by Talbot Mundy
“Don’t open it,” said Grim. “It’s possibly as new and deadly as the thunderbolts.”
He went on searching. Tucked in the waistband of the black silk pants he found a Yale key; it was wrapped in a scrap of paper and enclosed in a small leather purse that fastened with a snap.
“Master-key.” The letter M was stamped on the metal. “Look at that, will you.” He held the scrap of paper toward the candle in a sconce near the mirror. Scrawled on it in heavy pencil were the words “Sweet A.” Stooping again to continue his search he kept up a running comment while his fingers felt the seams. “Sweet Adeline is rather far from home. Suite A is the number of Baltis’ apartment at the hotel. Oh, hello — here’s something.”
He stood up again to examine his find in the candle-light. It was a token made of gold, no larger than a dime and beautifully done by hand. In high relief on one side was a Tibetan Dorje — the short lamaic scepter with a crown at each end. On the reverse was a pyramid composed of forty-five stars.
“Stowed in the seam of his pants’ leg. This man may be Bertolini’s boss, disguised as a sort of confidential butler; else why the gold token and why the air of authority? If he had been obeying orders he would never have let us keep him waiting all that time. Whoever gave him the orders would have come to see why the delay? But you can’t make a Chinaman talk — not his sort; so let’s leave him.”
Grim pocketed the token and blew out the light. Jeff locked the lavatory door and pocketed the key; then he opened the door of a room in which we had seen candle-light at the edge of the window-blinds. The candles were still burning; there were fresh cigar-butts — nine of them — on ashtrays spaced around a table made from slabs of cypress looted from ancient tombs. There were nine chairs of the same material. The other furniture was all museum-stuff and no doubt priceless, if you like that kind of thing. I would as soon live in a pawnshop. There was a mummy, up-ended, naked, with a sheet of plate-glass covering its coffin, at the far end of the room.
Grim merely looked in, counting the cigar-butts.
“Ten then, unless Bertolini smokes. Not many blind men do. Two others kept a lookout — see those chairs displaced beside the window — twelve then. What has our babu done to them, I wonder?”
Grim’s movements were almost leisurely, although he made almost no sound as he walked, so he may have been listening. Jeff pulled up the blinds and we left the door of that room open for the sake of the light that it admitted to the hall. Then Grim led quietly along a passage to the right and stood still.
I was following so close I almost stepped on his heels. There were three doors at the end of the passage, one at each side and one facing us. They all had Yale locks, of the sort that snap shut when you close the door and that can be opened from the outside only with the key, unless the latch is held back by a sliding button that manipulates a pin. As silently as possible Grim tested one door, then another — the one facing us; it was unlocked; it opened into a small square waiting-room, in which there was an electric bell and a numbered indicator.
Facing the door was a cushioned bench. Above that was a shelf containing Chinese books in paper bindings. On the right hand were a plain chair and an equally plain wooden table. On the left hand was a papered wall, entirely bare except for a gilt-framed reproduction, three by two, of Botticelli’s Graces. The frame was heavy and securely fastened to the wall with screws at top and bottom.
Grim let out a low whistle.
There was a lighted candle on the table. Grim took it and examined the picture. He tinkered with it — tried to push it sideways — downward — upward — but nothing happened. He clapped his ear to it — listened and seemed encouraged — tried again, feeling the wall with the palms of his hands. Then suddenly he handed Jeff the candlestick and whispered:
“Have you matches? Blow that out then if you see this even looks like moving.”
I shut the door. It was as stuffy in there as a bear’s den and there were smells such as only a Chinaman knows how to brew — no window and no ventilator. Grim resumed his efforts, until at last his fingers found a small lump on the edge of the frame farthest from the door. He pressed it, and found that the picture and glass moved inward on a hinge. Then Jeff blew out the light.
CHAPTER 22. “Play this as you would your last ten dollars in a poker game!”
The entire wall slid sideways — a mere screen that concealed an “icebox” door a pace or two beyond it. Light shone through a small round aperture in the door and we all stepped at once as close to the door as we could crowd ourselves to avoid being seen. After listening for about a minute Grim raised his eyes to the level of the hole and peered through. We could hear voices, but there was apparently no one on guard at the door. Grim put his arm through the hole — groped — tried to move a bolt of some sort — failed and whispered to Jeff to try it. Jeff succeeded. The door swung inward on hinges that had been oiled quite recently.
We descended a stairway of plain deal boards into a vestibule of ancient masonry, that led into a gallery, which overhung an ancient burial chamber. On our way we passed the guardian of the door, apparently a Greek with a touch of Egypt in him, lying dead on his side with a knife between his shoulder-blades. He had been dead less than an hour — perhaps less than thirty minutes. He had been slain with his own knife, drawn from the sheath in his red cotton sash.
In the midst of the floor beneath us there was a round hole through which the top of a ladder protruded. Evidently Bertolini’s “tomb” had been excavated on more than one level. There was a masonry stairway, very narrow, leading to the gallery and it appeared that if we only had some weapons we could hold that stairway against all comers. It curved sharply on itself; no one on the way up would be able to use a revolver until within four steps of the top, and then only with his left hand. It was like one of those stairways built into the walls of the Tower of London.
One man sat still on a lump of broken stone beneath us, slapping the palm of his hand with a blackjack eighteen inches long. There were numbers of lighted candles set in niches in the rock walls and the light from those threw the gallery into deep shadow, so that though he glanced up he did not see us. Probably the slight sounds we had made were over-balanced by the noise of argument and scuffling that came through a rectangular opening in the wall directly facing us.
“Who killed that guard?” demanded Grim, in Arabic. The man sprang to his feet. Then he answered in English: “I did. He was on the death list. He admitted a police spy.” Then suddenly: “Who are you? Who let you in here?”
“I am Dorje,” Grim answered.
The man staggered. He almost fell backward in his effort to peer through the shadow in order to see Grim’s face.
“The lord Dorje?” Arabic again. “May peace descend on you and bless your—”
“What have I to do with peace?” Grim answered. He touched my pocket. I passed him the flask I had found on the Chinaman. Then he whispered to Jeff, and Jeff motioned to me to follow him. “What are those fools doing in there?” Grim demanded in a loud voice. As I followed Jeff I heard the answer:
“There was a trial and they tortured a man. He talked about our plans to strangers. It is the rule of this lodge that each of us must torture him in turn, after which he is let down into this hole to die when Allah pleases. We are a very faithful lodge—”
Jeff was in haste, so I heard no more of that speech, and Jeff said nothing until we had gained the butler’s room. “More flasks!” he said then, starting in at once to hunt for them.
“Grim thinks they’re probably deadly, and so is the gang we’re up against.” He shook the table — tipped it — set his knee on it and strained until the muscles cracked and one half of the top came away in his hands, revealing ten flasks like the one I had given Grim, only that five of these were twice the size. We filled our pockets. Each of us took one in either hand.
“I’ll bet that Chink is one of Dorje’s head men — perhaps Bertolini’s boss,” said Jeff. “Why else s
hould he be the keeper of this ammunition — if it is ammunition? Come on — Grim may need us.”
Grim did. He was keeping himself back, in shadow. Beneath him, the chamber seemed to swarm with men, although that was due to movement and to semi- darkness, someone having put out more than half the candles. Their actual number was not more than a dozen, of whom the leader was a Chinaman with the loose-looking shoulders and physical strength of a Shanghai longshore coolie. They were all armed. Knives — revolvers. One man had a sawed-off shotgun. Jeff took his stand at the head of the stair. I went and stood near Grim, taking advantage of the shadow by stooping as much as I could without cutting off my view over the stone front of the gallery.
The Chinaman spoke insolently, in a language totally unknown to me, although I caught the word Dorje.
“Wants to look at me,” Grim whispered. “Says he knows Dorje by sight. Stand by for trouble.”
Through the opening in the wall that faced us two men dragged in one between them — one who still lived, tortured, gagged and with his arms bound. They dropped him feet first down the hole in the midst of the floor, and the Chinaman laughed. Then he spoke English:
“If you are Dorje, come down. Let us see you.”
“Bring Bertolini,” Grim answered.
The Chinaman laughed again, but under cover of that he gave an order to the man nearest to him. I warned Jeff in a whisper that there were four men edging toward the stairway. The Chinaman pulled another man forward by the arm to act as interpreter — a man who might be a Sicilian, but who spoke with a Chicago accent:
“You’re not Dorje. How many are you? How did you get in?”
I repeated my warning to Jeff.
“I ordered you to bring Bertolini,” Grim answered.
“Heard you the first time! We’ve put Bertolini on the spot. He’s no good. This man’s chief now.” He glanced at the Chinaman. “Bertolini gets his when the bell rings.”
“Sneaking up the stair,” Jeff whispered; only Jeff’s whisper is more like a watch-dog’s growl. “Shall I wait for the word?” The man with the Chicago accent talked on, obviously to gain time, and the Chinaman took advantage of it to back away toward the opening in the far wall.
“We’re all sick o’ being told nothing and kep’ idle. You ain’t Dorje. You ain’t cops, or you’d ha’—”
Suddenly he drew an automatic. And he was quick on the trigger. Six bullets chipped the rock behind us as Grim and I stepped sideways into other shadows, just as Jeff said calmly: “Here they come, Jim.”
“Let them have it!”
I saw Grim hurl his own flask at the Chinaman. Mine hit the Chicago spokesman on the shoulder and broke into fragments. Jeff hurled two flasks down the stairway. It is difficult to tell what happened then, although we lingered as long as we dared — two, possibly three seconds. Instantly the liquid contents of the glass flasks changed into a dense white vapor that filled the entire chamber to a height of nine or ten feet.
There was no noticeable smell. It was wooly, heavy-looking stuff that expanded as swiftly as steam but remained, for as long as we watched it, almost as flat as water on its upper surface. It did not put out the lights; they shone through it as I have seen candles shine through loose snow. But it appeared to smother sound. There was a ghastly silence.
“Snappy!” said Grim, and we ran for our lives until we reached the “ice- box” door and slammed it. Jeff stuffed a cushion into the round peep-hole and punched it in tight with his fist.
“I hope we haven’t killed our babu,” I suggested. “If he’s anywhere underground — and if that stuff creeps — it may reach him through crevices — tunnels—”
“Let’s go!” Grim put a flask of the stuff in his pocket. Jeff and I did the same and followed him, closing but not locking the door of the butler’s room. With the pass-key he had taken from the butler Grim opened the door on our left. There was another unpainted deal stairway and Grim led the way down, but I lingered to fasten the catch on the spring-lock, so that the door would open readily if we should need to retreat in a hurry. About twenty feet down in the dark a lantern burned dimly, in a niche in a very old masonry wall, into which had been fitted a modern door made of stout unpainted oak.
Grim inserted the master-key and again I made sure of retreat by fastening back the spring-bolt. There was a long passage that turned on itself and brought us to a stairway hewn from solid limestone, lighted by three candle- lanterns set in niches and by a kerosene lamp near a door at the bottom. It was more than fifty feet from top to bottom of that stairway, and it was very ancient.
At the foot of the stairs was a circular vault with the door on the far side.
“Understand,” said Grim, “we’ve no search warrant, and no legal right in here whatever. We’re not even accredited. If we make a bad break we’ll be out of luck. We’ve no proof that the stuff in the flasks is actually deadly. If those men recover they can take us from the rear. On the other hand, if they’re dead we answer for it, unless we get what we’re after and prove a whole case to the hilt. So play this as you would your last ten dollars in a poker game. Each watch the others. And remember: what we need is evidence, not dead men for the undertaker.”
He inserted the key. And once again I made sure of retreat by fastening back the spring-bolt.
CHAPTER 23. “Now! Go the limit!”
The smell of coffee greeted us. There is no need to tell an old campaigner what that means to men who lack food and sleep. We were like tired horses sniffing crushed oats. There was a well-tanned horse-hide curtain at the far end of a twenty-foot passage, and beyond that was warm light, which turned out to be from many lanterns and from the glow of a charcoal fire in a big copper pan on a tripod.
Grim parted the curtain and strode in, motioning to us to keep behind him, so I had to look over Jeff’s shoulder, because Jeff’s breadth almost filled the passage. I was backed against the curtain and I dare say its movement suggested there might be a number of people behind me. That may possibly account for our immediate reception. No one started to his feet and no one fired at us, though there were several revolvers in the room.
The place looked like a mortuary chapel, but it was much less evenly proportioned than, for instance, the passage by which we had entered. A natural cavern had been hewn out and adapted for the purpose, leaving the roof and some parts of the walls in their original condition. The entire floor had been hewn to such depth as to leave what may have been an altar or a bier in the center; and at the opposite end from the door there was a platform contrived in the same way, occupying the entire width of the chamber — twenty-five feet, more or less.
At the right-hand end of that platform, which had a depth of eight or nine feet, there was a natural protrusion of the rock wall which had been carved into a throne as grand as anything that Rodin ever chiseled. Its proportions perfectly suggested all the majesty and ponderous insolence of olden priesthood. On that sat Bertolini. He was no longer wearing spectacles; his eyes were closed; he looked like a scholarly anchorite in meditation; even when he moved there was the same effect of spiritual calm suggested by the drooping eyelids; outdoors they were protected from the sun by goggles, so that they were whiter than the rest of his face. But when he turned his face toward us the effect was different; he became a hater, nervously alert. Above his head, exactly in the corner of the wall, there was a natural crack in the rock, that led upward, growing gradually wider, until it spread into a hole up near the roof, as a river flows into the sea.
There was nobody else on the platform. In a semicircle on the floor around the brazier, with their backs to the wall, sat seven men on prayer-mats. There were coffee cups beside them. Facing them, not far from Bertolini, but below him, there were five more, also on mats with their backs to the wall. They were of different nationalities, well dressed. One man, in a suit of raw silk, was undoubtedly German; another looked English; three wore Arab costume, and of those one seemed to be a muallim (Moslem teacher).
Chul
lunder Ghose sat back toward us, also on a prayer-mat, hands on thighs, his big head sunk a little forward as if thought weighed more than muscle could support. He looked fatter than ever — enormous. He was squatting well to one side of the stone bier, in a position where he could watch Bertolini and everyone else. He had the coffee-pot beside him; it was no Turkish coffee — good United States dripped nectar; and instead of turning his head when we entered he poured some, so that the aroma reached our nostrils.
“And as I told you that he would be, here he is!” he announced. It did not occur to me at the moment that he had seen us reflected in the polished copper of the pot from which he poured.
“Who?” Bertolini sat bolt upright. “Is Titai with him?”
“No,” said Grim, “but Titai, if that’s your butler, sends his compliments and says he’ll see you later.”
Bertolini recoiled as if someone had slapped his face. “Damn that Chinaman! His insolence grows unbearable. How the devil did you get in here?”
“I passed myself in.”
“Through three locked doors?”
“Why not?”
“Who are you?”
“Major James Grim!”
If a bomb had gone off it would hardly have caused more alarm. I heard two revolvers click, but the only hand that I actually saw move was Bertolini’s; he let it fall between the throne and the end wall, and since he produced no weapon I concluded he had touched an electric bell-push. The other men held strained, alert, breathless silence.