by Unknown
But as he looked, his mind still a turmoil of hate and hopeless anger,he saw one of the three machines cease whirring. The group about itdispersed, the light above went out. And now his plane, as if drawn bythe power of the two remaining machines, began to move jerkily again,not down toward the burning wreckage, but sidewise, away from it.
Straight out toward the side of the tarmac it moved jerked downwarddiagonally, until it rested only a few feet above the ground.
Then suddenly Dick felt the plane quiver, as if released from thepower of the force that had held it. It nosed down and crashed, rolledover amid the wreckage of a shattered wing. The concussion shot Dickfrom the cockpit clear of the smashed machine.
He landed upon his head, and went out instantly.
CHAPTER IX - The Invisible Emperor
It was the sound of his name, spoken repeatedly, that brought Dickback to consciousness. He opened his eyes, blinking in broad daylight.He stared about him, and the first thing he saw was Luke Evans,regarding him anxiously from a little distance away. He saw that itwas Luke who had spoken.
He had heard the old man distinctly. The condition of inaudibility wasgone.
Not that of invisibility. Dick stared about him in bewilderment. For amoment, before he quite realized what had happened to him, he thoughthe had lost his mind. Underneath him was a thick rug, beneath his heada pillow; he could feel both of them, and yet all he could see was theopen country, a clearing with shrubbery on either side, and, beyondthat, a luxurious growth of tropical trees. Under him, to all visualappearance, was the bare ground.
He moved, and heard the clank of chains. He looked down at himself.His wrists were loosely linked to a chain that seemed to stretch tightinto vacancy and end in nothing. His ankles were bound likewise.
And both chains appeared to be of solid silver, but thick enough togive them the strength of iron!
Then he perceived that old Evans was bound in the same way.
"Rennell! Rennell!" repeated the old man in a sort of whimper. "ThankGod you've come out of it! I was afraid you were dead."
"What's happened?" asked Dick. "Where are we? Didn't they get us?"
"They've got us, damn them!" snarled old Evans. "All the rest burnedto cinders, those fine fellows, Rennell! You were thrown unconscious,but none of my tough old bones were hurt. They pulled us out of thewreckage and brought us in here and tied us with these silver chains."
"In here? But where are we?" demanded Dick, trying to pass his handacross his aching forehead, and realizing that the chain, though itseemed fastened to nothing, was perfectly taut.
* * * * *
"In one of their damned invisible houses," whimpered the old man."They're fireproof. Nearly all our bombs fell on the tarmac, and theydid hardly any damage at all. One of those devils was bragging aboutit to me. I couldn't see anything but his eyes. And they've taken awaymy gas-box," wailed old Luke.
Dick cursed comprehensively and was silent. The burning rage thatfilled him left him incapable of other utterance. Silver chains! Theymust be madmen--yes, that was the only explanation. Madmen who hadescaped from somewhere, obtained possession of scientific secrets, andbanded themselves together to overcome the world. If he could get thechance of a blow at them before he died!
He heard a door swing open--a door somewhere out on the prairie. Twomen sprang into sudden visibility and approached him. There wasnothing invisible about these men, though they had seemed to havematerialized out of nothing. They wore the same black, trimly fittinguniform that Dick had seen in the White House. They were flesh andblood human beings like themselves.
"I congratulate you upon your recovery, Captain Rennell," remarked oneof them with ironical politeness. "Also upon your shrewd coup.Needless to say, it had no chance of success, but we were misinformedas to the hour at which you might be expected. We thought it wouldtake the fools at Washington a little longer to puzzle out ourlocation--and then we did not put quite sufficient force into ourhurricane. Quite an artificial one, Captain."
Dick, glaring at them, said nothing, and the one who had spoken turnedto his companion, laughing, and said something in a foreign languagethat he did not recognize.
"His Majesty the Emperor commands your presence, and that of this oldfool," said the first man. "Do not attempt to escape us. Death will beinstantaneous." He drew a glass rod from his pocket, the tip of whichglowed with a pale blue light.
* * * * *
Again he spoke to his companion, who moved apparently a few feetdistant out on the prairie. Suddenly Dick saw old Evans' chainslacken: then Dick's slackened too. He understood that he was unbound,though his wrists and ankles were still loosely fastened.
The second man took his station beside Luke Evans and motioned to himto rise. The first man beckoned to Dick to do the same. The twoprisoners got upon their feet, trailing each a length of clankingchain. Each of the two guards covered his captive with the glass rodand motioned to him to precede him.
Choking with fury, Dick obeyed. He had taken a dozen steps with hisguard uttered a sharp command to halt, at the same time shouting someword of command.
The edge of a door appeared, also seeming to materialize out of space.It widened, and Dick realized that he was looking at the unpaintedinner side of a door whose outside was invisible. Beyond the doorappeared a flight of steps.
Dick passed through and descended them. He counted fifteen. He emergedinto a timbered underground passage, well lit with lamps, filled withwhat seemed to be mercury vapor. Behind him walked his guard: behindthe guard he heard Luke Evans shambling. Both chains were clinking,and again Dick's fury almost overcame him.
He controlled himself. He had no hope or desire for life, but he meantto strike some sort of blow before he died, if it were possible.
They turned out of the timbered passage, Dick's guard now walking athis side, the glass rod menacing his back. Dick found himself in alarge subterranean room of extraordinary character. The walls were notmerely timbered, but paneled. Pictures hung upon them, there were softrugs underfoot, there was antique furniture. Everything was in plainsight.
* * * * *
There was a door at the farther end, from beyond which came the murmurof voices. Two guards in the same black uniform, but without theornamental silver braid, stood to attention, long halberds in theirhands. One spoke a challenge.
The guard at Dick's side answered. The two men stepped backward, eachabout two feet, and pulled the two cords on either side of a curtainbehind the open door. Dick passed through.
He stopped in sheer amazement. The gorgeousness of this larger roominto which he entered was almost stupefying. It seemed to have beenlifted bodily from some European palace. Mirrors with gilt edges ranalong the side. On the floor was a single huge rug of Oriental weave.
At the farther end was a throne of gilt, lined with red velvet inwhich sat a man. An old man, of perhaps eighty years, with a greypeaked beard and fierce, commanding features. On his head was a goldcrown glittering with gems. About him were gathered some twoscore menand a few women.
Those ranged on either side of the throne wore, like its occupant,robes of red, lined with ermine. The rank behind wore shorter robes,less decorative, but no less extraordinary. They might all havestepped out of some medieval court.
Behind this second line, and half-encircling them, were officers inthe black uniform with the silver braid.
There had been chattering, but as Dick passed through into the room itwas succeeded by complete silence. Dick fixed his eyes upon the oldman on the throne.
He knew him! Knew him for a once famous European ruler who had losthis throne in the war. A man always of unbalanced mentality, who,after living for years in exile, had been reported dead three yearsbefore. A madman who had vanished to make this last attempt upon theworld, aided and abetted by the secret group of nobles who hadsurrounded him in the days of his pomp and power.
* * * * *
Old men, all of those in the first line! Madmen too, perhaps, asmadness beget
s madness. Behind them, younger men, infected by thestrange malady, and enthusiastic for their desperate cause.
Yes, Dick knew this Invisible Emperor, lurking here in his undergroundpalace. He knew Von Kettler, too, in the second line, close to theEmperor's throne. And, among the women in their robes, groupedpicturesquely about that throne, he knew Fredegonde Valmy.
Dark-haired beneath her coronet, of radiant beauty, she fixed her eyesupon Dick's. Not a muscle of her face quivered.
Then only did Dick see something else, which he had not hithertoobserved, owing to its concealment by the robes of those grouped aboutthe Emperor, and the sight of it sent such a thrill of fury throughhim that he stood where he was, unable to speak or move a muscle.
The throne was set on a sort of dais, with three steps in front of it.The lowest of these steps was hollow. Within this hollow appeared thehead and shoulders of a man.
An elderly man clothed in parti-colored red and yellow, thetime-honored garment of court fools. He was on his hands and knees,and the round of his back fitted into the hollow of the step, and hada flat board over it, so that the Emperor, in ascending his throne,would place his foot upon it.
He was kept in that position with heavy chains of what looked likegold, which passed about his neck and arms, and fitted into heavy goldstaples in the wood. And the old man was President Hargreaves of theUnited States!
* * * * *
The President of the American Republic, chained as a footstool for theInvisible Emperor, the madman who defied the world. Dick stoodpetrified, staring into the mild face of the old man, still incapableof speech. Then a herald, carrying a long trumpet, to which a squarebanner was attached, strode forward from one side of the grotesqueassemblage.
"Dog, on your knees when His Majesty deigns to admit you to thePresence!" he shouted.
The guard at Dick's side prodded him with his glass rod.
Then the storm of mad fury in Dick's heart released limbs and voice.The cry that came from his lips was like nothing human. He leaped uponthe guard with a swift uppercut that sent him sprawling.
The glass rod slipped from his hands to the rug, striking the edge ofhis shoe, and broke to fragments. A single streak of fire shot fromit, blasting a black streak across the Oriental rug.
Dick leaped toward the throne, and the assemblage, as if paralyzed byhis sudden maneuver, remained watching him without moving. Then awoman screamed, and instantly the picturesque gathering had dissolvedinto a mob placing itself about the person of the Emperor, who sprangfrom his throne in agitation.
Dick was almost at the steps. But it was not at the Emperor that heleaped. He sprang to Hargreaves's side. "Mr. President, I'm anAmerican," he babbled. "We've located this gang, we'll blow them offthe face of the earth. In chains--God, in chains, sir--"
Dick stumbled over the length of his own chain that he had beendragging behind him--stumbled and fell prone upon the floor. Before hecould regain his feet they were upon him.
* * * * *
A dozen men were holding him, despite his mad, frenzied struggles, andas, at length, he paused, exhausted, one of them, covering his headwith a glass rod, looked up at the Emperor, who had resumed his seat.
Dick calmed himself. Still gripped, he straightened his body, and gavethe mad monarch back look for look. For a moment the two men regardedeach other. Then a peal of laughter broke from the Invisible Emperor'slips. And any one who heard that peal--any one save those accustomedto him--might have known that it was a madman's laughter.
He flung back his head and laughed, and the whole crowd laughed too.All those sycophants roared and chuckled--all except Fredegonde. Itwas not till afterward that Dick remembered that.
He stood up. "Dog of an American," he roared, "do you know why youwere brought here? It was because I wanted one Yankee to live and seethe irresistible powers that I exercise, so that he can go back andreport on them to those fools in Washington who still think they candefy me, the messenger of the All-Highest.
"I tell you that the things I have done are nothing in comparison withthe things that I have yet to do, if your insane government ofpig-headed fools persists in its defiance. It is my plan to send youback to tell them that their President lies bound in gold chains as myfootstool. That the hurricane which spread the gas through southernAmerica was a mere summer zephyr in comparison with the storm that Ishall send next.
* * * * *
"All the resources of Nature are at my command thanks to theillustrious chemists who have been secretly working for the past tenyears to serve me. I, the All-Highest, have been commanded by theAlmighty to scourge the world for its insolence in rejecting me, andespecially the pig-race of Yankees whose pride has grown so great.Mine is the divinely appointed task to cast down your ridiculousdemocracies and re-establish the divine world-order of an Emperor andhis nobility.
"That is why I have chosen, to permit so mean a thing as you to live.As for the old fool beside you, who thought to stay my power with hisbox of tricks--his gas-box is already being analyzed by my chemists,and in a few hours the trivial secret will be at my disposal."
"And that's just where you're wrong," piped old Luke Evans in hiscracked voice. "That gas can't be analyzed, because it contains anunknown isotope, and, as for yourself, you're nothing but a daft oldfool, with your tin-horn trumpery!"
For a moment the Emperor stood like a statue, staring at old Luke. Theexpression on his face was that of a madman, but a madman throughwhose brain a straggling ray of realization has dawned. It was thelook upon his face that held the whole assemblage spellbound. Thensuddenly came intervention.
Through a doorway in the side of the hall came one of the officers inblack. He advanced to the foot of the throne and made a deep, hurriedbow, speaking rapidly in some language incomprehensible to Dick.
The Emperor started, and then a peal of laughter left his lips.
"Pig of a Yankee," he shouted to Dick, "your contemptible navy's nowapproaching our shores, with a dirigible scout above it. You shall nowsee how I deal with such swine!"
CHAPTER X - The Tricks of the Trade
He barked a command, and instantly Dick was seized by two of theguards, one of whom--the one Dick had knocked down--took the occasionto administer a buffeting in the process of overcoming him. For thesight of the honored President of the United States--that kindly oldman straining his eyes to meet Dick's own--in the parti-colored garbof red and yellow, and chained like a beast below the madman's throne,again filled Dick with a fury beyond all control.
It was only when he had been half-stunned again by the vicious blowsof his captors, delivered with short truncheons of heavy wood, that atlength he desisted from his futile struggle.
With swimming eyes he looked upon the gathering about the throne,which, again taking its cue from the madman, way roaring with laughterat his antics. And again Dick's eyes encountered those of FredegondeValmy.
The girl was not smiling. She was looking straight at him, and for amoment it seemed to Dick as if he read some message in her eyes.
Only for an instant that idea flashed through his mind. He was in nomood to receive messages. As he stood panting like a wild beast atbay, suddenly a filmy substance was thrown over his head from behind.Then, as his face emerged, and the rest of his body was swiftlyenveloped, he realized what was happening.
They had thrown over him one of the invisible garments. He could feelthe stuff about him, but he could no longer see his own body or limbs.
From his own ken, Dick Rennell had vanished utterly. Where his legsand feet should have been, there was only the rug, with the burn fromthe glass tube. He raised one arm and could not see arm or fingers.
In another moment invisible cords had been flung around him. Dick'sefforts to renew the struggle were quickly cut short. Trussedhelplessly, he could only stand glaring at the madman rocking withlaughter upon his tinsel throne. Beside him, similarly bound, stoodLuke Evans, but Dick was only conscious of the old man's presence byreason of the short, rasping, emphati
c curses that broke from hislips.
* * * * *
The Emperor turned on his throne and beckoned to Von Kettler, whoapproached with a deferential bow.
"Nobility, we charge you with the care of these two prisoners," headdressed him. "Have the old one removed to the laboratory, and giveorders that he shall assist our chemists to the best of his power intheir analysis of the black gas. As for the other, take him up to thecentral office, and show him how we deal with Yankees and all otherpigs. Show him everything, so that he may take back a correct accountof our irresistible powers when we dismiss him."
"Come!" barked one of the guards in Dick's ear.
Dick attempted no further resistance. Convinced of its futility, sickand reeling from the blows he had received, he accompanied his captorsquietly. There was nothing more that he could do, either for PresidentHargreaves or for old Luke, but he still imagined the possibility ofsomehow warning the approaching fleet or the occupants of thedirigible.
He was led along the passage, past the guards, and up the stairsagain. The top door opened upon vacancy; it closed, and vanished. Dickfelt the rugs beneath his feet, but he was to all appearances standingon a square of bare earth in the middle of a prairie.
"Come!" barked the guard again, and Dick accompanied him, trailing hissilver chain. Behind came Von Kettler.
"Here are steps!" said the guard, after they had proceeded a shortdistance.
Dick stumbled against the lowest step of an invisible flight. Thebreeze was cut off, showing that they had entered a building.Underneath was a large oval of bare ground. Dick found a handrail andgroped his way up around a spiral staircase, four flights of it.
"Here is a room!"
* * * * *
Dick saw that widening edge of door again. The room inside wasperfectly visible, though it seemed to be supported upon air. It was aspheroid, of huge size, with a number of large windows set into thewalls, and it was filled with machinery. About a dozen workmen inblue blouses were moving to and fro, attending to what appeared to bea number of enormous dynamos, but there were other apparatus of whosesignificance Dick was ignorant. The dynamos were whirring with intensevelocity, but not the slightest sound was audible.