CHAPTER XXIV - LEMBKEN
The maneuvers of our party had been so skilfully planned and carried out so surely that the Temple fell into our hands almost immediately. Entering upon that side which faced the Airscouts’ Fortress, our men had surprised and overpowered the guards posted about the elevators, and driven them in flight toward the Science Wing, into which Sanson withdrew to rally them about him.
The Council Hall and offices beneath it were occupied as quickly. Including the Airscouts’ Fortress, we had thus three-fourths of the quadrilateral in our possession; but the Guard held the Science Wing in strength, and, of course, the surrounding wall, armed with the Ray artillery and commanding everything within it.
The change of fortune was so swift that I could hardly grasp its significance immediately. Carrying Esther, and surrounded by a frenzied mob, I was dragged from the bridge to the corridor of the elevators, between Elizabeth and David, pent up among five hundred men, some carrying Ray rods and trying to force their way through the Temple in the direction of the Science Wing, others returning, realizing the impossibility of pushing through the crowds, and others, merely spectators, unarmed, who had gone mad with delirious joy. The confusion was indescribable, and, to make it worse, these people seemed to look to me for leadership, while I was caught in the throng and helpless. Precious moments were passing.
Into the mob burst a man heading a little group of revolutionists.
“Follow me!” he shouted. “To the Science Wing! Capture the bridges! Follow me!”
As he spoke the Temple lights went out. I was not yet clear of the bridge. Inch by inch I struggled onward, but in the darkness the confusion was still more undisciplined; and while the oncoming party still fought for a foothold I heard a rending, straining sound behind me, a crash of wood, and a mighty fall that set the whole building echoing. Shouts, oaths, and groans came from below; the span on which we stood shook from the concussion.
There was no need to ask what had occurred. Sanson had cut down the farther half of the bridge, securing himself against attack from the upper floor of the Temple.
Then a voice, bellowing with rage and ferocity, arose:
“Follow me! Seize the elevators! To Lembken! To the People’s House!”
The mob broke and dissolved, carrying me with it into the corridor. I saw the leader with the Assyrian beard heading the rush for the elevator shafts. He carried all with him. But the shafts were empty; the elevators had been drawn up. There followed howls of fury.
“Lembken!” shrieked the mob. “Out with him! Out with the defective!”
It was queer, that word; but one impulse animated all. They plunged after their leader, scrambling up the ironwork of the interior, and clinging there like flies as they worked their way upward. The little band of disciplined men alone stood still, and their chief turned to me with a wry look.
“We are too late,” he said. “Sanson has got his men together. We shall have to storm the Wing from below. Half our men have joined in that mad attack on Lembken, who is helpless, whereas Sanson—”
He shrugged his shoulders in despair. Then David turned to me.
“You must bring them back, Arnold,” he said. “They will obey and follow you. Leave Esther—”
He saw the look on my face, and began to plead with me. “It is your duty, Arnold,” he cried. “All will be lost unless you can draw off our men from the Palace. I will protect her with my life.” He bent down and looked into Esther’s face, and an expression of amazement came upon his own. It occurred to me afterward that he had never believed that Esther really lived. But at the time only the thought of this flickered through my brain, and it yielded to more urgent ones.
“They will follow you!” cried David.
I hesitated no longer. I placed Esther’s unconscious body in Elizabeth’s arms, and, without stopping to glance at her, lest it sap my resolution, I plunged into the shaft and began to scramble upward.
Somehow I reached the summit. I fell upon my hands within the Palace. The mob was swarming everywhere, in every room, it seemed, and through the gardens. I ran out under the dome. The winter sun shone through a gray fog, a blood-red ball of fire.
The yelling mob swept through the groves. Its fury was unleashed, and the remembered wrongs of years impelled it to universal destruction. I saw at the first glance that these men were beyond the power of argument. With their bare hands they tore up palms and tossed them down into the courts through jagged holes in the transparent walls. They tore the panes out of their settings, twisting the thin, un-splintering glass until it writhed everywhere, coiled, crystal snakes among the uprooted flowers. They spared nothing. The yellow orange spheres gleamed in the rank grass. The scent of orange flowers was choking.
I ran among them, calling on them to follow me back, for the sake of our cause, to join their comrades, hard pressed by Sanson. Most of them did not seem to hear me; some raised their heads from their work, stared at me for a moment, and resumed their wild task of ruin. It came to me then that I was unknown to them. Not one in a hundred of these men had seen my face more than a moment or two upon the altar platform.
I turned and ran through the Palace rooms, still calling, and still unheeded. The mob was sweeping onward like an avalanche. They had torn the costly hangings from the walls. From the blue rooms, mull rooms, red rooms, purple rooms, all the baroque, fantastic, and depraved trappings of Lembken’s gleaning were heaped into great rolls at which the furious army hacked and tore. In one place it was venting its rage upon a heap of masquerade clothing. Pieces were flung from man to man, and some, tearing great rents in garments, thrust their heads through them and continued in the pursuit, with skirts about their shoulders and leopard skins about their bodies. A tun of wine had overturned and spilled, and the contents crept like a rivulet along the floor, seeping from room to room. The conduit that fed the artificial brooks, being slashed, poured out a muddy stream that dogged our heels, befouling the slashed rugs and tattered coverlets. And ever the cries became more furious.
The mob was yelling with one universal voice. Palm trees were hurled from man to man, clods of earth clung to walls, mud spattered everything. I followed, breathless, imploring, pleading in vain. No one paid me the least attention. Some, indeed, scowled at me, but the spirit of destruction, seizing them before the words were framed on their lips, hurled them along. They swept me with them. At the head was the giant, bellowing in frantic wrath. The mob followed him, hypnotized; and he, armed with a spiked stanchion which he must have wrenched from some portion of the wall supports, dashed the weapon in furious assault against each door, and shattered it, leading the chase down every corridor of the bewildering place, returning, hot on the scent, dog-like, and the great arms thrashing the club from side to side.
The Palace was enormous. We had not covered half of it, and we had seen no one. But, as we ran, shouts came from another party behind us, roars mingled with shrieks, and, keening above all clamor, I heard that bloodhound cry that breaks from human throats when the death hunt draws near to its finale.
With an answering roar our mob turned and sprang toward its victims, smashing down doors and wrenching weapons from legs of tables and woodwork of the walls. The quarry was found. Like bolting hares they turned and scuttled into the small, hidden room, where they cowered, women and negro eunuchs, still dressed in the masquerade of the revels that Lembken had held that night even while his empire was breaking from his hand. Horned women, women in dominoes, in striped and spotted hides, Elizabethans wearing hooped skirts and huge, starched neck frills, Victorian girls with parasols and corseted bodies, a motley, cowering crew, less abject only than the cringing blacks, eyed their pursuers with terror-stricken looks that sought their eyes for pity and found only hatred.
The giant leaped out before his followers and whirled his spiked club. “Where is Lembken?” he roared. “Where are his men?” All the while his eyes searched the women’s faces; but he did not find her whom he sought.
“There are no men,” a frightened woman gasped. “There were never any but Lembken. We have never seen any others in our lives.”
He had lied to me, then, when he spoke of his friends. How long would he have endured me there before the poisoned cup came to me? I felt my own hate and wrath become implacable as that of the mob.
The giant leaped out before his followers. “Where is Lembken?” he roared. “Where are the men?”
The giant clutched at a cringing negro boy and pulled him from his knees. “Where is he?” he shouted.
The boy was tongue-tied with fear. But a girl stepped forth bravely. “That way!” she said, pointing toward a door.
The mob whirled through in a torrent, following the Assyrian-bearded giant. I heard their shouts grow fainter. The women bolted, scattering through the dismantled rooms, seeking some other refuge. But one of them stopped and then came toward me quickly.
“She lied! He is there,” she whispered, pointing toward a wall. “Kill him, but whisper my name in his ear before he dies.”
I looked at the girl and recognized Coral, the maid who had supplanted Amaranth. I turned quickly toward the wall, and my eyes discovered the hidden door, flush with the wall. I burst it open and ran through.
I raced along a winding passage, hearing the mob’s cries far away as they ran on the false scent they had taken up. I emerged suddenly upon a little platform fronting a part of the crystal wall that was still standing in the rear of the Palace. The mob had not yet found the approaches to this secret refuge.
A glass gateway within the wall stood open, and outside, at rest in the air, I saw the dark airplane, with Hancock at the wheel. And at the gate, hesitating to set his feet upon the narrow plank that led to safety, was Lembken. His arms were filled with bundles, and on his shoulder a monkey perched, mouthing and gibbering. At his side kneeled a young girl, with hands clasped, urging Lembken to flight.
The old man heard me and turned around. I saw Hancock start forward, raise a Ray rod, and aim it at me. But Lembken stood in the way, and he could not fire.
The girl leaped at me, clutching me by the arms with surprising strength, and crying to Lembken to fly. But the obese old man only stared into my face. Fear seemed to have paralyzed him. He did not remember me, but my presence seemed to awaken some association in his mind, and, as I watched, I saw it flash into consciousness.
“Jacquette!” he screamed in a tremulous falsetto. “I have forgotten her. I must go back for her.”
He scrambled past me, and the girl, releasing me, ran after him. I followed. On we ran, till Lembken turned into a tiny room, once meant to be a hiding place, no doubt, but now doorless and bare. Again I heard the shouting. The mob was drawing near.
On a perch beside the entrance sat the gaudy macaw, head on one side, preening her plumage.
“The people’s friend!” she cackled. “The people’s friend! Friend—friend—friend—friend—frien—”
With a cry of delight Lembken snatched at her. She fluttered to his shoulder. He turned, and, with monkey and bird against his sagging cheeks, he began to make his way along the passage. As he ran I saw another corridor at right angles to this, and, at the end, daylight and the waste of uprooted palms. The mob was sweeping past. They saw him; they howled and dashed to cut off his flight.
Lembken saw them, doubled back, dashing in panic from room to room. The mob was everywhere about him, searching for him, blocking all exits; their howls were a continuous sound.
They were upon him. Lembken fell on his knees and pulled a Ray rod from his robes. With shaking, nerveless fingers he forced up the guard. He held it to his breast; but it fell from his hand.
“Kill me!” he muttered to the girl.
She flung her arms about him; and thus the mob found them.
The giant leaped at them. His bellowings shook the walls. He sprang for Lembken, caught him by the throat, and forced his head upward. I saw the loose spike in his hand. The monkey chattered, the parrot stretched out her neck and snapped, shrieking her phrases. Between the men the frail girl wrestled, dashing her weak fists into the giant’s face.
The roaring mob choked the narrow corridor on either side. “Death to him!” they shrieked. “Death! Death!”
The old man caught the words upon his tongue and screamed.
“Not death!” he yelped. “I’m Lembken. I can’t die. I never thought of death—dying—going nowhere—nowhere—nothing—I want to live—”
He cowered behind the girl, thrusting her between himself and his enemy. So furious were her struggles that she forced the giant away. She dashed her fists into his eyes again and again, until he turned on her and gripped her by the wrists, twisting her backward. He looked into her face for the first time.
“Let him go!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him. He is old—he is old—he has done no harm—he is the people’s friend—he has told me so—I love him—”
The giant dropped her wrists and staggered back. His horror-painted face became a tragic mask. He moaned, and his hands groped impotently in the air for something that he failed to find. It was not the blood in his eyes that blinded him. For this was she whom he had sought, torn from his home, the last to share Lembken’s favor, the child whom I had seen dragged from the Council Hall, her innocent child’s heart loyal in his last hour to the only lover she knew.
It wrung my heart, the pity of it: this blossom of love that sprang from that festering, rank soil of human baseness.
The next instant the mob swept over us. They seized their prey and stamped out the life beneath their feet. I saw the quivering body tossed high in the air and dashed from wall to wall, trampled on, hacked, and torn. I saw it poised against the crystal walls, saw the dark airplane swoop to safety amid a hail of Ray fire; and then the air was filled with zig-zag flashes of blinding light.
CHAPTER XXV - THE COMING OF THE CROSS
I stood with a small group of our men beneath the dome, where Lembken’s gardens had been. The havoc that had been wrought is almost indescribable. The beauty molded by the most cunning hands in Europe had been obliterated in one short hour. The gardens were a waste of uprooted trees and trampled earth, while from the broken conduit a dozen muddy streams were pouring like high waterfalls upon the courts below. The Palace was a mass of wreckage, in which the mob still moved, shouting for fire to finish the work of destruction.
I had been recognized at last, and we were searching for our men among the rabble, gathering the nucleus of a force to render aid to our party, hard-pressed, below. I had managed to achieve something at last: I had detailed a dozen men with Ray rods to guard the women. That was all I could accomplish.
The ground about the Temple was already strewn with blackened, twisted figures. From the conical Ray guns on the enclosing walls swept sheets of blinding flame, a soundless cannonade that pecked at the interstices in the walls of the Temple and of the Airscouts’ Fortress, seeking for some unpainted spot between the blocks of stone, some small, abraded surface where the cold Rays might find lodgment. I heard the crumbling of disintegrating mortar and saw fragments of stone flying from cornice and pediment. Soon gaps would open and the whole splendid pile tumble into a heap of shapeless ruins.
The Rays flashed to and fro like brilliant lightning. I was half blinded; all I could discern was that Sanson still held the Science Wing, from whose windows the Guard were picking off our men beneath them. I surmised from the shouting that we were attacking the Wing from the ground floor of the Temple.
We had gathered most of our men together, and we plunged for the elevator shafts and scrambled down. My pulses hammered with fear as I entered the corridor below. But there stood David, and Elizabeth kneeled beside him, with Esther’s head in her lap. She looked at me and smiled with so brave an effort that I realized her own anxiety. Somewhere in the deadly tumult Paul was fighting, unless, indeed, he lay among those shapeless masses that strewed the courts.
Our men swept by me and poured along the corridor toward the bridge.
“I have fulfilled my promise, Arnold,” said David. “Now I must take Elizabeth within the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress, and you will follow with Esther. Then each of us must do his best to rally parties to the assault. All is not going well, Arnold. Our Ray rods are emptying fast, and the storage batteries within the Airscouts’ Fortress have been destroyed, so that we cannot recharge them; the attack upon the lower level of the Wing has failed. Sanson has placed a Ray gun there. All hangs upon the battleplanes, and they have not returned.”
He put his arm about his daughter and hurried her toward the bridge, while I picked up Esther, still plunged in that first sleep, and followed him. I saw him lead Elizabeth to safety, but as I was about to follow, a sheet of purple light swept past me, tearing a stanchion from the bridge and knocking down a part of the brick house on the wall above, where Lembken had taken me that night of our first meeting.
A gun was playing on the bridge. It was impossible to cross at present. I drew back, waiting.
Then a babel of cries broke out on the opposite side, so fierce and wild that, grasping Esther more tightly, I rushed to a window at the further end of the corridor, commanding a view of the exterior courts. The long bridges were packed with our men, making a mad sortie to scale the enclosing walls. Streaks of light, pitiably thin, flashed from their Ray rods, and, with exultant shouts, the Guard sprang forward to meet them. They were dragging lighter Ray guns behind them. For an instant it seemed as if the revolutionists would scale the walls before the heavy Ray artillery could be reaimed at them. The foremost files of the opposing forces clashed and surged and swayed in a rain of meteor flashes. The blackened corpses heaped the bridges, hung, toppled over, and went to swell the heaps below. Then, with a renewed outburst of shouting, the Guard drove back the attack and placed their guns.
The blinding flashes swept the bridges, playing like ribands of silvery blue along the course of their discharge. Everywhere along the bridges swarmed the stampede of flight, checked where the Rays caught the fugitives and twisted them into charred lumps, sweeping away the superstructure also, and the bridge rails. I saw one bridge go down, as a deflected Ray wrenched it from its piers. It spewed its burden upon the stones below, and from among the dead, little figures leaped up and began to run for refuge toward the Council Wing; and there a blast from a Ray gun found them, and the heavy doors crumbled upon them, and wood and men were ground into the same pulpy blackness. The Ray had found the weak spots of the great buildings, and from the Temple top huge stones came crashing down, rebounding along the courts and splintering into fragments. Clouds of dust rose up like smoke from conflagrations.
The flowing tide of the Guard’s victory rolled on unchecked. Their shouts were frightful. They held the courts, now piled with debris from the buildings above them. I ran with Esther back toward the bridge, crossed it, and gained the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress. Before me was a flight of stone steps; I ran up, shouting. Nobody answered me. I gained the summit and found myself alone there.
Looking down from the roof I saw that the Guard were swarming in the Temple. They had regained that; they had driven our men from the Airscouts’ Fortress, on which I stood, trapped, since it was impossible to cross the courts. Where were our forces? I saw the locust cloud of attack break against the doors of the offices beneath the Council Hall. That was our last stronghold. The Ray flashes played on the walls, but they held fast.
Then out of the south a flock of giant birds came wheeling. They swooped toward us and resolved themselves into the airplane fleet. They dipped their luminous wings and circled around us, and a mazy pattern of light shot downward upon the ranks of the Guard.
The battleplanes had settled their differences, and three-fourths of them had returned to fight for us.
I saw the Guard race back for their sheltering walls. The Ray artillery shot upward to meet the challenge of the battleplanes. To and fro overhead wheeled the great shining birds in soundless duel. The conflict appeared the more frightful because of this silence. Only those at the guns knew what was happening.
But presently, as the flock wheeled, I saw one tower like a shot pheasant and then tumble. It plunged into the court and lay, a shapeless mass, upon the stones. The Ray gun had found its defenseless parts as it maneuvered. A second battleplane came hurtling down. It struck the Temple wall, seemed to cling there like a bat, and, fluttering like a dying thing, plunged to the stones beside its shattered mate.
The Guard was winning. The enclosing walls stood fast. Our last hope seemed to be gone. The sun was dipping into the west.
I dared not carry Esther through that fire-swept zone. It was my plan, should Sanson’s men reoccupy the Airscouts’ Fortress, to seek refuge within the little, half-secret room where Jones had hidden us. Meanwhile I waited on the roof, behind the glow-painted shield of a single empty airplane that was resting there. Twilight fell, and the soundless fight went on. The battleplanes were circling higher, and their fire was utterly ineffective. I judged, from its growing infrequency, that their solar batteries were becoming emptied. Meanwhile our men, pent in the council offices, waited for the finale.
Hourly our situation grew more desperate. Another battleplane went down. The game was in Sanson’s hands after all. Our only chance had been in the surprise, and the mad rush to the People’s House and the confusion in the Temple had spoiled all plans and allowed our enemy to concentrate his men. Where was he, I wondered.
Suddenly shouts broke out again from the walls, and were caught up and echoed back from the Council Hall. Southward, high in the sky, pin-points of light appeared, like vagrant stars, which became larger, wheeled, extended.
The Guard cheered frantically. I heard the cry “America!”
If this was the Mormon fleet, come to aid Lembken, there was no doubt with which side it would join. Perhaps the Guard knew already that Sanson had outwitted Lembken and outbid him for its support.
The airfleet shot upward, drew together, and a single light, detaching itself, flew like a rocket upward, moving in the direction of the oncoming battleplanes, which seemed to hang poised above, like a new group of Pleiades. The rocket’s apparent speed dwindled, until it seemed to move as slowly as any star. I saw a second light shoot downward, detaching itself from those clustered orbs, to meet it. I held my breath, as all must have done, for not a Ray was fired, nor was there any sound as the fate of the world hung upon those nearing points. They circled about each other, a binary star; they moved together; and suddenly they plunged downward, the whole oncoming fleet following them, and the roar of a thousand throats rang from the Council Hall:
“The Russians! The Russians! The Tsar! The Tsar!”
The lights grew larger and resolved themselves into the glow parallelograms again, and the great fleet of battleplanes descended toward the wall. Again the pattern of light interplayed with the answering fire from the Ray artillery of the Guard.
The new squadron was armed with Rays almost as strong, taken in Stockholm, and worked by Swedish gunners. Searchlights and glow rays blended in heliotrope and pink and blue, playing about the walls, carrying the most murderous death that man had ever devised. And it appeared incredible that death lay hidden within that warp and woof of color that intercrossed through space, blending and twisting, and forming a thousand patterns upon the night. Once a battleplane, caught as she wheeled, came crashing down; but the next moment the persistent Ray found an unprotected place in the walls at last, and hammered at it, dislodging mortar and stones, till, with a mighty roar, a tower fell toppling into the court, leaving a great breach in the Guard’s fortress.
Instantly two battleplanes lit like great birds, and behind their shields a score of men swarmed out, carrying swords and Ray shields, interlocked. The line swept onward, to encounter the Ray rods of the defense. I saw it crumple and twist. But other battleplanes had alighted along the breach, and everywhere small groups were forming between the Ray guns, which could not be aimed before they were attacked, the gunners sabered, and the great conical machines made useless. The valor which had overthrown the Federation’s troops before Tula was not helpless here.
But from each wing a blast of fire caught the downward swooping battleplanes and crumpled them. No attack could live before that devastating crossfire. I saw the groups of swordsmen wither, fall back, until the bodies heaped before them, on which they planted their glow shields, formed an impregnable rampart. But the artillery was retaken, the battleplanes, surprised and broken in the ebb-tide of defeat, were piled in indistinguishable heaps within the courts. The Guard turned the artillery upon the stubborn line that mounted the breach. Once more the fortune of the day was turning.
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of their midst the Ray artillery belched
I saw the ragged figures of our men run from the Council Hall across the courts. Then the Guard about Sanson in the Science Wing streamed forth to meet them. The Ray rods flashed, and the ghastly murder began once more.
Upon the walls the Guard were swarming toward the defenders. Out of their midst the Ray artillery belched. It found the chinks among the shields, and a sheet of white flame swept through the Russians’ ranks. Their wall of interlocked shields had carried them into death’s jaws, but now the jaws were closing. I closed my eyes in anguish.
I opened them in darkness.
There was no flash from the conical guns, which glittered in impotence upon the walls. For an instant I did not understand. The next I knew. Jones had cut the supply cables in the Vosges Mountains. He had kept his promise, and in the moment of defeat.
The same mad exultation seized all. I heard the new note of victory as our men from the Council Hall bore back the defeated remnants of Sanson’s army. I saw the Russians leap from behind their shields and swarm into the fortress; saw the flash of their swords against the spurting fire of the Ray rods; saw the defeated Guard fly through the courts, to meet death there.
Then I stood face to face with Sanson.
