"James was mad."
"Of course provided he let himself be immured. But if he was buried alive against his will, the whole story is different."
"I see," she said uneasily. "This must be the place he found. The delphinium Brasseii growing by the river is almost proof by itself. And I haven't told you," she continued, "that I recognized at least fifty varieties of those deformed flowers we saw yesterday as the same, or at least very similar to some of those grown from James' barren seeds. All the descriptions have been kept, and Mr. Brassey had carefully colored photographs of all that flowered."
"You haven't seen living representatives of all of Brassey's flowers?" Vartan interrupted.
"Not nearly all. But to go back to James. If he was not mad, why did he send back that package of seeds?"
"To me it is quite simple if he was sane, and totally incomprehensible if he was not. Why should a madman, about to shut himself away forever from the world and all its alleged vanities, think at the last moment of the honor of his family? James sent back those seeds to benefit Brassey House, didn't he? If he was as far gone as Charles believes he was, James would have been thinking of Nirvana, not of flowers and the prosperity of Brassey House."
"It doesn't follow," she objected, "that James would have sent back the seeds if he had been sane."
"Doesn't it? I'm inclined to believe it does. Those seeds, smuggled out somehow, were James' message that he was a prisoner here, and an appeal to his brother to come and rescue him. What better clue to his whereabouts could he have given? Probably he himself did not know where he was; all this region is unexplored. He did know, however, that the numerous seed collecting expeditions sent out by Brassey House would follow up every hint of the strange plants reared from his seeds. There must be an easier way into this valley; native travellers must have taken the easy way from time to time, and some of them must have spread tales and rumors of what they found. My guess is that James came to grief in tracing some of these rumors too successfully. What was he doing during those years in the mountains when the India secret police lost all track of him?"
"I don't know," she confessed. "Your theory may be logical, but it falls with its weakest prop. Look at those four following us like trained bloodhounds and watching every move we make. Have we been left to ourselves for a single second? We have not. Nor was poor James, I suspect. It would have been sheerly impossible for him to bribe anyone to smuggle a message – seeds or other – out of these caves. Besides, if it had been possible, why should he have concealed the fact that he was a prisoner? His letter contained no hint of such a thing."
"His letter might have been read."
"By whom?"
"If native travellers have penetrated to this valley," Vartan persisted, "it is quite possible that some of them came from Northern India and knew English. I stick to my theory: James was a prisoner, and sent back that queer letter with his seeds as the only safe means of communicating with his brother."
They had reached the exit of the main tunnel, and were standing on a high narrow ledge overlooking the whole vast expanse of the valley, misty as a milk opal in the early morning sun. Only the gleaming river, meandering toward the precipices three miles to their right, gave any hint of the coming flood of light which presently would quicken the mists into transparent azure, revealing every detail to the farthest wall in iridescent splendor.
"Let us go down," he suggested, "and explore the river."
"I'm willing," she agreed, "provided our guards make no objection."
They boldly descended the narrow trail on the face of the cliff to the valley, followed closely by the guards who, however, made no effort to hinder them. At the base of the cliff they turned to the right and made directly for the river, skirting along the base of the sheer rock wall. Presently their progress was blocked by a deep ravine, evidently the ancient bed of a tributary which had long ceased to flow. Looking up, they saw the worn rocks where an old cataract had once foamed down to feed the dead stream. After their descent to the valley, the ravine offered no serious difficulties to their skill, and they were soon scrambling down, the guards following resolutely but with obvious trepidation.
"As I anticipated," Vartan remarked, kicking free a roundish object that resembled a large ostrich egg, "the valley floor is nothing but a vast fossil bed of extraordinary richness, thinly covered with loose dirt. That was a stone egg I just sent skipping to the bottom. Look at these bones sticking out everywhere from the conglomerate. If we were to explore throughly what we can see from here, I'll wager we should find the remains of at least a thousand destinct prehistoric animals – birds, reptiles, and mammals, and nine tenths of them new to science. Look at this one, for instance."
He held up a fragment of hard sandstone from which a small white hemisphere, crisscrossed by a beautifully intricate pattern of delicate sutures, protruded in pathetic memory of the tiny animal whose brain case it had been millions of years ago.
"Is that new?" she asked.
"Partly. I believe it belonged to one of the earliest known mammals. But, like everything else in this valley, it misses being what it was intended to be by a wide margin. These sutures are all wrong. It is as great a freak as–"
"One of our guides?" she suggested in a low tone.
"Precisely," he replied, glancing up at the hands of the man nearest him. "These people are as human as we are, and yet not one of them is normal according to our standards. I'm wondering," he continued, kicking out another fossil, "whether there is anything human in those caves corresponding to this specimen."
Marjorie fingered the curiously misshapen bone wonderingly.
"Is this one really new?"
"Quite, so far as I know, and I have made old bones my life work for longer than I care to recall. That is another skull, as you can see. Fortunately the top part of it is exposed. Notice anything peculiar?"
"Are those holes its eye sockets?"
"Yes. All eight of them. The beast, whatever it was when alive, must have been the size of a small cat. If I could find the rest of it, I might be able to tell you whether it was a mammal or a reptile. But as its legs and backbone may be miles from here, I shall have to make a wild guess." He struck the specimen a sharp blow with a heavier fragment, expertly breaking off the tip of the rock. "There," he exclaimed, indicating a row of needlelike teeth embedded in the stone, "reptilian beyond a doubt. It must have been a pleasant, lively creature, with eight eyes to see its prey and this young forest of fangs to poison it. No known member of the extinct reptiles had more than two fully developed eyes on the outside of its head. This, as I said, is brand new."
"Not like our guides, then?"
"Biologically different. This reptile is the sort of animal that might have been evolved from the known prehistoric reptiles if evolution, millions and millions of years ago, had turned just a step or two to the right or left, instead of keeping to the path it actually took."
"That would account for my deformed flowers," she mused.
"But they are still living and growing. All these seemingly impossible animals must have perished long before human beings came on the scene."
"Then what did you mean," she asked, "by alluding to human beings like these possibly being in the caves?"
"My preposterous hypothesis," he laughed. "I'll tell you about it some time."
"You might tell me now," she begged.
"Too soon – I may be all wrong. However, what I meant was this – roughly. Obviously our human friends here are only minor indiscretions of Mother Nature's. She has sported with them, but not to the shocking extent that she did with these vast beds of dead and forgotten reptiles. Now, what I should like to know is just how far she has gone with the human beings. Are those we have seen – our shaggy friend the cyclops, for instance, the worst she can do? If not, where do they hide the others? They must be pretty bad if they are too ugly for our first jailers to view with comfort."
"As bad, relatively, as those horrible blue lillie
s?"
"Worse, probably. After all, a plant is only a plant, but a product of human evolution gone mad might be the very devil."
"Are you sure a plant can not be worse than the devil?" she asked with a mocking smile.
He regarded her intently.
"Look here, Miss Driscott," he said coolly, "I believe you now more than you tell. And I have felt that way for some time. What is it?"
"You are not very free with your own guesses," she retorted.
"I did share one," he protested.
"Then I'll pay you back," she smiled. "Your impossible reptiles and mammals of millions of years ago, and my unspeakably atrocious lilies of yesterday, are different aspects of one and the same thing. Or, if you prefer, they are two effects from a common cause. In the case of your fascinating reptiles, the cause worked itself out – or almost – long before the monkeys arrived. Perhaps the cause was more active, stronger, if you like, when it first began operating. As your geologic ages slipped by, the weakened effect could no longer do its worst on animals. It was still strong enough, I suspect, to attack the weaker cells of plants without killing them, but with full force – comparatively. What we see now is the last dying warmth of a great and evil fire."
He stared at her in astonishment.
"Where did you get all those ideas?" he demanded.
"Out of my head, of course," she replied lightly.
"Yes, but who put them there in the first place?"
"That would be telling," she laughed. "Just credit them to my lively imagination. I worked at Brassey House for six years," she continued seriously, "and I was not utterly stupid when I began. If you had listened to as many wild theories as I have about the origin of James Brassey's seeds, all put forward with the utmost sobriety by conservative plant pathologists, you would consider your own hypothesis too tame to be respectable."
"You have guessed it?"
"No," she smiled. "I didn't have to guess. You told me all about it in spite of yourself."
"Well I'm–," he began.
"No, you're not – yet. But you will be by your brother geologists when you publish your first paper on your theory. I know, because I've seen how these cold, critical scientists enjoy a row. Shall we go on? It's a long way to the river."
"I can only follow you," he said, not wholly in jest. "After showing me up over that miserable old scoundrel Ali Baba, and then worming my most precious thoughts out of me without my knowledge, you should take charge of the expedition."
"How do you know I'm not in charge?" she quizzed. "You do what I wish so beautifully."
"Well, if that isn't the limit." He paused, struck by a new thought. "I believe you are the leader," he said slowly. "Didn't Brassey engage you to run Shane and me?"
"No," she smiled.
Vartan momentarily lost his temper, and his red hair bristled ominously.
"Then who the devil did?" he snapped.
"My conscience," she answered sweetly. "You seemed so helpless. Some might say it was the mother that is in every woman that made me follow you when you tried to run away alone like a naughty little boy."
"Mother–," Vartan exploded, and scrambled up the precipitous fossil bank to the opposite lip of the ravine.
"Miss Driscott," he heaved when she, having taken an easier way up, joined him sound of wind and limb, "I admit that you put it all over me about Ali Baba. But I won't stand for you considering yourself my nurse on that account." Her amused smile irritated him to the point of exasperation. "I have a good mind to tell you now why I let you come."
"Do," she said evenly. "You promised to tell me the day we reach civilization again – if we ever do," she concluded quietly.
"If we ever do," he echoed. "Beginning to doubt, eh?"
"Yes. And so are you. James did not return."
"Sit down," he said curtly, setting the example. "Now," he continued, "I intend to have this out. From the moment I set eyes on you in Bombay, I have known – known, mind you, not merely guessed – that you are not what you profess to be. You are something more."
Her eyes followed his slightest movements with rigid attention.
"Go on," she said in a low voice.
"Whether that something more is good or bad for your employer, I have not yet been able to decide. To give Mr. Brassey the benefit of my doubt, and to earn the very generous salary he is paying Shane and me, I have played safe."
"By suspecting me of working against him?"
"If you must have it, yes. That is why I ordered you to come with me, instead of returning to Srinagar with the porters. Your eagerness to go on with me, combined with what I already knew of you from a single, revealing flash of your face as it really is, amounted almost to a proof of guilt. You are not here with me for Mr. Brassey's good."
"I am," she asserted.
"So you say," he scored. "Well, we shall see."
"If we live to see anything but this hideous prison with its deformed flowers and monstrous human beings. Oh, I hate its beauty," she burst out. "Every color of those terrible rock walls is evil. The very sunlight is tainted."
"An appropriate setting for tainted truth. What I tell you now is a hundred per cent sound. You are here with me because I hoped to catch you redhanded. At first I thought it would be safer to send you back to Srinagar, instead of trying to match my wits against yours. Then I decided to take you along, and keep an eye on your doings. Your chances of escape are slimmer this way. If you succeed in robbing me," he concluded viciously through his clenched teeth, "after I've found what Brassey wants, you will deserve to go scott free. I'm not the fool you seem to think me."
"You are not foolish," she answered dispassionately, as if she were discussing an absent acquaintance. "Merely over suspicious. And," she went on, "a little upset. Now, please don't think I'm trying to mother you, because I'm not. My nerves are all on edge too. We are both as mad as we were in that terrible valley of the hot springs. Don't you realize that your brain is not working right? I do, and yet I can't make myself think clearly. We're slowly being poisoned."
"But these people?" he muttered, indicating the observant guards. "They seem sober enough."
"Why not? They are immune to whatever it may he that's affecting us. Only those with the power of resistance survived, until generations of madness or early death weeded out all but the hardiest. If we don't escape soon we shall join the weeds."
"Cheerful prospect," he mumbled, getting to his feet. "Come on. You're right, as usual. I'm going to see that river if I die in my tracks getting there."
The walk to the river was accomplished in oppressive silence. Both were exhausted when they reached the high bank overlooking the black, flashing waters. Vartan made his way down to a narrow, sandy beach. He was parched with thirst, and so was Marjorie.
"Have a drink?" he invited.
She nodded and followed him down. The four guards stood on the bank watching them intently, but not interfering. Vartan knelt down to skim the oil off a pool and drink. Instantly all four guards scrambled down the bank, shouting and waving their arms.
"Don't drink!" Marjorie cried. "This must be as poisonous as the spring water."
"Of course," he muttered in a daze, rising to his feet. "This river is fed partly by the water from those hot springs, and there must be others like them above some of the falls we saw."
"Does it strike you," she asked, "that we have not had a drop of water since we entered this horrible place? What do these people drink?"
A guard answered in the most practical manner possible. Leading her up the bank, he guided her to a dense thicket of low growing shrubs, with massive, twisted limbs and a profusion of small red berries clustered thickly about the hard, thorny twigs. Plucking a handful, he ate them, to show her that they were not poisonous. Following his example, she found the berries tasteless but thirst quenching.
"Better than iced tea," she called to Vartan. "Why don't you have some? Where are you?"
She turned to see him standing with his
back to her, staring speechless at a vast blue arch in the mountain side. In their toiling walk along the base of the precipices, they had not seen this huge mouth devouring the swift, black waters of the river, nor had they distinguished its misty azure from that of the afternoon shadows on their approach to the cliffs. Hastily plucking a hatful of the red berries, she hurried to join him.
"Eat these," she said. "Then we shall go on. I think you will find what you want, if it exists, beyond that arch."
"What do you mean?"
"Nature's sport. This river is the cause of it all."
"You're wrong," he said, leading the way to the arch. "The river is only a symptom. The cause lies deeper. My fossils are ages older than the river."
"And my flowers are the same age. Are the guards still following?"
He glanced back. "Yes, but they seem to be having a debate about letting us go on. One is running back, probably for orders."
"At last," she sighed.
"What do you mean?"
"Isn't it significant that they should be in doubt? They didn't expect us to come here, and their tyrant's orders don't cover emergencies. We shall see what they wish to hide before they can stop us."
He followed in silence for some moments. "Miss Driscott," he said finally, "I wonder if you ever learned anything from anyone by asking a direct question?"
"Not often."
"Where did you pick up the trick of reading thoughts from actions instead of words?"
"Brassey House. I was there six years," she reminded him.
"And before that?"
"I worked for my father."
"What was he, if I may ask?"
"A great amateur. A botanist. That's why I was appointed at Brassey House."
"I see," he said, silently reflecting on her singular choice of words. One is not usually "appointed" to a confidential secretaryship. Was it a deliberate false slip of the tongue, committed in cold blood to mystify him? Or was she taking him into her guarded confidence? Baffled, he concentrated on the immediate task before him.
"Step out," he ordered. "We have practically the whole day before us, but I don't want to spend all of it in that black hole ahead of us."
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