Murder Madness

Murder Madness

CONCLUSION OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Murray Leinster_

[Illustration: _The deck was covered with panic-stricken folk who had
come in awful terror to watch. And all were slaves to The Master._]

[Sidenote: Bell has fought through tremendous obstacles to find and
kill The Master, whose diabolical poison makes murder-mad snakes of
the hands; and, as he faces the monster at last--his own hands start
to writhe!]


CHAPTER XV

The door of the car swung wide, and Ortiz's pale grim face peered in
behind the blue steel barrel of his automatic. He smiled queerly as
Jamison, with a grunt of relief, tapped Bell's wrist in sign to put
away his weapon.

"Ah, very well," said Ortiz, with the same queer smile upon his face.
"One moment."

He disappeared. On the instant there was the thunderous crashing of a
weapon. Bell started up, but Jamison thrust him back. Then Ortiz
appeared again with smoke still trickling from the barrel of his
pistol.

"I have just done something that I have long wished to do," he
observed coolly. "I have killed the chauffeur and his companion. You
may alight, now. I believe we will have half an hour or more. It will
do excellently."

He offered his hand to Paula as she stepped out. She seemed to shudder
a little as she took it.

"I do not blame you for shuddering, Senorita," he said politely, "but
men who are about to die may indulge in petty spites. And the
chauffeur was a favorite with the deputy for whom I am substituting.
Like all favorites of despots, he had power to abuse, and abused it. I
could tell you tales, but refrain."

* * * * *

The car had come to a stop in what seemed to be a huge warehouse, and
by the sound of water round about, it was either near or entirely
built out over the harbor. A large section near the outer end was
walled off. Boxes, bales, parcels and packages of every sort were
heaped all about. Bell saw crated air engines lying in a row against
one wall. There were a dozen or more of them. Machinery, huge cases of
foodstuffs....

"The Buenos Aires depot," said Ortiz almost gaily. "This was the point
of receipt for all the manufactured goods which went to the _fazenda_
of Cuyaba, Senor Bell. Since you destroyed that place, it has not been
so much used. However, it will serve excellently as a tomb. There are
cases of hand grenades yonder. I advise you to carry a certain number
with you. The machine guns for the air-craft, with their ammunition,
are here...."

He was hurrying them toward the great walled-off space as he talked,
his automatic serving as a pointer when he indicated the various
objects.

"Now, here," he added as he unlocked the door, "is your vessel. The
Master bought only amphibian planes of late. Those for Cuyaba were
assembled in this little dock and took off from the water. Your
destruction up there, Senor Bell, left one quite complete but
undelivered. I think another, crated, is still in the warehouse. I
have been very busy, but if you can fuel and load it before we are
attacked...."

They were in a roofed and walled but floorless shed, built into the
warehouse itself. Water surged about below them, and on it floated a
five passenger plane, fully assembled and apparently ready to fly,
but brand new and so far unused.

* * * * *

"I'll look it over," said Bell, briefly. He swung down the catwalk
painted on the wings. He began a swift and hasty survey. Soot on the
exhaust stacks proved that the motors had been tried, at least.
Everything seemed trim and new and glistening in the cabin. The fuel
tanks showed the barest trace of fuel. The oil tanks were full to
their filling-plugs.

He swung back up.

"Taking a chance, of course," he said curtly. "If the motors were all
right when they were tried, they probably are all right now. They may
have been tuned up, and may not. I tried the controls, and they seem
to work. For a new ship, of course, a man would like to go over it
carefully, but if we've got to hurry...."

"I think," said Ortiz, and laughed, "that haste would be desirable.
Herr Wiedkind--No! _Amigo mio_, it was that damned Antonio Calles who
listened to us last night. I found pencil marks beside the listening
instrument. He must have sat there and eavesdropped upon me many weary
hours, and scribbled as men do to pass the time. He had a pretty taste
in monograms.... I gave all the orders that were needful for you to
take off from the flying field. I even went there myself and gave
additional orders. And Calles was there. Also others of The Master's
subjects. My treason would provoke a terrible revenge from The Master,
so they thought to prove their loyalty by permitting me to disclose my
plan and foil it at its beginning.

"I would have made the journey with you to The Master, but as a
prisoner with the tale of my treason written out. So I returned and
changed the orders to the chauffeur, when all the Master's loyal
subjects were waiting at the flying field. But soon it will occur to
them what I have done. They will come here. Therefore, hasten!"

"We want food," said Bell evenly, "and arms, but mostly we want fuel.
We'll get busy."

* * * * *

He shed his coat and picked up a hand-truck. He rammed it under a drum
of gasoline and ran it to the walkway nearest to the floating plane.
Coiled against the wall there was a long hose with a funnel at its
upper end. In seconds he had the hose end in one of the wing
fuel-tanks. In seconds more he had propped the funnel into place and
was watching the gasoline gurgling down the hose.

"Paula," he said curtly, "watch this. When it's empty roll the drum
away so I can put another in its place."

She moved quickly beside it, throwing him a little smile. She set
absorbedly about her task.

Jamison arrived with another drum of gas before the first was emptied,
and Bell was there with a third while the second still gurgled. They
heaped the full drums in place, and Jamison suddenly abandoned his
truck to swear wrathfully and tear off his spectacles and fling them
against the wall. The bushy eyebrows and beard peeled off. His coat
went down. He began to rush loads of foodstuffs, arms, and other
objects to a point from which they could be loaded on the plane. Ortiz
pointed out the things he pantingly demanded.

In minutes, it seemed, he was demanding: "How much can we take? Any
more than that?"

"No more," said Bell. "All the weight we can spare goes for fuel. See
if you can find another hose and funnel and get to work on the other
tank. I'm going to rustle oil."

He came staggering back with heavy drums of it. A thought struck him.

"How do we get out? What works the harbor door?"

* * * * *

Ortiz pointed, smiling.

"A button, Senor, and a motor does the rest." He looked at his watch.
"I had better see if my fellow subjects have come."

He vanished, smiling his same queer smile. Bell worked frantically. He
saw Ortiz coming back, pausing to light a cigarette, and taking up a
hatchet, with which he attacked a packing case.

"They are outside, Senor," he called. "They have found the signs of
the car entering, and now are discussing."

He plucked something carefully from the packing box and went leisurely
back toward the door. Bell began to load the food and stores into the
cabin, with sweat streaming down his face.

There was the sound of a terrific explosion, and Bell jumped savagely
to solid ground.

"Keep loading! I'll hold them back!" he snapped to Jamison.

But when he went pounding to the back of the warehouse he found Ortiz
laughing.

"A hand grenade, Senor," he said in wholly unnatural levity. "Among
the subjects of The Master. I believe that I am going mad, to take
such pleasure in destruction. But since I am to die so shortly, why
not go mad, if it gives me pleasure?"

* * * * *

He peered out a tiny hole and aimed his automatic carefully. It
spurted out all the seven shots that were left.

"The man who poisoned me," he said pleasantly. "I think he is dead. Go
back and make ready to leave, Senor Bell, because they will probably
try to storm this place soon, and then the police will come, and
then.... It is amusing that I am the one man to whom those enslaved
among the city authorities would look for The Master's orders."

Bell stared out. He saw a small horde of people, frantically agitated,
milling in the cramped and unattractive little street of Buenos Aires'
waterfront. Sheer desperation seemed to impel them, desperation and a
frantic fear. They surged forward--and Ortiz flung a hand grenade. Its
explosion was terrific, but he had perhaps purposely flung it short.
Bell suddenly saw police uniforms, fighting a way through to the front
of the crowd and the source of all this disturbance.

"Go back," said Ortiz seriously. "I shall die, Senor Bell. There is
nothing else for me to do. But I wish to die with Latin melodrama." He
managed a smile. "I will give you ten minutes more. I can hold off the
police themselves for so long. But you must hasten, because there are
police launches."

* * * * *

He held out his hand. Bell took it.

"Good luck," said Ortiz.

"You can come--" began Bell, wrenched by the gaiety on Ortiz's face.

"Absurd," said Ortiz, smiling. "I should be murder mad within three
days. This is a preferable death, I assure you. Ten minutes, no more!"

And Bell went racing back and found Jamison rolling away the last of
the fuel drums and Paula looking anxiously for him.

"Tanks full," said Jamison curtly. "Everything set. What next?"

"Engines," said Bell.

He swung down and jerked a prop over. Again, and again.... The motor
caught. He went plunging to the other. Minutes.... They caught. He
throttled them down to the proper warming up roaring, while the air in
the enclosed space grew foul.

* * * * *

Once more to the warehouse. Ortiz shouted and waved his hand. He was
filling his pockets with hand grenades. Bell made a gesture of
farewell and Ortiz seemed to smile as he went back to hold the
entrance for a little longer.

"We're going," said Bell grimly. "Get your guns ready, Jamison, for
when the door goes up."

He pressed on the button Ortiz had pointed out. There were more
explosions and the rattle of firearms from the front of the warehouse.
There was a sudden rumble of machinery and the blank front of the
little covered dock rose suddenly. The sunlit waters of Buenos Aires
harbor spread out before them. To Bell, who had not looked on sunlight
that day, the effect was dazzling. He blinked, and then saw a fast
little launch approaching. There were uniformed figures crowded about
its bows.

"All set!" he snapped. "I'm going to give her the gun."

"Go to it," said Jamison. "We're--"

The motors bellowed and drowned out the rest. The plane shuddered and
began to move. The sound of explosions from the back of the warehouse
was loud and continuous, now. Out into the bright sunlight the plane
moved, at first heavily, then swiftly....

Bell saw arms waving wildly in the launch with the uniformed men.
Sunlight glittered suddenly on rifle barrels. Puffs of vapor shot out.
Something spat through the wall beside Bell. But the roaring of the
motors kept up, and the pounding of the waves against the curved bow
of the boat-body grew more and more violent.... Sweat came out on
Bell's face. The ship was not lifting....

* * * * *

But it did lift. Slowly, very slowly, carrying every pound with which
it could have risen from the water. It swept past the police launch at
ninety miles an hour, but no more than five feet above the waves. A
big, clumsy tramp flying the Norwegian flag splashed up river with its
propeller half out of water. Bell dared to rise a little so he could
bank and dodge it. He could not rise above it.

He had one glimpse of blonde, astonished beards staring over the stern
of the tramp as he swept by it, his wing tips level with its rail and
barely twenty feet away. And then he went on and on, out to sea.

He began to spiral for height fully four miles offshore, and looked
back at the sprawling city. Down by the waterfront a thick, curling
mass of smoke was rising from one spot abutting on the water. It
swayed aside and Bell saw the rectangular opening out of which the
plane had come.

"Ortiz's in there," he said, sick at heart. "Dying as he planned."

But there was a sudden upheaval of timbers and roof. A colossal burst
of smoke. A long time later the concussion of a vast explosion. There
was nothing left where the warehouse had been.

Bell looked, and swore softly to himself, and felt a fresh surge of
the hatred he bore to The Master and all his works. And then filmy
clouds loomed up but a little above the rising plane, and Bell shot
into them and straightened out for the south.

* * * * *

For many long hours the plane floated on to southward, high above a
gray ocean which seemed deceptively placid beneath a canopy of thin
clouds. The motors roared steadily in the main, though once Bell
instructed Jamison briefly in the maintenance of a proper course and
height, and swung out into the terrific blast of air that swept past
the wings. He clung to struts and handholds and made his way out on
the catwalk to make some fine adjustment in one motor, with six
thousand feet of empty space below the swaying wing.

"Carburetter wrong," he explained when he had closed the cabin window
behind him again and the motors' roar was once more dulled. "It was
likely to make a lot of carbon in the cylinders. O.K., now."

Paula's hand touched his shyly. He smiled abstractedly at her and went
back to the controls.

And then the plane kept on steadily. Time and space have become purely
relative in these days, in startling verification of Mr. Einstein, and
the distance between Buenos Aires and Magellan Strait is great or
small, a perilous journey or a mere day's travel, according to the
mind and the transportation facilities of the voyager. Before four
o'clock in the afternoon the coast was low and sandy to the westward,
and it continued sterile and bare for long hours while the plane hung
high against the sky with a following wind driving it on vastly more
swiftly than its own engines could have contrived.

* * * * *

It was little before sunset when the character of the shore changed
yet again, and the sun was low behind a bank of angry clouds when the
stubby forefinger of rock that Magellan optimistically named the Cape
of the Eleven Thousand Virgins reached upward from the seemingly
placid water. Bell swept lower, then, much lower, looking for a
landing place. He found it eight or nine miles farther on, on a wide
sandy beach some three miles from a lighthouse. The little plane
splashed down into tumbling sea and, half supported by the waves and
half by the lift remaining to its wings, ran for yards up upon the
hard packed sand.

The landing had been made at late twilight, and Bell moved stiffly
when he rose from the pilot's seat.

"I'm going over to that lighthouse," he said curtly. "There won't be
enough men there to be dangerous and they probably haven't frequent
communication with the town. I'll learn something, anyway. You two
stay with the plane."

Jamison lifted his eyebrows and was about to speak, but looked at
Bell's expression and stopped. Leadership is everywhere a matter of
emotion and brains together, and though Jamison had his share of
brains, he had not Bell's corroding, withering passion of hatred
against The Master and all who served him gladly. All the way down the
coast Bell had been remembering things he had seen of The Master's
doing. His power was solely that of fear, and the deputies of his
selection had necessarily been men who would spread that terror with
an unholy zest. The nature of his hold upon his subjects was such that
no honorable man would ever serve him willingly, and for deputies he
had need of men even of enthusiasm. His deputies, then, were men who
found in the assigned authority of The Master full scope for the
satisfaction of their own passions. And Bell had seen what those
passions brought about, and there was a dull flame of hatred burning
in his eyes that would never quite leave them until those men were
powerless and The Master dead.

* * * * *

"You'll look after the ship and Paula," said Bell impatiently. "All
right?"

Jamison nodded. Paula looked appealingly at Bell, but he had become a
man with an obsession. Perhaps the death of Ortiz had cemented it, but
certainly he was unable to think of anything, now, but the necessity
of smashing the ghastly hold of The Master upon all the folk he had
entrapped. Subconsciously, perhaps, Bell saw in the triumph of The
Master a blow to all civilization. Less vaguely, he foresaw an attempt
at the extension of The Master's rule to his own nation. But when Bell
thought of The Master, mainly he remembered certain disconnected
incidents. The girl at Ribiera's luxurious _fazenda_ outside of Rio,
who had been ordered to persuade him to be her lover, on penalty of a
horrible madness for her infant son if she failed. Of a pale and
stricken _fazendiero_ on the Rio Laurenco who thought him a deputy and
humbly implored the grace of The Master for a moody twelve year old
girl. Of a young man who kept his father, murder mad, in a barred room
in his house and waited despairingly for that madness to be meted out
upon himself and on his wife and children. Of a white man who had been
kept in a cage in Cuyaba, with other men....

* * * * *

Bell trudged on through the deepening night with his soul a burning
flame of hatred. He clambered amid boulders, guided by the tall
lighthouse of Cape Possession with the little white dwelling he had
seen at its base before nightfall. He fell, and rose, and forced his
way on and upward, and at last was knocking heavily at a trim and
neatly painted door.

He was so absorbed in his rage that his talk with the lighthouse
keeper seemed vague in his memory, afterward. The keeper was a wizened
little Welshman from the Chibut who spoke English with an
extraordinary mixture of a Spanish intonation and a Cimbrian accent.
Bell listened heavily and spoke more heavily still. At the end he went
back to the plane with a spindle-shanked boy with a lantern
accompanying him.

"All settled," he said grimly, when Jamison came out into the darkness
with a ready revolver to investigate the approaching light. "We get a
boat from the lighthouse keeper to go to Punta Arenas in. He's a
devout member of some peculiar sect, and he's seen enough of the hell
Punta Arenas amounts to, to believe what I told him of its cause. His
wife will look after Paula, and this boy will hitch a team to the
plane and haul it out of sight early in the morning. With the help of
God, we'll kill Ribiera and The Master before sunset to-morrow."


CHAPTER XVI

But they did not kill The Master before nightfall. It was not quite
practicable. Bell and Jamison started out well before dawn with a
favorable wind and tide, in the small launch the wizened Welshman
placed at their disposal. His air was one of dour piety, but he
accepted Bell's offer of money with an obvious relief, and criticized
his Paraguayan currency with an acid frankness until Jamison produced
Argentine pesos sufficient to pay for the boat three times over.

"I think," said Jamison dryly, "that Pau--that Miss Canalejas is safe
enough until we come back. The keeper is a godly man and knows we
have money. She'll be in no danger, except of her soul. They may try
to save that."

Bell did not answer. He could think of nothing but the mission he had
set himself. He tinkered with the engine to make it speed up, and set
the sails with infinite care to take every possible advantage of the
stiff breeze that blew. During the day, those sails proved almost as
much of a nuisance as a help. The fiendish, sullen williwaws that blow
furiously and without warning about the Strait required watching, and
more than once it was necessary to reef everything and depend on the
motor alone.

Bell watched the horizon ahead with smouldering eyes. Jamison watched
him almost worriedly.

"Look here, Bell," he said at last, "you'll get nowhere feeling like
you do. I know you've done The Master more damage than I have, but
you'll just run your head into a trap unless you use your brains. For
instance, you didn't ask about communications. There's a direct
telegraph wire from Cape Virgins to Buenos Aires, and there's
telephonic communication between the Cape and Punta Arenas. Do you
imagine that the plane wasn't seen when it came in the Cape? And do
you imagine The Master doesn't know we're here?"

* * * * *

Bell turned, then, and frowned blackly.

"I hadn't thought of it," he said grimly, "but I put some hand
grenades in the locker, there."

"You damned fool!" said Jamison angrily. "Stop being bloodthirsty and
use your head! You haven't even asked what I've done! I've done
something, anyhow. That bundle I chucked in the bow has a couple of
sheepmen's outfits in it. Lots of sheep raised around here. We'll put
'em on before we land. And like a good general, I arranged a method of
retreat before we left B. A. There'll be a naval vessel here in two or
three days. She's carrying a party of Government scientists. She'll
anchor in Punta Arenas harbor and announce a case of some infectious
disease on board. No shore leave, you see, and nobody from shore
permitted on board her. And she has one or two damned good analytical
chemists with a damned good laboratory on board her, too. It's a long
gamble, but if we can get hold of some of The Master's poison.... Do
you see?"

"Yes," said Bell heavily. "I see. But you haven't been through what
I've been through. What I've done, fighting that devil, has caused men
to be deserted after being enslaved. There's one place, Cuyaba...."

His face twitched. That place was in his dreams, now. That place and
others where human beings had watched their bodies go mad, and had
been carried about screaming with horror at the crimes those bodies
committed....

"I'm going to kill The Master," he rasped. "That's all."

He settled down to his grim watch for the city. All during the cloudy,
overcast day he strained his eyes ahead. Jamison could make nothing of
him. In the end he had to leave Bell to his moody waiting.

* * * * *

The morning passed, and midday, and a long afternoon. Three times Bell
came restlessly back to the engine and tried to coax more speed out of
it. But when darkness fell the town was still not in sight. They kept
on, then, steering by the stars with the motor putt-putt-putting
sturdily away in the stern. The water splashed and washed all about
them. The little boat rose, and fell, and rose and fell again.

"That's the town," said Bell grimly.

It was eleven at night, or later. Lights began to appear, very far
away, dancing miragelike on the edge of the water. They grew nearer
with almost infinite slowness. Two wide bands of many lights, with a
darker space in which a few much brighter lights showed clearly.
Presently a single red light appeared, the Punta Arenas harbor light,
twenty-five feet up on an iron pole. They passed it.

"Bell," said Jamison curtly, "it's time you showed some sense, now.
We're going to find out some things before we get reckless. This town
isn't a big one, but it always was a hell on earth. No extradition
from here. It's full of wanted men. It's dying, now, from the old days
when all ships passed the Straits before the Panama Canal opened up,
but it ought to be still a hell on earth. And we're going to put on
these sheepmen outfits, and put up at some low caste sailors' and
sheepmen's hotel on shore, and find out what is what. In the morning,
if you like--"

"In the morning," said Bell coldly, "I'm going to settle with The
Master."

* * * * *

They found a small and filthy hotel, in a still filthier street where
the houses were alternately black and silent and empty, and filled
with the squalid hilarity most seaport towns can somehow manage to
support. The street lamps were white and cold. The dirt and squalor
showed the more plainly by their light. There were sailors from the
few ships in harbor, and women so haggard and bedraggled that shrill
laughter and lavish endearments remained their only allure. And Bell
and Jamison plodded to the reeking place in which a half-drunk
sheepman pointed, and there Bell sat grimly in the vermin infested
room while Jamison, swearing wryly, went out.

He came back later, much later. His breath was strong of bad whiskey
and he looked like a man who feels that a bath would be very
desirable. He looked like a man who feels unclean.

"Give me a cigarette," he said shortly. "I found out most of what we
want to know."

* * * * *

Bell gave him a cigarette and waited.

"Good thing you stayed behind," said Jamison. "I want to vomit. Why
people go in hell holes for fun.... But I was very drunk and very
amorous. Picked up a woman and fed her liquor. Young, too. Damnation!
She got crying drunk and told me everything she knew. I gave her money
and left. Punta Arenas is The Master's, body and soul."

"One could have guessed it," said Bell grimly.

"Nothing like it is," said Jamison. "Every living creature, man,
woman, and child, has been fed that devilish poison of his. The
keepers of the dives go fawning to the local officials for the
antidote. The _jefe politico_ is driven in his carriage to be cured
when red spots form before his eyes. The damned place is full of
suicides, and women, and--oh, my God! It's horrible!"

A humming, buzzing noise set up off in the night somewhere. It kept up
for a long time, throttled down. Suddenly it seemed to grow louder,
changed in pitch, and dwindled as if into the far, far distance.

"That's one of The Master's planes now, no doubt," said Jamison
savagely, "going off on some errand for him. He uses this place
practically as an experiment station. The human beings here are his
guinea pigs. The deputies get a standardized form of the stuff, but
he's got it worked out in different doses so he can make a man go mad
in hours, if he chooses, instead of after a delay. I don't know how.
And The Master--"

* * * * *

He checked himself sharply. There were shuffling footsteps in the hall
outside. A timid tap on the door. Jamison opened it, while Bell
dropped one hand inconspicuously to a weapon inside his shapeless
clothing.

The toothless and filthy old man who kept the hotel beamed in at them.

"_Senores_," he cackled. "_Vdes son de Porvenir, no es verdad?_"

Jamison hiccoughed, as one who has been out and been drunken ought to
do.

"_No, viejo_," he rumbled tipsily, "_somos de la estancia del Senor
Rubio. Vaya._"

The old man seemed to mourn that they did not come from the sheep
ranches about Porvenir Bay. But he produced a bottle with a shaking
hand, still beaming.

"_Tengo muchos amigos en Porvenir_," he chirped amiably. "_Y questa
botella--_"

"_Demela_," rumbled Jamison. He reached out his hand.

"_No mas que poquito!_" said the old man, beaming but anxious as
Jamison tilted it to his lips. "_Es visky de gentes...._"

He beamed upon Bell, and Bell swallowed a spoonful and seemed to
swallow vastly more. He lay back lazily while Jamison in the part of a
tipsy sheepherder bullied the old man amiably and eventually chased
him out.

"You're amused?" asked Jamison sardonically, when there were no more
sounds outside. "Because I said you didn't want to meet the young
senorita who loved you when she saw you downstairs? Well, Bell, if you
used your brain you didn't swallow any of that stuff."

Bell started up. Jamison caught him by the shoulder.

"I'm not sure," he said sharply. "Of course not. But it's damned funny
for a Spanish hotel keeper to give something for nothing, even when he
seemed just to want to gossip about his friends. Here. Drink this
water. It looks vile enough to take the place of mustard...."

* * * * *

Next morning the hotel keeper beamed upon them both as they went out
of the place. A slatternly, dark haired girl who leaned on his
shoulder smiled invitingly at Bell. And Bell, in his character of a
loutish sheepman from one of the ranches that dot the shores of the
Strait, grinned awkwardly back. But he went on with Jamison.

"We separate," said Jamison under his breath. "We want to find where
The Master lives, mostly, and then we want to find the laboratory
where his stuff is mixed. We don't want to do any killing until that's
settled. After all, the Trade has something to say!"

Bell codded indifferently and began to wander idly about the streets,
turning here and there as if moved by nothing more than the vaguest
curiosity. But gradually he was working through the sections in which
the larger buildings stood. Concrete structures, astonishingly modern,
dotted the business section. But none of them had the air that would
surround a place where a man with power of life or death would be. In
a town the size of Punta Arenas there would be unmistakable evidences
about The Master's residence, even if it were only that those who
passed it did so hurriedly and with a twinge of fear.

* * * * *

There were prosperous men in plenty on the streets, mingled with
deserting sailors, stockmen and farmers from the villages along the
Strait, and even a few grimy men who looked like miners. But there is
a lignite mine not far from the city, and a narrow gauge railroad
running to it. Of the prosperous-seeming men, however, Bell picked out
one here and there toward whom all passersby adopted a manner of
cringing respect. Bell lounged against a pole and studied them
thoughtfully. Men with an air of amused and careless scorn which only
men with unlimited power may adopt. He saw one grossly fat man with
hard and cruel eyes. The uniformed policemen drove all traffic
abjectly out of the way of his carriage, and stood with lifted hat
until he had passed. The fat man gave no faintest sign of
acknowledgment.

"I wonder," said Bell slowly, and very grimly, "if that's The Master?"

And then a passerby dodged quickly past his shoulder, brushing against
him, and waited humbly in the street. Bell turned. A party of men were
taking up nearly all the sidewalk. There were half a dozen of them in
all. And nearly in the middle was the bulky, immaculate, pigmented
Ribiera.

Bell stiffened. But to move, beyond clearing the way, would be to
attract attention. He backed clumsily off the curbing as if making
way....

And Ribiera looked at his face.

* * * * *

Bell's hand drifted near his hidden weapon. But Ribiera looked neither
surprised nor alarmed. He halted and chuckled.

"Ah, the Senhor Bell!"

Bell said nothing, looking as stupid as possible, merely because there
was nothing else to do.

"Ah, do not deny my acquaintance!" said Ribiera. He laughed. "I advise
you to go and look at the view, over the harbor. Good day, Senhor
Bell."

Laughing, he went off along the street. And Bell felt a cold horror
creeping over him as he realized what Ribiera might mean. Ribiera had
entirely too much against him to greet him only, in a town where even
the dogs dared not bark without The Master's express command. He had
guards with him, men who would have shot Bell down at a nod from
Ribiera.

Bell burst into a mad run for the waterfront. When the bay spread out
before his eyes he saw what Ribiera meant, and something seemed to
snap in his brain.

The plane in which he and Jamison and Paula had escaped in was
floating out in the harbor. It was unmistakable. A larger, bulkier
seaplane floated beside it. The buzzing in the air the night
before.... The arrival of the plane had been telephoned from Cape
Virgins. Through a glass, perhaps, even its alighting had been
watched. And a big seaplane had gone out to bring it back. Footprints
in the sand would lead toward the lighthouse. There would be plenty of
men to storm that, if necessary, to take the three fugitives. But they
would have found only Paula. It was quite possible that the plane had
only been sent for after Bell and Jamison had been seen to land in
Punta Arenas. And Paula in The Master's hands would explain Ribiera's
amusement perfectly.

* * * * *

Bell found Jamison looking unhurriedly for him. And Jamison glanced at
his utterly white face and said softly:

"We want to get where we can't be seen, to talk. There's the devil to
pay."

"No use hiding," said Bell. His lips seemed stiff. "Paula--"

"Hide anyway," snapped Jamison. He fairly thrust Bell into an alleyway
between two houses and thrust two rounded objects beneath his loose
fitting coat. "Two grenades. I have two more. The boat we came in is
taken--"

"So is the plane," said Bell emotionlessly.

"And there is a sign, in English, posted where we tied it up. The sign
says, '_The Senores Bell and Jamison may recover their boat on
application to The Master, and may also receive news of a late
traveling companion from him._"

"We're known," Bell told him--and amazingly found it possible to smile
faintly--"Ribiera met me on the street and spoke to me and laughed and
went on."

Jamison stared. Bell's manner was almost entirely normal again. Then
Jamison shrugged.

"The sense of what you're saying," he observed wryly, "is that we're
licked. Let us, then, go to see The Master. I confess I feel some
curiosity to know just what he's like."

* * * * *

Bell was smiling. Being in an entirely abnormal state, he had a
curious certitude of the proper course to adopt. He went up to a
policeman and said politely, in Spanish:

"I am desired to report to The Master, himself. Will you direct me?"

The policeman abased himself instantly and trotted with them as a
guide. And Bell walked naturally, now, with his head up and his
shoulders back, and smoked leisurely as he went, and the policeman's
abasement became abject. All who walked with that air of amused
superiority in Punta Arenas were high in the service of The Master.
Obviously, the two men in these dejected clothes must also be high in
the service of The Master, and had adopted their disguise for purposes
into which a mere policeman and a slave of The Master should not dare
enquire.

Jamison was rather grim and still. Jamison thought he was walking to
his death. But Bell smiled peculiarly and talked almost gaily and--as
Jamison thought--almost irrationally.

* * * * *

They came to a house set in a fairly spacious lawn behind a rather
high wall. There were greenhouses behind it, and there were flowers
growing as well as any flowers can be expected to grow in such high
altitudes. It was an extraordinarily cheerful dwelling to be found in
Punta Arenas, but the shuddering fear with which the little policeman
removed his hat as he entered the gateway was instructive.

They were confronted by four other policemen, on guard inside the
gate.

"_Estos Senores_--" began the abject one.

"Take us to The Master," commanded Bell in a species of amused and
superior scorn.

"It is required, Senor," said the leader of the four on guard, very
respectfully, "it is required that none enter without being searched
for weapons."

Bell laughed.

"Does The Master manage things so?" he asked scornfully. "Now, where I
am deputy no man would dare to think of a weapon to be used against
me! If it is The Master's rule, though...."

The policeman cringed. Bell scornfully thrust an automatic out.

"Take it," he snapped. "And go and tell The Master that the Senores
Bell and Jamison await his pleasure, and that they have given up
their weapons."

The policeman scuttled toward the house. Bell smiled at his cigarette.

"Do you know, Bell," said Jamison dryly, in English, "I'd hate to play
poker with you."

"I'm not bluffing," said Bell. "Not altogether. I've a four card
flush, with the draw to come."

* * * * *

Almost instantly the policeman returned, more abject still. He had
stammered out Bell's message, just as it was given him. And the slaves
of The Master did not usually disobey orders, especially orders
designed to prevent any danger of a doomed man or woman trying to
assassinate The Master before madness was complete. Bell and Jamison
were received by liveried servants in utter silence and conducted
through a long passageway, too long to have been contained entirely in
the house as seen from the front. Indeed, they came out into a great
open greenhouse, in which the smell of flowers was heavy. There were
flowers everywhere, and a benign, small old man with a snowy beard and
hair, sat at a desk as if chatting of amiable trivialities with the
frock-coated men who stood about him. The white haired old man lifted
a blossom delicately to his nostrils and inhaled its perfume with a
sensitive delight. He looked up and smiled benignly upon the two.

It was then that Jamison got a shock surpassing all the rest. Bell's
hands were writhing at the ends of his wrists, writhing as if they
were utterly beyond his control and as if they were longing to rend
and tear....

And Bell suddenly looked down at them, and his expression was that of
a man who sees cobras at the ends of his arms.


CHAPTER XVII

There was a long pause. Bell was very calm. He seemed to tear his eyes
from the writhing hands that were peculiarly sensate, as if under the
control of in intelligence alien to his own.

"I believe," said Bell steadily, "that The Master wishes to speak to
me."

With an apparent tremendous effort of will, he thrust his hands into
his pockets. Jamison cursed softly. Bell had taken the direction of
things entirely out of his hands. It only remained to play up.

"To be sure," said a mild, benevolent voice. The man with the snowy
beard regarded Bell exactly in the fashion of an elderly
philanthropist. "I am The Master, Senor Bell. You have interested me
greatly. I have grown to have a great admiration for you. Will you be
seated? Your companion also pleases me. I would like"--and the mild
brown eyes beamed at him--"I would like to have your friendship, Senor
Bell."

"Pull out a chair for me, Jamison," said Bell in a strained voice.
"And--I'd like to have a cigarette."

Jamison, cursing under his breath, put a chair behind Bell and stuck a
cigarette between his lips. He held a match, though his hands shook.

"You might sit down, too," said Bell steadily. "From the manner of The
Master, I imagine that the conversation will take some time."

* * * * *

He inhaled deeply of his cigarette, and faced the little man again.
And The Master looked so benevolent that he seemed absolutely
cherubic, and there was absolutely no sign of anything but the utmost
saintliness about him. His eyes were clear and mild. His complexion
was fresh and translucent. The wrinkles that showed upon his face were
those of an amiable and a serene soul filled with benevolence and
charity. He looked like one of those irritatingly optimistic old
gentlemen who habitually carry small coins and stray bits of candy in
their pockets for such small children as they may converse with under
the smiling eyes of nurses.

"Ah, Senor Bell," he said gently. "You do cause me to admire you. May
I see your hands again?"

Bell held them out. He seemed to have conquered their writhing to some
extent. But he could not hold them quite still. Sweat stood out on his
forehead. He thrust them abruptly out of sight again.

"Sad," said The Master gently. "Very sad." He sighed faintly and laid
down the rose he had been toying with. His fingers caressed the soft
petals delicately. "Fortunately," he said benevolently, "it is not yet
too late for me to relieve the strain under which you labor, Senor.
May I send for a certain medicine which will dispose of those symptoms
in a very short time?"

"We'll talk first," said Bell harshly. "I want to hear what you have
to say."

* * * * *

The Master nodded, his fingers touching the rose petals as if in a
sensitive pleasure in their texture.

"Always courageous," he said benignly. "I admire it while I combat it.
But the Senor Jamison...."

Jamison had been looking fascinatedly at his own hands, opening and
closing the fingers with a savage abruptness. They obeyed him, though
they trembled.

"I didn't drink the damned stuff that hotel keeper brought us last
night," he growled. "Bell did. And I--"

"Wait a minute, Jamison," said Bell evenly. "Let's talk to The Master
for a while. I swore, sir," he said grimly, "that I'd kill you. I've
seen what your devilish poison does, in the hands of the men you've
chosen to distribute it. I've seen"--he swallowed and said
harshly--"I've seen enough to make me desire nothing so much as to see
you roast in hell! But you wanted to talk to me. Go ahead!"

* * * * *

The Master beamed at him, and then glanced about at the frock-coated
men who had been attending him. Bell glanced at them. Ribiera was
there, chuckling.

"I told you, _tio mio_," he said familiarly, "that he would not be
polite. You can do nothing with him. Better have him shot."

Francia, of Paraguay, nodded amusedly to Bell as their eyes met. But
The Master shook his really rather beautiful head. An old man can be
good to look at, and with a saintly aureole of snow-white hair and the
patriarchal white beard, The Master was the picture of benign and
beautiful old age.

"Ah, you do not understand," he protested mildly. "The more the Senor
Bell shows his courage, _hijo mio_, the more we must persuade him." He
turned to Bell. "I realise," he said gently, "that there are hardships
connected with the administration of my power, Senor. It is
inevitable. But the Latin races of the continent which is now nearly
mine require strong handling. They require a strong man to lead them.
They are comfortable only under despotism. The task I have chosen for
you is different, entirely. _Los Americanos del Norte_ will not
respond to the treatment which is necessary for those _del Sud_. Their
governments, their traditions, are entirely unlike. If you become my
deputy and viceroy for all your nation, you shall rule as you will. A
benevolent, yet strong, rule is needed for your people. It may even
be--I will permit it--that the democratic institutions of your nation
may continue if you so desire. I am offering you, Senor, the position
of the absolute ruler of your nation. You may interfere with the
present government not at all, if you choose, provided only that my
own commands are obeyed when relayed through you. I choose you because
you have courage, and resource, and because you have the _Yanqui_
cleverness which will understand your nation and cope with it."

* * * * *

Bell inhaled deeply.

"In other words," he said bitterly, "you're saying indirectly that you
offer me a chance to be the sort of ruler Americans will submit to
without too much fuss, because you think one of Ribiera's stamp would
drive them to rebellion."

The fine dark eyes twinkled.

"You have much virtue, Senor. My nephew--though he is to be my
successor--has a weakness for a pretty face. Would you prefer that I
give him the task of subduing your nation?"

"You might try it," said Bell. His eyes gleamed. "He'd be dead within
a week."

The Master laughed softly.

"I like you, Senor. I do like you indeed. I have not been so defied
since another _Americano del Norte_ defied me in this same room. But
he had not your resource. He had been enslaved with much less
difficulty than yourself. I do not remember what happened to him...."

"He was taken, Master," said a fat man with hard eyes, obsequiously,
"he was taken in Bolivia." It was the man whom Bell had seen earlier
that morning in a carriage. "You gave him to me. He had insulted me
when I ordered him sent to you. I had him killed, but he was very
obstinate."

"Ah, yes," said The Master meditatively. "You told me the details." He
seemed to recall small facts in benevolent retrospection. "But you,
Senor Bell, I have need of you. In fact, I shall insist upon your
friendship. And therefore--"

He beamed upon Bell.

"I give you back the Senorita Canalejas."

* * * * *

He shook his head reproachfully at the utterly grim look in Bell's
eyes.

"I shall give you one single portion of the antidote to the medicine
which makes your hands behave so badly. You may take it when you
please. The Senor Jamison I shall keep and enslave. I do not think he
will be as obstinate as you are, but he has excellent qualities. If
you prove obdurate, I may yet persuade him to undertake certain tasks
for me. But you and the Senorita Canalejas are free. Your boat has
been reprovisioned and provided with fuel. You may go from here where
you will."

Ribiera snarled.

"_Tio mio_," he protested angrily, "you promised me--"

"Your will in many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all.
Remember that you have much to learn, _hijo mio_. I have taught you to
prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my
place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his
hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy.
The Senorita Canalejas belongs to the Senor Bell."

Jamison was staring, now, but Bell's eyes had narrowed to mere slits.

"You see," said The Master gently, to him, "I desire your friendship.
You may go where you will. You may take the Senorita Canalejas with
you. You will have enough of the antidote to my little medicine to
keep you sane for perhaps a week. In one week you may go far, with
her. You may do many things. But you cannot find a place of safety for
her. I still have a little power, Senor. If you take her with you,
your hands will writhe again. Your body will become uncontrollable.
Your eyes, staring and horror-struck, will observe your own hands
rending her. While your brain is yet sane you will see this body of
yours which now desires her so ardently, tearing at and crushing that
delicate figure, gouging out her eyes, battering her tender flesh,
destroying her.... Have you ever seen what a man who has taken my
little medicine does to a human being at his mercy?"

* * * * *

The figures about The Master were peculiarly tense. The fat man with
the hard eyes laughed suddenly. It was a horrible laugh. Francia of
Paraguay took out his handkerchief and delicately wiped his lips. He
was smiling. Ribiera looked at Bell's face and chuckled. His whole
gross figure shook with his amusement.

"And of course," said The Master benignly, "if you prefer to commit
suicide, if you prefer to leave her here--well, my nephew knows little
expedients to reduce her will to compliance. You recall _Yague_, among
others."

Bell's face was a white mask of horror and fury. He tried to speak,
and failed. He raised his hand to his throat--and it tore at the
flesh, insanely.

"Let--let me see her," croaked Bell, as if strangling.

Jamison stiffened. Bell seemed to be trying to get his hands into his
pockets. They were apparently uncontrollable. He thrust them under his
coat as there was a stirring at the door.

* * * * *

And Paula was brought in, as if she had been waiting. She was entirely
colorless, but she smiled at Bell. She came quickly to his side.

"I heard," she said in a clear and even little voice. "We will go
together, Charles. If there is a week in which we can be together, it
will be so much of happiness. And when you are--The Master's victim,
we will let the little boat sink, and sink with it. I do not wish to
live without you, Charles, and you do not wish to live as his slave."

Bell gave utterance to a sudden laugh that was like a bark. His hands
came out from under his coat. Dangling from each one was a small,
pear-shaped globule of metal. A staff projected upward from each one,
and he held those staffs in his writhing hands. About each wrist was a
tiny loop of cord that went down to a pin at the base of the staffs.

"Close to me, Paula," he said coldly. She clung to his arm. He moved
forward, with half-a-dozen revolver muzzles pointed at his breast.

"If one of you damned fools fires," he said harshly, "I'll let go.
When I let go--these are Mills grenades, and they go off in three
seconds after they leave the hand. Stand still!"

* * * * *

There was a terrible, frozen silence. Then a movement from behind
Bell. Jamison was rising with a grunt.

"Some day, Bell," he observed coolly, "I'll be on to all of your
curves. This is the best one yet. But you're likely to let go at any
second, aren't you?"

"Like hell!" raged Bell. "I drank some of your poison," he snarled at
The Master. "Yes! I was fool enough to do it! But I took what measures
any man will take who finds he's swallowed poison. I got it out of my
stomach at once. And if you or one of these deputies tries to
move...."

Ribiera had blanched to a pasty gray. The Master was frozen. But Bell
saw Ribiera's eyes move in swift calculation. There was a solid wall
behind The Master. It seemed as if the greenhouse were a sort of
passageway between two larger structures. And there was a door almost
immediately behind Ribiera. Ribiera glanced right--left--

He flung himself through that door. He knew the secret of The Master's
power. He was The Master's appointed successor. If The Master and all
his deputies died, Ribiera....

But Bell snapped into action like a bent spring released. His arm shot
forward. A grenade went hurtling through the door through which
Ribiera had fled. There was an instantaneous, terrific explosion. The
solid wall shook and shivered and, with a vast deliberation,
collapsed. The greenhouse was full of crushed plaster dust. Panes of
glass shivered....

But Bell was upon The Master. He had struck the little man down and
stood over him, his remaining automatic replacing the grenade he had
thrown.

"Ribiera's dead," he snapped, "and if I'm shot The Master dies too and
you all go mad! Stand back!"

The deputies stood frozen.

"I think," said Jamison composedly, "I take a hand now. I'll pick him
up, Bell.... Right. I've got him. With a grenade hanging down his
back. If he jerks away from me, or I from him, it will blow his spine
to bits."

"Hold him so," said Bell coldly.

* * * * *

He went coolly to where he could look over the heap of the collapsed
wall. He saw a bundle of torn clothing that had been a man. It was
flung against a cracked and tottering chimney.

"Right," he said evenly. "Ribiera's dead, all right."

He turned to the deputies, whose revolvers were still in their hands.

"The Master's carriage, please," he said politely. "To the door. You
may accompany us if you please, but in other carriages. I am working
for the release of all the Master's slaves, and you among them if you
choose. But you can see very easily that there is no hope of the
release of The Master without the meeting of my terms."

The Master spoke, softly and mildly and without fear.

"It is my order that the Senor Bell is to be obeyed. I shall return.
You need have no fear of my death. My carriage."

A man went stiffly, half-paralyzed with terror, to where chattering
scared servants were grouped in the awful fear that came upon the
slaves of The Master at any threat to his rule.

But Bell and Paula and Jamison went slowly and cautiously--though they
held the whip hand--to the entrance door of the house, and out to the
entrance gate. A carriage was already before the door when they
reached it, and others were drawing up in a line behind it.

"Get in," said Bell briefly. "Down to the waterfront."

He turned to the group of frock-coated, stricken men who had followed.

"Some of you men," he said coldly, "had better go on ahead and warn
the police and the public generally about the certainty of The
Master's death if any attempt is made to rescue him."

Francia, of Paraguay, summoned a swagger and raised his hand to the
second carriage. It drew in to the curb.

"I will attend to it, Senor Bell," he said politely. "Ah, when I think
that I once raised my revolver to shoot you and refrained!"

He drove off swiftly.

* * * * *

Bell's eyes were glowing. He got into the carriage, and such a
procession drove through the streets of Punta Arenas as has rarely
moved through the streets of any city in the world. The long line of
carriages moved at a funereal pace amid a surging, terrified mob. The
Master beamed placidly as he looked out over white, starkly agonized
faces. Some of the people groaned audibly. A few cursed The Master in
their despair. More cursed Bell, not daring to strike or fire on him.
But he would have been torn to bits if he had stepped from the
carriage for an instant.

"Bell," said Jamison dryly, "considering that I'm prepared to be blown
apart on three seconds notice, it is peculiar that this mob frightens
me."

The Master's eyes twinkled benignly. He seemed totally insensible to
fear.

"You need not be afraid," he said gently. "They will not touch you
unless I order them."

Jamison stared down at the little man whose collar he held firmly,
with a Mills grenade dangling down at the base of his neck.

"I wouldn't order them to attack, if I were you," he said coldly. "I
haven't Bell's brains, but I have just as much dislike for you as he
has."

* * * * *

They came to the harbor. Bell spoke again.

"The carriage is to drive out to the end of one of the docks, and no
one else is to go out on that dock."

The Master relayed the order in his mild voice, but as the coachman
obeyed him he clucked his tongue commiseratingly.

"Senor Bell," he protested gently. "You do not expect to escape! Not
after killing me! Why that is absurd!"

Bell said nothing. He alighted from the carriage, his face set grimly,
and stared ashore at the long, long row of terrified faces staring out
at him. The whole waterfront seemed to be lined with staring faces.
Wails came from that mass of enslaved human beings.

"Hold him here, Jamison," he said drearily. "I'm going out to look at
that big plane. There's a rowboat tied to the dock, here."

He swung down the side into the dock and rowed off into the harbor,
while the horses attached to The Master's carriage pawed impatiently
at the wooden flooring of the dock. Bell reached the two planes
anchored on the still harbor water. The smaller one had brought them
down from Buenos Aires. The larger one had gone after the beached
amphibian and brought it and Paula on to the city. Bell, from the
shore, was seen to be investigating the larger one. He came rowing
back.

His head appeared above the dock edge.

"All right," he said tiredly. "The Master has a rule requiring all his
ships ready for instant flight. Very useful. The big plane is fueled
and full of oil. We'll go out to it and take off."

* * * * *

Jamison lifted The Master to his feet and with a surge of muscles
swept him down to the flooring of the dock.

"Paula first," said Bell, "and then The Master, and then you,
Jamison."

"One moment," said The Master reproachfully. "It would be cruel not to
let me reassure my subjects. I will give an order."

Bell and Jamison listened suspiciously. But he spoke gently to the
coachman.

"You will tell the deputies," said The Master in Spanish, "that a
month's supply of medicine for all my subjects will be found in my
laboratory. And you may tell them that I shall return before the end
of that time."

The coachman's eyes filled with a passionate relief.

"Now," said The Master placidly, "I am ready for our little jaunt."

Paula descended the ladder and seated herself in the bow of the boat.
Bell covered The Master grimly with his automatic as he descended,
with surprising agility. Jamison came down last, and resumed his
former grip on The Master's collar. Bell rowed out to the big plane.

* * * * *

Jamison kept close watch while Bell started the four huge motors and
throttled them down to warming up speed, and while he hauled up the
anchor with which the huge seaplane was anchored.

The dock was covered with a swarm of panic stricken folk. Everywhere,
all the inhabitants of the city who were slaves to The Master had come
in awful terror to watch. And all the inhabitants of the city were
slaves to The Master. Some of them fell to their knees and held out
imploring arms to Bell, begging him for mercy and the return of The
Master. Some cursed wildly.

But, with his jaws set grimly, Bell gave the motors the gun.

The big plane moved heavily, then more swiftly through the water. It
lifted slowly, and rose, and rose, and dwindled to a speck high in the
air.

And all through the streets and ways of Punta Arenas, fear stalked
almost as a tangible thing. Panic hovered over the housetops, always
ready to descend. Terror was in the air that every man breathed, and
every human being looked at every other human being with staring,
haunted eyes. Punta Arenas was waiting for its murder madness to
begin.


CHAPTER XVIII

There were four motors to pull the big plane through the air, and
their roaring was a vast thundering noise which the earth re-echoed.
But inside the cabin that tumult was reduced to a not intolerable
bumming sound.

"What'll I do with this devil, Bell?" asked Jamison. "Now that we're
aloft, I confess this grenade makes me nervous. I'm holding it so
tightly my fingers are getting cramped."

"Tie him up," said Bell, without looking. "He'll talk presently."

Movements. The plane flew on, swaying slightly in the way of big
sea-planes everywhere. A williwaw began in the hills ahead and swept
out and set the ship to reeling crazily in its erratic currents. The
Strait vanished and there were tumbled hills below them. Minutes
passed.

"Got him fixed up," said Jamison coolly, "I'll guarantee he won't
break loose. Got any plans, Bell?"

"No time," said Bell. "I haven't had time to make any. The first thing
is to get where his folk will never find us. Then we'll see what we
can do with him."

Paula looked at the now bound figure of The Master. And the little old
man beamed at her.

"He--he's smiling!" said Paula, in a voice that was full of a peculiar
horrified shock.

* * * * *

Bell shrugged. Punta Arenas was all of twenty-five miles behind, and
the earth over which they _flew_ began to take on the shape of an
island. Water appeared beyond it, and innumerable small islands. Bell
began to rack his brain for the infinitesimal scraps of knowledge he
had about this section of the world. It was pitifully scanty. Punta
Arenas was the southernmost point of the continental mass. All about
it was an archipelago and a maze of waterways, thinly inhabited
everywhere and largely without any inhabitants at all. The only solid
ground between Cape Horn and the Antarctic ice pack was Diego Ramirez
and the South Shetlands....

Nothing to go on. But any sufficiently isolated and desolate spot
would do. Almost anywhere along the southern edge of the continental
islands should serve.

The plane roared on monotonously, while Bell began to wrestle with
another and more serious problem. In three days--two, now--an American
naval vessel would turn up, with scientists and chemists on board. It
was to be doubted whether anything like an overt act would be risked
by that vessel. If all the governments of South America were under The
Master's thumb, then cabled orders from his deputies would race three
navies to the spot. And the government of the United States does not
like to start war, anywhere. Certainly it would not willingly enter
into a conflict with the whole southern continent for the solution of
a problem that so far affected that continent alone. The Master's
kidnapping had solved nothing, so far.

* * * * *

Jamison tapped his shoulder.

"No pursuit, so far," he observed coolly. "I've looked." Bell nodded.

"They don't dare. Not yet, anyhow. They're depending on The Master.
How is he?"

"Smiling peacefully to himself, damn him!" snarled Jamison. "Do you
know what we're up against?"

"Ourselves," said Bell coldly. "But I'm nearly licked. He's got to
talk!"

Jamison moved away again. The earth below looked as if it had been
torn to shreds in some titanic convulsion of ages past. The sea was
everywhere, and so was land! There were little threads of silver
interlacing and crossing and wavering erratically in every conceivable
direction. And there were specks of islands--rocks only yards in
extent--and islands of every imaginable size and shape, with their
surfaces in every possible state of upheaval and distortion. A broader
mass of land appeared ahead and to the left.

"Tierra del Fuego again," muttered Bell. "If we cross it...."

For fifteen minutes the plane thundered across desolate, rocky hills.
Then the maze of islets again. Bell scanned them keenly, and saw a
tiny steamer traveling smokily, for no conceivable reason, among the
scattered bits of stone. The sea appeared, stretching out toward
infinity.

Bell rose, to survey a wider space. He swung to the left, so that he
was heading nearly southeast, and went on down toward that desolation
of desolations, the stormy cape which faces the eternal ice of the
antarctic. He was five thousand feet up, then, and scanning sea and
earth and sky....

And suddenly he swung sharply to the right and headed out toward the
open sea. He felt a small figure pressing against his shoulder.
Presently fingers closed tightly upon his sleeve. He glanced down at
Paula and managed to smile.

"There are some rocks out there," he told her quietly. "Islands, I
think, and Diego Ramirez, at a guess."

* * * * *

They were specks, no more, but they were vastly more distinct from the
plane than from Mount Beaufoy. That is on Henderson Island in New Year
Sound, and its seventeen-hundred-foot peak was almost below Bell when
he sighted the islands. But the islands have been seen full fifty
miles from there.

It took the plane nearly forty minutes to cover the space, but long
before that the islands had become distinct. Two tiny groups of
scattered rocks, the whole group hardly five miles in length and by
far the greater number no more than boulders surrounded by sheets of
foam from breakers. Two of them merited the name of islands. The
nearer was high and bare and precipitous. No trace of vegetation
showed upon it. The farther was smaller, and at its northern corner a
little cove showed, nearly land-locked.

Bell descended steeply. The big plane plunged wildly in the air eddies
about the taller island at five hundred feet, but steadied and went
winging on down lower, and lower.... The waves between the two
islands were not high, but the seaplane alighted with a mighty, a
tremendous splashing, and Bell navigated it grimly though clumsily
into the mouth of the cove. There a small beach showed. He went very
slowly toward it. Presently he swung abruptly about. A wing tip float
grounded close to the shore.

The motors cut off and left a thunderous silence. Bell climbed atop
the cabin and let go the anchor.

"We're here," he said shortly. "Bring The Master and we'll go ashore."

* * * * *

The catwalk painted on the lower wing guided them. Bell jumped to the
rocks first, and stumbled, and then rose to lift Paula down and take
The Master's small, frail body from Jamison's arms.

"You looked for a gun?" asked Bell

"He'd nothing to fight with," said Jamison heavily. He had been facing
the same problem Bell had worked on desperately, and had found no
answer. But he shuddered a little as he looked about the island.

There was nothing in sight but rock. No moss. No lichens. Not even
stringy grass or the tufty scrub bushes that seemed able to grow
anywhere.

Bell untied The Master, carefully but without solicitude. The little
man sat up, and brushed himself off carefully, and arranged himself in
a comfortable position.

"I am an old man," said The Master in mild reproach. "You might at
least have given me a cushion to sit upon."

Bell sat down and lighted a cigarette with fingers that did not
tremble in the least.

"Suppose," he said hardly, "you talk. First, of what your poison is
made. Second, of what the antidote is made. Third, how we may be sure
you tell the truth."

* * * * *

The Master looked at him with bright, shrewd, and apparently kindly
old eyes.

"_Hijo mio_," he said mildly, "I am an old man. But I am obstinate. I
will tell you nothing."

Bell's eyes glowed coldly.

"Does it occur to you," he asked grimly, "that it's too important a
matter for us to have any scruples about? That we can--and will--make
you talk?"

"You may kill me," said The Master benignly, "but that is all."

"And," said Bell, still more grimly, "we have only to get back in the
plane yonder, and go away...."

The Master beamed at him. Presently he began to laugh softly.

"_Hijo mio_," he said gently, "let us stop this little byplay. You
will take me back in my airplane, and you will land me at Punta
Arenas. And then you will fly away. I concede you freedom, but that is
all. You cannot leave me here."

"Paula," said Bell coldly, "get in the plane again. Jamison--"

Paula rose doubtfully. Jamison stood up. The Master continued to
chuckle amiably.

"You see," he said cherubically, "you happen to be a gentleman, Senor
Bell. Every man has some weakness. That is yours. And you will not
leave me here to die, because you have killed my nephew, who was the
only other man who knew how to prepare my little medicine. And you
know, Senor, that all my subjects will wish to die. Those who do, in
fact," he added mildly, "will be fortunate. The effect of my little
medicine does not make for happiness without its antidote."

* * * * *

Bell's hands clenched.

"You know," said The Master comfortably, "that there are many
thousands of people whose hands will writhe, very soon. The city of
Punta Arenas will be turned into a snarling place of maniacs within a
very little while--if I do not return. Would you like, Senor, to think
in after days of that pleasant city filled with men and women tearing
each other like beasts? Of little children, even, crouching, and
crushing and rending the tender flesh of other little children? Of
lisping little ones gone--"

"Stop!" snarled Bell, in a frenzy. "Damn your soul! You're right! I
can't! You win--so far!"

"Always," said The Master benevolently. "I win always. And you forget,
Senor. You have seen the worst side of my rule. The revolutions, the
rebellions that have made men free, were they pretty things to watch?
Always, _amigo_, the worst comes. But when my rule is secure, then you
shall see."

* * * * *

He waved a soft, beautifully formed hand. From every possible aspect
the situation was a contradiction of all reason. The bare, black, salt
encrusted rocks with no trace of vegetation showing. The gray water
rumbling and surging among the uneven rocks at the base of the shore,
while gulls screamed hoarsely overhead. The white haired little man
with his benevolent face, smiling confidently at the two grim men.

"The time will come," said The Master gently, and in the tone of utter
confidence with which one states an inescapable fact, "the time will
come when all the earth will know my rule. The taking of my little
medicine will be as commonplace a thing as the smoking of tobacco,
which I abhor, Senores. You are mistaken about there being an antidote
and a poison. It is one medicine only. One little compound. A
vegetable substance, Senor Bell, combined with a product of modern
chemistry. It is a synthetic drug. Modern chemistry is a magnificent
science, and my little medicine is its triumph. Even my deputies have
not heard me speak so, Senores."

Bell snarled wordlessly, but if one had noticed his eyes they would
have been seen to be curiously cool and alert and waiting. The Master
leaned forward, and for once spoke seriously, almost reverently.

"There shall be a forward step, Senores, in the race of men. Do you
know the difference between the brain of a man and that of an
anthropoid ape? It consists only of a filmy layer of cortex, a film of
gray nerve cells which the ape has not. And that little layer creates
the difference between ape and man. And I have discovered more. My
little medicine acts upon that film. Administered in the tiny
quantities I have given to my slaves, it has no perceptible effect. It
is merely a compound of a vegetable substance and a synthetic organic
base. It is not excreted from the body. Like lead, it remains always
in solution in the blood. But in or out of the blood it changes,
always, to the substance which causes murder madness. Fresh or
changed, my little medicine acts upon the brain."

* * * * *

He smiled brightly upon them.

"But though in tiny quantities it has but little effect, in larger
quantities--when fresh it makes the functioning of the gray cells of
the human brain as far superior to the unmedicated gray cells, as
those human gray cells are to the white cells of the ape! That is what
I have to offer to the human race! Intelligence for every man, which
shall be as the genius of the past!"

He laughed softly.

"Think, Senores! Compare the estate of men with the estate of apes!
Compare the civilization which will arise upon the earth when men's
brains are as far above their present level as the present level is
above the anthropoid! The upward steps of the human race under my rule
will parallel, will surpass the advance from the brutish caveman to
intellectual genius. But I have seen, Senores, the one danger in my
offering."

There was silence. Jamison shook his head despairingly. The Master
could not see him. He formed the word with his lips.

"Crazy!"

* * * * *

But Bell said coldly:

"Go on."

"I must rule," said The Master soberly. "It is essential. If my little
secret were known, intelligences would be magnified, but under many
flags and with many aims. Scientists, with genius beside which
Newton's pales, would seek out deadly weapons for war. The world would
destroy itself of its own genius. But under my rule--"

"Men go mad," said Bell coldly.

The Master smiled reproachfully.

"Ah, you are trying to make me angry, so that I will betray something!
You are clever, Senor Bell. With my little medicine, in such
quantities as I would administer it to you...."

"You describe it," said Bell harshly and dogmatically, "as a brain
stimulant. But it drives men mad."

"To be sure," said The Master mildly. "It does. It is not excreted
from the body save very, very slowly. But it changes in the blood
stream. As--let us say--sugar changes into alcohol in digestion. The
end-product of my little medicine is a poison which attacks the brain.
But the slightest bit of unchanged medicine is an antidote. It is"--he
smiled amiably--"it is as if sugar in the body changed to alcohol, and
alcohol was a poison, but sugar--unchanged--was an antidote. That is
it exactly. You see that I have taken my little medicine for years,
and it has not harmed me."

"Which," said Bell--and somehow his manner made utter silence fall so
that each word fell separately into a vast stillness--"which, thank
God, is the one thing that wins finally, for me!"

* * * * *

He stood up and laughed. Quite a genuine laugh.

"Paula," he said comfortably, "get on the plane. In the cabin. Jamison
and I are going to strip The Master."

Paula stared. The Master looked at him blankly. Jamison frowned
bewilderedly, but stood up grimly to obey.

"But Senor," said The Master in gentle dignity, "merely to humiliate
me--"

"Not for that," said Bell. He laughed again. "But all the time I've
been hearing about the stuff, I've noticed that nobody thought of it
as a drug. It was a poison. People were poisoned. They did not become
addicts. But you--you are the only addict to your drug."

He turned to Jamison, his eyes gleaming.

"Jamison," he said softly, "did you ever know of a drug addict who
could bear to think of ever being without a supply of his drug--_right
on his person_?"

Jamison literally jumped.

"By God! No!"

The Master was quick. He was swarming up the plane-wing tip before
Jamison reached him, and he kicked frenziedly when Jamison plucked him
off. But then it was wholly, entirely, utterly horrible that the
little white haired man, whose face and manner had seemed so cherubic
and so bland, should shriek in so complete a blind panic as they
forced his fingers open and took a fountain pen away from him.

"This is it," said Bell in a deep satisfaction. "This is his point of
weakness."

* * * * *

The Master was ghastly to look at, now. Jamison held him gently
enough, considering everything, but The Master looked at that fountain
pen as one might look at Paradise.

"I--I swear," he gasped. "I--swear I will give you the formula!"

"You might lie," said Jamison grimly.

"I swear it!" panted The Master in agony. "It--If the formula is known
it--can be duplicated! It--the excretion can be hastened! It can all
be forced from the body! Simply! So simply! If only you know! I will
tell you how it is done! The medicine is the cacodylate of--"

Bell was leaning forward, now, like a runner breasting the tape at the
end of a long and exhausting race.

"I'll trade," he said softly. "Half the contents of the pen for the
formula. The other half we'll need for analysis. Half the stuff in the
pen for the formula for freeing your slaves!"

The Master sobbed.

"A--a pencil!" he gasped. "I swear--"

Jamison gave him a pencil and a notebook. He wrote, his hinds shaking.
Jamison read inscrutably.

"It doesn't mean anything to me," he said soberly, "but you can read
it. It's legible."

Bell smiled faintly. With steady finger he took his own fountain pen
from his pocket. He emptied it of ink, and put a scrupulous half of a
milky liquid from The Master's pen into it. He passed it over.

"Your medicine," said Bell quietly, "may taste somewhat of ink, but it
will not be poisonous. Now, what do we do with you? I give you your
choice. If we take you with us, you will be held very secretly as a
prisoner until the truth of the information you have given us can be
proven. And if your slaves have all been freed, then I suppose you
will be tried...."

* * * * *

The Master was drawn and haggard. He looked very, very old and beaten.

"I--I would prefer," he said dully, "that you did not tell where I am,
and that you go away and leave me here. I--I may have some subjects
who will search for me, and--they may discover me here.... But I am
beaten, Senor. You know that you have won."

Bell swung up on the wing of the plane. He explored about in the
cabin. He came back.

"There are emergency supplies," he said coldly. "We will leave them
with you, with such things as may be useful to allow you to hope as
long as possible. I do not think you will ever be found here."

"I--prefer it, Senor," said The Master dully. "I--I will catch
fish...."

Jamison helped put the packages ashore. The Master shivered. Bell
stripped off his coat and put it on top of the heap of packages. The
Master did not stir. Bell laid a revolver on top of his coat. He went
out to the plane and started the motors. The Master watched
apathetically as the big seaplane pulled clumsily out of the little
cove. The rumble of the engines became a mighty roar. It started
forward with a rush, skimmed the water for two hundred yards or so,
and suddenly lifted clear to go floating away through the air toward
the north.

* * * * *

Paula was the only one who looked back.

"He's crying," she said uncomfortably.

"It isn't fear," said Bell quietly. "It's grief at the loss of his
ambition. It may not seem so to you two, but I believe he meant all
that stuff he told me. He was probably really aiming, in his own way,
for an improved world for men to live in."

The plane roared on. Presently Bell said shortly:

"That stuff he has won't last indefinitely. I'm glad I left him that
revolver."

Jamison stirred suddenly. He dug down in his pocket and fished out a
cigar.

"Since I feel that I may live long enough to finish smoking this," he
observed dryly, "I think I'll light it. I haven't felt that I had
twenty minutes of life ahead of me for a long time, now. A sense of
economy made me smoke cigarettes. It wouldn't be so much waste if you
left half a cigarette behind you when you were killed."

* * * * *

The tight little cabin began to reek of the tobacco. Paula pressed
close to Bell.

"But--Charles," she asked hopefully, "is--is it really all right,
now?"

"I think so," said Bell, frowning. "Our job's over, anyhow. We go up
the Chilean coast and find that navy boat. We turn our stuff over to
them. They'll take over the task of seeing that every doctor,
everywhere in South America, knows how to get The Master's poison out
of the system of anybody who's affected. Some of them won't be
reached, but most of them will. I looked at his formula. Standard
drugs, all of them. There won't be any trouble getting the news
spread. The Master's slaves will nearly go crazy with joy. And," he
added grimly, "I'm going to see to it that the Rio police take back
what they said about us. I think we'll have enough pull to demand that
much!"

He was silent for a moment or so, thinking.

"I do think, Jamison," he said presently, "we did a pretty good job."

Jamison grunted.

"If--if it's really over," said Paula hopefully, "Charles--"

"What?"

"You--will be able to think about me sometimes," asked Paula
wistfully, "instead of about The Master always?"

Bell stared down at her.

"Good Lord!" he groaned. "I have been a brute, Paula! But I've been
loving you--" He stopped, and then said with the elaborate politeness
and something of the customary idiotic air of a man making such an
announcement. "I say, Jamison, did you know Paula and I were to be
married?"

Jamison snorted. Then he said placidly:

"No. Of course not. I never dreamed of such a thing. When did this
remarkably original idea occur to you?"

He puffed a huge cloud of smoke from his cigar. It was an unusually
vile cigar. Bell scowled at him helplessly for a moment and then said
wrathfully:

"Oh, go to hell!"

And he bent over and kissed Paula.

(_The End._)

[Advertisement: IN THE NEXT ISSUE

JETTA OF THE LOWLANDS
_Beginning an Exciting Three-Part Novel of the Nares Deep_
By Ray Cummings

AN ATTACK FROM SPACE
_A Sequel to "Beyond the Heaviside Layer"_
By Captain S. P. Meek

MAROONED UNDER THE SEA
_A Thrilling Novelet of the Ocean Floor_
By Paul Ernst

EARTH, THE MARAUDER
_The Conclusion of the Tremendous Novel_
By Arthur J. Burks

----_AND OTHERS!_]