by Rufus King
The wind had sprung up again.
With the energy of despair, he swung the pickax like a madman against the stones. The trickles of water became larger and more frequent. Fissures were widening and appearing in greater numbers. If he could only keep up his present pace for the next ten minutes—even for the next five minutes…
The handle of the pickax broke.
He had failed.
The water at present trickling through would stop nothing—scarcely a match, lighted or unlighted, much less a forest fire.
With lead in his heart, he took one look at the road before him, at the beckoning road where lay escape, and then plunged back to the brink and started the descent of the cliffs.
The passage was quicker, if less dignified, than the one up had been.
The raging fire was showing its wicked crest less than three quarters of a mile away as he stumbled up to the laboratory door and hurled himself inside.
Anna was there where he had left her, kneeling stoically and silently beside a cot. He gathered from her attitude that she was still praying.
Ramier had left his desk and was standing at a window, staring with calm, fatalistic eyes at the now visible tops of the flames.
“We are done for,” he said simply, as Billy joined him. “The fire will soon be upon us. It is my punishment for tampering with forces that are part of nature’s heritage and should not be experimented upon by man. There is something like an avengeance of fate in the fact that this peril should come upon us at the very moment when I feel that success lies ready in my hand.”
“You mean your dope is finished—that you’re all set for a try?”
“Yes. My data is complete.”
“Then get them back, man—get them back! We can all stand in the air pocket under the falls until the flames have passed.”
Ramier slowly shook his head. A great lethargy seemed to enfold him.
“You,” he said, “and Anna—yes. For myself, I shall go and join them. There is no other way. It would take half an hour at the least to restore them all, and by then we shall be in the heart of the fire—by then we may be nothing but cinder and ash. No, no. You and Anna shall go to the waterfall, and I to Drusilla. You will find some mind before your death who, in later years, may follow in my footsteps even as I have followed in those of Thyrus, and who may release us.”
And then a startling and strange thing happened.
A voice cried, “No—no—bring us back now—even to the flames—you must risk it—bring us back—now—now!”
It was the voice of Drusilla.
Ramier was electrified—a new being. Energy pulsed through him in a flood.
“How much time have we got?” he asked Billy.
Billy looked toward the fire.
“Not very many minutes at best,” he said. “Perhaps about twenty. Wait!” He looked more intently. “I think—I think—”
He flew to the door and jerked it open.
“The wind!” he called. “The wind is shifting!”
Whether the wind had actually shifted or had simply died down, it was hard to tell. But the crest of the fire was less vicious and almost seemed to stand still. The sight must have driven Billy a little out of his head, for he dashed back into the laboratory, slammed the door, and crossing swiftly to Anna said fiercely, “If you must pray, stick to a request that the wind keeps shifting into the nor’nor’west!”
Ramier had sped to his apparatus and was adjusting the battery of transmitters. He worked with speed, but with meticulous care. He switched on the generator.
“Drusilla,” he said to the empty air, “take your stand. Whatever—whoever is preventing you, surely your father and Mr. Wilkins can come to your assistance. Make every effort that you can. I shall count ten. At the end of the count, I shall press the keys of the control board.”
Billy was in a cold stew. He moved in a helpless manner between Ramier’s side and a window from which he could observe their menace.
The fire really did seem to be checked, even if it were only temporarily so. Nothing, of course, actually could check a forest fire but rain, or until the rangers put it out—but the flames, were creeping on less rapidly.
“Silence!” cautioned Ramier. “Please do not move. We must have absolute quiet. I am about to commence.”
Billy stood rooted in his tracks, his eyes transfixed by the chalk marks on the floor where Drusilla must take her stand.
“Now,” continued Ramier, “I shall Begin to count. One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten!”
He pressed the keys.
Appearing slowly, vaguely as a mirage in the air, they saw the outline of a hand!
After a single sharp intake of breath, Ramier gave the power control a turn.
The mirage became clearer. Form began to show distinctly. Billy was able to make out the shape of a short skirt, such as Drusilla was wearing when she had been dissolved.
“It’s Drusilla,” he hissed. “I can make out her dress. Keep on—keep on—”
“Silence!” commanded Ramier.
And his hand again turned the power control.
He hit, it seems, the correct amount, for the cloud suddenly compressed into complete solidity.
“Thanks,” said the solidified cloud, as it stepped from the flux of the transmitters.
They found themselves gasping with shock at the sight of a total stranger who was dressed in what seemed to be a short white nightshirt with a cord looped around its middle, and who had bare legs with sandals fastened at the ends of them.
It was Thyrus, the Greek.
CHAPTER XX
THE GRIM REAPER’S FOOT GLIDES SOFTLY OVER A BANANA PEEL
“I dare say that my appearing like this comes as a bit of a surprise,” said Thyrus.
Thyrus’s physique, Billy tells me, radically changed the opinion he had hitherto held concerning Greeks. This opinion, of course, had been solely based on the scrubby and rather human-looking variety who have such a passionate flair for the merchandising of sweets. But Thyrus differed from such vendors as the day differs from black night.
Although he hated and distrusted him, Billy was obliged to admit that the man looked like a god. There was a classic perfection about his features that made them almost too beautiful for any beholding. One can only presume that the rest of Thyrus, in particular his legs, was beyond words.
Ramier also indulged in a good eyeful, and got an equal if different kind of a shock. He had been picturing Thyrus as a man who looked his age—if one can determine how a man does look when he is two thousand and some odd hundreds of years old—and although Ramier must very well have known that he himself was not so difficult to gaze upon when it came to a question of features and physique, nevertheless, he was forced to admit that in a beauty contest he would be hard put to it to hold a candle up to Thyrus.
Everything—the fire included—rushed from his mind before a terrible onslaught of jealousy.
“What has happened to Drusilla?” he demanded, with more than a threat or two bristling in his voice.
“Nothing,” said Thyrus amiably. “Nothing at all. She’s just been a bit hysterical for the past few hours. You see, she saw the fire coming before you did, and your danger got on her nerves. Her father and Mr. Wilkins were trying to calm her when you solidified me.”
“But, good heavens,” said Ramier, “there isn’t time for nerves—the wind may shift again—we may be wiped out—”
“So I told her,” said Thyrus, impartially inspecting Anna and then returning his attention to Ramier. “And she is trying her best to get herself in hand. That was the reason for her cry for help. She wanted to get out and warn you about the fire.”
“That sounds fishy to me,” said Billy. “In fact, it sounds like a whole aquarium.”
“If it is true,” said Ramier doubtfully, “why didn’t she just tell us about the fire, instead of screaming?”
“She fainted from the strain before she could
speak.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Billy coldly, and truculently, and to the point.
Thyrus permitted himself a polite shrug. He had, of course, the shoulders to go with it.
“It hardly seems an appropriate moment for an argument,” he said. “Later on I’ll be only too glad to oblige you with anything you care to suggest—from catapults up. But just at present, Mr. Preston, might I suggest that you glance out of the window and note the progress of the flames?” Billy wavered between a strong desire to march up to Thyrus and smack him on the nose, and his pressing anxiety about the condition of the fire. The latter conquered, and he went to the window.
The favorable shift in the wind still held. It is true that the flames were nearer, but they were moving at a very flow rate of speed. He faced about to inform Ramier that they would still have time, with luck, when all of them were startled by the voice of Drusilla.
It is necessary to know just where each was standing. Billy, as we have seen, was beside one of the windows. Ramier stood by the control board of the apparatus. Thyrus had just stepped across to the receiving unit and was inspecting it closely, his eyes fixed musingly upon its dials. “Ramier!” cried the voice of Drusilla, “beware of the-ee-eeee—” shrilled the voice out of tune.
“Drusilla!” called Ramier. “What happened?”
“She is again hysterical,” said Thyrus sympathetically.
“Hysterical your grandmother!” choked Billy savagely. “I saw you turn the dials of that receiver.”
“Absurd,” said Thyrus coldly. “Why should I?”
“I don’t know, but it’s quite in keeping with the other things you’ve done.”
Thyrus mildly raised his unbelievably perfect eyebrows. “Other things?” he asked. “What other things?”
“I don’t know—but I feel them about you. Ramier, go take a look at those dials and see if he hasn’t twisted them.” Ramier, perplexed, crossed to the receiver and bent over the table on which the set stood. Billy glared at Thyrus with his fists clenched, and was only waiting for Ramier’s verdict before he leaped across the room and flayed him. Thyrus smiled mockingly at Billy and, as impolitely as he could, turned his back. By doing so, it placed him directly in a line between Ramier and Billy.
Which is the reason why Billy failed to see Thyrus draw from beneath the folds of the garment he was wearing, a mean, wicked-looking, razor-edged, big Greek knife.
“Well?” asked Billy impatiently.
There was no answer.
Billy affirms that he saw no move. The back of Thyrus was motionless, and showed not the ripple of a single muscle. Ramier’s hands were spread out on the table top. He was pressing down upon them as he leaned forward to take a reading of the dials. And as Billy waited for an answer, he saw Ramier slowly crumple up, without so much as a sigh, and tumble in a heap upon the floor.
There was nothing visual that could explain the collapse. Thyrus stepped backward a pace, and stood there looking down critically upon the huddled figure. Naturally, Billy rushed right over. He was dazed and at a complete loss until he noticed a thin trickle of blood creeping out from beneath Ramier’s bent arm.
Billy fell upon his knees and leaned over to gather Ramier in his arms. A premonition—some quite unaccountable warning of danger—made him swerve his body sharply to one side—and a knife flashed past his upturned face.
This was too much.
Billy made a very effective grab for Thyrus’s immaculate legs and at once relieved them from the strain of supporting the rest of Thyrus’s body. This, in turn, was too much for Thyrus.
They started to wrestle.
The fact was unfortunate for Billy, inasmuch as the business of wrestling was an art par excellence with the Greek of Thyrus’s time, forming, as it did, one of the principal divertissements of the pentathlon. Nor was it then the polite art to which it has degenerated in our weaker and more mollycoddleish day. All holds were not alone allowed but positively encouraged, including the whimsical ones of strangling, butting, and kicking.
A particularly desirable hold consisted in crushing one’s adversary’s fingers. This neat little piece of strategy achieved its highest popularity in the pancratium, which was a combination of wrestling and boxing.
The only sop offered to the weak sisters of the period was a hidebound rule that wrestlers must be graceful in all their movements, in order that they might conform to the very rigid ideas established by Greek aesthetics.
Of course, all this was both a shock and surprise to Billy—who maintains the very strictest principles concerning sportsmanship—and it was not until Thyrus had ground down two of Billy’s fingers, taken a graceful bite out of one ear, and butted a few butts, that Billy began to scuttle back for a century or two on his own hook in the general direction of primordial man.
Billy then essayed a few bites himself, and what they may have lacked in grace they made up for in earnestness. But, bite back as he would, he was no match for Thyrus, and things would decidedly have fared ill with him had it not been for the fortuitous conclusion, on the part of Anna, of her prayers.
Anna arose from her kneeling posture beside the cot at the point in the game when Billy had moved back to about the Fifteenth Century B. C. She found him going the graceful Thyrus one better, in that he was interpolating a few growls between his bites.
“Whoosh!” she said, reverting herself, presumably, to Lithuania.
Her whoosh, as might be expected, was without effect. However, she had remembrances of the method employed for separating fighting dogs. A kettle of hot water was handily simmering on top of the stove, and she used it well. Thyrus, after one international screech, lost his gracefulness and got all balled up. Billy promptly seized his opponent’s confusion and the remains of a right ear and turned them to such good advantage that before three minutes were over he had Thyrus imprisoned in a closet that owned a stout door and a good honest lock. Billy turned the key in the lock and put the key in his pocket. Then he came back to the Twentieth Century.
Before Billy again pounces upon me with the accusation that I am not treating the adventure seriously enough, let me hasten to state that at that precise moment things reached their darkest, their lowest ebb. Outside, lazily came the fire—slowly, steadily, inexorably advancing—creeping toward them inch by inch, or rather tree-by-bush-by-tree—Ramier, the master of their fate, stretched out for the count on the floor—and what in heaven’s fair name were they to do?
Billy and Anna examined Ramier’s wound. It was a superficial one and, Billy having dressed it, would cause but little trouble in the future, if there should be any future for any of them.
I dislike to think that at such a critical moment there should have been any ulterior motive such, say, as petty revenge, in the back of Anna’s head. However, it must be reported that her manner of taking a pitcher of ice cold water and dumping its contents upon Ramier’s face was not only tinged with a dash of gusto but with a positive glaze of relish as well.
“Where is he?” Ramier demanded thickly, as he opened his eyes. He jumped up, pale and shaken, but quite undaunted.
“Thyrus is in that closet there,” said Billy. “And if I had my way we would leave him in it to be well roasted when we escape.”
“Yes,” agreed Anna calmly. “Roasted or parboiled.”
“Impossible,” muttered Ramier, his better nature getting the upper hand after a pleasant second or two lost in speculation. “Come—there is not a minute to lose.”
Billy, who had gotten as confirmedly into the habit as was the late Sister Anne, went again to the window to set how the fire was getting on.
“Rats!” he said viciously, as he noted the flames sweeping more swiftly down upon them. “That damn wind has shifted again.”
CHAPTER XXI
A LOST CAUSE
It would be a deep injustice to that splendid branch of our state’s service were one to leave it to be imagined that the trooper, accompanied by Oscar and Harris, tur
ned tail and fled at the first sight of flames licking across the road before them, and made no effort at once to rescue the people trapped in the valley.
In the first place, the trooper wasn’t at all sure that there were any people trapped in the valley.
The sole evidence he possessed was that at around eight’ o’clock on the previous morning, Mr. and Miss Duveen had left home in separate cars and had gone somewhere along the old logging road. That same evening, Miss Duveen’s maid had driven off, too. One could presume that her object was to join her mistress.
There were several things the Duveens could have done, and the least probable of them all was to have spent the night out in the open. An accident might have happened had they been in one car, or even in two cars, that might have prevented their either returning or sending for help. But that three cars and their occupants should all become disabled at the same time was almost too coincidental to be considered.
The trooper knew vaguely of the two young men who occupied the shack in the valley. They only came in for supplies at lengthy intervals—generally well over a month apart—were extremely uncommunicative, and might easily, for all he knew, be now in some other portion of the state.
These facts—after the primarily important one about the forest fire itself—he reported succinctly to the sergeant at Hiram’s Corners over the Duveen telephone.
“But the two young men, sir,” said a much-sobered Oscar, tugging at the sleeve of the trooper’s shirt, “are in the valley.”
“One minute please, sergeant.” The trooper turned to Oscar. “How do you know? If there’s any more monkey business out of you, I’ll lock you up as soon as this mess is over.”
“A gentleman stopped here this morning, sir. He was on his way to visit them and inquired after the proper route, as well as requesting a glass of water.”
“The presence of three men is definitely established in the valley, sergeant, at some time this morning. They may have escaped before the road was cut off, but I doubt it, as we would have met them coming out. The whole business is queer, and there may be something after all in the idea that Duveen and his daughter and her maid are in the valley, too… No, this house is too far to the east to get caught… I know there are no trails, but the country is fairly open along the eastern ridge.” He hung up the receiver. “How many men have you got in this joint?”