Chapter 21. The Breaking of the
Chain
"And like a soul belated,
In heaven and hell unmated;
By cloud and mist abated;
Come out of darkness morn."
Swinburne
There is
little need to linger on the scenes of horror of that terrible London morning.
The world is familiar with and knows most of the details attendant to the great
explosion which wiped out a tenth of that great city with a resultant loss of
lives and property. For such a happening some reason must needs be given; the
tale of the deserted building got out, and many wild stories were circulated. Finally,
to still the rumors, the report was unofficially given out that this building
had been the rendezvous and secret stronghold of a gang of international
anarchists, who had stored its basement full of high explosives and who had
supposedly ignited these accidentally. In a way there was a good deal to this
tale, as you know, but the threat that had lurked there far transcended any
anarchist.
All
this was told to me, for when I sank unconscious, Gordon, attributing my
condition to exhaustion and a need of the hashish to the use of which he
thought I was addicted, lifted me and with the aid of the stunned policemen got
me to his rooms before returning to the scene of the explosion. At his rooms he
found Hansen, and Zuleika handcuffed to the bed as I had left her. He released
her and left her to tend to me, for all London was in a terrible turmoil and he
was needed elsewhere.
When
I came to myself at last, I looked up into her starry eyes and lay quiet,
smiling up at her. She sank down upon my bosom, nestling my head in her arms
and covering my face with her kisses.
"Steephen!"
she sobbed over and over, as her tears splashed hot on my face.
I
was scarcely strong enough to put my arms about her but I managed it, and we
lay there for a space, in silence, except for the girl's hard, racking sobs.
"Zuleika,
I love you," I murmured.
"And
I love you, Steephen," she sobbed. "Oh, it is so hard to part now - but
I'm going with you, Steephen; I can't live without you!"
"My
dear child," said John Gordon, entering the room suddenly, "Costigan's
not going to die. We will let him have enough hashish to tide him along, and
when he is stronger we will take him off the habit slowly."
"You
don't understand, sahib; it is not hashish Steephen must have. It is something
which only the Master knew, and now that he is dead or is fled, Steephen cannot
get it and must die."
Gordon
shot a quick, uncertain glance at me. His fine face was drawn and haggard, his
clothes sooty and torn from his work among the debris of the explosion.
"She's
right, Gordon," I said languidly. "I'm dying. Kathulos killed the
hashish-craving with a concoction he called the elixir. I've been keeping
myself alive on some of the stuff that Zuleika stole from him and gave me, but
I drank it all last night."
I
was aware of no craving of any kind, no physical or mental discomfort even. All
my mechanism was slowing down fast; I had passed the stage where the need of
the elixir would tear and rend me. I felt only a great lassitude and a desire
to sleep. And I knew that the moment I closed my eyes, I would die.
"A
strange dope, that elixir," I said with growing languor. "It burns
and freezes and then at last the craving kills easily and without
torment."
"Costigan,
curse it," said Gordon desperately, "you can't go like this! That
vial I took from the Egyptian's table - what is in it?"
"The
Master swore it would free me of my curse and probably kill me also," I
muttered. "I'd forgotten about it. Let me have it; it can no more than
kill me and I'm dying now."
"Yes,
quick, let me have it!" exclaimed Zuleika fiercely, springing to Gordon's
side, her hands passionately outstretched. She returned with the vial which he
had taken from his pocket, and knelt beside me, holding it to my lips, while
she murmured to me gently and soothingly in her own language.
I
drank, draining the vial, but feeling little interest in the whole matter. My
outlook was purely impersonal, at such a low ebb was my life, and I cannot even
remember how the stuff tasted. I only remember feeling a curious sluggish fire
burn faintly along my veins, and the last thing I saw was Zuleika crouching
over me, her great eyes fixed with a burning intensity on me. Her tense little
hand rested inside her blouse, and remembering her vow to take her own life if
I died I tried to lift a hand and disarm her, tried to tell Gordon to take away
the dagger she had hidden in her garments. But speech and action failed me and
I drifted away into a curious sea of unconsciousness.
Of
that period I remember nothing. No sensation fired my sleeping brain to such an
extent as to bridge the gulf over which I drifted. They say I lay like a dead
man for hours, scarcely breathing, while Zuleika hovered over me, never leaving
my side an instant, and fighting like a tigress when anyone tried to coax her
away to rest. Her chain was broken.
As
I had carried the vision of her into that dim land of nothingness, so her dear
eyes were the first thing which greeted my returning consciousness. I was aware
of a greater weakness than I thought possible for a man to feel, as if I had
been an invalid for months, but the life in me, faint though it was, was sound
and normal, caused by no artificial stimulation. I smiled up at my girl and murmured
weakly:
"Throw
away your dagger, little Zuleika; I'm going to live."
She
screamed and fell on her knees beside me, weeping and laughing at the same
time. Women are strange beings, of mixed and powerful emotions, truly.
Gordon
entered and grasped the hand which I could not lift from the bed.
"You're
a case for an ordinary human physician now, Costigan," he said. "Even
a layman like myself can tell that. For the first time since I've known you,
the look in your eyes is entirely sane. You look like a man who has had a
complete nervous breakdown, and needs about a year of rest and quiet. Great
heavens, man, you've been through enough, outside your dope experience, to last
you a lifetime."
"Tell
me first," said I, "was Kathulos killed in the explosion?"
"I
don't know," answered Gordon somberly. "Apparently the entire system
of subterranean passages was destroyed. I know my last bullet - the last bullet
that was in the revolver which I wrested from one of my attackers - found its
mark in the Master's body, but whether he died from the wound, or whether a
bullet can hurt him, I do not know. And whether in his death agonies he ignited
the tons and tons of high explosives which were stored in the corridors, or
whether the Negroes did it unintentionally, we shall never know.
"My
God, Costigan, did you ever see such a honeycomb? And we know not how many
miles in either direction the passages reached. Even now Scotland Yard men are
combing the subways and basements of the town for secret openings. All known
openings, such as the one through which we came and the one in Soho 48, were
blocked by falling walls. The office building was simply blown to atoms."
"What
about the men who raided Soho 48?"
"The
door in the library wall had been closed. They found the Chinaman you killed,
but searched the house without avail. Lucky for them, too, else they had
doubtless been in the tunnels when the explosion came, and perished with the
hundreds of Negroes who must have died then."
"Every
Negro in London must have been there."
"I
dare say. Most of them are voodoo worshipers at heart and the power the Master
wielded was incredible. They died, but what of him? Was he blown to atoms by
the stuff which he had secretly stored, or crushed when the stone walls
crumbled and the ceilings came thundering down?"
"There
is no way to search among those subterranean ruins, I suppose?"
"None
whatever. When the walls caved in, the tons of earth upheld by the ceilings
also came crashing down, filling the corridors with dirt and broken stone,
blocking them forever. And on the surface of the earth, the houses which the
vibration shook down were heaped high in utter ruins. What happened in those
terrible corridors must remain forever a mystery."
My
tale draws to a close. The months that followed passed uneventfully, except for
the growing happiness which to me was paradise, but which would bore you were I
to relate it. But one day Gordon and I again discussed the mysterious
happenings that had had their being under the grim hand of the Master.
"Since
that day," said Gordon, "the world has been quiet. Africa has
subsided and the East seems to have returned to her ancient sleep. There can be
but one answer - living or dead, Kathulos was destroyed that morning when his
world crashed about him."
"Gordon,"
said I, "what is the answer to that greatest of all mysteries?"
My
friend shrugged his shoulders.
"I
have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret
oceans of which it knows nothing. Races have lived and vanished before our race
rose out of the slime of the primitive, and it is likely still others will live
upon the earth after ours has vanished. Scientists have long upheld the theory
that the Atlanteans possessed a higher civilization than our own, and on very
different lines. Certainly Kathulos himself was proof that our boasted culture and
knowledge were nothing beside that of whatever fearful civilization produced
him.
"His
dealings with you alone have puzzled all the scientific world, for none of them
has been able to explain how he could remove the hashish craving, stimulate you
with a drug so infinitely more powerful, and then produce another drug which
entirely effaced the effects of the other."
"I
have him to thank for two things," I said slowly; "the regaining of
my lost manhood - and Zuleika. Kathulos, then, is dead, as far as any mortal
thing can die. But what of those others – those 'ancient masters' who still
sleep in the sea?"
Gordon
shuddered.
"As
I said, perhaps mankind loiters on the brink of unthinkable chasms of horror.
But a fleet of gunboats is even now patrolling the oceans unobtrusively, with
orders to destroy instantly any strange case that may be found floating - to
destroy it and its contents. And if my word has any weight with the English
government and the nations of the world, the seas will be so patrolled until
doomsday shall let down the curtain on the races of today."
"At
night I dream of them, sometimes," I muttered, "sleeping in their
lacquered cases, which drip with strange seaweed, far down among the green
surges - where unholy spires and strange towers rise in the dark ocean."
"We
have been face to face with an ancient horror," said Gordon somberly,
"with a fear too dark and mysterious for the human brain to cope with.
Fortune has been with us; she may not again favor the sons of men. It is best
that we be ever on our guard. The universe was not made for humanity alone;
life takes strange phases and it is the first instinct of nature for the
different species to destroy each other. No doubt we seemed as horrible to the
Master as he did to us. We have scarcely tapped the chest of secrets which
nature has stored, and I shudder to think of what that chest may hold for the
human race."
"That's
true," said I, inwardly rejoicing at the vigor which was beginning to
course through my wasted veins, "but men will meet obstacles as they come,
as men have always risen to meet them. Now, I am beginning to know the full
worth of life and love, and not all the devils from all the abysses can hold
me."
Gordon
smiled.
"You
have it coming to you, old comrade. The best thing is to forget all that dark
interlude, for in that course lies light and happiness."
THE END
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