August 1930 Read online

  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--"
r />   "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."