by Talbot Mundy
“Keep your distance!”
She obeyed. “Blair, see what I will show you. After that, answer.”
“I’ll look. What is it?”
“Let me pass you.”
He stepped back to the wall. The Chinese girl came carrying the sari and the two women walked past him toward the fierce light at the end of the tunnel, speaking Chinese to each other. The Chinese girl stooped and picked up the hilt of her broken dagger that Blair had crushed underfoot.
“Drop that!” he commanded. She looked at him over her shoulder as if he were too contemptible to deserve an answer. He was not sure she was not right. He funked the prospect of a fight with two women. He wondered whether funk, emotion, lack of sleep and thirst were combining to make him incompetent. He had found out practically nothing. He was more mystified now than ever.
He decided to follow them, chiefly because he was thirsty. He needed a drink like the devil. The few drops of water he had had were only a little better than nothing; they had made him crave more. There was maddening irritation in the dust that every footstep stirred. Wu Tu probably needed drink, too, and almost certainly knew where to get it. He was sweating and grimy; he kept imagining pools of cool water in which to plunge, drink, bathe himself. He could not imagine Wu Tu remaining personally dirty a moment longer than she could help. She was probably heading for water now—lots of it. He quickened his pace. But what he saw, a moment later, almost drove the thought of water from his mind.
The tunnel opened on a ledge that passed completely around the sheer wall of an almost oval chasm. Its sides glittered with quartz and micah. It was shaped like a womb—a retort. It narrowed upward to a curving neck, through which daylight poured like molten, white-hot metal; the light turned golden as it picked up color from the quartz on the flanks of the place.
The ledge on which he found himself was about a hundred feet above ‘a floor that seemed covered with stuff like wax from a guttered, candle, but the stuff glittered so that he could hardly see it. In the midst of that floor was a rock shaped roughly like an upturned bowl. Down toward that, from the curving roof, hung stalactites like icicles. Those were creamy, not dazzling white. Eyes rested on them with relief. The longest of them—it seemed to be forty or fifty feet long—pointed directly downward at an object that looked like crystal or flaming opal. It flashed so that eyesight refused to define it.
From the mouth of the tunnel where he stood staring, to the smooth wall on the far side, the pit was not less than three hundred feet across. Its size dwarfed that glittering thing in the midst, but the thing monopolized attention. Eyes, that could not see it beneath puckered eyelids, hardly could be forced to look away from it. It was not clear crystal; at moments it looked like frosted glass or a colossal uncut diamond. A bird flew overhead and was reflected in it. Gradually something else appeared, apparently inside the thing—something that took human shape. It looked as if a human body was encased in a cone of glass or ice. But it was too big to be a human body. When Blair moved it vanished.
There were a few birds up near the neck where the sunlight streamed in. There was such silence that their wing-beats were audible. It was a kind of cathedral silence, punctuated by another delicious sound, of dripping water. But there was no water anywhere to be seen. The stalactites were bone-dry; the water that oozed from the rock to create them had dried up centuries ago.
Wu Tu was sitting on the brink of the ledge, to the right, in comparative shadow. She was staring at that central object. The Chinese girl, beside her, stood holding Wu Tu’s sari over one arm and doing something to the broken dagger-handle. It was easy to keep them in full view. There appeared to be no way out except up that unclimbable curve toward daylight or else back through the tunnel. Blair turned left, away from them, in full sunlight, shading his eyes under his left hand, stopping at every third or fourth step to stare at that glittering central cone. But it was no use. That was. all he could see; it was cone-shaped, and even that discovery made his eyes ache. It seemed to gather all the rays of light into itself and then reflect them again outward. It would have been easier to stare at a sunlit mirror. There were momentary glimpses of the thing within; then eyes swam, tortured by the brilliance.
He doubted the glimpses—thought they were imaginary, or the reflections of some other object. But there was no other object that could have caused them. He had to cover his eyes at last;, he was so blinded by the glare that he could hardly see Wu Tu any longer. But he just could see her, so he walked back around the ledge toward her, keeping close to the wall for fear his eyes might play tricks; and when he reached the tunnel he stared straight into it, resting his eyes On the weird gloom. Something moved against the dim light at the far end. Wu Tu was right: the two men who had fled toward the other tunnel had returned. They were making no noise. He could not detect a sound, although he listened for nearly a minute.
When he approached Wu Tu the Chinese girl walked away and stood with her back to the wall of the chasm. He passed between them and stood beyond them, where he could watch them both and keep an eye, too, on the mouth of the tunnel, where two men might appear at any moment.
“Where are we?” he demanded, pointing upward with the revolver. “Where’s that opening?”
Wu Tu shrugged her shoulders. “Gaglajung. There is a sheer cliff on this side of the summit; and there is a great crack in a fold of the cliff, but it can’t be seen from above or below.”
“Where’s the way out?”
“The way you came in.”
“There’s another. Where is it?”
“Taron Ling knows.”
“You don’t?”
“No, and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Win or lose all. Look.”
He was watching the Chinese girl. She had filled one dagger with the little liquid that remained in the broken handle she had picked up. She screwed the dagger-handle tight and tossed the broken one over the ledge. His eyes followed it. It was only then that he saw clearly what he had hurt his eyes trying to see from other angles. The ledge where Wu Tu sat was broken. Carved stone-work, once erected there, had fallen and lay in ruins a hundred feet below. Directly opposite, within that cone-shaped thing that shone beneath the pointing stalactite, there stood—
“The ancient secret of the Caves of Gaglajung!” said Wu Tu. “Do you understand it?”
The thing was staggering. It was not a statue: that was evident at the first glance. It had no quality of sculpture, but an awful weirdness. Like Wu Tu in her own surroundings, it stirred in Blair an instantaneous and exciting impulse. He craved to interpret that thing unevasively, then, that moment, and to set down his opinion savagely in line and color. It challenged him. He was no longer, at that moment, a policeman, but an artist.
Thirst became unimportant. Danger dismissed itself from consciousness. There remained one emotion—awe; one impulse, to create. Within that conical, smooth, crystalline formation stood a woman. She could be seen perfectly from where Wu Tu was seated. and from where Blair stood, exactly behind her. If he moved six feet to the right or left he could see nothing but dazzling stabs of light amid an opalescent cone.
The woman was not less than nine feet tall. She stood erect in an attitude of mystic contemplation. She had been turned to stone within the stalagmitic ooze that once dripped from the rocks of the vaulted roof. But the appearance of life still remained, with all its color. She had light brown hair and she was broad shouldered, with large feet and hands, and was muscled like an athlete. Her legs looked capable of climbing mountains. Her skin was more butter- than ivory-color. It was definitely not a statue. That woman had once lived, moved, had her being.
She appeared even to breathe as the sun passed higher than the slot-like opening in the cavern roof and the changing light touched flaws and wave-like irregularities on the surface of the stuff that enclosed her. At one instant it resembled mother-of-pearl—then opal—then clear glass. Gold and silver flame with red sparks appeared to leap and die away within, until the bri
ght hair stole all the sunlight for a moment and the entire cone became pale sapphire that changed to amethyst and then flashed white again.
“Strength!” said Wu Tu with her head between her hands. Her voice was startling. It awoke hollow echoes. “Do you see how strong she was? Such as she could crack rocks—by thinking!”
Blair looked down at her. That might be a new line on Wu Tu. Was that her secret? Glutted with the loot of criminal intrigue and influence, was she seeking a more occult strength and new fields for its use? Typically oriental, that. Hundreds of thousands of orientals have abandoned material means in the quest for spiritual causes. But it calls for a different character than Wu Tu possessed— a different integrity. She looked bizarre, dwarfed, pretty and so feeble in comparison to the gigantic grandeur at which she stared, that Blair almost laughed aloud.
The human habit of explaining everything at once assured him he was face to face with something older than Egypt—than history—older, perhaps, than legend. It filled him with awe and excitement. It revealed the essential littleness of Wu Tu. But intuition warned him not to. let her know he had seen that. He could feel his own littleness. In the presence of such fabulous antiquity he felt of no importance—an impertinence—a mere policeman— ignorant. But he hungered to draw and paint what he saw.
Henrietta? Was this her secret, that she had said she could tell to a lover perhaps, but not to a policeman? Was Henrietta yearning too, to “crack rocks”—to steal some prehistoric scientific truth, of which this giantess within the stalagmite perhaps had been the sibyl? Did that account for Frensham’s disappearance? Did it account for Taron Ling? Zaman Ali? Dur-i-Duran Singh of Naga Kulu? The golden box in the commissioner’s office? Was there a discoverable secret? Or were they all mad? Within the transparent cone, glowing golden now, the monstrous woman smiled like an image of Kali, bride of the Destroyer—pondered like Rodin’s Thinker. What had she known, that marked her with so much dignity?
“Who built Gizeh, the Great Pyramid?” asked Wu Tu suddenly in a low, throaty voice that filled the cavern full of murmurs. “Who built Stonehenge and the temples of Peru? There were giants on the earth in those days —giants and magicians. They knew, but we don’t know. What if we did know? Anyone who did know—”
Blair interrupted. “Where’s that water that I hear dripping?”
He had not noticed where the Chinese girl went. He had almost forgotten her. She came now along the ledge toward him, carrying water in a golden bowl that had the same smooth character and color as the ornament he had seen on Wu Tu’s table in Bombay.
The sudden memory made him stare again at the woman within the cone. There was a resemblance. Her features were less sphinx-like, more human, but vaguely like those on that figurine. He had drawn it in the train, from memory—had made forty or fifty efforts to catch with his pencil the strangely subhuman quality. Perhaps he had failed because he had thought it subhuman. Perhaps it was something else. Anyhow, he remembered it; it was much easier to remember than to set down in black and white.
The Chinese girl gave him the bowl. It was large and heavy; he had to take it in both hands, so he held the revolver between his knees. Then he stood at the brink of the ledge and, conscious that both women watched him although they pretended not to, raised the bowl to the level of his lips and poured the contents to the floor a hundred feet below.
“Hail—and libation and obeisance to whatever gods there be!” he shouted. Then he gave the bowl back. Echoes picked up his words and cannonaded them until they died in a whisper—“There be—there be!” He glanced at Wu Tu: “Damn you, not poison! I said water!”
“Water! Water!” said the echoes.
For a moment he thought the Chinese girl would try to push him off the ledge, but she had a less murderous motive. He was in time to prevent her snatching the revolver. Her hand went to the opening of her jacket then and he glimpsed the dagger-handle. But Wu Tu spoke to her in Chinese and she turned away, shaking the last drops of water out of the bowl with an air of calm indifference. Apparently quite unconcerned, she began to descend the sheer flank of the cavern. There seemed to be steps on the far side of a projection of the ledge about thirty feet from where Blair was standing. When her chin was level with the ledge she turned and waited, watching for a signal.
“You shall have champagne,” said Wu Tu.
“Water. Where is it?”
Wu Tu got up in silence and signed to him to follow the Chinese girl, whose head promptly disappeared below the ledge. Blair ignored that invitation. Those two men in the tunnel undoubtedly had heard the echoes. They were very likely lurking near the tunnel entrance. They might be in Wu Tu’s confidence, although they had probably been Zaman Ali’s dependents; Zaman Ali was notorious for having cutthroats on his payroll. Having lost their master they were probably willing to murder anyone, to betray or work for anyone—or all three. They were rats in a trap, dangerous opportunists. Wu Tu probably wished to have word with them. Blair took a stride along the ledge toward the tunnel.
“Come,” said Wu Tu.
“Come, come, come!” said the echoes.
She began to lead toward the steps, but Blair ignored her and went to the tunnel entrance. He heard someone with bare feet scampering away ahead of him. but when he peered along the tunnel there was no one visible. Wu Tu beckoned. He followed her, then, to the head of the steps and she went down them quickly with her face to the wall. But to Blair those steps were not more than just negotiable. They were irregularly spaced, some of them less than a foot wide, all of them more than eighteen inches deep, and there were gaps between. They overhung a hundred feet of air, with glaring rock beneath. There was nothing to cling to, not a crack in the smooth surface of the hot, hewn wall.
He dreaded unfenced heights and precipices. He stared at the cone and retraced his steps until he could clearly see the face of the woman inside it. Curiosity then became stronger than dread of the dangerous stairway. There must be some way of getting closer to that mystery. He followed Wu Tu. She was out of sight already and he was glad she would not see him groping his way with his heart in his teeth.
The eighth or ninth step was a big one. It projected nearly three feet and he rested there a moment, leaning his back against the wall and staring at the cone. From that angle he could only see the woman’s face, magnified and distorted by a wave on the cone’s surface. Her eyelids seemed to move when he moved. Fierce lips seemed to mumble unimaginable things. The ridge of her nose grew cynical and eaglish, cruel. Then, at the next step downward her head looked too small to be human, but the body bulged like a fat gorilla’s. Lower again, she looked like someone swimming in reddish water amid deep-blue seaweed.
After that there was a gap. A step was missing. There was a yard of glaring air to cross, to a square foot of step on the far side —not much—nothing to a man in good condition— hardly more than a stride. Wu Tu and the Chinese girl had done it. But Blair’s head reeled. It was a stride so ghastly, on smooth stone in slippery boots, that he had to shut his eyes for sixty seconds before he could force himself to look, and make the effort. On the step below, his boot soils slipped, perhaps an inch that made his hair rise and his backbone tighten like a racked rope.
When he recovered balance, his knees trembled and felt so unsteady that he had to kneel, then sprawl on two steps. After about a minute he looked downward to test his nerve. At the bottom, seventy or eighty feet below, in the shadow of the wall, very close to the edge of the glare, he saw a man’s corpse that appeared to move in spasms.
It was nearly a minute before he could see that the body lay still and was being torn by vultures. Two of the filthy brutes had scented carrion even in that pit. While he watched, a third one circled downward from the opening, around and around the cone, its shadow splurging black on the crystal and its. wings disturbing silence with a noise like wind in a forest. Two more of the death-watch from the broken fangs of Gaglajung followed, and cast their shadows on the cone. With his head on the ste
p, Blair thought the woman in the cone suggested then, from that angle, a figure of Despair, frozen in self-contemplation.
He crawled after that on hands and knees, hugging the wall as he groped his way downward one step at a time, until he reached a smooth, projecting stone about six feet wide that formed the threshold of an opening in the wall. But the opening was only half the width of the stone slab. It was smooth-hewn, shaped like an elongated horse-collar, with the narrowed part at the bottom. Wu Tu stood in the opening with her back to a passage that grew dim ten feet behind her.
“Now you look less like a strong savage!” she observed with a mean smile that made her look ten years older.
Blair thought of having to reclimb those steps. The thought sickened him. But it felt good to be standing on wide stone. It was good enough for the moment. Anger returned to his aid, along with primitive emotions that included a desire to kill Wu Tu and hurl her below to the vultures. She was watching his eyes and choosing words. She chose with peculiar skill, if she meant to enrage him further:
“In uniform, Blair, with all the greatness of the government’s authority, you’re one thing. But now you’re naked—and there’s, no government! How does it feel to be mere Blair Warrender without a friend or a servant? Why not blow your whistle?”
It was true, he did feel naked. Not nude, naked. His torn, soiled uniform had lost the quality which cloaks bewilderment beneath assumed official calm. He had lost self-assurance. He was nakedly scared. But the truth is a two-edged weapon. It stiffens some men, though it weakens others. He began to try to ride fear—to command it, compel it, change it into alertness. Wu Tu detected a change in his eyes.