The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  Shene blinked at her in slow puzzlement as she drained the glass to the last too-sweet drop.

  * * *

  Percy Loring, sprawled under his tree, watched Mark's departure with as much emotion as his capacity offered. He had lost the power to feel anything deeply, but he had liked Mark, and this departure of his was idiotic—standing, after all, by his fool-born ultimatum.

  "Nothing to be done," he thought. "Vanya'd take any of my sympathy as sarcasm. Best thing is to start on that quart of mine, while Shene needs me at the piano. That gives me the whip hand, for once!"

  He strolled into the Diver's Helmet on silent barefooted tread. It seemed deserted, then he spied Hong's broad back in the doorway beyond the piano; he was carrying something. And Shene's voice growled. "Over on that!" he was saying.

  An instant more and the pair of them were emerging into the bar-room. Shene paused, and started perceptibly at the sight of Loring.

  "What do you want?" he bellowed.

  "An advance on the quart you owe me."

  "You won't get it tonight!"

  "Then you'll play the piano, Shene." The beachcomber glanced casually around the room. "Fine laugh a room-full of customers will have at your efforts!"

  His eye fell on the two glasses on the table, with the dregs of wine coloring their bottoms.

  "Hello! Who's been drinking?"

  "I have!" roared Shene.

  "With whom?"

  "With Hong, you lousy scum!"

  "That," said Loring, "doesn't sound reasonable, and I reject your explanation because I find that in practically all cases, whatever you say is a lie."

  He advanced a step, and leaned on the corner of the bar.

  "Where's Vanya?" he asked.

  "How do I know? Gone with your friend Talbot!"

  "No," said the beachcomber. "She didn't go."

  "Then she's in her room. Or down the beach!"

  "What's in there?" queried Loring, motioning toward the room from which Hong and Shene had emerged.

  "Nothing, you filthy bum! And get out of here!"

  "Mind if I look?" asked the beachcomber, with a mild smile on his lips.

  He stepped forward; the giant Shene barred his way with a deep growl of rage.

  "You're getting out!" he rumbled.

  Loring fell back; he knew it was utterly useless to attempt to pass the colossal Shene aided by the massive Hong. Yet he was determined now to verify his suspicions of some harm or danger to Vanya. "Mark!" he shouted suddenly. "Mark Talbot!"

  The chances were thousands to one that Mark was out of earshot, but he might rouse some one on the Kermadec. Worth trying, anyway.

  Shene answered with an irate bellow. He lunged for the emaciated form of the beachcomber, his great hands stretched forward. The concentrated hatred born of many insults, of songs of ridicule that sailors were singing in far ports, shone in his small eyes.

  Loring whipped out his single domestic implement—the knife he used in gathering his provender of fruit. He backed toward the door with the point of the blade directed at Shene's throat. He backed slowly, cautiously.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the vast form of Hong moving to cut off his escape. He turned with a movement cat-like in its rapidity, and planted his bare foot with all the power of his leg in the tremendous stomach of the Chinaman. Hong groaned and sat suddenly on the floor—but he sat with his back against the screen door, Loring had no time to waste in an effort to open it; he was trapped by the giant Shone.

  The huge dive-keeper had paused when Loring ceased his retreat to, ward the door, and stood just out of reach of his opponents arm; Shone had no wish to brave the knife! He edged toward the bar; Loring interpreted his move and stepped to forestall it.

  "A gun behind the bar," he grinned. "You're not smart enough, Shene!"

  But the other had not yet exhausted his means; he backed suddenly away from Loring, and darted heavily toward the far end of the bar. He was coming around from the other side.

  The beachcomber sidled deliberately behind his own end of the massive bar; halfway down the narrow space he saw Shene fumbling desperately among a mass of bottles and glasses on the shelf. Loring gripped his knife and advanced with a strange smile on his bearded face; one might have judged him completely happy as he burst into a great, shouting song.

  * * *

  And Vanya—to what evil bourne had she disappeared ? She had instantly regretted her foolhardiness in draining Shene's untrustworthy wine. She was frightened; she cast frantically about for some means of aid. She opened her lips impulsively, on the verge of screaming Mark's name; then she closed them grimly. If he did hear her, she'd only be calling him to danger; she had no illusions as to the actions of Hong and Shene when cornered. Then what remained to do? She was puzzled, frightened, and uncontrollably dizzy.

  Shene had risen, and was staring down at her with a shrewd expression in his small eyes. Hong was standing at her right; she sensed his elephantine presence without seeing him. She forced her eyes to the window; the prau was sliding swiftly between the anchored vessel and the coral spit. Mark was seated in the center, looking back at the ' Cove. And another wave of dizziness ran through her body.

  "I knew it!" she said, staring at Shone, who loomed more than naturally large before her. "I knew it —the wine!"

  "Eh?" rumbled the giant, bending toward her.

  "She talk wild!" said Hong.

  Waves of increasing darkness swept through the room. She saw Shene swelling to enormous size, then shrinking to the dimension's of a pygmy. The phenomenon interested her; her fright had vanished. Why had she been frightened, anyway? She could recall no reason, no logical cause.

  "Glass—water, please!" she said. The recurring waves of darkness were less pleasant.

  "Water? Sure," growled Shene. "Hong, fix her up a glass of water."

  But the water too had that nauseating sweetness of smell and taste. She took a tiny sip, and the glass crashed to the floor.

  "Sorry," she murmured. "Awkward!"

  Suddenly a sharp blow restored her to momentary clarity. Her cheek had struck the table; her head must have dropped forward. Again she felt that frightened urge to escape; perhaps she could slip past Shene, and run into the open of the clearing, where the men of the Kermadec could see her—or Loring, Even Loring!

  But she couldn't rise. Her knees were unresponsive; her arms refused to pull her from the chair. Then a humorous thought flashed through the returning darkness.

  "You're cheated!" she said to Shene. "Anyway, you're cheated!" She had remembered the pearls.

  The room blurred and darkened; she realized vaguely that her head was lying on her arm on the table top. Then some one had pulled her erect in the chair; her head fell back as hands fumbled at the neck of her robe.

  "What the deuce!" she heard Shene roar. "She's got on her dancing togs!"

  There was little more; the darkness had become very nearly complete. She heard distant, inchoate voices, like those in dreams.

  "Get her out of sight" . . . "they come" . . . "take her shoulders" . . . "I'll take legs—"

  CHAPTER XXXV

  She was being carried—a rather pleasant sensation, riding weightless through illimitable space. Afterwards, Vanya could recall almost the very moment when she lost consciousness; it was somewhere on that pleasant, effortless journey. For she remembered hearing Shene's order to "Lay her over on that!" but she never recalled the actual completion of the act. The darkness had deepened so that there was nothing left—not even darkness.

  "Enough," Mark grunted, as the prau rounded the point and the Cove vanished. "Stop!"

  The paddlers rested, giving an occasional stroke against the drift of the waves, whose slap sounded like Loring's irritating laugh.

  "Beaten!" thought Mark dolorously. "The only thing I can do now is return and surrender. And how I hate it!" He stared morosely at the topmast of the Kermadec beyond the point.

  "Anyway," he reflected, "Vanya's made of stern
stuff. She called this bluff of mine, and no mistake!" He grinned...

  "The graceful thing to do," he continued, "would be to go right back, kneel before her, tell her I love her, and surrender on her terms. And that's what I'm tempted to do."

  He sat musing, while the sun dipped into the western ocean, and the brief tropical twilight was over him. One could almost see the progress of the darkness; stars were already twinkling.

  Then, thin and clear across the water came a shrill call, like a summons echoing out of a deep cavern.

  "Mark!" sounded Loring's voice. "Mark Talbot!"

  "Something's up!" thought Mark. "Loring must think me far out of earshot, or else his infernal cleverness figured out what I'd do. Back!" he snapped at his paddlers. "To the beach—quick!"

  The prau swung about in a wide circle; the drift of wave and wind had carried it some hundreds of feet away from the coral spit. Swiftly they moved toward it, where it showed as a deep shadow in the gathering darkness. Yet swift as the craft cut the water, it seemed interminably slow to Mark; a nervous excitement had seized him; for some obscure reason he was suddenly worried.

  As the prau rounded the point, a burst of song drifted out to him. Loring was singing; there was a note Mark had never heard in his voice—something wild and joyous.

  "With gun and knife there join in strife

  Two men of manner shady.

  One is a villain, one a fool,

  Who—quite according to the rule!—

  Are fighting for a lady!"

  The craft shot like a hunting shark through the channel between the point and the anchored ship. Mark, now erect in the center, saw the lighted ports of the Kermadec; the crew was still at mess. A crash sounded from the Diver's Helmet; he dug his nails into the palm of his hand, and strained as if he were thrusting the paddles. Loring's voice rose again in that wild song.

  "Come closer, Shene—you dog unclean!

  I wish you nought but good!

  I merely think you need a bath

  To cleanse your filth and cool your wrath!

  I'll give you one—in blood!"

  The prau grounded; Mark leaped on the instant into the knee-deep water, and rushed across the clearing toward the door of the Diver's Helmet. As he touched the beach, the song rose fiercely, with a note of triumph.

  "Face in the gore upon the floor,

  Shene, like all villains, lies—!"

  A shot crashed! The song ceased abruptly, then sounded in a different, faltering tone. For a moment the words were inaudible, then as he was almost upon the single step that rose before the door, the words were plain, high, thin, wavering.

  "The fool? Of course—he—dies!" Mark burst in upon a shambles. Projecting from behind the bar was the gigantic frame of Shene; blood still spurted from the hilt of the knife imbedded in his great corded neck. And Loring—Loring was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bar, his legs crossed as he was wont to sit beneath his tree. He smiled as Mark burst in.

  "Good boy!" he said faintly. "I rather thought you'd be along."

  "You're hurt!" said Mark. "Nothing at all," murmured the beachcomber. "I think the lady's in there." He nodded toward the room beyond the piano. "And I think you'll find her drugged."

  Mark dashed to the door, and crashed it open. Vanya lay with closed eyes and pallid face on the steamer chair. Her robe was in a heap on the floor; she lay in her dancing costume, with one tiny red slipper missing, and the throat of her scarlet blouse was torn open. Mark bent over her frantically; he placed his ear to her breast. Her heartbeats sounded slowly, but strong and unvarying.

  "Loring! Loring!" he cried, rushing to the door. "What's happened? What did he do to her?"

  "I think she's all right," said the beachcomber wearily. "It's likely he gave her chloral—just knock-out drops."

  "You're hurt!" said Mark, approaching as he noted the bloodstained shirt of the beachcomber. "You're hurt badly! I'll get you to the prau, to a doctor in Taulanga!"

  "Don't bother," said Loring. "It's quite useless."

  "We'll go immediately," said Mark, kneeling beside him. "What a fool I've been!"

  "No more than most! Do you know—I never had a drop of that quart you staked me?" He coughed slightly. "But I've realized my life's ambition, nevertheless."

  "What's that?"

  "To die like a gentleman!" said Loring, and—he did so.

  Mark rose slowly; bitter, anguished thoughts were in his mind. But for him, Loring might still be singing, drinking, living his life like a natural spirit under his tree. He turned heavily back to the room where Vanya lay.

  He tossed her robe on his shoulder; the glint of the red slipper caught his eye from beneath the steamer chair, and he slipped it on her foot. He passed his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, and lifted her from the chair; he twisted her through the narrow door out into the bar-room.

  He turned his head away from Loring; he didn't want to imagine reproach in the expression of the beachcomber's face. A flash of motion caught his eye; he glanced at the bar to see Hong's vast round face rising from behind it like the rising of a yellow moon.

  Hong might have a weapon. Mark was sick of the thought of blood-shed; he shifted Vanya to his shoulder, where she hung with her head and arms down his back, her silk-clad legs caught in his right arm, and dashed for the door.

  There were lights on the deck of the schooner as he sped toward the beach; the crew was coming ashore. He ignored the excited chattering of his paddlers as he laid Vanya gently on the bottom of the prau, and sat with her head on his knees.

  "Taulanga!"he he ordered. "Quick!"

  * * *

  Tongatabu had long faded into the night, and the prau moved as if alone in a world of stars and water. The natives, guiding themselves by the configurations of the glorious, now familiar star groups of the Southern Hemisphere, drove the craft silently forward. Mark sat with Vanya's head upon his knees, and stared again at the splendor of the Southern Cross, the misty, infinite remoteness of the Magellanic Clouds.

  He glanced at the drugged girl; he had spread her robe over her against the spray from the glistening blades of the paddles. The moonlight shone very bright on her immobile face; it was as pale and beautiful as the face of some statue of antiquity. Mark noted the slow rising moon that glistened on the group; it was three-quarters full, even a little more than that. How long had it been since he had sat gazing at a full tropical moon? He remembered the night; it was that first evening he and Vanya had sat together on the coral point— the night he had first watched her dance.

  So short a time as that! The satellite had not yet completed a single cycle from full moon to full moon. He wondered that so much of life and death could be compressed into so little a span of time.

  He gazed again at Vanya; be bent over her and listened to her breathing. It was soft and regular now, though at the very beginning of their journey it had been heavy, labored. He had been worried, afraid of poison, or an overdose of whatever drug she had taken; for the first hour a spectral fear had pursued him, that still another catastrophe might follow his aimless blundering. But then Vanya had opened her eyes, looked at him uncomprehendingly, and dazedly murmured his name. Her eyes had closed again almost immediately, but now she seemed to be in a natural slumber. Mark felt reassured by her quiet even breathing; Loring had seemed confident that she was in no danger.

  In fact, she was stirring now. Mark raised her head in his arms; she muttered something impossible to understand, and opened her eyes. For a long interval she simply stared at him.

  "Mark!" she said finally. "Oh, Mark! Have we—have we left?"

  "Be quiet, dear," he answered. "Tell me how you feel."

  "Feel?" she echoed vaguely. "I feel all right—no, I don't! My head aches."

  She struggled to a half-sitting posture; for the first time she saw the impassive, laboring natives, and the rush of waters beside her.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  "Mark! We're in a boat! What —what happened
?"

  "I don't know, Vanya. I found you asleep, unconscious or drugged, in the back room. That's as much as I know."

  Like a flash of light, memory returned to the girl. Shene and his too-sweet wine—her pearls! And Mark, sailing heartlessly away, leaving her alone, she thought, forever. She remembered her hopeless, impulsive toast, and the draining of the nauseous wine. She remembered the rising waves of darkness, and Shene's rumbling voice, and very little more. But Mark had been deserting, her, and now she was lying half in his arms, in a speeding native prau on a dark shoreless sea.

  "The pearls!" she said. "It was Shene! He wanted the pearls, and he tried to drug me."

  "He seemed to have succeeded when I arrived," said Mark dryly.

  "But I knew! I knew there was something wrong with the wine; I could taste it!"

  "Then why the devil—?"

  "Mark, I saw you step into your prau; I saw you leaving me! That's why I drank it, and hoped it was poisoned."

  "You poor kid! Did you think I'd actually do what I threatened?" He kissed her gently on her pale cheek.

  "Yes!" she said defiantly. "Yes, I did think so! I was desperately unhappy, and then—and then, it seemed like a good joke on Shene."

  "Joke? What seemed like a joke?"

  "The pearls! I didn't have them at all. You still have them in your wallet!"

  "Good Lord!" ejaculated Mark. "I have!"

  The night wind was clearing Vanya's head; the ache and dizziness were vanishing. She pulled herself still further erect, so that her head leaned against Mark's shoulder.

  "Mark," she said, gazing straight ahead of her into the luminous night, "did you really forget those pearls?"

  "No, dear," he confessed with an embarrassed little chuckle. "I remembered them; I thought of them several times during these last two days of arguing."

  "Then why didn't you return them?"

  "Because I hoped you'd realize from the fact that I didn't that I never intended to desert you. I hoped you'd figure the thing out, and yield because you wanted to yield."