And the Chinaman saw what was to happen and shrieked aloud, even before whatever death it was with which the dragon was armed came upon him. Then he stiffened with hands flung up, and fell still shrieking, and crawled with momentarily lessening strength away from the dragon. Koshinga looked around again and saw what he had done.
It is nature’s safeguard for humanity that egotism ever tends toward madness; and it is probable that at that last stroke of adverse fate Koshinga went mad. But had he remained sane, his next step would probably have been the same. Hazard had hinted it in his last half-uttered sentence, “Koshinga will never—” What he had meant to say was that Koshinga would never willingly permit any one in that whole assemblage to escape alive.
The Dalai Lama’s reply to the growing confusion in the hall had been to raise his hand and his voice, holding his audience in their seats and driving into their minds the message of the dragon, the message which would damn Koshinga and the Ko Lao Hui eternally were it spread throughout China.
And the priests would spread it; they had been commanded to spread it; their own self-interest would impel them to do so; were they not to be partners in Koshinga’s pretenses of absolute and divinely ordained power, they must be his enemies. All this must have flashed through Koshinga’s mind, but mostly I think he was filled with a mad rage and a desire to destroy.
He turned toward the stairway leading down into that cellar in which Sha Feng, Hazard and I had been captured, and in which his men were still concealed; and he cried out in that voice of abominable power, hot now with hate:
“Come up, come up, Ko Lao Hui. It is time for the killing. The day is come. The messages will be—”
“Blalock!” shouted Hazard. “For your life and ours and more. Come! Come here!”
Blalock heard Hazard’s cry, which was pitched at the top of his voice. Koshinga may or may not have heard it, for he was already darting through a door at the rear of the platform. The false dragon had collapsed as Koshinga leaped away from it, with a harsh grinding of metal plates.
The Dalai Lama stopped reading, thrust the parchment into the breast of his tunic, and said something in a low tone to his soldiers. Blalock sprang from the platform, landing well out in the midst of the priests, who had come to their feet in confusion, and he struggled and shoved through the mass of them.
“There’ll be —— here,” muttered Hazard, “but it’s Koshinga—it’s Koshinga that’s dangerous.”
“The messages?” I gasped. “The messages he spoke of?”
“The call for the revolution. Ah-h.”
The soldiers of the Dalai Lama had slipped from their seats and spread along the edge of the platform, where they flung themselves prone, rifles to shoulder and eyes glinting along the barrel.
“They’ll handle that crowd,” rasped Hazard, “the crowd in the cellar; but is it likely that’s all? Is it likely that Koshinga— Ah, Blalock—the door.”
Blalock, a wild figure with the clothing half-torn from his thin body, had got through the crush of priests and was now immediately below the small opening through which we had seen these things. He didn’t look up at us; his eyes were intent on something in front of him—the sentry whom we had almost forgotten, but who still guarded that door. Suddenly Blalock darted in; craning my head forward, I saw a knife glance past his shoulder; but the next instant he had flung the wielder of that knife straight over his head, among the priests.
And now the four of us—we three white men and Sha Feng—were struggling away from the door which Blalock had unbarred, through the mob of cassocked priests who were also surging toward the exit of the temple. Fear inspired all of us, priests and laymen; but ours was the grimmer and more ghastly fear, as ours was the greater knowledge of our opponent, and of the ferocity of his unleashed power.
And our fear was not for ourselves alone, but for the patient millions of Asia over whom the wreck and ruin of civil war might presently break; nor could any one continent contain the full results of the mischief which we foresaw might be loosed this hour.
We burst out into the glare of the desert day just as rifles began to rattle behind us—the Dalai Lama’s body-guard engaging the Ko Lao Hui. We needed no consultation; but one thought was in the mind of each—to seek another entrance than the guarded one through which Koshinga had passed, to the room into which he had gone.
But just outside the temple we stopped for an instant, appalled. The front of the mob of priests that had followed us also stopped, recoiled, and pressed those behind back with shrill, warning cries. For as if the shots inside the temple had been a signal a crackling rifle fire now echoed from without and the air around the temple had become full of flying bullets.
That had happened, in short, which might have been expected to happen. The eastern segment of the circular sand ridge, not two hundred yards away, had become crowned with red-sashed Ko Lao Hui, advancing upon the temple.
On the inner slope of the western segment a smaller number of troops in orange and scarlet debouched from files to skirmish line at double time, answering the Ko Lao Hui fire as they ran. This was the obvious explanation: the Dalai Lama and Koshinga had both been distrustful of this meeting, had each thought to safeguard himself against the other; and as a consequence the temple and the lives of those therein had become the prize of battle.
XIII
BUT our hesitation was only for an instant. The next moment we were darting around the corner of the temple, running low.
“Never mind this,” Hazard had shouted; “it’s Koshinga who’s all-important. Koshinga!”
He flung the name like a curse into the hot air, whining with bullets.
“But what do you think?” I cried as we rounded the corner of the temple and saw before us a box-like annex, not ten feet high at the eaves, into which Koshinga had evidently retreated.
“You heard him: ‘The messages will be sent.’ ‘The day is come.’ Can you doubt what day? Quick, quick, Partridge, and you, Sha Feng and Blalock. Ah, there’s no door nor window—” we had passed clear around that annex, “and yet there must be—”
“There must be an exit,” I completed Hazard’s sentence. “Koshinga wouldn’t imprison himself, and besides—”
“The messages!” Hazard cried. “The messages must come out some way. And wires or wireless—any electrical device—impossible where there’s no power. Let me think, let me think!”
For a few seconds we stood there, panting, pressing close to the low wall. Inside the temple the firing had increased. The fanatic fury of the Ko Lao Hui must have won them a way out of the cellar; or perhaps they had used an exit of which the Dalai Lama’s men were ignorant.
That latter guess afterward proved to have been truth; the two forces were engaged in a suicidal fight at close quarters on the platform, while the priests, with the exception of the armed Mongolians, groveled for safety on the floor. Outside the bullets hummed angrily; the Debadjung troops and the Ko Lao Hui were racing each other for the temple. One of those bullets flicked the skin from Sha Feng’s cheek; and he wiped the blood away languidly with his hand.
“A cube has six sides,” he said; “a room—”
“Has six sides also,” cried Hazard. “Sha Feng, I thank you. The roof—it must be. Partridge, give me a foot up.”
I placed the hollow of my two clasped hands under his foot and tossed him up until he clutched the edge of the roof. He scrambled up somehow; and fell flat as if one of the bullets had reached him. But he was uninjured; he squirmed around and called down to us in a voice that had become suddenly cautious.
“It’s here.”
“What’s there?”
“Come up. Unless we’ve a gun amongst us— Blalock, did they leave you a gun? No! Then come up, all of you. We’ll all be needed.”
For what? To grapple with Koshinga? In that case, the need was greater than our numbers. Death was closing in upon us from two quarters, for the Ko Lao Hui would know us for enemies and the troops of the Dalai Lama could
not be expected to recognize us as friends; but the thought of physical contact with that monstrosity made the clean extermination promised by the rifle fire seem desirable.
But one is not always to choose even the form of his death; and I, being the strongest of the trio, helped Sha Feng and Blalock to mount the roof. Then, with a run and flying leap, I made it myself; and, crouching low, looked to see what Hazard had discovered.
There was a hole in the roof, a dozen feet from the cave. It was a square hole about three feet across, the edges of which were still raw from the saw. Here was a way to Koshinga if he was still in the room into which we had seen him pass—a dangerous way, a way that only one might take at a time, and Hazard was already crawling toward it.
But what was the purpose of that hole? When I remembered the width of Koshinga’s great shoulders and of his arching chest, I knew it was no way to escape for him. What then? An avenue for messages, perhaps—but how conveyed?
By the same means, probably, that Koshinga had used to summon the priests here—but what was that means? I pondered those questions fruitlessly as I followed Hazard toward the opening, beneath which waited for us an experience from which my mind recoiled.
Also I noticed, during that ascent, that the Ko Lao Hui who had been hidden in the sand outnumbered the Dalai Lama’s men two to one, that the Ko Lao Hui were already nearer the temple than the Debadjung troops, and were advancing faster. Even if we mastered Koshinga we would meet our end at their hands, we and the priests and the Dalai Lama himself—but I feared very much that we wouldn’t master Koshinga.
When I withdrew my eyes from the Ko Lao Hui, I found the roof ahead of me empty; Hazard had dropped through the opening. An instant later I was looking down upon him; he was standing directly below me, straightening himself from his fall. I thrust my feet through the opening and dropped; and, mid-air, I saw Koshinga.
He had been bending over something in the corner of the room. Already he was whirling; he saw us, Hazard on the floor while I was still descending. I saw that the thing over which Koshinga had been bending was a bird cage which seemed to be fastened to the end of a long pole. A bird-cage larger than ordinary; but Koshinga, without uttering a sound, rushed upon us, and the glimpse I got of its feathered occupants was brief.
Koshinga came, crouching, with the speed and force of a swung battering-ram, his wide-set, greenish eyes gleaming, his clutching hands extended, his fingers working with hate, his lips writhing with a smile. One would have thought from that smile that he welcomed us and I think he did.
He who was able to crush an ordinary man’s head like an egg-shell, at a single blow, could have no thought of physical defeat; and when he saw Hazard and me, who had got in his way so many times, he must have instantly connected us with the last misfortune that had befallen him. A berserker rage must have possessed him as he leaped for us; and I think that his next few minutes were sweet—sweet with the wreaking of vengeance.
For we were no match for him, though we were three to one from the beginning, Blalock landing upon the floor behind us before Koshinga reached us. Unarmed, we were no match for him, even though he was also unarmed, a fortunate chance. Although, for that matter, he had never needed a personal weapon till then; others had fought for him.
Flat on the floor I flung myself when Koshinga was within six feet of me; and, hugging his ankles close, I plunged forward. Giant as he was, he came down; but some one else went to the floor also; it was Blalock, whom Koshinga struck a glancing blow, and knocked senseless. And Koshinga, falling on top of me, his head a little beyond my heels, reached back and caught my foot. He twisted once; and a terrific pain told me that my leg was dislocated at the knee.
He kicked once, and his own legs and feet were free. But Hazard had thrown himself on top of Koshinga’s body lengthwise, attempting to throttle him with his hands while with his legs he gripped Koshinga around the middle. With a growl that might have come from some terrific primordial monster that had survived the passage of ages, Koshinga rolled half-over, reached back of his neck and tore Hazard’s hands away from his throat.
In another moment Hazard’s arms would have gone the way of my right leg, if they had not been torn entirely away, for the sinews of no man could withstand Koshinga’s pulling power. But at that moment Sha Feng dropped down upon us, with his legs drawn up; and as he fell he straightened his legs and lashed out savagely at Koshinga’s head.
It was a shrewd blow and a powerful one, with the weight and momentum of Sha Feng’s body and all his kicking power behind it—a blow that would have knocked any other man unconscious. It momentarily weakened Koshinga, for Hazard was able to tear his wrists loose.
But before Hazard could get away completely Koshinga completed his turn and lay on his back, with Hazard beneath him. I was now on top; but before I could take advantage of my position, Koshinga caught me about the waist with both hands, and flung me away from him. Straight up into the air he flung me, and to his right, so that I landed on the floor at a distance of a dozen feet.
My crippled leg doubled up under me, racking me with the greatest agony I’ve ever known; blood spurted from my nose, and a blood-red haze hung before my eyes, so that I saw nothing clearly. But when I realized things, I was crawling back toward the writhing heap that was Koshinga and Hazard and Sha Feng, and with a queer, new, mad conviction underlying the realization of my own helplessness. A conviction, indeed, that was born of the very discovery that should have disheartened me most, the discovery of Koshinga’s supernormal strength, greater than I’d imagined it, even.
It did not seem to me written in the scheme of things that such a creature should triumph, a creature who possessed the physical force of half a dozen orang-utans, mental subtlety in proportion, and a conscience that had no proper place on earth. But this was the last fight—so I saw the matter; if he escaped us here, we were undone, and China, and the world; and even as I denied the possibility of the thing in the light of any sane Providence I saw that he had escaped us.
KOSHINGA’S hands left Hazard’s throat, and Hazard lay motionless. The monster leaped up lightly with Sha Feng clinging to him; and there was contempt in the easy swing of Koshinga’s arm as he struck upward at the Chinaman. Sha Feng’s jaw was driven to one side, as though he had been hit by a sledge. His muscles relaxed, and he slipped limply to the floor. Koshinga glared around, saw me still crawling toward him and laughed horribly.
“Ah, the jackal has not yet had enough of the lion’s fangs. How insensible you insect creatures are! Why, do you not know that with the weight of my foot I can crush your flesh into the very earth? And that I will presently do, but first— Listen!”
I listened, as he bade me, and heard the crackling rifle fire outside. Very heavy and near it was to the east, farther away and weaker from the west; and I knew by that sign that Koshinga was triumphant without the temple as he was within. And still I think I found strength to return him stare for stare.
“At least,” I said, with what voice was left to me, “the priests—”
“Will never leave this place; and it is well. The dragon and the dragon’s message will be buried here, and all who heard that message. They would have been dangerous as allies and more dangerous as enemies; but with them passes the power of the Taoist and Buddhist hierarchies, and nothing will stand against the Ko Lao Hui.
“Ten million faithful ones wait my word; and twice ten million will join them in the slaughter of those who oppose me. Now the word will be given; and because it will torture you, you shall witness the sending of the message; and then—”
Koshinga turned his back on me and strode across the room. Weakly I raised myself on my elbows and followed him with my eyes. He lifted the pole, on the end of which swung the bird-cage; and I saw that the cage was full of carrier-pigeons.
Swift, swift birds, doubtless already freighted with messages that meant the death of millions, messages that would be relayed as the summons to the priests had been relayed, the length and b
readth of China. A string, extended from the door of the cage to the end of the pole in Koshinga’s hand; he was coming toward me, toward that hole in the roof through which the birds would be released. And I—I saw the door leading into the body of the temple open noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, and close again. I groaned aloud.
“So!” Koshinga mocked my groan. “Slave of your own emotions and an outgrown creed, is not this sight bitter to you? I wish that your pygmy companions were awake; it would add to my enjoyment. But they sleep, and soon their sleep will be sounder. Then you, having seen them die—”
With pain and difficulty I struggled till I stood upright on my one sound leg, propping myself with the other, and so confronted him, for now it seemed to me that I would willingly sell my soul into eternal torment for a single minute’s delay. Amid hopelessness, hope persisted; and I had seen the opening of a door and had recalled that for some minutes the firing beyond that door had ceased.
Incoherent as was my thinking at that moment, I realized that if the Ko Lao Hui had won the battle inside the temple, they would be killing the priests as Koshinga had commanded them. The Dalai Lama had won then, and if I could but hold Koshinga, anger him into finishing me before loosing the birds—
“Evil perishes in the moment of its triumph,” I cried out to him as loudly as I could. “So shall you, devil-man.”
But I could not move fast enough to place myself squarely in his way; and he did not wait until he was directly under the opening that led to the wide spaces before thrusting the cage of carrier-pigeons upward. Then he paused a moment to laugh at me; while the door behind him opened again, and the orange-colored, impassive face of the Dalai Lama peered through it.
“There is no good nor evil, but power; and I possess it,” said Koshinga.
And then the Dalai Lama fired.
Now I, John Partridge, saw this thing, which some will say is impossible. The bullet smashed through the back of Koshinga’s skull, for the red blood spurted out. But Koshinga did not fall. The pole containing the bird-cage descended; he tried to raise it again, but I fell with my chest across it, bearing it down. Then Koshinga turned and rushed for the Dalai Lama, who stepped aside and fired another shot; and thus began a game of death that sickened me.
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 49