BEGINNING A THREE-PART NOVEL
By Ray Cummings
Foreword
_Have you ever stood on the seashore, with the breakers rolling at your
feet, and imagined what the scene would be like if the ocean water were
gone? I have had a vision of that many times. Standing on the Atlantic
Coast, gazing out toward Spain, I can envisage myself, not down at the
sea-level, but upon the brink of a height. Spain and the coast of
Europe, off there upon another height._
[Sidenote: Fantastic and sinister are the Lowlands into which Philip
Grant descends on his dangerous assignment.]
_And the depths between? Unreal landscape! Mysterious realm which now we
call the bottom of the sea! Worn and rounded crags; bloated mud-plains;
noisome reaches of ooze which once were the cold and dark and silent
ocean floor, caked and drying in the sun. And off to the south the
little fairy mountain tops of the West Indies rearing their verdured
crowns aloft._
[Illustration: "Look around, Chief. See where I am?"]
_If the ocean water were gone! Can you picture it? A new world, greater
in area than all the land we now have. They would call the former
sea-level the zero-height, perhaps. The depths would go down as far
beneath it as Mount Everest towers above it. Aeroplanes would fly down
into them._
_And I can imagine the settlement of these vast new realms: New little
nations being created, born of man's indomitable will to conquer every
adverse condition of inhospitable nature._
_A novel setting for a story of adventure. It seems so to me. Can you
say that the oceans will never drain of their water? That an earthquake
will not open a rift--some day in the future--and lower the water into
subterranean caverns? The volume of water of all the oceans is no more
to the volume of the earth than a tissue paper wrapping on an orange._
_Is it too great a fantasy? Why, reading the facts of what happened in
1929, it is already prognosticated. The fishing banks off the Coast of
Newfoundland have suddenly sunk. Cable ships repairing a broken cable,
snapped by the earthquake of November 18th, 1929, report that for
distances of a hundred miles on the Grand Banks the cables have
disappeared into unfathomable depths. And before the subterranean
cataclysm, they were within six hundred feet of the surface. And all the
bottom of that section of the North Atlantic seems to have caved in. Ten
thousand square miles dropped out of the bottom of the ocean! Fact, not
fancy._
_And so let us enlarge the picture. Let us create the Lowlands--twenty
thousand feet below the zero-height--the setting for a tale of
adventure. The romance of the mist-shrouded deeps. And the romance of
little Jetta._
CHAPTER I
_The Secret Mission_
I was twenty-five years of age that May evening of 2020 when they sent
me south into the Lowlands. I had been in the National Detective Service
Bureau, and then was transferred to the Customs Department, Atlantic
Lowlands Branch. I went alone; it was best, my commander thought. An
assignment needing diplomacy rather than a show of force.
It was 9 P. M. when I catapulted from the little stage of Long Island
airport. A fair, moonlit evening--a moon just beyond the full, rising to
pale the eastern stars. I climbed about a thousand feet, swung over the
headlands of the Hook, and, keeping in the thousand-foot local lane,
took my course.
My destination lay some thirteen hundred miles southeast of Great New
York. I could do a good normal three-ninety in this fleet little Wasp,
especially if I kept in the rarer air-pressures over the zero-height.
The thousand-foot lane had a southward drift, this night. I was making
now well over four hundred; I would reach Nareda soon after midnight.
The Continental Shelf slid beneath me, dropping away as my course took
me further from the Highland borders. The Lowlands lay patched with inky
shadows and splashes of moonlight. Domes with upstanding, rounded heads;
plateaus of naked black rock, ten thousand feet below the zero-height;
trenches, like valleys, ridged and pitted, naked in places like a
pockmarked lunar landscape. Or again, a pall of black mist would
shroud it all, dark curtain of sluggish cloud with moonlight tinging its
edges pallid green.
To my left, eastward toward the great basin of the mid-Atlantic
Lowlands, there was always a steady downward slope. To the right, it
came up over the continental shelf to the Highlands of the United
States.
There was often water to be seen in these Lowlands. A spring-fed lake
far down in a caldron pit, spilling into a trench; low-lying,
land-locked little seas; canyons, some of them dry, others filled with
tumultuous flowing water. Or great gashes with water sluggishly flowing,
or standing with a heavy slime, and a pall of uprising vapor in the heat
of the night.
At 37 deg.N. and 70 deg.W., I passed over the newly named Atlas Sea. A
lake of water here, more than a hundred miles in extent. Its surface
lay fifteen thousand feet below the zero-height; its depth in places was
a full three thousand. It was clear of mist to-night. The moonlight
shimmered on its rippled surface, like pictures my father had often
shown me of the former oceans.
I passed, a little later, well to the westward of the verdured mountain
top of the Bermudas.
There was nothing of this flight novel to me. I had frequently flown
over the Lowlands; I had descended into them many times. But never upon
such a mission as was taking me there now.
I was headed for Nareda, capital village of the tiny Lowland Republic of
Nareda, which only five years ago came into national being as a
protectorate of the United States. Its territory lies just north of the
mountain Highlands of Haiti, Santo Domingo and Porto Rico. A few hundred
miles of tumbled Lowlands, embracing the turgid Nares Sea, whose bottom
is the lowest point of all the Western Hemisphere--some thirty thousand
feet below the zero-height.
The village of Nareda is far down indeed. I had never been there. My
charts showed it on the southern border of the Nares Sea, at minus
twenty thousand feet, with the Mona Valley behind it like a gash in the
steep upward slopes to the Highlands of Porto Rico and Haiti.
Nareda has a mixed population of typical Lowland adventures, among which
the hardy Dutch predominate; and Holland and the United States have
combined their influence in the World Court to give it national
identity.
* * * * *
And out of this had arisen my mission now. Mercury--the quicksilver of
commerce--so recently come to tremendous value through its universal use
in the new antiseptics which bid fair to check all human disease--was
being produced in Nareda. The import duty into the United States was
being paid openly enough. But nevertheless Hanley's agents believed that
smuggling was taking place.
It was to investigate this condition that Hanley was sending me. I had
introduction to the Nareda government officials. I was to consult with
Hanley by ether-phone in seeking the hidden source of the contraband
quicksilver, but, in the main, to use my own judgment.
A mission of diplomacy. I had no mind to pry openly among the people of
these Lowland depths, looking for smugglers. I might, indeed, find them
too unexpectedly! Over-curious strangers are not welcomed by the
Lowlanders. Many have gone into the depths and have never returned....
I was above the Nares Sea, by midnight. I was still flying a thousand
feet over the zero-height. Twenty-one thousand feet below me lay the
black expanse of water. The moon had climbed well toward the zenith,
now. Its silver shafts penetrated the hanging mist-stratas. The surface
of the Nares Sea was visible--dark and sullen looking.
I shifted the angles of incidence of the wings, re-set my propeller
angles and made the necessary carburetor adjustments, switching on the
supercharger which would supply air at normal zero-height pressure to
the carburetors throughout my descent.
I swung over Nareda. The lights of the little village, far down, dwarfed
by distance, showed like bleary, winking eyes through the mists. The
jagged recesses of the Mona valley were dark with shadow. The Nares Sea
lay like some black monster asleep, and slowly, heavily panting.
Moonlight was over me, with stars and fleecy white clouds. Calm, placid,
atmospheric night was up here. But beneath, it all seemed so mysterious,
fantastic, sinister.
My heart was pounding as I put the Wasp into a spiral and forced my way
down.
CHAPTER II
_The Face at the Window_
With heavy, sluggish engines I panted down and came to rest in the dull
yellow glow of the field lights. A new world here. The field was flat,
caked ooze, cracked and hardened. It sloped upward from the shore toward
where, a quarter of a mile away, I could see the dull lights of the
settlement, blurred by the gathered night vapors.
The field operator shut off his permission signal and came forward. He
was a squat, heavy-set fellow in wide trousers and soiled white shirt
flung open at his thick throat. The sweat streamed from his forehead.
This oppressive heat! I had discarded my flying garb in the descent. I
wore a shirt, knee-length pants, with hose and wide-soled shoes of the
newly fashioned Lowland design. What few weapons I dared carry were
carefully concealed. No alien could enter Nareda bearing anything
resembling a lethal weapon.
My wide, thick-soled shoes did not look suspicious for one who planned
much walking on the caked Lowland ooze. But those fat soles were
cleverly fashioned to hide a long, keen knife-blade, like a dirk. I
could lift a foot and get the knife out of its hidden compartment with
fair speed. This I had in one shoe.
In the other, was the small mechanism of a radio safety recorder and
image finder, with its attendant individual audiophone transmitter and
receiver. A miracle of smallness, these tiny contrivances. With
batteries, wires and grids, the whole device could lay in the palm of
one's hand. Once past this field inspection I would rig it for use under
my shirt, strapped around my chest. And I had some colored magnesium
flares.
* * * * *
The field operator came panting.
"Who are you?"
"Philip Grant. From Great New York." I showed him my name etched on my
forearm. He and his fellows searched me, but I got by.
"You have no documents?"
"No."
My letter to the President of Nareda was written with invisible ink upon
the fabric of my shirt. If he had heated it to a temperature of 180 deg.F.
or so, and blown the fumes of hydrochloric acid upon it, the writing
would have come out plain enough.
I said, "You'll house and care for my machine?"
They would care for it. They told me the price--swindlingly exorbitant
for the unwary traveller who might wander down here.
"All correct," I said cheerfully. "And half that much more for you and
your men if you give me good service. Where can I have a room and
meals?"
"Spawn," said the operator. "He is the best. Fat-bellied from his own
good cooking. Take him there, Hugo."
I had a gold coin instantly ready; and with a few additional directions
regarding my flyer, I started off.
It had been hot and oppressive standing in the field; it was infinitely
worse climbing the mud-slope into the village; but my carrier, trudging
in advance of me along the dark, winding path up the slope, shouldered
my bag and seemed not to notice the effort. We passed occasional
tube-lights strung on poles. They illumined the heavy rounded crags. A
tumbled region, this slope which once was the ocean floor twenty
thousand feet below the surface. Rifts were here like gulleys; little
buttes reared their rounded, dome heads. And there were caves and
crevices in which deep sea fish once had lurked.
* * * * *
For ten minutes or so we climbed. It was past the midnight hour; the
village was asleep. We entered its outposts. The houses were small
structures of clay. In the gloom they looked like drab little beehives
set in unplanned groups, with paths for streets wandering between them.
Then we came to a more prosperous neighborhood. The street widened and
straightened. The clay houses, still with rounded dome like tops, stood
back from the road, with wooden front fences, and gardens and shrubbery.
The windows and doors were like round finger-holes plugged in the clay
by a giant hand. Occasionally the windows, dimly lighted, stared like
sleeping giant eyes.
There were flowers in all the more pretentious private gardens. Their
perfume, hanging in the heavy night air, lay on the village, making one
forget the over-curtain of stenching mist. Down by the shore of the
Nares Sea, this world of the depths had seemed darkly sinister. But in
the village now, I felt it less ominous. The scent of the flowers, the
street lined in one place by arching giant fronds drowsing and nodding
overhead--there seemed a strange exotic romance to it. The sultry air
might almost have been sensuous.
"Much further, Hugo?"
"No. We are here."
He turned abruptly into a gateway, led me through a garden and to the
doorway of a large, rambling, one-story building. The news of my coming
had preceded me. A front room was lighted; my host was waiting.
Hugo set down my bag, accepted another gold coin; and with a queer
sidelong smile, the incentive for which I had not the slightest idea,
he vanished. I fronted my host, this Jacob Spawn. Strange fate that
should have led me to Spawn! And to little Jetta!
* * * * *
Spawn was a fat-bellied Dutchman, as the field attendant had said. A
fellow of perhaps fifty-five, with sparse gray hair and a heavy-jowled,
smooth-shaved face from which his small eyes peered stolidly at me. He
laid aside a huge, old-fashioned calabash pipe and offered a pudgy hand.
"Welcome, young man, to Nareda. Seldom do we see strangers."
The meal which he presently cooked and served me himself was lavishly
done. He spoke good English, but slowly, heavily, with the guttural
intonation of his race. He sat across the table from me, puffing his
pipe while I ate.
"What brings you here, young lad? A week, you say?"
"Or more. I don't know. I'm looking for oil. There should be petroleum
beneath these rocks."
For an hour I avoided his prying questions. His little eyes roved me,
and I knew he was no fool, this Dutchman, for all his heavy, stolid
look.
We remained in his kitchen. Save for its mud walls, its concave,
dome-roof, it might have been a cookery of the Highlands. There was a
table with its tube-light; the chairs; his electron stove; his orderly
rows of pots and pans and dishes on a broad shelf.
I recall that it seemed to me a woman's hand must be here. But I saw no
woman. No one, indeed, beside Spawn himself seemed to live here. He was
reticent of his own business, however much he wanted to pry into mine.
I had felt convinced that we were alone. But suddenly I realized it was
not so. The kitchen adjoined an interior back-garden. I could see it
through the opened door oval--a dim space of flowers; a little path to a
pergola; an adobe fountain. It was a sort of Spanish patio out there,
partially enclosed by the wings of the house. Moonlight was struggling
into it. And, as I gazed idly, I thought I saw a figure lurking. Someone
watching us.
* * * * *
Was it a boy, observing us from the shadowed moonlit garden? I thought
so. A slight, half grown boy. I saw his figure--in short ragged trousers
and a shirt-blouse--made visible in a patch of moonlight as he moved
away and entered the dark opposite wing of the house.
I did not see the boy's figure again; and presently I suggested that I
retire. Spawn had already shown me my bedroom. It was in another wing of
the house. It had a window facing the front; and a window and door back
to this same patio. And a door to the house corridor.
"Sleep well, Meester Grant." My bag was here on the table under an
electrolier. "Shall I call you?"
"Yes," I said. "Early."
He lingered a moment. I was opening my bag. I flung it wide under his
gaze.
"Well, good night. I shall be very comfortable, thanks."
"Good night," he said.
He went out the patio door. I watched his figure cross the moonlit path
and enter the kitchen. The noise of his puttering there sounded for a
time. Then the light went out and the house and garden fell into
silence.
I closed my doors. They sealed on the inside, and I fastened them
securely. Then I fastened the transparent window panes. I did not
undress, but lay on the bed in the dark. I was tired; I realized it now.
But sleep would not come.
I am no believer in occultism, but there are premonitions which one
cannot deny. It seemed now as I lay there in the dark that I had every
reason to be perturbed, yet I could not think why. Perhaps it was
because I had been lying to this innkeeper stoutly for an hour past, and
whether he believed me or not for the life of me I could not now
determine.
* * * * *
I sat up on the bed, presently, and adjusted the wires and diaphragms of
the ether-wave mechanism. When in place it was all concealed under my
shirt. As I switched it on, the electrodes against my flesh tingled a
little. But it was absolutely soundless, and one gets used to the
tingle. I decided to call Hanley.
The New York wave-sorter handled me promptly, but Hanley's office was
dead.
As I sat there in the darkness, annoyed at this, a slight noise forced
itself on me. A scratching--a tap--something outside my window.
Spawn, come back to peer in at me?
I slipped noiselessly from the bed. The sound had come from the window
which faced the patio. The room, over by the bed, was wholly dark. The
moonlight outside showed the patio window as a dimly illumined oval.
For a moment I crouched on the floor by the bed. No sound. The silence
of the Lowlands is as heavy and oppressive as its air. I felt as though
my heart were audible.
I lifted my foot; extracted my dirk. It opened into a very businesslike
steel blade of a good twelve-inch length. I bared the blade. The click
of it leaving the flat, hollow handle sounded loud in the stillness of
the room.
A moment. Then it seemed that outside my window a shadow had moved. I
crept along the floor. Rose up suddenly at the window.
And stared at a face peering in at me. A small face, framed by short,
clustering, dark curls.
A girl!
CHAPTER III
_In a Moonlit Garden_
She drew back from the window like a startled fawn; timorous, yet
curious, too, for she ran only a few steps, then turned and stood
peering. The moonlight slanted over the western roof of the building and
fell on her. A slight, boyish figure in short, tattered trousers and a
boy's shirt, open at her slim, rounded throat. The moonlight gleamed on
the white shirt fabric to show it torn and ragged. Her arms were
upraised; her head, with clustering, flying dark curls, was tilted as
though listening for a sound from me. A shy, wild creature. Drawn to my
window; tapping to awaken me, then frightened at what she had done.
I opened the garden door. She did not move. I thought she would run, but
she did not. The moonlight was on me as I stood there. I was conscious
of its etching me with its silver sheen. And twenty feet from me this
girl stood and gazed, with startled eyes and parted lips--and white
limbs trembling like a frightened animal.
The patio was very silent. The heavy arching fronds stirred slightly
with a vague night breeze; the moonlight threw a lacy dark pattern of
them on the gray stone path. The fountain bowl gleamed white in the
moonlight behind the girl, and in the silence I could hear the low
splashing of the water.
A magic moment. Unforgettable. It comes to some of us just once, but to
all of us it comes. I stood with its spell upon me. Then I heard my
voice, tense but softly raised.
"Who are you?"
It frightened her. She retreated until the fountain was between us. And
as I took a step forward, she retreated further, noiseless, with her
bare feet treading the smooth stones the path.
* * * * *
I ran and caught her at the doorway of the flowered pergola. She stood
trembling as I seized her arms. But the timorous smile remained, and her
eyes, upraised to mine, glowed with misty starlight.
"Who are you?"
This time she answered me. "I am called Jetta."
It seemed that from her white forearm within my grasp a magic current
swept from her to me and back again. We humans, for all our clamoring,
boasting intellectuality, are no more than puppets in Nature's hands.
"Are you Spawn's daughter?"
"Yes."
"I saw you a while ago, when I was having my meal."
"Yes--I was watching you."
"I thought you were a boy."
"Yes. My father told me to keep away. I wanted to meet you, so I came to
wake you up."
"He may be watching us now."
"No. He is sleeping. Listen--you can hear him snore."
I could, indeed. The silence of the garden was broken now by a distant,
choking snore.
We both laughed. She sat on the little mossy seat in the pergola doorway
And on the side away from the snore. (I had the wit to be sure of that.)
"I wanted to meet you," she repeated. "Was it too bold?"
* * * * *
I think that what we said sitting there with the slanting moonlight on
us, could not have amounted to much. Yet for us, it was so important!
Vital. Building memories which I knew--and I think that she knew, even
then--we would never forget.
"I will be here a week, Jetta."
"I want--I want very much to know you. I want you to tell me about the
world of the Highlands. I have a few books. I can't read very well, but
I can look at the pictures."
"Oh, I see--"
"A traveler gave them to me. I've got them hidden. But he was an old
man: all men seem to be old--except those in the pictures, and you,
Philip."
I laughed. "Well, that's too bad. I'm mighty glad I'm young."
Ah, in that moment, with blessed youth surging in my veins, I was glad
indeed!
"Young. I don't remember ever seeing anyone like you. The man I am to
marry is not like you. He is old, like father--"
I drew back from her, startled.
"Marry?"
"Yes. When I am seventeen. The law of Nareda--your Highland law, too,
father says--will not let a girl be married until she is that age. In a
month I am seventeen."
"Oh!" And I stammered, "But why are you going to marry?"
"Because father tells me to. And then I shall have fine clothes: it is
promised me. And go to live in the Highlands, perhaps. And see things;
and be a woman, not a ragged boy forbidden to show myself; and--"
* * * * *
I was barely touching her. It seemed as though something--some vision of
happiness which had been given me--were fading, were being snatched
away. I was conscious of my hand moving to touch hers.
"Why do you marry--unless you're in love? Are you?"
Her gaze like a child came up to meet mine. "I never thought much about
that. I have tried not to. It frightened me--until to-night."
She pushed me gently away. "Don't. Let's not talk of him. I'd rather
not."
"But why are you dressed as a boy?"
I gazed at her slim but rounded figure in tattered boy's garb--but the
woman's lines were unmistakable. And her face, with clustering curls.
Gentle girlhood. A face of dark, wild beauty.
"My father hates women. He says they are all bad. It is a sin to wear
woman's finery; or it breeds sin in women. Let's not talk of that.
Philip, tell me--oh, if you could only realize all the things I want to
know. In Great New York, there are theatres and music?"
"Yes," I said. And began telling her about them.
The witching of this moonlit garden! But the moon had presently sunk,
and to the east the stars were fading.
"Philip! Look! Why, it's dawn already. I've got to leave you."
I held her just a moment by the hand.
"May I meet you here to-morrow night?" I asked.
"Yes," she said simply.
"Good night--Jetta."
"Good night. You--you've made me very happy."
She was gone, into a doorway of the opposite wing. The silent, empty
garden sounded with the distant, reassuring snores of the still sleeping
Spawn.
I went back to my room and lay on my bed. And drifted off on a sea of
magic memories. The world--my world before this night--now seemed to
have been so drab. Empty. Lifeless. But now there was pulsing, living
magic in it for me.
I drifted into sleep, thinking of it.
CHAPTER IV
_The Mine in the Cauldron Depths_
I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm
beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.
It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by
the flat light of dawn.
Hanley's microscopic voice:
"Phil? I've just raised President Markes, there in Nareda. I've been a
bit worried about you."
"I'm all right, Chief."
"Well, you'd better see President Markes this morning."
"That was my intention."
"Tell him frankly what you're after. This smuggling of quicksilver from
Nareda has got to stop. But take it easy, Phil; don't be reckless.
Remember: one little knife thrust and I've lost a good man!"
I laughed at his anxious tone. That was always Hanley's way. A devil
himself, when he was on a trail, but always worried for fear one of his
men would come to harm.
"Right enough, Chief. I'll be careful."
He cut off presently.
I did not see Jetta that morning. I told Spawn I was hoping to see
President Markes on my petroleum proposition. And at the proper hour I
took myself to the government house.
* * * * *
This Lowland village by daylight seemed even more fantastic than
shrouded in the shadows of night. The morning sun had dissipated the
overhead mists. It was hot in the rocky streets under the weird
overhanging vegetation. The settlement was quietly busy with its
tropical activities. There were a few local shops; vehicles with the
Highland domestic animals--horses and oxen--panting in the heat; an
occasional electro-automatic car.
But there were not many evidences of modernity here. The street and
house tube-lights. A few radio image-finders on the house-tops. An
automatic escalator bringing ore from a nearby mine past the government
checkers to an aero stage for northern transportation. Cultivated fields
in the village outskirts operated with modern machinery.
But beyond that, it seemed primitive. Two hundred years back. Street
vendors. People in primitive, ragged, tropical garb. Half naked
children. I was stared at curiously. An augmenting group of children
followed me as I went down the street.
The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards
against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern
instruments before him.
"Sit down, Grant."
* * * * *
He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President.
White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort
lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced
drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy
gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration.
"Damnable heat, Grant."
"Yes, Sir President."
"Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me
what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it."
His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy,
twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver
production very closely. The government fee is a third."
I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the
mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the
necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to
the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corporation.
He added, "You think--Hanley thinks--the smuggling is on too large a
scale to be any illicit producer?"
I nodded.
"Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines."
"Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production
record," I explained.
"If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm
and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are--the representative
of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver
production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up
your glass, Grant."
* * * * *
The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt
his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action
would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the
knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United
States--_that_ might spur him.
He added--and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that
some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should
not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar
lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn--"
"Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten
kilometers from here--back on the southern slope."
"He didn't mention it," I said.
"So? That is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He
specializes in prying into the other fellow's affairs. Hm-m."
He fell into a reverie while I stared at him. Spawn, the big--the only
big--quicksilver producer here!
* * * * *
The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not
intimate your real purpose?"
"No."
We both turned at the sound of an opening door. Markes called, "Ah, come
in Perona! Are you alone? Good! Close that slide. Here is Chief Hanley's
representative." He introduced us all in a breath. "This is interesting,
Perona. Damnably interesting. We're being cheated, what? It looks that
way. Sit down, Perona."
This was Greko Perona. Nareda's Minister of Internal Affairs. Spawn had
mentioned him to me. A South American. A man in his fifties. Thin and
darkly saturnine, with iron-gray hair, carefully plastered to cover his
half-bald head. He sat listening to the President's harangue, twirling
the upturned waxen ends of his artificially black mustache. A wave of
perfume enveloped him. A ladies' courtier, this Perona by the look of
him. His white uniform was immaculate, carefully tailored and carefully
worn to set off at its best his still trim and erect figure.
"Well," he said, when at last the President paused, "of a surety
something must be done."
Perona seemed not excited, rather more carefully watchful, of his own
words, and of me. His small dark eyes roved me.
"What is it you would plan to do about it, Senorito?"
An irony was in that Latin diminutive! He spread his pale hands. "Your
United States officials perhaps exaggerate. I am very doubtful if we
have smugglers here in Nareda."
"Unless it is Spawn," the President interjected.
* * * * *
Perona frowned slightly. But his suave manner remained. "Spawn? Why
Spawn?"
"You need not take offense, Perona," Markes retorted. "We are discussing
this before an envoy of the United States, sent here to consult with us.
We have nothing to hide."
Markes turned to me. And his next words were like a bomb exploding at my
feet.
"Perona _is_ offended, Grant. But I promise you, his natural personal
prejudice will not affect my investigation. Of course he is prejudiced,
since he is to marry Spawn's daughter, the little Jetta."
I started involuntarily. This pomaded old dotard! This perfumed, ancient
dandy!
For all the importance of my mission in Nareda my thoughts had been
subconsciously more upon Jetta--far more--than upon smugglers of
quicksilver. This palsied popinjay! This, the reality of the specter
which had been between Jetta and me during all that magic time in the
moonlit garden!
This suave old rake! Betrothed to that woodland pixie whose hand I had
held and to whom I had sung love songs in the magic flower-scented
moonlight only a few hours ago! And whom I had promised to meet there
again to-night!
This, then, was my rival!
* * * * *
Nothing of importance transpired during the remainder of that interview.
Markes reiterated his intention of making a complete governmental
investigation at once. To which Perona suavely assented.
"_Por Dios Senorito_," he said to me, "we would not have your great
government annoyed at Nareda. If there are smugglers, we will capture
them of a certainty."
From the Government House, it now being almost time for the midday meal,
I returned to Spawn's.
The rambling mud walls of the Inn stood baking in the noonday heat when
I arrived. The outer garden drowsed; there seemed no one about. I went
through the main door oval into the front public room, where first I had
met Spawn. He was not here now, nor was Jetta.
A sudden furtiveness fell upon me. With noiseless steps I went the
length of the dim, padded interior corridor to my own room. My
belongings seemed undisturbed; a vague idea that Spawn might have seized
this opportunity to ransack them had come to me. But it seemed not;
though if he had he would have found nothing.
I stood for a moment listening at my patio window. I could see the
kitchen from here; there was no one in it. I started back for the living
room. That furtive instinct was still on me. I made no noise. And
abruptly I heard Spawn's voice, floating out softly in the hushed
silence of the house.
"So, Perona?"
* * * * *
A brief silence, in which it seemed that I could hear a tiny aerial
answer. Then Spawn again. A startled oath.
"De duvel! You say--"
I stood frozen, listening.
"She is here.... Yes, I will keep her close. I am no fool, Perona."
Spawn's laugh was like a growl. "Later to-day, yes. Fear not! I am no
fool. I will be careful of it."
Spawn, talking by private audiphone, to Perona. The colloquy came to an
abrupt end.
"... Might eavesdrop? By hell, you are right!"
I heard the click as Spawn and Perona broke connection. Spawn came from
his room. But he was not quick enough. I slipped away before he saw me.
In the living room I had time to be calmly seated with a lighted
cigarette. His approaching heavy footsteps sounded. He came in.
"Oh--Grant."
"Good noon, friend Spawn. I'm hungry." I grinned at him. "I understand
my bargain with you included a noonday meal. Does it?"
He eyed me suspiciously. "Have you been waiting here long?"
"No. I just came in."
He led me to the kitchen. He apologized for the informality of his hotel
service: visitors were so infrequent. But the good quality of his food
would make up for it.
"Right," I agreed. "Your food is marvelous, friend Spawn."
* * * * *
There was a difference in Spawn's manner toward me now. He seemed far
more wary. Outwardly he was in a high good humor. He asked nothing
concerning my morning at the Government House. He puttered over his
electron-stove, making me help him; he cursed the heat; he said one
could not eat in such heat as this; but the meal he cooked, and the way
he sat down opposite me and attacked it, belied him.
He was acting; but so was I. And perhaps I deceived him as little as he
deceived me. We avoided the things which were uppermost in the thoughts
of us both. But, when we had very nearly finished the meal, I decided to
try him out. I said suddenly, out of a silence:
"Spawn, why didn't you tell me you were a producer of quicksilver?" I
shot him a sharp glance. "You are, aren't you?"
It took him by surprise, but he recovered himself instantly. "Yes. Are
you interested?"
I tried another shot. "What surprised me was that a wealthy mine
owner--you are, aren't you?--should bother to keep an unprofitable
hotel. Why bother with it, Spawn?"
I thought I knew the answer: he wanted Nareda's visitors under his eyes.
"That is a pleasure." There was irony in his tone. "I am a lonesome man.
I like--interesting companionship, such as yours, young Grant."
It was on my tongue to hint at his daughter. But I thought better of it.
"I am going to the mine now," he said abruptly. "Would you like to
come?"
"Yes," I smiled. "Thanks."
* * * * *
I wanted to see his mine. But that he should be eager to show it,
surprised me. I wondered what purpose he could have in that. I had a
hint of it later; for when we took his little autocar and slid up the
winding road into the bloated crags towering on the slope behind Nareda,
he told me calmly:
"I shall have to put you in charge of my mine commander. I am busy
elsewhere this afternoon. You will see the mine just as well without
me."
He added. "I must go to the Government House: President Markes wants a
report on my recent production."
So that was what Perona had told him over the audiphone just before our
noonday meal?
It was an inferno of shadows and glaring lights, this underground
cavern. As modern mining activities go, it was small and primitive. No
more than a dozen men were here, beside the sweating pudgy mine
commander who was my guide. A voluble fellow; of what original
nationality I could not determine.
We stood watching the line of carts dumping the ore onto the endless
lifting-belt. It went a hundred feet or so up and out of the cavern's
ascending shaft, to fall with a clatter into the bins above the smelter.
"Rich ore," I said. "Isn't it?"
The cinnabar ran like thick blood-red veins in the rock.
"Rich," said the mine commander. "That it is. Rich. But who does it make
rich? Only Spawn, not me." He waved his arms, airing his grievance with
which for an hour past he had regaled me. "Only Spawn. For me, a dole
each week."
The smelter was in a stone building--one of a small group of mine houses
which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of
rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone
behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering,
the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung
between small metal poles, winked on like bleary eyes.
"Of a day soon I will fling this job to hell--"
* * * * *
I was paying scant attention to the fellow's tirade. Could there be
smuggling going on from this mine? It all seemed to be conducted openly
enough. If the production record were being falsified I felt that this
dissatisfied mine commander was not aware of it. He showed me the
smelter, where the quicksilver condensed in the coils and ran with its
small luminous silver streams into the vats.
He was called away momentarily by one of his men, leaving me standing
there. I was alone; no one seemed in sight, or within hearing. In the
shadow of the condensers I drew out my transmitter and called Hanley.
I got him within a minute.
"Chief!"
"Yes, Phil. I hoped you'd call me. Didn't want to chance it, raising you
when you might not be alone."
I told him swiftly what I had done; where I was now.
And Hanley said, with equal briskness: "I've an important fact. Just had
Markes on secret wave-length. He tells me that Spawn has been saving up
his quicksilver for six months past. He's got several hundred thousand
dollar-standards' worth of it in ingots there right now."
"Here at the mine?"
"Yes. Got them all radiuminized, ready for the highest priced markets.
Markes says he is scheduled to turn them over to the government checkers
to-morrow. The Nareda government takes its share to-morrow; then Spawn
exports the rest."
I heard a footstep. "Off, Chief! I'll call you later!"
I clicked off summarily. The little grid was under my shirt when the
mine commander rejoined me.
* * * * *
For another half hour or to I hovered about the smelter house. A
treasure of quicksilver ingots here? I mentioned it casually to my
companion. He shot me a sharp glance.
"Spawn has told you that?"
"I heard it."
"His business. We do not talk of that. Never can I tell what Spawn will
choose to take offense at."
We rambled upon other subjects. Later, he said, "We work not at night.
But Spawn, he is here often at night, with his friend, the Senor
Perona."
That caught my attention. "I met Perona this morning," I said quickly.
"Is he a partner of Spawn's?"
"If he is so, I never was told it. But much he is here--at night."
"Why at night?"
The fellow really knew nothing. Or if he did, he was diplomatic enough
not to jeopardize his post by babbling of it to me. He said:
"Perona is Spawn's friend. Why not? His daughter to marry: that will
make him a son-in-law." He laughed. "An old fool, but not such a fool
either. Spawn is rich."
"His daughter. Has he a daughter?"
"The little Jetta. You haven't seen her? Well, that is not strange.
Spawn keeps her very hidden. A mystery about it: all Nareda talks, but
no one knows; and Spawn does not like questions."
Spawn abruptly joined us! He came from the black shadows of the lurid
smelter room. Had he heard us discussing Jetta? I wondered.
CHAPTER V
_Mysterious Meeting_
"Ah, Grant--have you enjoyed yourself?" He dismissed his subordinate. "I
was detained. Sorry."
He was smoothly imperturbable. "Have you seen everything? Quite a little
plant I have here? We shut down early to-day. I will make ready to
close."
I followed him about while he arranged for the termination of the day's
activities. The clatter of the smelter house was presently still; the
men departing. Spawn and I were the last to leave, save for the eight
men who were the mine's night guards. They were stalwart, silent
fellows, armed with electronic needle projectors.
The lights of the mine went low until they were mere pencil points of
blue illumination in the gloom. The eery look of the place was
intensified by the darkness and silence of the abnormally early
nightfall. The fantastic crags stood dark with formless shadow.
Spawn stopped to speak to one of the guards. The men wore a
gold-trimmed, but now dirty, white linen uniform, wilted by the
heat--the uniform of Nareda's police. I remarked it to him.
"The government lent me the men," Spawn explained. "Of an ordinary time
I have only one guard."
"But this then, is not an ordinary time?" I hinted.
He looked at me sharply. And upon sudden impulse, I added:
"President Markes said something about you having a treasure here.
Radiumized quicksilver."
It was evidently Spawn's desire to appear thoroughly frank with me. He
laughed. "Well, then, if Markes has told you, then might I not as well
admit it? The treasure is here, indeed yes. Will you like to see it?"
* * * * *
He led me into a little strong room adjoining the smelter
coil-rectifiers. He flashed his hand searchlight. On the floor, piled
crosswise, were small moulded bars of refined quicksilver--dull,
darkened silver ingots of this world's most precious metal.
"Quite a treasure, Grant, here to-night. See, it is radiumized."
He snapped off his torch. In the darkness the little bars glowed
irridescent.
"To-morrow I will divide with our Nareda government. One-third for them.
And my own share I will export: to Great New York, this shipment.
Already I have the order for it."
He added calmly, "The duty is high, Grant. Too bad your big New York
market is protected by so large a duty. With my cost of
production--these accursed Lowland workmen who demand so much for their
labor, and a third of all I produce taken by Nareda--there is not much
in it for me."
He had re-lighted the room. I could feel his eyes on me, but I said
nothing. It was obvious to me now that he knew I was a government
customs agent.
I said, "This certainly interests me, friend Spawn. I'll tell you why
some other time."
We exchanged significant glances, both of us smiling.
"Well can I guess it, young Grant. So here is my treasure. Without the
duty I would soon be wealthy. Chut! Why should I roll in a pity for
myself? There is a duty and I am an honest man, so I pay it."
I said, "Aren't you afraid to leave this stored here?" I knew that this
pile of ingots--the quicksilver in its radiumized form--was worth four
or five hundred thousand dollars in American gold-coin at the very
least.
* * * * *
Spawn shrugged. "Who would attack it? But of course I will be glad to be
rid of it. It is a great responsibility--even though it carries
international insurance, to protect my and the Nareda Government share."
He was sealing up the heavy barred portals of the little strong-room.
There was an alarm-detector, connected with the office of Nareda's
police commander. Spawn set the alarm carefully.
"I have every safeguard, Grant. There is really no danger." He added, as
though with sudden thought. "Except possibly one--a depth bandit named
De Boer. Ever you have heard of him?"
"Yes. I have."
We climbed into Spawn's small automatic vehicle. The lights of the mine
faded behind us as we coasted the winding road down to the village.
"De Boer," said Spawn. "A fellow who lives by his wits in the depths.
Near here, perhaps: who knows? They say he has many followers--fifty--a
hundred, perhaps--outlaws: a cut-belly band it must be."
"Didn't he once take a hand in Nareda's politics?" I suggested.
Spawn guffawed. "That is so. He was once what they called a patriot
here. He thought he might be made President. But Markes ran him out. Now
he is a bandit. I have believe that American mail-ship which sank last
year in the cauldron north of the Nares Sea--you remember how it was
attacked by bandits?--I have always believe that was De Boer's band."
* * * * *
We rolled back to Nareda. Spawn's manner had again changed. He seemed
even more friendly than before. More at his ease with me. We had supper,
and smoked together in his living room for half an hour afterward. But
my thoughts were more on Jetta than on her father. There was still no
evidence of her about the premises. Ah, if I only had known what had
taken place there at Spawn's that afternoon while I was at the mine!
Soon after supper Spawn yawned. "I think I shall go to bed." His glance
was inquiring. "What are you going to do?"
I stood up. "I'll go to bed, too. Markes wants to see me early in the
morning. You'll be there, Spawn?"
"Yes. We will go together."
It was still no more than eight o'clock in the evening. Spawn followed
me to my bedroom, and left me at its door.
"Sleep well. I will call you in time."
"Thanks, Spawn."
I wondered if there were irony in his voice as he said good night. No
one could have told.
* * * * *
I did not go to bed. I sat listening to the silence of my room and the
garden, and Spawn's retreating footsteps. He had said he was sleepy, but
nevertheless I presently heard him across the patio. He was apparently
in the kitchen, cleaning away our meal, to judge by the rattling of his
pans. It was as yet not much after hour eight of the evening. The hours
before my tryst with Jetta seemed an interminable time to wait. She
might not come, though, I was afraid, until midnight.
At all events I felt that I had some hours yet. And it occurred to me
that the evening was not yet too far advanced for me to call upon
Perona. He lived not far from here, I had learned. I wanted to see this
beribboned old Minister of Nareda's Internal Affairs.
I would use as my excuse a desire to discuss further the possibility of
smuggler being here in Nareda.
I put on my hat and a light jacket, verified that my dirk was readily
accessible and sealed up my room. Spawn apparently was still in the
kitchen. I got out of the house, I felt sure, without him being aware of
it.
* * * * *
The Nareda streets were quiet. There was a few pedestrians, and none of
them paid much attention to me. It was no more than ten minutes walk to
Perona's home.
His house was set back from the road, surrounded by luxurious
vegetation. There was a gate in front of the garden, and another, a
hundred feet or to along a small alleyway which bordered the ground to
my left. I was about to enter the front gate when sight of a figure
passing under the garden foliage checked me. It was a man, evidently
coming from the house and headed toward the side gate. He went through a
shaft of light that slanted from one of the lower windows of the house.
Perona! I was sure it was he. His slight figure, with a gay,
tri-cornered hat. A short tasseled cloak hanging from his shoulders. He
was alone; walking fast. He evidently had not seen me. I crouched
outside the high front wall, and through its lattice bars I saw him
reach the side gate, open it swiftly, pass through, and close it after
him. There was something furtive about his manner, for all he was
undisguised. I decided to follow him.
The front street fortunately was deserted at the moment. I waited long
enough for him to appear. But he did not; and when I ran to the alley
corner--chancing bumping squarely into him--I saw him far down its dim,
narrow length where it opened into the back street which bordered his
grounds to the rear. He turned to the left and shot a swift glance up
the alley, which I anticipated, provided for by drawing back. When I
looked again, he was gone.
* * * * *
I have had some experience at playing the shadow. But it was not easy
here along the almost deserted and fairly bright Nareda streets. Perona
was walking swiftly down the slope toward the outskirts of the village
where it bordered upon the Nares Sea. For a time I thought he was headed
for the landing field, but at a cross-path he turned sharply to the
right, away from the field, whose sheen of lights I could now see down
the rocky defile ahead of me. There was nothing but broken, precipitous
rocky country ahead of him, into which this path he had taken was
winding. What could Perona, a Minister, be engaged in, wandering off
alone into this black, deserted region?
It was black indeed, by now. The village was soon far behind us. A storm
was in the night air; a wind off the sea; solid black clouds overhead
blotted out the moon and stars. The crags and buttes and gullies of this
tumbled area loomed barely visible about me. There were times when only
my feel of the path under my feet kept me from straying, to fall into a
ravine or crevice.
I prowled perhaps two hundred yards behind Perona. He was using a tiny
hand-flash now; it bobbed and winked in the darkness ahead, vanishing
sometimes when a curve in the path hid him, or when he plunged down into
a gully and up again. I had no search-beam. Nor would I have dared use
one: Perona could too obviously have seen that someone was following
him.
There was half a mile of this, I think, though it seemed interminable. I
could hear the sea, rising with the wind, pounding against the rocks to
my left. Then, a distance ahead, I saw lights moving. Perona's--and
others. Three or four of them. Their combined glow made a radiance which
illumined the path and rocks. I could see the figures of several men
whom Perona had joined. They stood a moment and then moved off. To the
right a ragged cliff wall towered the path. The spots of light bobbed
toward it. I caught the vague outline of a huge broken opening, like a
cave mouth in the cliff. The lights were swallowed by it.
I crept cautiously forward.
CHAPTER VI
_Ether-wave Eavesdropping_
I had thought it was a cavern mouth into which the men had disappeared,
but it was not. I reached it without any encounter. It loomed above me,
a great archway in the cliff--an opening fifty feet high and equally as
broad. And behind it was a roofless cave--a sort of irregularly circular
bowl, five hundred feet across its broken, bowlder-strewn, caked-ooze
floor.
I crouched in the blackness under the archway. The moon had risen and
its light filtered with occasional shafts through the swift-flying black
clouds overhead. The scene was brighter. It was dark in the archway, but
a glow of moonlight in the bowl beyond showed me its tumbled floor and
the precipitous, eroded walls, like a crater-rim, which encircled it.
The men whom Perona had met were across the bowl near its opposite side.
I could see the group of them, five hundred feet from me, by a little
moonlight that was on them; also by the sheen from the spots of their
hand-lights. Four or five men, and Perona. I thought I distinguished the
aged Minister sitting on a rock, and before him a huge giant man's
figure striding up and down. Perona seemed talking vehemently: the men
were listening; the giant paused occasionally in his pacing to fling a
question.
All this I saw with my first swift glance. My attention was drawn from
the men to an object near them. The nose of a flyer showed between two
upstanding crags on the floor of the valley. Only its forward horizontal
propellers and the tip of its cabin and landing gear were visible, but I
could guess that it was a fair-sized ship.
The men were too far away for me to hear them. Could I get across the
floor of the bowl without discovery? It did not seem so. The accursed
moonlight became stronger every moment. Then I saw a guard--a dark
figure of a man showing just inside the archway, some seventy feet from
me. He was leaning against a rock, facing my way. In his hands was a
thick-barreled electronic projector.
I could not advance: that was obvious. The moonlight lay in a clear
clean patch beyond the archway. The guard stood at its edge.
* * * * *
A minute or two had passed. Perona was still talking vehemently. I was
losing it: not a word was audible. Yet I felt that if I could hear
Perona now, much that Hanley and I wanted to learn would be made clear
to us. My little microphone receiver could be adjusted for audible air
vibrations. I crouched and held it cautiously above my head with its
face, like a listening ear, turned toward the distant men. My
single-vacuum amplification brought up the sound until their voices
sounded like whispers murmured in my ear-grids.
"De Boer, listen to me--"
Perona's voice. They must have been chance words spoken loudly. It was
all I could hear, save tantalizing, unintelligible murmurs.
So this was De Boer, the bandit! The big fellow pacing before Perona. I
wanted infinitely more, now, to hear what was being said.
I thought of Hanley. There might be a way of handling this.
I had to murmur very softly. I was hidden in these shadows from the
guard's sight, but he was close enough to hear my normal voice. I
chanced it. A wind was sucking through the archway with an audible
whine: the guard might not hear me.
"X. 2. AY."
The sorter's desk. He came in. I murmured Hanley's rating. "Rush.
Danger. Special."
It went swiftly through. Hanley, thank Heaven, was at his desk.
* * * * *
I plugged in my little image finder; held it over my head; turned it
slowly. I whispered:
"Look around, Chief. See where I am? Near Nareda; couple of miles out.
Followed Perona; he met these men.
"The big one is De Boer, the depth bandit. I can't hear what they're
saying--but I can send you their voice murmurs."
"Amplify them all you can. Relay them up," Hanley ordered.
I caught Perona's murmurs again; I swung them through my tiny
transformers and off my transmitter points into the ether.
"Hear them, Chief?"
"Yes. I'll try further amplification."
It was what I had intended. Hanley's greater power might be able to
amplify those murmurs into audible strength.
"I'm getting them, Phil."
He swung them back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum
and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I
saw the nearby guard turn his head as though startled. Listening....
But evidently he concluded it was nothing.
I cut down the volume. Hanley switched in.
"By God. Phil! This--"
"Off, Chief! Let me hear, too!"
* * * * *
He cut away. Those distorted voices! They came from Perona and the
bandits to me across this five hundred foot moonlit bowl; from me,
thirteen hundred miles up to Hanley's instruments; and back to me once
more. But the words, most of them, now were distinguishable.
Perona's voice: "I tell it to you. De Boer ... and a good chance for you
to make the money."
"But will they pay?"
"Of course they will pay. Big. A ransom princely."
"And why, Perona? Why princely? Who is this fellow--so important?"
"He is with rich business men, I tell to you."
"A private citizen?"
"... And a private citizen, of a surety. Fool! Have you come to be a
coward, De Boer?"
"Pah!"
"Well then I tell you it is a lifetime chance. All of it I have
arranged. If he was a government agent, that would be very different,
for they are very keen, this administration of the American government,
to protect their agents. But their private citizens--it is a scandal! Do
you not ever pick the newscasters' reports, De Boer? Has it not been a
scandal that this administration does very little for its citizens
abroad?"
"And you want to get rid of this fellow? Why, Perona?"
"That is not your concern. The ransom is to be all yours. Make away with
him--in the depths somewhere. Demand your ransom. Fifty thousand
gold-standards! Demand it of me. Of Nareda!"
"And you will pay it?"
"I promise it. Nareda will pay it--and Nareda will collect the ransom
from the American capitalists. Very easy."
His voice fell lower. "Between us, you will get the ransom money from
Nareda--and then kill your prisoner if you like. Call it an accident;
what matter? And dead men are silent men, De Boer. I will see that no
real pursuit is made after you."
* * * * *
They were talking about me! It was obvious. Questions rushed at me.
Perona, planning with this bandit to abduct me. Hold me for ransom. Or
kill me! But Perona knew that I was not a private citizen. He was lying
to De Boer, to persuade him.
Why this attack upon me? Was Spawn in on it? Why were they so anxious to
get rid of me? Because of Jetta? Or because I was dangerous, prying
into their smuggling activities. Or both?
De Boer: "... Get up with my men through the streets to Spawn's house?
You have it fixed?"
"Yes. Over the route from here as I told you, there are no police
to-night. I have ordered them off. In the garden. _Dios!_ You offer so
many objections! I tell you all is fixed. In an hour, half an hour; even
now, perhaps, the Americano is in the garden. The girl has promised to
meet him there. He will be there, fear not. Will you go?"
"Yes."
"Hah! That is the De Boer I have always admired!"
I could see them in the moonlight across the pit. Perona now standing
up, the giant figure of the bandit towering over him.
* * * * *
Hanley's microscopic voice cut in: "Getting it, Phil? To seize you for
ransom!"
"Yes. I hear it."
"This girl. Who--?"
"Wait, Chief. Off--"
De Boer: "I will do it! Fifty thousand."
Perona: "An hour now. Spawn will be at his home asleep."
"And you will go to the mine?"
"Yes. Now, from here. You seize this fellow Grant, and then attack the
mine. Our regular plan, De Boer. This does not change it."
Attack Spawn's mine! Half a million of treasure was there to-night!
Perona was chuckling: "You give Spawn's guards the signal. They are all
my men--in my pay. They will run away when you appear."
Hanley cut in again. "By the gods, they're after that treasure! Phil,
listen to me! you must...." His voice faded.
"Chief, I can't hear you!"
Hanley came again: "... And I will notify Porto Rico. The local patrol
will be about ready to leave."
"Or notify Nareda headquarters," I suggested. "If you can get President
Markes, he can send some police to the mine--"
"And find all Nareda's police bribed by Perona? I'll get Porto Rico. We
have an hour or two; the patrol can reach you in an hour."
The bandits were preparing to leave here. Two or three of them had gone
to the flyer. Perona and De Boer were parting.
"... Well, that is all, De Boer."
"Right, Senor Perona. I will start shortly."
"On foot, by the street route to Spawn's--"
Hanley's hurried voice came back: "I've sent the call to Porto Rico."
* * * * *
The guard had moved again. He was no more than forty feet away from me
now--standing up gazing directly toward where I was crouching over my
tiny instruments in the shadows of the rocky arch. A footstep sounded
behind me, on the path outside the arch. Someone approaching!
A tiny light bobbing!
Then a voice calling, "Perona! De Boer!"
The guard took a step forward; stopped, with levelled weapon.
Then the voice again: it was so loud it went through my opened relay,
flashed up to New York, and blew out half a dozen of Hanley's attuned
vacuums.
"Perona!"
Spawn's voice! He was coming toward me! I lay prone, my little grids
switched off. I held my breath.
Spawn's figure went past within ten feet of me. But he did not see me.
He met the guard. "Hello, Gutierrez. The damned American--"
Perona and De Boer came hastening. Spawn joined them in the moonlight
just beyond the archway, close enough for me to hear them plainly. Spawn
was out of breath, panting from his swift walk. He greeted them with a
roar.
"The American--he is gone!"
"_Dios!_ Gone where, Spawn?"
"The hell--how do I know, Perona? He is gone from his room--from the
house. Maybe he followed you here? Did he?"
CHAPTER VII
_Behind the Sealed Door_
There was a moment when I think I might have escaped unseen from that
archway. But I was too amazed at Spawn's appearance to think of my own
situation. I had believed that Perona was plotting against Spawn,
meeting these bandits in this secret place; I had just heard them
planning to attack Spawn's mine--to rob it of the treasure doubtless,
which I knew was stored there.
But I realized now it was not a plot against Spawn. He had come here
swiftly to join Perona and tell him that I, their intended victim, was
missing. He had greeted the bandit guard by name. He seemed, indeed, as
well known to these bandits as Perona himself.
They stood now in a group some thirty feet away from me. I could hear
their excited voices perfectly clearly. My instruments were off; but I
recall that as I listened to Spawn I was also aware of the tingle of the
electrode-band on my chest--Hanley, vigorously calling me back to find
out why I had so summarily disconnected.
"I took him to his room," Spawn was explaining excitedly. "De duvel, why
should I have sealed him in? How could I? He is no child!"
De Boer laughed caustically. "And so he has walked away from you? I
think I am a fool to mix myself with you two."
Perona retorted, "I have made you rich, De Boer. Think what you like;
to-night is the end of our partnership. Only, you do what I have told
you to-night."
"Hah! How can I? Your American has flown his trap."
This guard--this Gutierrez, as Spawn had called him--was listening with
interest. De Boer's several other men were gathered there. I felt
myself safe where I was, for the moment at least.
* * * * *
I cut Hanley in. "Chief, they're closer! Spawn has come! They've missed
me! I'll relay what they're saying, but you step it down; there's too
much volume."
"You're all right, Phil? Thank Heaven for that! Something blew my
vacuums."
"Chief, listen--here they are--"
Perona: "But he will be back. In the garden now, no doubt, with Jetta."
De Boer: "Ah--the little Jetta! So she is there, Spawn? Not in years
have you spoken of your daughter. A young lady now, I suppose. Is it
so?"
Spawn cursed. "We leave her out of this. You follow the Senor's plan."
"Come to your house? You think the bird will be there for me to seize?"
"Yes," Perona put in. "You go there; in an hour. Then to the mine."
Spawn undoubtedly was in this plot to attack his mine! He said, "At the
mine we have arranged everything. Damn this American! But for Perona I
would not bother with him."
"But you will bother," Perona interjected.
De Boer laughed again. "I would be witless could I not figure this! He
is a young man, and so handsome he has frightened you with the little
Jetta! Is that it, Perona? Jealous, eh?"
I had been holding the image finder so that Hanley might see them.
Hanley's voice rattled my ear-grid. "Phil! Get away from there! Look! De
Boer is searching!"
* * * * *
De Boer had, a moment before, spoken quietly aside to Gutierrez. And now
three or four of the men were spreading out, poking about with small
hand-flashes. Searching for me! The possibility that I might be here,
eavesdropping!
Hanley repeated vehemently, "Phil, they'll find you! Get out of there:
the way is still open!"
Gutierrez was approaching the archway. But I lingered a moment longer.
"Chief, you heard about that girl, Jetta, Spawn's daughter--"
I stopped. Perona was saying, "Spawn, was Jetta still in her room? You
did not untie her?"
"No."
"And gagged? Suppose the Americano was back there now? She might call to
him, and he would release her--"
De Boer: "How do you know he is not around here? Listening?"
With the assumption that I might be within hearing, De Boer tried to
trap me. Gutierrez, at a signal now, suddenly dashed through the archway
and planted himself on the path outside. The other searchers spread
their rays; the rocks all about me were lighted. But my niche was still
untouched.
De Boer: "If he is around here--"
Perona: "He could not have followed me; I was too careful."
I was murmuring: "Chief, they've got that girl."
"Phil, you get away! Go to Markes. Stay with him."
"But Chief, that Jetta, I--"
"Keep out of this! You're only one; you can't help any! I've sent for
the Porto Rican patrol ship to handle this."
"Chief, I'm going back to Spawn's."
"No--"
I cut off abruptly. In another moment I would have been discovered. The
searchers were headed directly for me.
* * * * *
I moved, crouching, back along the inner wall of the archway. The moon
was momentarily behind a cloud. It was black under the arch; and out
front it was so dim I could only see the faint blob of Gutierrez's
standing figure, and the spot of his flashlight.
Perona: "He is not around here, De Boer. That is foolish."
Spawn: "He could have gone anywhere. Maybe a walk around the village."
Perona: "Go back home, Spawn. De Boer will come--"
Their voices faded as I moved away. A searching bandit behind me poked
with his light into the crevice where a moment before I had been
crouching. I moved faster. Only Gutierrez now was in front of me. He was
at the far end of the arch. I could slip past, and still be fifty feet
from him--if I could avoid his swinging little light-beam.
I was running now, chancing that he would hear me. I was on the path; I
could see it vaguely.
From behind me came a sizzling flash, and the ting of the flying needle
as it missed me by a foot.
"The Americano! He goes there!"
Another shot. The shouts of the bandits in the archway. A turmoil back
there.
But it was all behind me. I leaped sidewise off the path as Gutierrez
small light-beam swept it. I ran stumbling through a stubble of
boulders, around an upstanding rock spire, back to the path again.
There were other shots. Then De Boer's voice, faint by distance: "Stop!
Fools! We will alarm the village! The landing field can see our shots
from here! Take it easy! You can't get him!"
The turmoil quieted. I went around a bend in the path, running swiftly.
Pursuit was behind me. I could hear them coming.
* * * * *
It was a run of no more than ten minutes to the junction where, down the
slope, I could see the lights of the landing field.
The glow of the village was ahead of me. Then I was in its outskirts.
Occasional dark houses. Deserted streets.
I slowed to a fast walk. I was breathless, panting in the heat.
I heard no pursuit now. But Spawn and the rest of them doubtless were
after me. Would they head back for Spawn's inn? I thought they would.
But I could beat them back there; I was sure there was no shorter route
than this I was taking.
Would they use their flyer? That would not gain them any time, what
with launching it and landing, for so short a flight. And a bandit flyer
could not very well land unseen or unnoticed, even in somnolent Nareda.
I reached the main section of the village. There were occasional lights
and pedestrians. My haste was noticeable, but I was not accosted. There
seemed no police about. I recalled Perona's remark that he had attended
to that.
My electrode was tingling. I had been running again. I slowed down.
"Chief?"
"Phil." His voice carried relief. "You got away?"
"Yes. I'm in the village."
"Go to President Markes."
"No, I'm headed for Spawn's! They're all behind me; I can get there a
few minutes ahead of them."
* * * * *
I panted an exclamation, incoherently, but frankly, about Jetta. "I'm
going to get her out of there."
"Phil, what in hell--"
I told him.
"So you've fallen in love with a girl? Entangled--"
"Chief!"
"Go after her, Phil! Got her bound and gagged, have they? Going to marry
her to this Perona? Like the Middle Ages?"
I had never seen this side of Hanley.
"Get her if you want her. Get her out of there. Take her to Markes--No,
I wouldn't trust anybody in Nareda! Take her into the uplands behind the
village. But keep away from that mine! Have you got flash-fuses?"
"Yes."
I was within sight of Spawn's house. The street was dim and deserted. I
was running again.
I panted. "I'm--almost at Spawn's!"
"Good! When it's over, whatever happens up there at the mine, then
signal the patrol."
"Yes."
I reached Spawn's front gate. The house and front garden were dark.
"Use your fuses, Phil. What colors?"
"I have red and blue."
"I'll talk to the patrol ship again. Tell them to watch for you. Red and
blue. Two short red flashes, a long blue."
"Right, Chief. I'm here at Spawn's, cutting off."
"Come back on when you can." His voice went anxious again. "I'll wait
here."
"All right."
I cut silent. I ran through the front doorway of Spawn's inn. The living
room was dim and empty. Which way was Jetta's room? I could only guess.
I had a few minutes, perhaps, before my pursuers would arrive.
* * * * *
I reached the inner, patio garden. The moon was well out from under the
clouds now. The patio shimmered, a silent, deserted fairyland.
"Jetta!" I called it softly. Then louder. "Jetta!"
Spawn's house was fairly large and rambling. There were so many rooms.
Jetta was gagged; how could she answer me? But I had no time to search
for her.
"Jetta?"
And then came her voice. "Philip?"
"Jetta! Which way? Where are you?"
"Here! This way: in my room."
A window and a door near the pergola. "Jetta!"
"Yes. I am in here. They tied me up. Not so loud, Phil: father will hear
you."
"He's gone out."
I reached her garden door. Turned its handle. Rattled the door. Shoved
frantically with my shoulder!
The metal door was firmly sealed!
_(To be continued)_
[Illustration: _One of the men rolled free and came Lurching toward
us._]
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