The A. Merritt Megapack
Page 105
At first glance I thought that I was looking into a circular place in which was a crowd of men, all facing a common center. Then I realized that this could not be so, since all the men were in exactly the same attitude, crouching upon one knee. There seemed to be thousands of these crouching men, line after line of them, one behind the other, growing smaller and smaller and vanishing off into immense distances.
I looked to right and to left. There were the kneeling men, but now in profile. I raised my eyes to the ceiling of the place. And there they appeared to hang, heads downward.
I stared again at those facing me. It was strange how the purplish light and the droning clouded one’s thought. They held back, like two hands, the understanding from fulfillment.
Then I realized abruptly that all those thousands of faces were—the same.
And that each was the face of Cobham!
They were the face of Cobham, drawn and distorted, reflected over and over again from scores of mirrors with which the place was lined. The circular walls were faceted with mirrors, and so was the globed ceiling, and all these mirrors curved down to a circular mirrored slab about seven feet in diameter which was their focus.
Upon this slab knelt Cobham, glaring at the countless reflections of himself, reflected with sharpest accuracy by that clear and evil purplish light.
As I looked, he jumped to his feet and began to wave his arms, crazily. Like regiments of automatons, the reflections leaped with him, waving. He turned, and they wheeled as one man in diminishing rank upon rank. He threw himself down upon his face, and I knew that unless his eyes were closed his face still stared up at him, buoyed, it must have seemed, upon the backs of the thousands reflected upon the slab from the mirrors in the ceiling. And I knew that no man could keep his eyes closed long in that room, that he must open them, to look and look again.
I shrank back, trembling. This thing was hellish. It was mind-destroying. There could be no sleep. The drone rasped along the nerves and would not permit it. The light was sleep-killing, too, keying up, stretching the tense nerves to the breaking point. And the mimicking hosts of reflections slowly, inexorably, led the mind into the paths of madness.
“For God’s sake…for God’s sake…” I turned to Consardine half-incoherent, white-lipped. “I’ve seen…Consardine…a bullet would be mercy…”
He drew me back to the opening.
“Thrust in your head,” he said, coldly. “You must see yourself in the mirrors, and Cobham must see you. It is Satan’s order.”
I tried to struggle away. He gripped my neck and forced my head forward as one does a puppy to make him drink.
The wall at this point was only a couple of inches thick. Held helpless, my head was now beyond that wall. Cobham had staggered to his feet. I saw my face leap out in the mirrors. He saw it, too. His eyes moved from one reflection to another, striving to find the real.
“Kirkham!” he howled. “Kirkham! Get me out!”
Consardine drew me back. He snapped the opening shut.
“You devil! You cold-blooded devil!” I sobbed, and threw myself upon him.
He caught my arms. He held me as easily as though I had been a child, while I kicked and writhed in futile attempt to break the inexorable grip. And at last my fury spent itself. Still sobbing, I went limp.
“There, there, lad,” he said, gently. “I am not responsible for what you’ve seen. I told you it was unpleasant medicine. But Satan ordered it, and I must obey. Come with me. Back to your rooms.”
I followed him, all resistance for the moment gone from me. It was not any affection for Cobham that had so stirred me. He had probably watched others in the mirrored cell from that same window. If the necessity had arisen, I would have shot Cobham down without the slightest feeling about it. Nor had the ordeal of Cartright shaken my nerve at all like this. Bad as that had been, it had been in the open, with people around him. And Cartright, so it seemed, had been given some chance.
But this torture of the many-mirrored cell, with its sleep-slaying light and sound, its slow killing, in utter aloneness, of a man’s mind—there was something about that, something not to be put in words, that shook me to the soul.
“How long will he—last?” I put the question to Consardine as we passed in to my rooms.
“It is hard to say,” he answered, gently again. “He will come out of that room without memory. He will not know his name, nor what he has been, nor anything that he has ever learned. He will know nothing of all these hereafter—ever. Like an animal, he will know when he is hungry and thirsty, cold or warm. That is all. He will forget from minute to minute. He will live only in each moment. And when that moment goes it will be forgotten. Mindless, soulless—empty. I have known men to come to it in a week, others have resisted for three. Never longer.”
I shivered.
“I’ll not go down for dinner, Consardine,” I said.
“I would, if I were you,” he said gravely. “It will be wiser. You cannot help Cobham. After all, it is Satan’s right. Like me, Cobham had taken the steps and lost. He lived at Satan’s will. And Satan will be watching you. He will want to know how you have taken it. Pull yourself together, Kirkham. Come down, and be gay. I shall tell him that you were only interested in his exhibition. What, lad! Will you let him know what he has made you feel? Where is your pride? And to do so would be dangerous—for any plans you may have. I tell you so.”
“Stay with me till it’s time to go, Consardine,” I said. “Can you?”
“I intended to,” he answered, “if you asked me. And I think both of us can stand putting ourselves outside of an extra-sized drink.”
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I poured. The glass in my hand shook and spilled.
“I’ll never want to look in one again,” I told him.
He poured me another drink.
“Enough of that,” he said briskly. “You must get it from your mind. Should Satan be at dinner—thank him for a new experience.”
Satan was not at dinner. I hoped that he would receive a report, as no doubt he did, of my behavior. I was gay enough to satisfy Consardine. I drank recklessly and often.
Eve was there. I caught her glancing at me, puzzled, now and then.
If she had known how little real gayety there was in my heart, how much of black despair, she would have been more puzzled still.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I sat late at dinner, with a few others who, like me, had declined the bridge game. It was close to twelve when I returned to my room. I had the feeling that I would see Barker this night, whether or not he had been successful in getting hold of the kehjt.
Alone, the memory of Cobham and the mirrored cell swept back on me with full force. Why had Satan willed me to look upon the prisoner? Why to see myself in those cursed glasses? And why had he decreed that Cobham must see me?
To the first two questions there could be but one answer. He meant it as a warning. He was not, then, wholly satisfied with my explanation. And yet, if he were not, would he not have used harsher measures? Satan was not given to taking chances. I decided that he was satisfied, but nevertheless wished to give me a warning of what might happen to me if he should ever become not so.
Why, if Cobham’s memory was to be destroyed, he should have wished him to take note of me peering in upon him, I could not tell. There seemed no answer to that, unless it was one of his whims. But, again, Satan’s whims, as he called them, were never without reason. I gave it up, reluctantly and uneasily.
It was twelve-thirty when I heard a jubilant whisper from the bedroom.
“Got it, Cap’n!”
I walked into the bedroom. My nerves had suddenly grown taut, and there was a little ache in my throat. The moment had come. There could be no withdrawing now. The hand was ready to be played. And, without doubt, Death in a peculiarly unpleasant mood was the other player.
“’Ere it is!” Barker thrust a half-pint flask into my cold fingers. It was full of that green li
quor which I had watched Satan give to the slaves in the marble hall. The kehjt.
It was a clear fluid, with an elusive sparkle as of microscopic particles catching the light. I uncorked the flask and smelled it. It had a faintly acrid odor with an undertaint of musk. I was about to taste it when Barker stopped me.
“Keep awye from it, Cap’n,” he said earnestly. “That stuff was brewed in ’Ell, it was. You’re close enough.”
“All right,” I recorked the flask. “When do we go?”
“Right awye,” he answered. “They chynged the blighters in the Temple at midnight. Syfe to start now as at anytime. Oh, yes—”
He fished down in a pocket.
“Thought I’d best bring along some of the scenery,” he grinned.
He held out a pair of the golden cups into which the veiled figure with the ewer had poured the kehjt.
“Did you have a hard time getting the stuff, Harry?” I asked.
“It was touch an’ go,” he said soberly. “I ’ate to think of gettin’ them cups back. I ’ates to think of it, but it’s got to be done. Still,” he added, hopefully, “I’m good.”
“I’ll say you are, Harry,” I told him.
He hesitated.
“Cap’n,” he said, “I won’t ’ide from you; I feel as if we was h’about to slip into a room what’s got a ’undred snakes in every corner.”
“You’ve nothing on me, Harry,” I answered cheerfully. “I think maybe it’s got a snake carpet and scorpion curtains.”
“Well,” he said, “let’s go.”
“Sure,” I said, “let’s go.”
I snapped off the lights in the outer room. We passed through the wall of the bedroom into a dimly lighted passage. A little along it and we went into one of the lifts. We dropped. We came out into a long passage, transverse to the first; another short drop, and we were in a pitch dark corridor. Here Harry took my hand and led me. Suddenly he stopped and flashed his light against the wall. He pressed his finger upon a certain spot. I could not see what had guided him, but a small panel slid aside. It revealed an aperture in which were a number of switches.
“Light control,” Barker’s mouth was close to my ear. “We’re right be’ind the chair you set in. Lie down.”
I slipped to the floor. He dropped softly beside me. Another panel about six inches wide and a foot high opened with the noiseless swiftness of a camera shutter.
I looked into the Temple.
The slit through which I was peering was at the level of the floor. It was hidden by the apparatus in which I had been prisoned when Cartright climbed to his doom. By craning my neck, I could see between its legs a horizontal slice of the whole immense chamber.
A brilliant light poured directly upon the black throne. It stood there empty—but menacing. About a dozen feet on each side of it was one of the kehjt slaves. They were tall, strong fellows, white robed, with their noosed cords ready in their hands. Their pallid faces showed dead-white under the glare. The pupilless eyes were not dreaming, but alert.
I caught a glitter of blue eyes behind the black throne. The eyes of the Satan of the pictured stone. They seemed to watch me, malignantly. I turned my gaze abruptly away from them. I saw the back of the Temple.
It, too, was illumined by one strong light. It was larger even than I had sensed it to be. The black seats ranged upward in semicircles, and there were at least three hundred of them.
The slit through which I had been looking closed. Barker touched me, and I arose.
“Give me the dope,” he whispered. I handed him the flask of the kehjt; he had kept the golden cups.
Again he flashed his light upon the switches. He took my hands and placed them upon two.
“County sixty,” he said. “Then open them switches. It puts out the lights. Keep your ’ands on ’em till I get back. Start now like this—one—two—”
He snapped out the flash. Although I had heard no sound, I knew he was gone. At the sixtieth count I pulled open the switches. It seemed a long time, standing there in the dark. It was probably no more than three or four minutes.
As noiselessly as he had gone, Barker was back. He tapped my hands away, and pressed the switches in place.
“Down,” he muttered.
We slid to the floor. Once more the observation panel flew open.
The two guardians of the black throne were standing where I had last seen them. They were blinking, dazed by the swift return of the glaring light. And they were nervous as hunting dogs who had sensed a quarry. They were quivering, twirling their noosed cords, peering here and there.
I saw upon the black throne the two golden cups of the kehjt.
The slaves saw them at the same moment.
They stared at them, incredulously. They looked at each other. Like a pair of automatons moved by the same impulse, they took a step forward, and stared again at the glittering lure. And suddenly into their faces came that look of dreadful hunger. The cords dropped. They rushed to the black throne.
They seized the golden cups. And drank.
“Gord!” I heard Barker mutter. He was gasping and shuddering like one who had taken an icy plunge. Well, so was I. There had been something infinitely horrible in that rush of the pair upon the green drink. Something infernal in the irresistible tidal rush of desire that had swept their drugged minds clear of every impulse but that single one. To drink.
They turned from the black throne, the golden cups still clasped in their hands. I watched first one and then the other sink down upon the steps. Their eyes closed. Their bodies relaxed. But still their fingers gripped the cups.
“Now!” said Barker. He shut the slit, and closed the panel that hid the switches. He led me quickly along the dark corridor. We turned a sharp corner. There was the faintest of rustling sounds. Light streamed out in my face from a narrow opening.
“Quick!” muttered Barker, and pushed me through.
We stood on the dais, beside the black throne. Below us sprawled the bodies of the two guardians. The seven shining footprints glimmered up at me, watchfully.
Barker had dropped upon his knees. The lever which Satan had manipulated to set at work the mechanism of the steps lay flat, locked within an indentation in the stone cut out to receive it when at rest. Barker was working swiftly at its base. A thin slab moved aside. Under it was an arrangement of small cogs. He reached under and moved something. The telltale globe swung down from the ceiling.
Barker released the lever, cautiously. He brought it to upright, then pressed it downward, as I had seen Satan do. I heard no whirring, and understood that the little man had in some way silenced it.
“You got to go down and walk up, Cap’n,” he whispered. “Make it snappy, sir. Tread on every one of them prints.”
I ran down the steps, turned, and came quickly up, treading firmly on each of the shining marks. I turned at the top of the stairs and looked at the telltale globe. From the pale field three symbols shone out, from Satan’s darker field gleamed four. My heart sank.
“Cheer up,” said Harry. “You look fair crumpled. No need. It’s what I expected. Wyte a moment.”
He fumbled around among the cogs again, lying flat, his head half hidden in the aperture.
He gave an exclamation, and leaped to his feet, face sharpened, eyes glittering. He ran over to the black throne, pawing at it like an excited terrier.
Suddenly he threw himself into it and began pressing here and there at the edge of the seat.
“’Ere,” he beckoned me. “Sit where I am. Put your fingers ’ereand ’ere. When I tell you, press ’em in ’ard.”
He jumped aside. I seated myself on the black throne. He took my hands and placed my fingers in a row about five inches long. They rested upon seven indentations along the edge, barely discernible. Nor did what I touched feel like stone. It was softer.
Barker slipped over to the cogs and resumed his manipulation of them.
“Press,” he whispered. “Press ’em all together.”
“Press ’em now, one at a time,” ordered Barker.
I pressed them one at a time.
“The swine,” said Barker. “The bloody double-crossin’ swine! Come ’ere, Cap’n, and look.”
I dropped beside him and peered down at the cogs. I looked from them up at the telltale. And stared at it, only half believing what I saw.
“Got him!” muttered Harry. “Got him!”
He worked rapidly on the cogs, and closed the slab upon them. The telltale swung back to its resting place in the ceiling.
“The cups,” he said. He ran down the steps and took the golden goblets that had held the kehjt from the still resisting fingers of the dreaming guardians.
“Got him!” repeated Harry.
We swung back of the black throne. Barker slid aside the panel through which we had entered. We passed out into the dark passageway.
A wild jubilance possessed me. Yet in it was a shadow of regret, the echo of the afternoon’s hours of beauty’s sorcery.
For what we had found ended Satan’s power over his dupes forever.
Dethroned him!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We had reached the dimly lighted corridor wherein lay the entrance to my rooms. Barker halted with a warning gesture.
“Listen!” he breathed.
I heard a noise, faint and far away; a murmuring. There were men moving somewhere behind the walls, and coming toward us. Could they have found the drugged slaves so soon?
“Get into your room. Quick,” whispered Harry.
We started on the run. And halted again. Ten feet ahead of us a man had appeared. He had seemed to melt out of the wall with a magical quickness. He leaned against it for a moment sobbing. He turned his face toward us—
It was Cobham!
His face was gray and lined and shrunken. His eyes were so darkly circled that they looked, in that faint illumination, like the sockets of a skull. They stared vaguely, as though the mind behind them were dimmed. His lips were puffed and bleeding as though he had bitten them through time and time again.