utmost.
* * * * *
Just as the night began to grow interesting from a scientific point of
view for Saxby, it developed, hundreds of miles away, an unexpected
human interest for the aviators. It was now about half an hour before
midnight. The mechanician was taking his turn flying while the pilot
slept. At the moment they were speeding eastward less than a hundred
and fifty miles from Shanghai, and were some two thousand feet above
the bloodiest battlefield of the Chinese revolution. So stubborn and
sanguinary had been that long-drawn-out butchery, that its aura tainted
the air about the plane to the point of nausea and woke the pilot. It
is unpleasant to have to record such facts, but they are essential
to an understanding of nature's attack; moreover they are a part of
our common heritage from the war that was to end war, and there is no
good reason for strewing roses on human stupidity or sophisticating it
under a yellow or a red flag. Both the pilot and the mechanician became
violently ill.
"Here's where I quit the service," the mechanician remarked, trying
hard to swallow his disgust. "You saw the West Front; I didn't. You're
hard-boiled; I've still got a stomach. Watch me cash in and get out
when we get to Shanghai."
"It won't be much longer now--less than two hours. You'll recover after
you've had a bath."
"In salt water. Yes, like hell I'll recover. I don't give a damn if I
drown. Say, do dead Christians smell like dead Chinks?"
"Worse. Cheer up, we'll soon be there."
On the moonlit battlefield beneath them all was quiet--from a military
point of view--with a ghastly serenity that mocked the dead and jeered
at the living who were yet to slaughter and be slaughtered. China
at last had awakened from her sleep of two thousand years; she was
westernized, civilized, and this portion of her at least smelt like it.
The false peace of the night was not due to any formal armistice,
but to one of those tense lulls that sometimes supervene in times of
madness when, by tacit consent, the opposing armies stop fighting one
another to fight their common enemy before she can steal a march on
them all and impartially obliterate friend and foe alike. If there is
one thing that Asiatic soldiers dread worse than death, dysentery or
the devil, it is the bubonic plague. The medical corps of neither army
would as yet admit an indisputable case of death by plague, but both
acknowledged an alarming number that looked suspiciously like the real
thing.
Neither side had fired a shot for the past thirty-six hours; both were
engaged in burying their dead as fast as they could scratch the shallow
ditches in the rocky soil. Mere burial in this case was insufficient.
The transports of both armies were straining every nerve to rush vast
quantities of quicklime and disinfectants from the cities to the
battlefield. The congested roads, the wretched inefficiency of the
transport service, and the keen competition for the fast diminishing
supplies of sanitary materials all indicated an overwhelming victory
for nature in the immediate future. The faster the diggers worked the
more they had to do, and no man could say that he would finish his
particular bit before the grinding cramp seized him by the middle and
tumbled him headlong into his half-completed job.
Naturally the nerves of both armies were on edge. The least hint of a
check in its necessary work might well send either army into a Chinese
berserker rage and incidentally end the revolution in its favor. The
side that fired the first shot would probably get it in the neck; the
victors might celebrate by infecting the entire civilian population.
The course of the bombing plane lay directly over the main defenses
of the army holding the southern edge of the battlefield. Both armies
were thoroughly westernized. They had all the approved weapons, and
lots of them, including machine-guns, flame-throwers, gas, tear and
smoke bombs, field artillery of the latest French pattern, American
and European airplanes, trench mortars, blimps--one apiece, and
anti-aircraft guns. In fact, their equipment would have been a credit
to any nation on earth, for they had bought it with their own money,
a treasure at a time, from most of the nations on earth. The cheaper
truck, such as rifles and shells, they manufactured themselves under
the expert direction of European technicians. They were quite proud,
poor devils, of their aptitude.
The combination of a bombing plane in the moonlight and a general on
the verge of hysteria made a highly explosive mixture. The general
quickly verified the fact that no plane on his own side was aloft that
night. He did not act in haste. Although he felt morally certain that
his side was playing the game straight, he took pains to ascertain the
truth by telephone. Since it was not one of his own birds, it must be
one of his rival's. Practical soldier though he was, he cursed his
enemies for a pack of inhuman blackguards, technically within their
rights as laid down by the laws of civilized warfare, but beyond the
pale of human decency in their sneaking disregard of an unwritten
agreement. He personally telephoned to the anti-aircraft batteries to
open fire.
"What the hell!" the mechanician shouted as the first shell burst like
a white mushroom in the moonlight.
"What the hell" was right. The second shot brought them down--two
thousand feet. Perhaps it was lucky in more ways than one. If the
second shot hadn't got them the two hundredth would. They escaped the
suspense.
The plane crashed directly astraddle of a long, shallow ditch packed
like a box of sardines with the victims of a sudden sickness. The loose
gravel had not yet been thrown over them, but the quicklime had. As the
fuselage of the plane burst, the fragments of Yang's petrified notebook
shot out and buried themselves in the quicklime. The bodies of the
aviators followed.
The burial squad removed what they could of the plane and mechanically
went on with their work, shoveling gravel.
An officer inspected the wreck. It was not worth salvaging. He
abandoned it and finally ordered his squad of shovel men to get to work
on the next ditch.
The general's nerves had snapped. His Oriental calm vanished in a
blazing, occidental, homicidal fury. The field batteries were ordered
to lay down a barrage to prepare the way for an infantry attack by
moonlight. From a military point of view it was sheer insanity; but the
general was beyond reason. Burial parties broke up and raced to join
their companies. Thinking like the general that they had been spied
upon by the enemy as a preliminary to a night attack, they seized their
rifles and machine-guns with a will, inspired, as they were, by a sort
of courage of panicky desperation.
The first salvo of the barrage roused the opposing army to the pitch of
madness. Their nerves too had snapped. The officers had difficulty in
holding the infuriated men back. They did not wait to be attacked. With
fixed bayonets they plunged forward to burst through the red curtains
of the barrage and attack.
Half of them never reached their objective. The other half, however,
made up in spirit what they had lost in their number.
The field gunners of the attacked saw them coming, became confused,
shortened the range, and drummed a devil's tattoo upon their own
front-line trenches. The maddest battle in the history of the Orient
was on. There was no doubt about that.
It raged twenty hours--all that night and all the next day till eight
o'clock in the evening, when the full moon rose on a shambles that was
silent, save for the cries of the wounded, only because both armies had
run out of ammunition. Exploding dumps, deliberately touched off by the
Russian advisors of the Chinese in more than one instance, had hastened
the end. The Russian agents were strictly impartial. They did what lay
to their hands, whether it benefited friend or foe. As in diplomacy,
so in war; to double-cross is to win the day--for yourself, if not
for your allies. From the red point of view the melée had proved a
glorious victory; from the Chinese it was a draw. Both armies were out
of the war for good. They had ceased to exist as armies; their remains
would be absorbed into less butchered organizations. By that much the
communists were nearer their goal of an Asia regenerated by the new
faith.
Every yard of the battlefield had been trampled over fifty or a hundred
times by the frenzied combatants. If indeed the ground was infected the
plague was now thoroughly disseminated. Nature, however, did not have
to rely upon a mere plague of buboes, of swelling lymphatic glands,
to demonstrate her superiority in the art of war. She chose a weapon
almost infinitely older than the most ancient disease germ.
The sword she grasped was forged in geologic stone, ages before organic
life began, and she had not forgotten in all that time how to use it.
The general whose order had initiated the madness lay moaning on the
loose gravel, mortally wounded. Like a captain of old he had lost his
head in the heat of battle and had risked his own life to rally his
wavering troops.
Under his personal leadership the battered army had pulled itself
together for a last supreme assault that swept the enemy from his
feet--for half an hour.
Then the tide turned and the dead of the enemy were duly avenged.
Again and again that fluctuating tide took up the quarrel, first of one
side, then of the other, with the foe of the moment, in order that its
temporary friend might sleep in peace on fields too barren to support a
white poppy.
The dead of both sides slept soundly, too weary to dream that the
victorious fortune that avenged them was a deceiving harlot.
As the dying general's eyes clouded he had a strange vision of death.
From the bloody charnel before his eyes he saw a transparent sword
shoot into the moonlight and glitter icily as if crusted with diamonds.
The sword seemed to live; flickering bands of purple and green light
pulsed along its axis in the substance of the crystal, and myriads of
spicules, bright as sparks of electricity, budded along its brittle
edges. Suddenly two arms, like those of a cross, shot from the sword a
third of the way down from the tip and began to grow. The vision may
have comforted the dying man, for he was a convert of the missionaries.
It is possible that he closed his eyes in peace on a symbol of mercy
conquering the world.
If he did so, he died happy, for what he saw was Markoff rising from
the dead.
A wounded infantryman by the general's side also saw nature's apparent
miracle and tried to crawl away. The grave where the sword grew burst
and hurled the wounded man free. Screaming with terror he clapped his
hands over his stomach and fled. He had seen the enemy.
He stumbled over the propeller of an airplane, picked himself up and
ran with the rest. All had seen it now.
Those who had legs ran.
CHAPTER XIII
Conflict
While Saxby watched, and under the same bright moonlight the maddened
Chinese were annihilating one another hundreds of miles away, the
marines slept. But they did not rest. The unnatural cold chilled them
to the bone, and a specific poison, odorless as clean air, tainted the
night. They began to toss and groan in their sleep, unable to shake off
the dreams that defied reason and yet were more credible than any human
experience.
"I had better waken them," Saxby muttered to himself. "They are having
the same dream that I had the night Yang died. Gad! I begin to feel it
myself. Something's going to happen; I can feel it coming, and I think
it is coming pretty soon."
He tried to move and discovered that he could not. He seemed to be
paralyzed.
"Something new," he remarked. "Well, let it come. I can't stop it."
Unable to move a muscle he sat staring straight ahead over the moonlit
desolation of the shattered mountains. To test the strange paralysis
he tried to shout, only to find he had lost control of his throat. The
automatic functions of his body continued normally. His heart did not
lose a beat, he breathed regularly, and he saw and heard as clearly
as ever. Then he became aware that his hands and feet were losing all
sensation. The numbness rapidly spread over his whole body, and he sat
as rigid as a rock, without sensation, yet fully conscious of what he
saw.
His condition was precisely that of a patient submitting to a
surgical operation under one of the newer wonderfully effective local
anesthetics.
Naturally he wondered what the nature of the operation was to be.
It began with a tremendous roaring swish like the simultaneous ascent
of thousands of gigantic sky-rockets. The wilderness of shattered rock
that had overflowed the plain for a distance of fifteen miles or more
began to boil. Its surface rose and fell tumultuously in huge bubbles
of rock and earth that puffed up suddenly, burst, and collapsed with a
brittle din that shook the sky.
This phase lasted but a few seconds.
First one bubble survived, then another, until the whole desolation
became a city of bleak, colossal domes. The domes began to glitter
icily in the moonlight, and almost instantly the imprisoned life that
was in them burst forth and multiplied. Jostling one another to ruin,
the furiously increasing masses of crystal flashed out gleaming arms
that branched and begot new colonies of glittering crystal; these fed
for a moment on their generative substance, then instantly burst out in
explosive growth in all directions, repeating the conquest of space.
As yet they had no mode of locomotion; their sole power over distance
was growth. In their urgency to survive, the opposing masses shot their
gleaming progeny at one another, devouring the diminishing distances
between them.
Their one instinct, if they had any, was to exterminate their
competitors by seizing and absorbing all of the food by which they
might increase.
Before the last alley closed and became a dense mass of furiously
growing crystals like the rest, the mountain range that had flowed over
the plain was a vast concourse of gigantic crystal shapes, towering
and flashing in the moonlight, that shot upward with an accelerated
growth that menaced the sky. Each glittering pinnacle budded at a
thousand sparkling points into living spears of crystal; these shot
into the night, themselves to become the sources of explosive life.
Neither upward nor lateral growth apparently had any natural limit, and
the huger the vast bulks became the faster they grew. The whole mass
pulsed and flickered with striæ of green and purple light deep within
the hollow crystal masses, and from the brittle, spearlike points
streamed steadily upward innumerable brushes of clear, cold blue light.
The loftiest pinnacles, leaping skyward with an ever greater speed,
bristled with electricity whose sharp, dry hiss all but drowned in
volume the creeping rustle of an incessant growth.
With a succession of pealing clashes of crystal masses the last lanes
closed and instantly became new foci of fecundity. For perhaps a
second the densely packed mass withstood the internal pressure of its
own lateral expansion. Then with a transcendent crash thousands of
irregular chasms were instantly created, radiating in all directions
through the still growing mass, as the hollow crystals collapsed along
the planes of greatest pressure.
As the crushed crystals released the purple and green luminescence
which was the source of their life, they instantly lost their solid
structure and sublimated into a heavy, invisible gas. Where one crystal
volatized, the impact of its destruction set free the imprisoned energy
to shatter the densely packed crystal matrix in which it was embedded;
the wave of destruction thus started stopped only at the densest cores,
isolating them as prolific centers of unabated vitality.
Again the merciless contest for possession of the nutritive rocks
was fought out, but with diminishing speed, and again the resultant
deadlock was suddenly broken by waves of destruction that cleft the
solid unit into thousands of isolated enemies. The terrific speed of
the encounters became less as the nutrition in the rocks was drawn into
successive generations, to be dissipated into gas as enemy clashed
against enemy, till, after the hundredth assault the lanes ceased
to close, and the towering victors grew slowly and silently upward,
starving on their exhausted rocks. The food they had battled for no
longer existed. Ten thousand conquerors towered in the moonlight
to await the trivial accidents that would destroy them as they had
destroyed their enemies.
The whole conflict lasted but an incredibly short time as men measure
events. From the instant when the first gleaming spire rose from the
rocks to the last clash but thirty or forty seconds had elapsed.
Yet every detail of it was fixed distinctly and indelibly on the
consciousness of the one human being who saw it all from beginning to
end.
Saxby would have closed his eyes and stopped his ears if he could, but
he had lost control of his body. By a sense more ancient than either
sight or hearing he experienced a torture less endurable than either
the sights or the sounds of that conflict between things which lived,
and yet were neither animal nor plant, for the cells of his whole body
were aware of the combatants' agony as parts of their substance died.
Each wave of destruction that cleft the warring masses asunder rocked
the very atoms of his own flesh and bone with a pang that was not
mortal pain, but the after-shock of an immemorial dissolution. The
stuff of his own body had suffered in forgotten ages as those things
were suffering now; before the first life started on the millions of
years of upward evolution that had culminated in his own body and in
his mind, the substances of his body had lived as these things were
living, and had died in agony such as theirs.
* * * * *
It was not a dream. The men who slept, drugged by the same poison as
he, also experienced it. Nature does not communicate with its creatures
by reason alone, nor through the haze of ideas that reason evolves to
explain nature, for it is insensible to reason, but directly, thing
to thing. Because we have existed, thought and reasoned for at most a
few million years--which are less than a pulse beat in the life of the
stuff of which we are made--we assume that nature has but one mode of
expression and but one way of communicating with its creatures. When
the last man has ceased to think, the universe will still be evolving
as if our race had never existed, and possibly the shadow of our own
passing may fall upon the life that is to follow us, chilling our
successors with the memory of a pain that only their atoms remember.
May no accident precipitate us into their age as the living crystals
were hurled into our own. With all their insensate ferocity, according
to the lonely watcher who saw their war and who suffered in their
death, those crystals were less terrible than some whose nostrils are
filled with the breath of life.
The discharge of millions of volts of electricity from the warring
crystals, and the escape of vast quantities of ionized gases as the
dying bled out their purple or green lifeblood, incurred its inevitable
reaction. Even as the clashing Titans warred, grinding themselves and
their opposing kind to dust that sublimated instantly, the suspended
moisture of the chilly air condensed into black thunder clouds above
their splintering pinnacles.
When the conflict ended, and the victors towered up in solitary might
awaiting starvation and the dawn, a vast canopy, black as anger,
sagged down from the sky above them, shutting them from the moonlight
and penning them up in all but total darkness. All about their sombre
isolation a soft radiance flooded the plain, and it became the dream,
the unsubstantial vision of an infinite ocean from another life; the
black island of the Titans awaiting the lightning was the reality, the
substance, and the familiar dwelling place. The lucent calm, glowing
like a milky opal about the black cliffs at the base of the island, and
receding with diminishing brilliance to infinity, was the incredible
memory; the stark island; the vivid present.
The sooty shadow, under that black canopy instinct with lightning, was
the natural habitat and fecund breeding place of the living crystals
that had bred and multiplied in sunless caverns to burst asunder
the mountains; in total darkness they increased without restraint;
in sunlight they ceased to multiply. Injured in darkness they still
lived; the most trivial wound inflicted in full daylight slew them
progressively and swiftly from pinnacle to root. In one last effort to
increase in their fostering darkness, the living crystals drew from
the impoverished rocks the last traces of their silicon, absorbed and
digested it into the compounds that gave them life, grew explosively
for a fraction of a second, and ceased absolutely to grow. Unless
transplanted to fresh feeding grounds the ravenous Titans must stand
where they were rooted, and starve till the accident of a thrown
missile should break a fragment from the brittle armor of one,
releasing the prisoned life and letting the famished thing perish
utterly.
The black island leaped into stark relief as the lightning struck the
highest pinnacle, demolished it, and sent the towering crystal crashing
down in a wave of progressive ruin to fragments that volatilized
instantly. The following crash of thunder, sharp as a pistol shot,
was the signal for the sagging canopy to release all of its forked
darts. Under the volleying thunders that jarred the plain like a rapid
earthquake, the stabbing lightings etched every glittering detail of
the motionless Titans in glaring relief, playing harmlessly about a
group of fifty or a hundred, only to leap suddenly away and strike down
a solitary martyr. As a colossal crystal expired, the man watching its
extinction suffered its infinite pain, and the sleepers dreamed of its
agony with every atom of their bodies. The vast army of the victorious
crystals that had survived by annihilating their kind dwindled rapidly
to half its numbers, then to a quarter, and then more slowly, till but
a scant dozen of Titans stood where they had grown, powerless to flee,
awaiting their doom. A single spurt of blue fire from above destroyed
all but three; the clouds burst, and with a roar that might have been
heard fifty miles let down their deluge.
The three survivors toppled slowly over on the dissolving earth and
came gently to rest on their sides in the flood, exposing their matted
roots of crystal to the rain.
The lightings did not cease with the coming of the rain, but continued
to strike viciously at the last of their fallen enemies. In falling
the three had exposed their secret places, the very hearts and
fountains of their life. Through the crystal curtains of the rain it
was not possible to see precisely what happened to the exposed roots
about which the lightings concentrated their attack; yet the quality
of the flickering light which they emitted changed visibly. It was
in the roots that the purple and green light, the lifeblood of the
living crystals, first generated as the monsters grew. Passing into
the hollow crystals that budded from the roots, the light gave life
to the branching mass, and carried with it the principle of life and
generation to the farthest tips. As the glancing lightnings played all
about the roots the quality of the light underwent a gradual change.
The purple separated from the green and darted through the limbs of
the recumbent masses, while the green, its brilliance intensified,
remained in the roots. As if repelled by the green, the lightnings
followed the purple, stabbing viciously. Simultaneously the recumbent
purple branches of all three were struck. The stricken branches
withered instantly, and the same bolts which destroyed them fused the
ends of the huge stumps, sealing up the green light in the roots. The
lightnings ceased, and a pall of darkness descended with the flood.
Through the black torrent three misty green embers glowed and flickered
evilly, waiting the accidental missile which would liberate their
prisoned life to ravage the world.
A sleeping man stirred in his dream and groaned, Saxby felt sensation
steal into his nerves once more. The man who had groaned staggered
to his feet in six inches of water, cursed, and shouted to rouse his
companions before they drowned.
"What a hellish night!" It was the captain's voice. "Where's Mr. Saxby?"
"Here. I'm beginning to move again."
"Why the devil didn't you waken us?"
"I couldn't. You were drugged into paralysis. So was I. But I saw
everything."
"I dreamed it," a man muttered. "Why can't I move my legs?"
"Gassed," Saxby informed him. "Lie still. You'll find your legs in a
minute. This downpour is dissolving the poison like salt and soaking it
into the ground."
"There will be a flood if this keeps up another ten minutes," Lane
remarked. "Give us a hand in rousing the men. We must move higher up
the slope at once."
It was a half an hour before they were on the march uphill, slushing
through a torrent of gravel and muddy water that almost swept them from
their feet. At length they reached a place of safety and stood about
miserably in the dark and the rain waiting for daylight.
On comparing notes Saxby and Lane found a remarkable similarity between
their awareness of pain during the battle of the living crystals,
although one had been stupefied in sleep and the other intensely
awake. Questioning his men Lane found that they, too, had distinct
recollections of the same thing, although only three or four had the
skill to express graphically what they had "dreamed." On being assured
by Saxby that the rain was disposing of the poisonous gas for good, the
men brightened. The downpour continued to within an hour of daybreak.
The sun rose red upon a welter of white mud--the sticky paste of
crushed rock from which every particle of silicon compounds had been
absorbed by the living crystals. Most of this stuff was pulverized
limestone. The living crystals, it appeared, needed only a small amount
of lime or other calcium compounds to start their explosive growth;
their food, so far as they obtained it from rocks, was silicon dioxide.
From the fate of Tom's cotton mat and Yang's wood-pulp notebook, it was
clear, as Saxby had already deduced, that some at least of the crystals
could draw nourishment from cellulose. An equally probable theory
suggested was that at some stage of their development the crystals in
which both the purple and the green luminescence played the part of
blood or chlorophyll, could live and multiply on both kinds of food,
silicon and cellulose, but that they prefered silicon and thrived best
on it. In fact some of the phenomena indicated that these dual monsters
could absorb only a limited amount of cellulose, no matter how huge
they became. When the lightning which must have been electricity of
some kind, positive or negative, played about the roots of the three
survivors, it repelled the oppositely electrified gas, the green, into
the roots and pursued the purple into the farthest tips before striking
the branches of hollow crystal and sealing off the green in the roots.
Such was Saxby's tentative explanation to Lane as they stood staring
out over the mass of white mud that buried the ruins of Teng-shan. The
deluge had one good thing; it had effectively sluiced the earthquake
fissures full of gravel from the undestroyed hills.
* * * * *
The men gathered in silent knots viewing the three enormous roots,
towering up in the cold morning air, like the wrecks of colossal
icebergs, which were all that remained of the vast forest of monsters
that perished in the night. Saxby was uneasy.
"I can't understand," he said, "why those infernal things don't melt
into gas as the sun strikes them. They must be a new breed."
"Let's walk--or swim--over and take a look," Lane suggested.
"Not yet. Give the sun an hour. If they're not dead then, I'll go with
you. What about sending the men off on a foraging expedition in these
hills? There must be dead pigs or chickens in the ruins of the farm.
I'm starving."
"So am I. We shall have to get over the pass into Shen-si today. I'll
send the men off to see what they can do."
"That's the stuff. Tell them to bring back a cow or something for me.
I've got to stay and see the end of this."
When, at the end of an hour, the three bergs of crystal showed no sign
of melting in the hot sunshine, Lane and Saxby made their way down
to the white, sticky, steaming mess. As they slipped and floundered
through the mire stretching for miles between them and their goal they
regretted their early start. The deluge had washed the lethal gas of
the crystals' destruction from the air thoroughly enough, but the stuff
still poisoned the soil. Under the sun's rays it was now decomposing
in the paste which it impregnated. Every step released a sickening
puff of the repulsive gas. Although it was not definitely poisonous
in this advanced state of decay, its indescribable odor was all but
unendurable. Only an insatiable curiosity on Saxby's part held Lane to
his intention.
Presently splintered timbers, fragments of copper waterspouts, and the
remains of three machine guns sticking up from the mire, announced that
they were walking over the churned-up ruins of the governor's palace.
They were now rapidly nearing the smallest of the crystal "bergs."
Saxby walked warily ahead, glancing sharply from side to side.
"I say," he called back, "do you notice anything?"
Lane, trained as a soldier to observe the minutest details of the
enemy's territory, replied that he did. The metal scraps were more
plentiful than ever, and two twisted copper spouts showed that they
were still walking over the ruins of important buildings. There was,
however, a total and suspicious absence of wood. Not a splinter was to
be found.
"Evidently that green devil squatting there like a tame iceberg is a
cellulose feeder," Saxby remarked.
"Squatting" was rather a contemptuous term to apply to the huge shape
that towered above them like a skyscraper, shadowing the mire with its
distorted limbs of hollow crystal for a radius of a quarter of a mile.
Through the vast bulk of its main mass, and along the jagged "roots"
that sprawled in all directions, a dull green light pulsed slowly as if
the creature had a living heart. Watching it in awed silence the men
almost heard the steady beat of the life flowing and ebbing through
the crystal arteries of the thing. They could not doubt that it lived.
Saxby broke the silence.
"After last night nothing surprises me. Yet this beats them all. You
can see it live, or rather you can see it starving to death. There's
not a stick of wood or any other cellulose material within half a mile
of the infernal brute, and that, I'll wager, is the only sort of stuff
it can absorb. It must be a cellulose feeder. What would happen, do you
suppose, if I were to go back and get one of those posts and offer it
to the brute?"
"You might try it and see," Lane suggested. "I'll wait here."
Saxby was as good as his challenge. He started back to get a stick of
wood. Lane stopped him.
"Don't be a fool! You haven't the ghost of an idea how that green devil
eats its food when it gets the chance. We saw how the purple and green
got at Markoff's bones. Once is enough."
"All right," Saxby laughed. "I'll have to wait till you're gone. Shall
we go up and take a look at him at close quarters? I want to see how
brittle he is."
"I'm game." He suddenly remembered what had happened to Tom's mat.
"Take off your clothes," he ordered, proceeding to set the example.
"What the devil for?" Saxby demanded.
"You say it is a cellulose feeder. There's a lot of cotton in our
clothes. I have a wife and kid in Los Angeles. Want any more reasons?"
Under protest Saxby stripped to the skin, Lane would not even permit
him to put his shoes on to protect his bare feet.
"The fact that Markoff's boots and nails were not destroyed doesn't
prove anything," he objected. "Nor does the fact that the hoofs of the
burros came through unchanged have anything to do with us. Neither you
nor I ever saw an all-green brute like this. Ours all had a dash of
purple. This fellow may relish leather and horn and stuff like that
as much as Markoff's seemed to enjoy bones and cotton. You make your
inspection in a state of nature or you don't make it."
Grumbling at Lane's "militarism," Saxby submitted. Naked as worms the
two men passed into the cold shadow of the colossus. Though neither
admitted it till long afterwards, both were so stiff with fright that
they had difficulty in making their legs move. Had either been alone
he would never have dreamed of going forward. Afraid of acting the
poltroon before his companion, each made a fool of himself, for it was
nothing less than ignorant bravado to tempt the devil of whose habits
they knew precisely nothing, except that they were probably evil.
On close inspection the towering buttresses of the creature appeared
as nothing more ominous than huge, hollow crystals, packed solidly
together, and filled with a moving green light. The whole structure
gave an impression of massive strength, and somehow, for the feeling it
induced was undefinable, a sullen threat of immense stores of creative
energy locked up within the crystal cavities.
"I wonder how brittle this rock crystal is?" Saxby speculated. He
glanced up at the tremendous root three hundred feet above them,
zig-zagging far out over the site of Teng-shan like a forked dart of
green lightning. "If that thing up there should break away now and fall
on us, we should be cut to ribbons before we could yell. Feel how sharp
these edges are where the crystals twin. Damn it! I've cut my finger."
[Illustration: _"I wonder how brittle this rock crystal is?" Saxby
speculated. He glanced up at the tremendous root three hundred feet
above them, zig-zagging far out over the site of Teng-shan like a
forked dart of green lightning. "If that thing up there should break
off, now, and fall on us, we should be cut to ribbons before we could
yell. Feel how sharp these edges are where the crystals twin, Damn it!
I've cut my finger."_]
"Don't do that!" the captain yelled.
Before Lane could stop him, Saxby had dealt the crystal wall a
resounding blow. The hollow crystal vibrated, emitting a deep,
bell-like note that was inexpressibly mournful. The sound died away in
the vitals of the thing and the wall ceased to shudder.
"You could almost imagine the brute had nerves," Saxby remarked. "But,
of course, that's rot."
"What did you hit it for?" Lane expostulated, his own nerves on edge.
"To get some idea of its elasticity. I wanted to find out what are the
chances of killing it with a judiciously thrown stone. From the way the
crystal vibrates I infer that it is extremely brittle." He looked up at
the hanging root. "Before the breeze grows into a full-sized wind and
snaps that thing off, I think we had better retreat. I don't like the
way the gusts eddy about the base of this berg."
As they put on their sodden clothes they held a council of war.
"These infernal things have got to be destroyed before you leave,"
Saxby declared. "There's no telling what a sudden storm may blow up.
These are cellulose feeders, pure and simple. I'm convinced of that.
Suppose there is another storm and a high wind. Those roots will be
blown down and smashed into millions of bits. They are exceedingly
brittle. When they do smash, they will go all to pieces, and vast
quantities of pulverized glass will blow all over western China. What
if some of that dust settles on a forest, or even on a grove like the
one we camped in last night? Although I am not sure of my deduction, I
believe that it is certain that something bad would start.
"With abundant nourishment the germs of life in the dust might well
generate a plague of the huge brutes that would sweep the world and
denude it of all growing things--trees, grass, shrubs and all. We saw
how the silicon feeders stop growing when they have exhausted their
food. They can't budge an inch, except by growing laterally, from the
place where they take root. The slightest impact jars them pieces;
the breaking of the brittle crystals start a physical reaction that
dissolves the solids instantly into heavy gases. Then, when the sun
rises, it finishes the killing by decomposing the gases into lighter,
unstable ones that are perfectly harmless, apparently, and don't seem
to retain their composition long. That they smell like the very devil
while they are disintegrating is merely an unpleasant detail of no
significance. Now, I vote that we act on these obvious hints and try
our luck against these three green devils before you leave. I've got to
stay here till General Maitland sends me some word and a geologist or
two."
* * * * *
After much argument Lane finally agreed. The point which decided him
was not made by Saxby. That intrepid collector of earthquakes thought
nothing of his personal danger. He never even mentioned it. Lane simply
could not leave him, even with a squad or two for protection, to his
own devices. To do so would expose him and his insatiable curiosity
to almost certain destruction, for Saxby would never be content, with
Lane out of the way, until he had explored every crystal of those evil
bergs. With the devils destroyed before he left with the main body of
his men, as he must do owing to the scarcity of food, Lane felt that
Saxby might safely stay a year in Kansu if he liked, and enjoy himself
after his own fashion. The decision was a human one. It offered,
perhaps, the only solution of a difficult problem. Neither could
foresee what would happen. The only way to find out was to experiment,
which they did. "There can't be any danger," Saxby repeated. "These
brutes have consumed every stick of wood within reach. They were the
outposts of the army that destroyed itself last night. What can they
live on if we smash them where they stand? Nothing. They'll die, half
an hour after we let their blood out. But destruction in a high wind
would be another matter. At least some of the spores--if you can
call them that--would blow into trees before they were dead. To make
everything safe for the future, you can collect an army of Chinese in
Shen-si and bring them back with you to bury all the fragments under
six feet of this paste. There's not an atom of silicon or a splinter
of wood in it, so the disease will be buried forever. Here's where we
get the better of nature. Our kind of evolution shall survive, not her
antique brand that would make the silicon compounds masters, and the
carbon compounds--ourselves among the rest--slaves and food for these
brainless abominations."
The battle of "carbon against silicon," as Saxby called the assault of
the human beings against their primeval rivals, began at twelve o'clock
sharp. On returning to the camp in the fir grove, Saxby and the captain
found the men roasting the sad remains of half a dozen fowls, nine
pigs, and two marmots--all victims of the earthquake. The ration was
inadequate for the ravenous men, but it would eke out what they carried
in their knapsacks and make a forced march into Shen-si possible.
Believing in safety first, Lane organized the attack against the
smallest of the crystal bergs--the one he and Saxby had inspected. If
they conquered that one they would proceed to demolish its two gigantic
brothers. The baby was not much taller than the tallest New York
skyscraper; its brothers made it look like a pigmy.
At a quarter to twelve the marines lined up just opposite the zone
which the voracious infant had licked clean of the last splinter
of wood. The jagged projection shadowing the plain, three hundred
feet from the ground, under which Lane and Saxby had conducted their
investigation, was selected as the most vulnerable point. If that
forked streak of crystal lightning could be severed at its base, it
would crash against the main body in its fall and probably bring the
whole huge berg crashing down in shattered crystal. Such was the
mechanical theory of the attack. By chipping off chunks of the jagged
root at the highest point of its thickest part, where it branched from
the exposed core, the desired end would follow with éclat. It was
as easy, the sergeant asserted, as shooting fish with dynamite. The
captain's voice rang out.
"Are you ready? Fire!"
Most of the steel-nosed bullets made clean hits. A shower of crystal
chips leaped into the sunlight; the brittle support cracked, and very
slowly for a fraction of a second the huge root began to wheel inward
toward the main mass. Then, with a terrific impact it struck the
crystal berg at its weakest part, and the whole cracked asunder and
began collapsing in a thousand cascades of glittering crystal.
The men's cheers were lost in the brittle thunder that filled the sky.
So also was Saxby's warning shout. Unable to make himself heard he
ploughed through the puddles and sticky mud and grasped the sergeant
by the arm. By signs he conveyed his warning and the sergeant passed
it on. It was a slow process, as the men were reluctant to turn their
backs on a spectacle that beat a hundred Niagaras.
What sent the cold shivers up Saxby's back was this. He noticed as the
green gas escaped from the broken crystals that it flowed down, not
up. Moreover, as the sunlight played upon the gas it rapidly bleached.
The hollow crystals evidently were filters for the actinic rays of
the sun. Now that the sunlight played directly upon the gas, chemical
changes set in, transforming it into a colorless compound. Was the
new gas as heavy as the old? Was it heavier than air? If so, it would
continue to stream downward, invisibly, and pile up for a moment as it
fell about the crumbling base of the berg. Then, when the whole berg
collapsed, the wind of its fall would shoot the colorless gas out over
the plain in a huge, ever-expanding vortex. If the gas was poisonous
the shattered berg would be avenged on the men who had destroyed it.
It was every man for himself. Saxby and the captain found themselves
floundering in white mud up to their knees. They had stumbled into a
shallow earthquake fissure which the deluge had filled with sticky
slime. The premonitory puff of air, being shoved forward in a huge wave
before the oncoming gas, knocked them flat on their faces in the white
mesa and ducked them completely. Saxby stuck his head up, wiped his
eyes as best he could, and saw the captain's head just reappearing. He
also saw a rabble of men trying to run. They were having about as much
success as flies on fly-paper, but they had made progress. They were
now bogged in one of the worst places where splintered timbers from the
governor's palace protruded through the mire. Saxby found his attention
riveted by one stout post, evidently part of a roof beam, which stuck
up in solitary desolation between the men and the shattered berg. It
was covered with a glittering crust of large scales which looked like
bright green barnacles, but which were in fact young living crystals.
Saxby grabbed Lane's arms and pulled them under the slime.
"Keep under, except enough to breathe with," he shouted. "It's coming!"
Lane did not see it come, as he was unable to wipe the white paste off
his eyelids. Saxby did, and he regretted his ability to see. Yet he
could not have closed his eyes; horror forced them open. First he saw
the fur of green crystals on the post add a second coat on top of the
first. What happened, of course, was that the first coat was thrust
out from the decomposing wood by a more vigorous growth of crystals
that absorbed the first as they grew. He remembered a third coat being
laid on in a fraction of a second. Then instantly the mass attained the
maximum growth and exploded into a motionless dome of green crystal,
bristling like a mace, forty feet in diameter. The entire substance of
the post had been devoured by the monster. Its hollow crystal cells,
thin as paper yet strong as granite, were the offspring of an invisible
gas breeding on the cellulose of the wood. In its explosion to maturity
the brute cut one bogged man to pieces with its razor-edged knives of
crystal.
What happened next was repeated until the shattered berg had achieved
a complete and barren victory over its destroyers. One man, bogged to
his boots in the white paste, suddenly disappeared. The invisible gas
flowing over the quagmire had isolated him like an island in hell.
Instantly the life in the gas seized upon the cotton in his uniform,
devoured it, and burst into a living crystal that reached its maturity
in less than a second and ceased to grow. A pillar of densely packed
green crystals, ten feet in diameter and six feet high, squatted in the
mire where, less than a second since, a living man had stood. The white
of his naked body gleamed mistily at the core of his living tomb.
[Illustration: _A pillar of densely packed green crystals, ten feet
in diameter and six feet high, squatted in the mire, where, less than
a second since, a living man had stood. The white of his naked body
gleamed mistily at the core of his living tomb._]
In less than ten seconds the last man was dead. The victors, except
the two cowering in the mudhole, were wiped out by the fiend they had
conquered. Some fell victims to the knives of the living crystals,
that burst from every stick or splinter, before the gas overtook them
a second or two later and crystallized their clothes, but most were
entombed as was the first. That these men had come to Kansu on a
mission of mercy counted for nothing with nature, whose motto seemed to
be, "Who taketh the sword shall fall by the sword."
* * * * *
The two survivors did not dare to venture from their mudhole till
sunset. When at last Saxby decided to risk it, he managed to tear off
a piece of his cotton undershirt without getting it completely smeared
with white paste. This was brought to the surface in his clenched fist
and hastily dropped. It was not attacked. The men crawled out of the
mess that had saved their lives and reeled off toward the pass into
Shen-si.
"I must report as soon as possible to General Maitland," Lane muttered.
"We can do nothing here."
"No," Saxby agreed. "We made a ghastly mistake. We shall have to
get back somehow to Shanghai and return with the proper weapons for
destroying these infernal things."
"How can they be destroyed? Your last guess was a bad one."
"After what has happened I won't insult you by prophesying. Still, I
have on idea. Stay here while I go over and look at one of these new
brutes. No! Don't you come. Remember you have a family; I haven't."
Saxby's latest idea was a natural outgrowth of his previous theories.
His main contentions still survived, although each successive assault
of nature modified the details. These new crystals were of a different
kind from any of the others. This much was obvious from their habits.
They were pure cellulose feeders like the two Titans still looming
undestroyed above the ruined mountains; but their contours were utterly
different from those of the giants. Saxby still maintained that his
initial strategy was sound. He had merely blundered in carrying it
out. Before firing, the men should have stripped to the skin, and they
should have burned every stick of wood in the vicinity of the bergs.
Approaching one of the squat pillars Saxby suffered a mishap which
nearly cost him his life. He learned that the living crystals were not
quite so immobile as they seemed. Human beings and other animals walk
by advancing their feet. The object of lifting the feet and walking is
to cover distance, to move from one place to another--in short, not to
be chained a prisoner to one spot. It probably has never occurred to
most human beings or animals that other natural ways of breaking their
bondage to space are available. Yet such an alternative escape without
machines is not only feasible but also ridiculously simple. This is
exactly what Saxby almost lost his life to discover.
The crystals had devoured every stick of wood in their vicinity that
showed so much as a splinter through the protective paste. It was
Saxby's misfortune to stumble elaborately over the submerged barrel of
a Chinese rifle and kick the stock violently against one of the razor
edges of the brute before him.
There is a lot of good solid wood in a rifle stock. The cutting edge of
the crystal bit into its prey and instantly began to feed. Saxby was
stabbed in the calf of the left leg by an evil green sword that shot
from the stock. A difference in aim of a few degrees would have cut his
leg off. That was the one accident that befell him; the other crystals
shot away from him. Within two seconds the green devil had acquired a
huge protuberance on its side that shifted its center of gravity. Then
it walked.
Lane came to Saxby's rescue just as the unbalanced brute heaved slowly
over in the slime to regain its equilibrium. As they floundered
through the sticky mud the thing seemed to pursue them. In whichever
way they turned, trying to shake it off, it followed. In horror they
began to believe that it had intelligence. But, as they subsequently
discovered, it had none. It was merely a blind devil that walked in
spite of itself. As its keen swords of crystal swished through the
slime they bit into submerged rifle butts and splintered beams. These
became new masses of crystal, like tumors on the old, and again shifted
the balance. Occasionally the green brute stood rocking uncertainly
for a few minutes, as if undecided which way to roll, when the slight,
inevitable fluctuations of the law of chance swerved some crystal knife
against a submerged splinter, and immediately the new growth tipped the
monster forward. It walked by toppling as it fed and grew irregularly,
a pure sport of nature. Where its food chanced to lie plentifully it
advanced rapidly; where sustenance was scarce it tottered; with a whole
forest but ten feet away it would stand and starve till a chance storm
should strew the ground before it with twigs and hurl a broken branch
against its terrible knives. Then it and its voracious progeny would
devour the forest.
The last hundred yards of their flight was a nightmare. Exhausted by
the loss of blood from his wound, Saxby had to be dragged. He begged
Lane to leave him, reminding the captain that he had a family. Lane, of
course, refused. When at last they reached comparative safety Lane was
all in.
"Let's rest a minute," he panted, "and see if we can't stop your leg
from bleeding."
While they were binding up the wound with rags torn from their shirts
they saw the last of their pursuer. In its wallowing lurch through the
mire in search of food it collided with one of the squat, well balanced
pillars. The impact shattered both, and their green blood gushed out in
the twilight.
"Watch that stuff," Saxby whispered. "If it doesn't lose color and turn
white my theory is wrecked."
Almost before he had stopped talking the green gas vanished.
"That settles it!" he exulted. "They're only a species of
cellulose-feeders after all. If there were any wood around here now
you'd see something."
"What about my clothes?"
"Great Scott! I clean forgot. Beat it, before the stuff spreads. Up on
that higher ground!"
They spent the night marooned on a hillock of harder paste. The first
few hours till the moon rose were the hardest. Gazing at the two
undestroyed Titans that loomed through the fading light, and imagining
the worst of the insignificant green devils their own fool-hardiness
had created, they sat silently dreading what the moonlight might bring
forth. Was the malignant fecundity of the ruined mountains indeed
exhausted? Were those crystal demons slowly starving where they stood,
or were they merely waiting for their generative light to give them
strength to march blindly over the plain?
The east brightened; the underside of a fleecy cloud became silver,
and the first level rays of the full moon struck the highest pinnacles
of the Titans. The two men held their breath and waited for the
flooding light to bathe the whole infernal brood. The moon cleared
the undestroyed hills, and the vast desolation, like a memory from a
forgotten life, lay still as death under a cold, unearthly brilliance.
Not a vestige of life stirred.
"We had better take no chances," Saxby advised, venting his relief in a
prodigious sigh. "If the moonlight isn't strong enough to take the vice
out of that hellish gas the sunlight may be."
"It wasn't this afternoon," Lane reminded him. "The men were killed in
the blazing sunshine."
"I know," Saxby admitted. "But I believe the stuff can live only a
short time in the full sunlight. The men were all killed within five
minutes of our crazy attack."
"Yes," Lane argued, "but the gas stopped crystallizing things only
because its food ran out. When it died there was not a stick of wood
or a rag of cotton above ground. If there had been, the gas would have
attacked it in short order."
"That's obvious. And like most obvious things it is obviously only half
true. What happened when we crawled out of the mud to inspect? Were our
clothes attacked? They were not. That disposes of your pessimism. When
I kicked up that damned rifle it came into direct contact with one of
the razor edges of the crystal. The crystal was still living--you saw
what happened. It was the living crystal that attacked the wood, not a
concealed pocket of undissipated gas. My optimism, as usual, comes out
top dog. We shall walk away from here tomorrow morning as sound as a
couple of bright new pennies. Then, after we get to Shanghai, we shall
come back and lay those devils out for good. Your boys will be avenged.
Maitland will give us whatever we ask."
"Much good it will do them," Lane responded bitterly. "They're dead."
"Could they have died better? They were not here to kill and pillage.
If they are the means of ending the reign of terror quickly and
forever, they will have died like soldiers."
"Do you remember what that Chinese girl told us her grandfather said?
'There shall be no killing.' I wonder if she would extend that order
to cover the enemy over there? They are just as much alive as you or
I, and if last night is any criterion, they can feel more pain than a
woman. Why should we kill them?"
"In order that we may survive. Our kind of evolution is better than
theirs."
"Sure?" Lane quizzed.
"Shut up! You're just arguing to keep awake. You think as I do.
Nature blundered when she made those brutes. Take it from me, it is
not mere chance that gave the carbon compounds a long lead over their
competitors--these silicon and cellulose feeders among others--in the
race toward evolution and a higher form of life. Whatever we may be
we are less fiendish than they are. There must be something more than
insane chance behind it all."
"What, for instance?"
"Oh, shut up! How the devil should I know?"
"I think you may have said it," Lane chuckled. "Just one more question.
How do you propose to demolish our fellow creatures over there?"
"No bragging till we do it. We may never beat them. Still, I think
there is rather more than a hint in a fine line I remember from one of
the poets--who wrote it I forget:
"'A stone is hurled; the giant falls.' Now, for Heaven's sake shut up
and let me try to get some sleep. This has been a hell of a day."
While they slept, dreaming of victory, the enemy marched in triumph
over the battlefield, hundreds of miles to the east, which two human
enemies had consecrated with their futile bloodshed. Nature was showing
those who could still see what war is. It beggared their beat.
CHAPTER XIV
Victory
Markoff's resurrection accomplished at least one good thing. When the
survivors on the battlefield saw what was upon them, they temporarily
forgot the distinction between ally and enemy. They became merely human
beings in a panic to escape.
It chanced that exactly two of the motor trucks that had been hauling
quicklime to the battlefield remained intact when the armies ran out of
ammunition. The rest were destroyed by inefficient artillery fire and
exploding shell dumps. One of these, packed with thirty-five officers
and men from both armies, succeeded in getting away. The other was cut
to pieces with its cargo, because not one of the soldiers swarming over
it knew how to start it. Disregarding the frenzied appeals of the men
running after the luckier truck, the officer at the wheel stepped on
the gas and headed for Shanghai. He could not possibly have carried
another man. Looking back the refugees saw enough to make them yell
for more speed. They got it; two of the thirty-five men were jolted
overboard. Twenty minutes later the thirty-three in the truck might
have boasted that they were the sole survivors of the battle.
One ludicrous incident of that retreat merits immortality. Fifty miles
west of Shanghai the thirty-three in the truck began wrangling bitterly
over who had won the battle--the army of General X or the opposing
army of General Y. Unfortunately the debate could not be decided by
single combat between the generals, as it was General X who saw the
first sword of crystal flash from the grave, and General Y was slain
by a similar sword while attempting to board the truck which stayed
behind. The driver of the lucky truck was a major in the late army of
General X. Being an intelligent man he used his eyes--it was moonlight,
and he had halted the truck to facilitate debate. He immediately saw a
fair way of settling the dispute. As the men had flung away their arms
on quitting the field of honor, the major's proposal struck them as
being both just and practical. Moreover it was seasoned with a spice
of chance, and if there is one thing that a Chinese cannot resist it
is a fair opportunity to gamble. They agreed to count noses, or rather
uniforms.
The soldiers wearing the uniforms of General X squeezed over to one
side of the truck, those of General Y to the other. All agreed to abide
by the decision of arithmetic, the losers to become prisoners of the
winners. The major, acting as referee, did the counting. There were
exactly sixteen on each side, till he cast the deciding vote in favor
of General X and won the battle by a majority of one.
The victory was extremely fortunate for the losers as well as the
winners, as Shanghai was the great headquarters of the winners' side.
It would have been awkward, to say the least, to be forced to take
one's prisoners through their own territory. The late General Y's great
headquarters were in Manchuria. If it did nothing else, this incident
demonstrated the blithe courage of the Chinese soldier in the face of
overwhelming natural odds against him. It also earned the major his
promotion to the rank of colonel. He had won the battle.
The truck made good time, as the roads had recently been re-ballasted
to hasten the transport of disinfectants to the battlefield. At a
quarter past four the following morning it delivered its sixteen
prisoners of war to the guard at great headquarters. By six o'clock
every Chinese in Shanghai was celebrating the victory. General Y's
sixth army, the adherents of General X were informed, had been totally
destroyed except for sixteen prisoners. This was, of course, the
literal truth--so far as it went.
While Shanghai as a whole celebrated with squealing bands and
sputtering firecrackers, the staff officers at Great Headquarters were
patiently trying to get at the facts. All thirty-three survivors were
being grilled. The one credible detail in their singularly concordant
testimony was the story of the bombing plane which precipitated the
battle. For the first time the survivors of each side learned that
the plane did not belong to their enemies. It was not the property
of either General X or General Y. Therefore, the staff officers
concluded rather unreasonably, the whole battle was a stupid blunder.
The incomprehensible tales of huge crystal devils suddenly leaping
out of the ground and racing over the battlefield with swords that
slashed like razors, and the equally fantastic accounts of the
devils fighting among themselves till they smashed one another to
nothing, were dismissed as the fevered fancies of men who had lived
for weeks in constant peril of death by gas, flames, bombs, bullets,
shells, bayonets and the bubonic plague. The witnesses, protesting like
magpies, were hustled off to the pest house.
With the chattering thirty-three disposed of, the staff officers
quickly solved the problem of the bombing plane. The chief of the
intelligence department, after consulting his records, made a probable
guess in three minutes. The only foreign plane within five hundred
miles of Shanghai that had been granted a permit to fly at any time
during the past two weeks was an American bombing plane. Permission
was granted at General Maitland's request for the plane to fly with
one passenger, Dr. Saxby, to the Christian missions in Kansu. General
Maitland made the request, he declared at the time, because he had
learned through private sources that the mission stations were
threatened with an epidemic of typhoid. Dr. Saxby wished to fly to
Kansu with a supply of antitoxin. As a matter of course the Chinese
granted the request--not that they believed General Maitland for an
instant. The story of Saxby's flight over the Chinese lines, and the
humane conduct of the Chinese in permitting the flight, would win all
the sentimentalists in America to their side at one swoop, and it
wouldn't cost a soy bean. They didn't give a damn what Saxby might be
up to in Kansu. The staff officers had perfect confidence in their
friend the governor.
It was with a smile of regretful satisfaction that the chief of staff
now called General Maitland on the telephone and informed him that his
bombing plane had met with a serious accident while flying over the
trenches of General X. Was anyone injured? Yes, unfortunately; the
chief feared that all in the plane had lost their lives. It fell from
a great height. The cause of the accident? It was impossible to say.
Several soldiers, on sick leave from the victorious army of General
X, agreed in reporting that the gasoline tanks must have exploded.
The plane suddenly burst into flame and crashed from a height of two
thousand feet--some said three thousand. The chief of staff tendered
his personal condolences and those of his entire army. He trusted that
General Maitland would convey these to the people of America. The
accident was but the more tragic in that Dr. Saxby perished in the
cause of mercy and humanity.
"Amen!" said General Maitland, banging the receiver back on the hook.
"And to think that we sold those damned Chinamen their anti-aircraft
guns."
"What are you going to do about it?" his aide asked cynically.
"Do? Watch me and you'll see."
* * * * *
He reached for the private telephone connecting him with the American
Air Force in Shanghai. Five minutes later fifty of the fastest bombing
planes in the world were roaring over the city on their way to
Teng-shan. They were under orders to support Captain Lane and to keep
in constant touch with General Maitland by wireless. If necessary they
were to cruise back and forth until Lane and the rescued missionaries
were safely escorted through the Chinese lines to Shanghai. And
further, at the first hostile demonstration from the Chinese, the
latter were to have hell bombed out of them and be raked with machine
gun fire from above.
"I guess that's plain enough for our Chinese friends and sympathizers,"
the general remarked to his aide.
"The planes won't be allowed to carry their wireless, you know," the
aide archly reminded him.
"Like hell they won't," the general snapped. "If anything happens--no
matter what--I'll return the Chinese staff's 'regrets' with thanks."
General Maitland was an impulsive, excitable man. He lacked the great
Papa Joffre's ability to sleep ten hours a day while the fate of his
army was up in the air. Maitland should never have been made a general.
He lived with his men, even when they were fighting a hundred and
fifty miles away. As the quarter hours dragged by, the general fought
hundreds of imaginary battles with the men in his bombing planes,
sometimes achieving brilliant victories, but more frequently suffering
the humiliation of disastrous defeats. Why the devil didn't they send
him some message? Their orders were explicit, and they surely knew him
well enough to realize the penalty for disobedience. They were to keep
in constant touch with headquarters by wireless. Why didn't they? The
aide stood silently by, as uneasy as his chief.
At last, an hour and twenty minutes after the planes started, the
telephone bell jingled. It was a message from the wireless station. The
general brushed his aide aside and snatched the telephone.
"General Maitland talking, yes?"
"The colonel wants to send a man back, sir."
"What for? He's got his orders! Send him this--."
"The message says he has sent one plane back to report."
"Report what? Speak up! I can't hear."
"The colonel says he has seen something this side of the battlefield
you should know about."
"What has he seen?"
"The message didn't say. The colonel thinks you should know--"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry, sir. We lost the rest of the message. The static is quite
bad."
The general's jaw set. He anticipated the worst.
"Those damned Chinese are firing on them and bringing them down like
partridges."
Till the unauthorized courier from the bombers arrived, the general
held himself as tense as a steel spring. The aide wisely held his
tongue. This was no time for fatuously making the best of things.
Maitland brooded in silence. His impetuosity, he imagined, had
precipitated a stupid disaster. What could he tell Congress to pacify
it for the loss of fifty of its pet bombing planes? Probably nothing.
They would insist that he be demoted and disgraced. Their spiteful
anger would hit him alone, for he was responsible for the great "air
program"; it was his sensational disclosures that had caused the
inspired press to howl for planes, more planes, and yet more planes.
And now that the country had given him his precious planes, what had
he done with them? Sent fifty of the finest to a certain scrap-heap
death. Worse, fifty of the bravest air crews of the world had probably
perished with their planes. It never occurred to the general that the
courier might be returning to report a devastating victory. Having
acted in haste, he could only repent.
When at last the pilot of the returned bomber entered the general's
office, Maitland rose slowly, white-faced and silent.
"What has happened?" he asked.
"We don't know," the pilot replied. His face was a greenish white.
"Where are the other planes?"
"Half way to Teng-shan by now."
The general made an instant recovery. He was himself, cold, precise and
shrewd.
"Then why aren't you with them?"
The pilot took his life in his hands. He looked his very superior
officer in the eye, spread his legs wide apart, jammed his muscular
fists against his belt, and deliberately spat on the Chinese carpet
directly in front of the general's feet. Maitland eyed him curiously,
but said nothing. It was not the first time he had seen a man crack and
reveal his true color under the stress of war.
"General Maitland," the pilot retorted coolly, "this is no time for
military etiquette. I've got to do something drastic to make you notice
me." The general was noticing. "Court-martial me if you like after the
fight. But the fight ahead of us won't be with the Chinese. Their war
is over--at least for a year or two. How can I make you understand?"
The general nodded encouragement.
"Their armies aren't there any more," the pilot continued. "We flew all
over their bloody battlefield. They've been wiped clean out. And we saw
what did it. They're still at it--coming this way. Toward Shanghai. Are
you following me? They're rolling over forests and rivers and villages
like a flock of crazy steam rollers, getting bigger with every yard
they make. And they leave nothing--absolutely nothing--behind them.
Like a fool I dropped a bomb on one of the biggest of the green devils
just as it rolled into a village. I hit it, all right. It smashed to
nothing. Before the dust settled there were fifty new ones, just as big
as the first, rolling away from it. Now, you've got to think up a way
of stopping them before they roll in on Shanghai."
The general sidled to his desk and unobtrusively pressed a button.
"What do you think they are?" he asked suavely.
"Something the Chinese have invented--some new kind of tank, or a new
sort of gas that turns solid and grows in the air when it bursts from
the shell. I don't know. But I guess whatever the things are, they
can't stop them. Can we? Some of them are the size of five city blocks
and taller than skyscrapers."
"I think we can," the general replied soothingly, keeping an eye on the
door, "no matter how big they are. The colonel sent your plane back
alone?"
"Yes. He wanted to turn the whole flock back."
"Why didn't he?"
"Well, he said you're hard-boiled, and would court-martial the lot of
us for disobeying orders if he did. I volunteered to come back alone. I
know you can stop them!"
"You weren't afraid of me, were you?" The general laughed boyishly,
like the good fellow he was at bottom--when he wasn't nervous.
"Nor of any other soldier," the pilot retorted. "I've seen what's going
to happen to us. These new things put all our equipment out of date.
Better warn everybody to take to the water."
The door opened and two tough-looking orderlies entered.
"Arrest this man and take him to the hospital. He's crazy," the general
snapped. "He is under arrest till further orders."
At the door the prisoner looked back and laughed.
"The colonel bet me a month's pay you would court-martial me. Do I win
or lose? It's all the same to me. But get the civilians out of the
city!"
* * * * *
The aide's insight into human nature was much sharper than the
general's. Otherwise he could never have been an aide. The pilot's
report, fantastic though it was, somehow had a ring of truth.
"Why not send out a scout plane," he suggested, "to see what has really
happened to those armies?"
The general pondered this plan in silence.
"The pilot was drunk, or crazy, or both. That's what we get by taking
the riffraff of the colleges into the service. A West Point man doesn't
go yellow the first time he sees a little blood."
The aide discreetly held his tongue. Presently the general made up his
mind. He telephoned an order to the air force. In two minutes the scout
plane was on its way. It never came back, and to this day its fate is
not known. Probably it flew too low and was cut in two by the sudden
upthrust of a sword of green crystal. Its continued absence, hour after
tenser hour, again grew unendurable. Maitland hazarded the guess that
the Chinese had shot it down. On calling up the Chinese chief of staff
about three o'clock that afternoon to protest, the aide received a
polite assurance that if a mistake had been made by the anti-aircraft
gunners the staff would indemnify the United States.
[Illustration: _Probably it flew too low and was cut in two by the
sudden upthrust of a sword of green crystal._]
The Chinese staff saw no reason for telling the Americans that their
army could not have shot down the scout for the simple reason that
General Y had annihilated the forces of General X, and conversely. Not
believing the green-devil yarns of the survivors, the Chinese staff
concluded that the scout plane had foolishly crashed into a tree. The
bewildered staff itself was waiting for solid information. Before the
fifty bombers left for Teng-shan, Chinese intelligence officers were on
their way to the battlefield to learn exactly how badly their side was
cut up. But they did not confide their anxieties to General Maitland's
sympathetic ear. They waited a long time for their information. The
intelligence officers never reported.
Between four and five o'clock that afternoon two footsore and weary
men halted midway on the pass from Kansu to Shen-si and sat down to
rest before limping on to find a village. Lane scarcely recognized the
pass as that down which he and his column had hastened to the rescue of
the missionaries. This spur of the mountains was merely shattered by
the earthquake, not burst asunder and strewn over the plain as was the
range of limestone caverns. Yet even here there was abundant evidence
of what nature can do when irritated. And far to the west, gleaming
in the sun, two turreted and pinnacled bergs of crystal flashed like
cities of emeralds and diamonds above the white wilderness of an utter
desolation, which they and their progenitors had created.
"How on earth are we ever going to destroy those monsters?" Lane asked.
"I won't prophesy," Saxby replied, "but I think it will be easy. We
must choose a day when the air is perfectly calm. This evening would be
ideal. Hark! Do you hear what I do?"
They listened intently to a sound that was not yet audible, feeling
rather than hearing it. A distant hum began to drone on the air far to
the east.
"Planes!" Lane exclaimed, springing to his feet. "Good old Maitland
guessed we were hard pressed from what your pilot told him. Do you see
them yet?"
"No. But we shall in a minute." Saxby was frantically collecting sticks
and leaves. "They've got to see us. Lend me your revolver. My matches
were all ruined in that mudhole."
Before the forty-nine bombers pricked the sky like a fleet of midgets
flying in battle formation, the men had a thick pillar of white smoke
streaming up in the motionless air. As the midgets grew rapidly from
mosquitoes to wasps, then to droning hornets, and finally to a roaring
flock of low-flying battle cruisers, the men fanned the smoke with
their coats to attract the aviators' attention. They were seen; the
fleet shot over them, wheeled, turned again and dived in search of a
landing place far down the slope. The one that came down nearest the
pass was about three miles away; the farthest fifteen. What looked like
smooth ground from above turned out to be either a sticky quagmire or a
trap of earthquake fissures. The fleet scattered when it saw what was
beneath it. Each pilot was now on his own in spite of the general order
to stick together.
Saxby and the captain met the first pilot a little better than half way
down the slope.
"What's been happening here?" the pilot bawled.
"Earthquake," Saxby shouted.
No further remarks were exchanged till the panting man joined them.
"Earthquake," he puffed, "be damned. I meant what are those green
things like icebergs standing up out there?"
"A new kind of crystal," Saxby informed him, thinking the indefinite
reply sufficient for the moment. To his astonishment the man asked if
they were alive.
"Yes. How did you guess?"
"I didn't."
"You have seen them before?"
"Not these. Others just like them. Much bigger."
"Where?" Saxby demanded.
"About a hundred and thirty miles east of Shanghai. Hundreds of them.
They were walking all over the woods and trampling down villages like
match-boxes. Headed for Shanghai is my guess. Know any thing about
them?"
"Lots," Lane cut in. "General Maitland ordered you fellows to come and
fetch us?"
"Just about."
"Well, we two are the lot. The rest of my outfit was killed in the
earthquake and by what happened afterwards. Maitland sent forty-eight
planes too many."
"Our orders were to support you. What's first? Here's the boss coming
up the slope now."
"The pilot I sent back," Saxby resumed, "told General Maitland what
happened here?"
"No. I guess it must have been your pilot that was shot down by the
Chinks a hundred and fifty miles west of Shanghai. Ask the boss?"
* * * * *
Saxby guessed the whole story without asking. Details were of no
moment. The commander briefly confirmed the pilot's account of the
march of the living crystals toward Shanghai.
"One of our crowd flew back to warn the general of what was coming. The
man bombed one and made things worse than ever--fifty at least took its
place."
"Why didn't you all turn back?" Lane demanded.
"Orders. You know how touchy and how bullheaded Maitland is. Well,
where do we go from here?"
"Ask Mr. Saxby. I don't know."
"Shall we take orders from him?"
"Yes. If anyone knows he does. If he doesn't know we may as well fly on
as long as the gas lasts. What's first, Saxby?"
"Drop bombs from five thousand feet on those two bergs out there, I'll
go up with the pilot. The outcome of our shots will determine what is
to be done next. By the way, have you an extra coat with you?"
"You'll be warm enough as you are."
"I guess not," Saxby retorted, stripping his coat and shirt off. "Give
me your clothes, Lane. Come on, all of them! I'll drop them when the
pilot drops the bombs."
"What's the idea?" the commander asked.
"Plague of some sort," Saxby explained sufficiently. "Our clothes may
be infected. You will have to dig up spores for us from your men.
We can crawl into the insides of our planes and keep warm somehow."
He turned to Lane. "If I have an accident, you tell the rest what
happened. Watch the effect of our shots. If they turn out O. K.--you
know what I mean--fly back to Shanghai at once. Wait half an hour for
all the gas to disperse. When you see Maitland tell him to do this."
He gave the captain the necessary brief instructions and followed the
commander down to the plane.
"You can signal somehow to your men?" he asked. The commander replied
that they could receive radio messages from his own plane, and Saxby
continued. "Then order them to get a thousand feet above the ground and
fly around until we finish. Tell them to take their orders from Lane if
we come a cropper."
The commander included in his general order a special one for ten of
his men to contribute toward clothing the captain while he and Saxby
were up. They were to drop their duds from the air. Before the plane
took off, Saxby removed his boots and socks, wadded them up with
his clothes, and included them with the captain's in the bundle of
discards. He then borrowed the pilot's leather coat and wrapped it,
leather side in, around the possibly infected clothes. The mechanician
donated an outer coat, the commander a sweater, and Saxby crawled in
where it was warm. They were off like a rocket.
"Up as fast as it will climb," Saxby bawled in the pilot's ear. "We
must have at least a half an hour of sunshine after the shots. Lend me
your glasses."
The desolation beneath them seemed to flatten out at the centre and
rise like a vast bowl toward the horizon. At the bottom of the bowl
two glittering jewels flashed and sparkled in the sun. Saxby crawled
out of his refuge and dropped the bundle of clothes. Then he shook the
commander's shoulder and nodded. The plane circled slowly above its
mark and laid a big black egg.
The men in the wheeling planes four thousand feet below the attackers
let out a shout of involuntary joy at the sheer beauty of the
spectacle; a peak of pure crystal burst into a cloud of flashing
emerald and diamond and showered down on the plain in a scintillating
rain. Saxby, peering down through his field glasses, saw the green ring
shoot out from the shattered base and spin over the plain. Before it
had traveled two miles, it was bleached colorless. In its wake, and for
five miles after it became invisible, an army of green pillars leapt
from the ground as the gas spread over half submerged splinters from
the ruins of the suburbs of Teng-shan and farm-houses. Then, suddenly,
as if a gigantic sword in one circling swish had severed the rushing
vortex and cut it clean out of space, the invisible gas ceased to
devour its prey. Less than twenty feet beyond the outmost pillar of
crystal, uprooted trees remained mere uprooted trees. Either the sticks
already devoured and transformed to living crystals had absorbed all
the gas as it rushed past, like a charcoal filter on common gases, or
the continued action of the dying sunlight had destroyed the baleful
vitality of the shattered crystal.
[Illustration: _Saxby, peering down through his field glasses, saw the
green ring shoot out from the shattered base and spin over the plain._]
"We know how to kill them!" Saxby shouted. "Now for the biggest devil
of them all!"
In four minutes the monarch of the wilderness was a ruin. There
remained only three rings of squat green pillars to be destroyed.
Bombing them would take too long. By radio the air fleet was ordered to
fly low and rake them with machine-gun fire.
As the sun set, the last low dome of green crystal burst into a shower
of fragments and vanished. No progeny sprang from this brood. By
letting out the lifeblood of the giants first, Saxby had robbed the
lesser devils of the food by which they might have lived again and bred.
The victors rose from the strangest battlefield in history and soared
over the pass in battle formation to consolidate their victory.
CHAPTER XV
Shopping
Hours before the returning planes swooped down upon Shanghai to refuel
for the conflict, the grand offensive against the living crystals
was well launched. Shortly after the fleet soared over the pass into
Shen-si the sun set, atmospheric conditions instantly improved, and
radio communication with American headquarters in Shanghai became
possible. From that moment to the last minute before they landed, the
fleet was in constant communication with General Maitland and Admiral
Bligh, in command of the battleships in the harbor.
The unanimous testimony of ninety-eight trained experts--the pilots
and mechanicians of the bombing planes--was not to be disregarded or
pooh-poohed as the sudden evidence of a yellow streak. If General
Maitland did not credit the first or the second message from the
returning planes, he was forced to believe the twenty-second. They
were all so curiously similar, so consistent in an insane way, that
the general broke into a profuse perspiration. When to the unanimous
testimony of the fliers was added a brief account--by radio--of what
Saxby and Lane had seen, with the fact, thrown in for good measure,
that the major part of Lane's troops had been wiped out by the
living crystals, the truth at last percolated through the general's
hard-boiled skepticism. Messages began to flicker back and forth
through the twilight.
"Do this, do that," was the tenor of Saxby's curt sparks: "What
shall we do next?" that of the general's. Among the orders which
Maitland executed like a lamb was a forcible command that he cooperate
immediately with the Chinese staffs--of all factions--and with all
British, French and other foreign legions within two hundred miles of
Shanghai, also with the fleets of all powers.
Like many soldiers of the higher ranks, general Maitland hated that
word "cooperate." It always seemed to mean "play the second fiddle, or,
if you don't like that, try a tin whistle." Before nine o'clock that
evening he was cooperating with Chinese, French, and British at such
a high pitch of proficiency that he threatened soon to beat the band.
By ten o'clock he had induced all of the oil corporations in China to
cooperate with the Chinese and foreign forces to the full limit of
their resources. In fact, failing to meet with as prompt and as hearty
a response as he had anticipated half an hour earlier, he confiscated
their property at one swoop, justifying his high-handed action by that
rude phrase "military necessity."
By ten fifteen all the oil trucks within two hundred miles of Shanghai,
loaded to capacity, were headed full speed for the battlefield. The
hint that any reluctant cooperator might find his tanks bombed in
the morning, if his trucks failed to start as ordered, may have had
something to do with the remarkable demonstration of efficiency. With
a pressing, real job in front of him, Maitland forgot his nerves and
showed what he was made of.
Scout planes, swifter than swallows, skimmed through the night to
spy out the enemy and report by radio his latest advances. At eleven
o'clock it was learned that the nearest of the oncoming green devils
was toppling and trundling toward Shanghai over a village less than
sixty miles from the city. The main army of crystal giants was some ten
miles further back, advancing on a two-hundred-mile front. Behind them,
glittering for mile after mile in the moonlight, stretched broad bands
of sheer desolation populated by squat domes and pillars of stationary,
living crystal. Flying further west to the human battlefield where
the monsters first seized life, the scouts reported in response to
a request from Saxby, relayed by Maitland, that the battlefield for
miles was a gleaming lake of white mud densely packed with regiments
of low domes and stunted pillars. Evidently here, as in Kansu, the
lightning growth of the bisexual crystals, with the purple and green
bloods, had been attended by strong electrical discharges. The vast
uprush of electricity had induced the storm which here, as in Kansu,
had severed the purple from the green--or male from female; the males
had perished, completely sterilized, in the sunlight, while the females
with the green blood had devoured every stick and cotton rag on the
battlefield. Then, sinking in the mire they had found fresh food,
consumed it, "walked" and toppled from the battlefield, which sloped
toward Shanghai, to trundle over woods and villages, breeding a new
race independently of the males.
Wherever one of the blind brutes blundered into an obstruction of
stone or metal it was instantly shattered, and its yet living blood
bathed every fragment of wood in the vicinity with malignant life; from
the death of the mother sprang a whole brood of monsters as prolific
as she. Where the food was sparse--here and there a few sticks or a
handful of straw--the living crystals rooted where they stood, or
toppled aimlessly but a few yards to come to equilibrium. Those that
ceased to grow were doomed to stand indefinitely, consumed by their own
hunger, till some chance wind might blow them a twig or a straw, and
possibly start them walking and growing explosively for miles.
If ever an army marched on its belly, this one did. The accident of an
exposed root frequently determined the impact of an entire campaign,
and more than once the headlong rush of a whole toppling battalion of
monsters, any one of which might have crushed a village in its forward
lurchings, was halted in abrupt starvation by a strip of gravel two
yards wide at the bottom of a dry river bed. Occasionally one of a host
thus suddenly stopped would be urged forward once more by the settling
of a single handful of gravel beneath it, and in half an hour the fair
countryside beyond the immobile army would be ravaged and as desolate
as the territory it had conquered.
* * * * *
With sublime impartiality blind nature did not always destroy. To her
the life of plant, animal or man, and all their laboriously acquired
wealth of age-old habits that had fitted them to survive--their beauty,
their cunning, their poor treasures--were nothing. In her supreme
indifference to them and their fate she stumbled like a drunken
imbecile all about them, utterly careless whether she destroyed or did
not destroy. The accident of where chance had thrown the food for her
latest brutes alone determined her course, and for these youngest and
yet most ancient of all living things she had neither hatred nor shadow
nor mercy. To her it was the same whether she led them to plenty in the
destruction of the works of her other spawns, or abandoned them to dumb
anguish on the barren stones. She who could not feel let her creatures
suffer for her. She was neither their friend nor their enemy, merely
their creator.
It was decided to make a stand on a two-hundred-mile front fifty
miles west of Shanghai. By drawing in the lines so close to the city,
Maitland and those cooperating with him hoped to have ample time for
the deployment of the effective fighting force on the human side.
Between this line and the nearest enemy lay a band now less than ten
miles wide of thickly settled, heavily wooded, rolling hills and
farm lands. Immediately after the oil trucks were despatched, vast
quantities of war material of practically all kinds began streaming
along all but two of the available roads and railroads toward the
front. Tanks trundled and clanked in the van, or clattered along short
cuts to the battlefield, crashing fences and farmyards, shanties and
pigstys with a serene disregard of everything but haste. The crews
inside these rattling fortresses gave such of the terrified Chinese
farmers as saw them the scare of their lives. Except for their leather
shoes the men were stark naked. These were the shock troops until the
bombing planes should arrive.
The first to reach no man's land were the oil trucks and their
supporting troops--Chinese regulars, French and British sailors from
the battleships, and American marines. By two o'clock in the morning
the counter-attack of the human beings was well launched. A front
twenty miles long burst into billowing red flames, and huge, tumbling
clouds of velvety soot rolled skyward, blotting out the stars and the
moon. The empty oil trucks were already bumping back at top speed along
the two open roads to the bases of supplies. Farms, villages and woods,
drenched in oil, flared up in one thundering conflagration. The wind
rose with outraged violence, hurled itself upon the bellying flames,
and swept them volleying back over the enemy's territory. As attack
after attack opened along the two-hundred-mile front, the sooty sky
flickered and throbbed with dull crimson, till the astonished ships, a
hundred miles at sea, thought they were witnessing the Armageddon of
all Asia. Where the oil failed, incendiary shells burst and rained down
fire; the surging groan of the bombardment rose and fell monotonously
over the seaports, getting the timid out of their beds in the cheerless
dawn to flee from an imagined invitation of Mongols.
As dawn turned the murky air to the color of dry blood, the returning
planes roared over the battlefield on their way to Shanghai, and the
first of the tanks clattered into action. Withering flames had bleached
the vanguard of the advancing hordes, but had not killed the life in
their green cores. As far as the human fighters could see, and towering
above the horizon where they had been halted by the starvation,
colossal bergs of crystal loomed through the dun air as motionless as
an army of Gibraltars.
The crews of the tanks donned their gas masks and charged across the
devastated strip in their clattering fortresses. The first was within
a hundred yards of crashing its berg when one of the returning planes
veered, roared back to the battlefield, swooped almost to the ground
in front of the tank to attract the attention of the crew, and circled
it three times before landing. The signal was sufficient; the tank men
were not without brains. They brought their clanking monsters to an
instant halt.
"Don't attack till the sun is well up!" Saxby shouted, tumbling out
of the bomber. "I know what I'm talking about. The wave of gas from a
brute the size of this one will travel five miles. Unless there is full
sunlight to sterilize the gas before it reaches the edge of the burned
area, you men will start the war all over again."
"All right," a voice shouted.
"All right, is it? What's that gas mask of yours made of? There's
canvas in it, isn't there?"
The man sheepishly admitted that there was.
"Your attack is off, young man," Saxby snorted. "Hasn't any man at
your headquarters a brain in his head? I told you _no cotton_, _no
cellulose_. You got our messages, I know, because you repeated them by
radio."
"Can't we try it if we leave these masks behind?"
"That's up to you. The gas may not be poisonous in the usual way."
"Do you think it is?"
"No. It passed over my head; I breathed it by the cubic yard, and I
rather liked it. Send a man out of each tank back with the masks, and
then you can have your fun. You can't start for an hour yet, anyway.
And it won't be fun when you do start."
When the cheer which hailed this verdict died, old Saxby's face was a
study of disillusioned pessimism.
"Ten dollars to five cents your rattletrap is stuffed with cotton
waste. What do you wipe your machinery with?"
They were guilty. Old Saxby became eloquent on the subject of military
efficiency.
"If every wisp of cotton is not out of your tanks before you attack,"
he concluded sourly, "they will swell up suddenly and burst like glass
bombs. And you'll be inside the glass like flies in amber. Goodbye;
I'll see you later--if you use common sense. If not, you are just as
well crystallized."
Two hours later, as a reward for their fine night march, the tanks
were given the honor of starting the grand assault. In full sunlight,
on a front of twenty miles, the ungainly tanks hurled themselves upon
the motionless enemy. The air was filled with the brittle din of their
ruin, and the minds of the attacking army with the mute agony of their
enemies' death.
Half an hour later the entire fleet of planes, refueled and carrying
all the ammunition they could lift, soared out over the vast territory
conquered by the living crystals.
All that day, all the following day and into the late afternoon, while
blazing oil inundated the bays of the battlefield, the planes bombed
the huge bergs that stood motionless to receive their death, and raked
the standing regiments of crystal pillars and squat, evil domes with
machine-gun fire. As the slaughter of the helpless offspring of a
blind chance increased to its peak, the fliers tried to forget that
they had nerves and to remember only that if one kind of life is to
survive, another must perish.
The indefinable sense of agony was no illusion. In distant cities,
where the rumor of the battle had not yet penetrated, the inhabitants
eyed one another suspiciously, apprehensive that their neighbors
carried the strange new plague which, they could swear, was feeling
with a hand of ice for the marrows of their own bones. Those who had
the means stupefied themselves with opium.
Only when the sun set on the final day of the battle, and the last
green dome of living crystal gave up the crushed thing at its heart,
did the echo of that distant pain from a forgotten age become a memory.
* * * * *
About ten months later, Isabel took Tom shopping on a Saturday
afternoon. He was to receive a real rabbit--a live one--to solace him
for his great loss. For his mother had suddenly announced that a boy of
five should put such childish things as Easter eggs behind him forever.
Worse, appeal to his father, carried over his mother's head, had but
confirmed the stern decision.
"Is it because of what happened to Hoot with that green egg last year?"
Tom persisted as they entered the entrancing shop where guinea-pigs,
young bulldogs, kittens, canaries and horned toads were sold.
"I thought you promised me to forget all about Hoot and that green
egg," his mother reminded him.
Tom was floored. Diplomacy came to his rescue.
"I can't forget Hoot," he said.
Sorrow for the forbidden eggs vanished in the resplendent vision of
an enormous black rabbit with a long face as decorously mournful as a
prosperous bishop's.
While Tom was concluding his purchase of the Bishop--Isabel christened
him on the spot--old Saxby was on a shopping tour of his own in a
romantic quarter of the city not far from the railway station. He
was to have Easter breakfast with the Lanes, and he wished to take
them some small gift, also to get some decoration for his earthquake
cabinets. A flower shop, its windows jammed with waxy Easter lilies
swathed in green oiled paper at a dollar a blossom, caught his eye for
a moment, but he passed on.
Passing a news-stand he unconsciously took in the headlines, but did
not stop. Presently, what he had read registered on his absent mind,
and he turned back.
HERO BOMBS TWO HUNDRED
the headline yelled. Old Saxby bought a paper, and read how one man in
a bombing plane had killed, with a single bomb, two hundred Nicaraguan
rebels who were about to slaughter a handful of American marines. He
dropped the paper into the nearest "Help Keep Our City Clean" can,
wiped his hands, and marched into a small grocery store.
"Give me two packages of dyes for Easter eggs," he said to the clerk.
"One blue and one yellow."
He put down ten cents, slipped the packages into his pocket, and
started for the interurban station, his shopping forgotten.
The problem in his mind absorbed him. Was it by more than a sheer
accident that Yang succeeded in concocting the specific compound
that caused silicon dioxide to take on at least the semblance of
life? Almost certainly not. Yet, of all the billions of unstable
compounds existing for infinitesimal fractions of a second in the
almost instantaneous rush to stability, only a few, perhaps only one,
under the exact conditions necessary, had the power of making silicon
colloids self-perpetuating and self-feeding. What was the probability
of hitting this one chance. Practically nil, unless one had genius to
read the slight variations of innumerable failures, and from their
mazes discern the one, infinitely crooked, path to the hidden goal.
Yang had had such genius. Saxby knew that he himself lacked it. Yet,
if he were lucky, he might stumble upon the fortunate combination of
circumstances before he died. With reasonable care of his health he
might live to be a hundred. That would give him nearly forty years. But
what if, after all, it was not the green dye that was the essential
"priming" of the explosion, but some rarer accident? Isabel told him
the first afternoon they talked together that the waterglass which
she had thrown away was foul with milk blue spots and was "stringy."
Were those evil threads and blue spots the secret principle of the
life in the living crystals? If so, how many millions of years must
elapse before chance would again turn up the lucky number which called
them into being? In the absence of luck in either event--green dye or
stringy waterglass--it might well be millions of millions of years
before another crystal relearned the forgotten secret of life.
This much he saw by the simple rules of arithmetic and the iron laws of
chance, laws less flexible than any ever devised by man. Yet, he might
live forty years, and in one year thousands of routine experiments can
be carried out. Only one need be the lucky one.
Mathematics does not tell us everything. Saxby realized this. The rest
of his problem was the hardest, and here arithmetic failed him. Which
way was better? The present order of nature, where the finest flower
of evolution dies or inflicts death to be free to grow, or the older
order, where brute killed brute blindly, without purpose and without
the sanction of reason. Was either way better than the other? What
had ethics to do with a problem that was a mere puzzle in the laws of
chance? How escape it? Was not a revolution to achieve liberty and a
less brutish life--the sort of thing these wretched Nicaraguans were
always pulling off--a contradiction in itself?
"At any rate," Saxby muttered to a helpless lamp-post, "those crystals
didn't say they were killing one another for the victims' good.
Fundamentally they were lesser humbugs than we are. Red-blooded men;
blue blood; fists across the sea; green-blooded crystals; true blood;
which shall it be? I'll try for the green! Forty years ... I'll do it!"
He savagely kicked the lamp-post and discovered to his dismay that
he was lost. A poker-faced Chinaman stood in the doorway of his shop
smoking a long pipe.
"Is this Chinatown?" Saxby asked, rather fatuously.
The imperturbable merchant nodded, a slight, Chinese nod. It was
Chinatown, the very heart of it. Saxby stood staring at the dingy shop
window. Unlike an American shop window, the Chinese merchant's gave
no indication of what the proprietor sold. It was bare of everything
except one small bowl of pebbles and water in which a single Chinese
lily bloomed in white purity.
"How much for the lily? Bowl and all?"
"Him not for sale."
Saxby fished out a twenty-dollar bill and flashed it In the Chinaman's
face.
"I guess you'll sell it for twenty dollars."
Without a word the merchant reached for the lily, bowl and all, handed
it to Saxby, and pocketed the bill in silence.
As he walked away, carrying his purchase tenderly, old Saxby fumbled in
his pocket. He found the two packets of dyes, the blue and the yellow.
With a gesture of shame he tossed them into the gutter.
"White Lily!"
THE END
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