The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 16

  ALL THIS we had seen and felt before meeting Sadafuki and, being quite accustomed to judge the cause from the effect, the revelation of his personality was no great shock to us. I should have been prepared even for his last quoted words. Such men make their own laws, and there is nothing they will not sacrifice to their god. As for what followed—well, was it any wonder if Sadafuki’s mind, overbalanced with power, wholly devoted to tyranny, lonely as only the mind of the egoist can be, drove itself deep into the pit of infernal imaginings and produced, as I claim, a vain and foolish thing?

  “She was my wife,” he had said and we two white men but bowed acquiescence to his proposal that we win her confidence, overpower her and thus help him sacrifice her to we knew not what ordeal.

  “But,” continued Hazard, “of course we’re curious, eager, in fact, to know—”

  “You may well be,” replied Sadafuki.

  “But I’ve had a second thought. You shall know, but not before you’ve earned the knowledge. It’s not necessary that you should be told, after all, anything except what you are to do. And it’s a thing too big, too big—”

  I discounted his enthusiasm, of course, but now I can see it was no wonder he was reluctant to give up his secret, for it was—if it had been true—as tremendous a thing as he imagined it, and by its very baseness the more closely related to the soul that had conceived and borne and labored over it in loneliness. I doubt whether he would ever have told us.

  “Perhaps,” I said carelessly, “it’s already been done. Western science has been pretty busy the last few years. It seems to me it’s accomplished pretty nearly everything that’s possible.”

  I thought I’d overstepped safety, for Sadafuki’s eyes flashed angrily, but he only replied jarringly:

  “You speak like a Western scientist—stupidly! To you science is bounded by a close, hard line; it can be nothing but material. That is, what you call material—steel, wood and the like, but even you should know they’re not the most important things. What, for instance,” he inquired curiously, “do you really think is the actual strength of a nation—or an army?”

  For that question I had to give him a straight answer.

  “Morale,” I said. “Courage.”

  “So!” he agreed swiftly. “You are right.”

  His anger had quite vanished and now there was a sort of gloating ecstasy on his face.

  “And yet how you’ve but skimmed the surface of that admittedly more important world—that so-called immaterial world! How closely, for example, you’ve studied physical contagions while altogether ignoring those other contagions. Now, if a man possessed power to destroy that courage, that morale you speak of, to turn a whole people into gibbering cowards, afraid of their own shadows—”

  He caught himself quickly. The way his eyes flamed and his voice rang as he uttered this wild speculation quite completed my conviction that he was mad, and I was surprized at Hazard’s unmistakably heightened interest.

  “But I talk too much,” finished Sadafuki. “You will do what I have commanded you to do.”

  “Explicitly,” I said, “we are to interview a woman who has disobeyed you—the woman that was your wife—pretend friendship, seize and overpower her, and turn her over to you to be subjected to this—is it a contagion?”

  “You are to turn her over to me,” said Sadafuki harshly.

  “But we should know how she has managed to defy you,” I submitted.

  “That is true,” said Sadafuki. “She has fortified herself with food and poison and she remains in the center of a room. The poison she has sworn to take if any one approaches her. But with you she will hope for help because she is of your race. Besides, you will also be prisoners. But when you have seized her you will call out to the man who will remain outside and the door will be opened.”

  It was hard, of course, to admit even to Sadafuki a capacity for doing that, but disappointing him would be consolingly easy.

  “We are very tired,” I said, without exaggeration. “If you will give us a few hours’ rest and food—”

  “You will have till noon,” said Sadafuki.

  AGAIN he gestured and again two of his bodyguard, who were uniformed raggedly in blue cotton, ran forward with that over tensity and abnormal eagerness to obey that is one of the products of Sadafuki’s sort of discipline. Presently Hazard and I were being led by one of them up a flight of stairs at the rear of the chamber. At the top of the stairs the guard opened a door, motioned us inside and closed the door behind us.

  This room was absolutely bare, save for two pallets that lay on the floor at its farther end. Near the door was a window which, however, was closed by heavy iron bars. Just outside was a balcony, one of which, as we had already observed, encircled each floor of the dagoba. Beyond that balcony, we discovered, lay a complete view of the valley into which we had come by subterfuge and from which it appeared rather unlikely we should ever depart. A miracle of greenness seemed the bottom of that valley, dotted here and there by bent forms of laboring coolies, and very busy seemed the noisy plant at its upper end. We could even see, far up on the western side, the beginning of the narrow trail along which we’d been conducted down to the dagoba.

  At the upper end of the valley, too, was a cluster of mud huts surrounded by a high wall that had so far escaped our notice.

  “Well,” said Hazard, smiling grimly, “We’ve won our heart’s desire. We’re here.”

  It was, it will be remembered, the first opportunity we’d had for private talk since entering the place.

  “Of course the man’s crazy,” said I.

  “Of course,” agreed Hazard.

  “But what an establishment! Hundreds of Chinese, exclusive of the sentries, and they’re all like scared puppets!”

  “Even the sentries are prisoners,” mused Hazard. “You can see it in their faces; they’re afraid of their lives and worse. But who watches them? And how is the watch kept up at night?”

  “Why not electric light?” I suggested. “Remember the glow we saw on the sky last night? High-powered searchlights, I suppose—power from the falls.”

  “Lord, you’re right, Partridge! Here in central Asia! But what’s to prevent? We Westerners are free enough with our knowledge.”

  “Well,” said I, “we should learn that and other things from the woman. Though she must be off mentally, too, to believe in Sadafuki’s madness.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Hazard queerly.

  “That infernal—what did he call it?—immaterial invention of his.”

  “Did he say it was immaterial?”

  “Well, no,” I admitted.

  “We’ve seen some strange things in this land, Partridge,” replied Hazard slowly, “and we’re liable to see many more. I rather believe we’ll not find our strength in skepticism. What happened to the tribes who denied gunpowder? Now, for me, it’s better to seize a weapon and use it. But let that go. I suppose there’s only one way to handle our interview with the woman.”

  “To pretend to obey Sadafuki,” I suggested, “to protest our friendship for her and to warn her in an undertone, if possible, to keep us at a distance. That is, to tell us just why we’ve been sent to her.”

  “And after that to do whatever the gods will let us do,” agreed Hazard.

  We were silent for a moment. In that silence I came to considering the valley as one might a nightmare—the product of a monstrous imagination. It seemed unreal, a place bewitched, and, indeed, fear’s wizardry had created it. Fear’s wizardry had brought all those men there, held them there in stronger than metal bonds, bowed their backs to Sadafuki’s will. Why, all his rule was built upon it—and for a moment I thought I had the finger of my mind upon a stronger releasing-charm.

  But I was recalled to the immediately practical by a vibrant whisper from Hazard—

  “Partridge! Look there!”

  I followed his pointing finger up the steep western ridge until I saw, perhaps two miles away eight little living
specks coming toward the dagoba, along the same path Hazard and I had used an hour before. Evidently they also had come from the great outside, for that path led nowhere but to the tunnel’s mouth; but that wasn’t the disquieting thing. It was a fact that would have been hardly noticeable to eyes not trained for distance; but the two central specks thrust themselves up peculiarly among their companions, as much taller than they, as white men are than Chinese. This was our first hint of a thing that increased our peril tenfold. I looked at Hazard, and he smiled at me significantly.

  “It couldn’t be those two,” I said.

  “Well,” debated Hazard, “it could, you know. Chinese aren’t the best guards in the world, and men selected by the Ko Lao Hui are apt to be resourceful. But our next step remains the same in any case.”

  “Of course! They’re gone!”

  The whole party had descended into a sort of gully, which we knew would keep it hidden until it was very near the dagoba.

  The next moment our door opened and a servant with a very erect body and very cringing eyes entered with a wooden platter containing steaming rice, plantains and “dough-strings.”

  While we ate, Hazard and I said nothing. For one thing, we hadn’t heard the servant leave the door, and there was a faint possibility that he could understand English. For another, we were worn and tired, and there was little to say. The formulation of a definite plan is possible only when one can keep his hands to some extent on the guiding reins of circumstances. This, as yet, we couldn’t do; we could only move ahead.

  And if that thing were true which we had both a moment before conjectured—if the two men whose rôles we had stolen had escaped and come for their revenge, then we must be guided entirely by events as they shaped themselves in the whirlwind of Sadafuki’s rage—or so I felt. Hazard seemed very thoughtful.

  However, I believe Hazard and I both felt sure of each other’s wit to seize whatever events arose and make the best of them. We’d gone through a great deal together, Hazard and I, from the Pai Ho to the Tsinglings. To me, at least, there was something in our companionship that robbed the unknown of most of its terror. I should want no better when I enter my last unknown trail, when I face my final and greatest adventure.

  Well, we ate with good appetite, and when the guard who had brought us to the room came to conduct us to the task Sadafuki had laid out for us—work very appropriate to our rôles as servants of the Ko Lao Hui—we followed eagerly.

  III

  WE WERE glad Sadafuki was nowhere in evidence when we left the room. There was really, of course, no reason he should have been, if he was sure of us. Certainly neither he nor any of his slaves could go with us into the presence of the woman whose confidence we were supposed to obtain. We would be alone with her.

  Our guide led us back along a narrow landing and then up a second flight of stairs set squarely above the first. Two more of these sets of stairs brought us, of course, to the upper or fifth floor of the place. The arrangement on each of the landings was the same—an outer door opening upon the balcony and an inner door similar to the one we had used on the second floor. Back of that was a corridor leading to several other doors, presumably entrances to as many rooms.

  But on the fifth floor there was an interesting addition to this arrangement. The door to the balcony was open, and we could now guess the purpose of the narrow, lightly railed bridge which we had observed in approaching the dagoba. At the other end of the bridge, which rested upon a projection of rock, was a wooden door set in a frame which was mortised in the face of the cliff. Evidently beyond that was a chamber hollowed out of the mountainside to fill some particular need of Sadafuki’s—no unusual thing, of course, in Shensi, half of whose country population are cliff-dwellers.

  But our guide had turned to the door at the head of the stairway. To this door, which opened inward, was cleated a heavy wooden bar, secured at one end by a staple and padlock—the whole of which seemed to have recently been put into place. His yellow face immobile, his eyes expressionless, the Chinaman pulled from his tattered blouse a bundle of keys and fitted one of them to the lock.

  The moment we saw those keys Hazard and I exchanged a swift glance. They were the same that we had seen half an hour before hanging on Sadafuki’s girdle. Whether the discovery was important or not, whether we could turn it to our advantage, it was impossible to know; but at least it appeared that Sadafuki, secure in his power, had done an injudicious thing. It was but natural to believe that the key which opened the lock Sadafuki had placed over the refuge of his recalcitrant wife would be kept in company with other important keys.

  The door opened, and we entered. Immediately the door was shut and locked behind us, and we were face to face with the woman whom we had been sent to betray.

  I do not know which was the most surprized. Hazard and I hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly we had not expected what we saw. I still think that not the least curious thing in the valley was that woman’s presence there. And still, on the other hand, it was only a phase of our modern world which, whatever else one may think of it, is fuller of interest, oddity and mystery than any age that has preceded it. From racial separateness we have passed to the melting-pot. This fact really underlay our whole experience; it accounts no more fully for Sadafuki’s education and for the white woman’s union with him, than for the existence of the Hidden Valley itself.

  At sight of us the woman, who had watched the door open in dead silence, gasped in amazement.

  I think that at one time she had been strikingly beautiful. Even now, in her middle age and with ten years of life with Sadafuki behind her, she was alive, vital and not at all unattractive. Her Chinese clothing of brocaded silk but emphasized the defiant erectness of her figure. In her dark, flushed face, her dilated eyes, the backward fling of her well-shaped head, there was still a suggestion of the wildness of nature that no doubt explained, as well as such things can be explained, the attraction Sadafuki had for her in the beginning.

  “Hush!” I said. “We are friends.”

  “What! Where did you—”

  Her right hand had been half-way to her lips. As she slowly lowered it, I saw that it had contained a small bottle filled with some dark-colored liquid. On the floor at her feet was her little stock of husbanded food—brown corn-and-millet bread and uncooked rice. Evidently she was really prepared to die, either from poison or slow starvation, rather than yield herself as a subject for—

  For what? I think that Hazard, whose imagination is inclined to outrun facts and in some cases to overleap them, already knew the magnitude of the threat conjured up from her by Sadafuki’s monstrous dream.

  “We’re prisoners, too,” said Hazard swiftly. “Don’t be afraid; we’re white men—how could we be anything but friends? But—”

  In three sentences, using a tone that couldn’t possibly carry through the door, Hazard told her of Sadafuki’s plan to seize her.

  As he did so, I thought I saw signs of an approaching collapse on her part, of overstrained nerves breaking at last. Her face grew pale and her bosom heaved; whether she was on the point of fainting or sobbing I couldn’t tell, but either would have been very awkward, so I put a bit of sharpness into my voice.

  “We’ve got to have your help, if we’re to help you escape. Don’t think you’re out of it yet. We’ve no arms; we’re as helpless as you, but there must be a chance with your knowledge of the place.”

  “There’s always a chance,” said Hazard, “but you’ve got to do some acting right now. Remember, you mustn’t seem to trust us. Warn us in a loud voice to keep away.”

  This, of course, was for the benefit of the man in the hall and any other possible listener. Thereafter, the dialogue was conducted in a peculiar dual-toned fashion, but most of what we wanted to know the woman was able to tell us openly, in a seeming effort to win our sympathy, the while, pretending not to be sure of us, she kept us at a distance. The necessity of keeping her mind on the game seemed to restore her compos
ure. She acted her part admirably, as most women are capable of doing under stress.

  But that unfortunately left the conversation largely under her control. Hazard and I, menially computing the time it would take for that ambiguously constituted party we’d seen approaching to arrive at the dagoba, were, of course, anxious to get at more essential facts; but one of the first things she insisted on explaining was her presence in this place. Under any other circumstances that would have been extremely interesting.

  WHEN she had married Sadafuki some ten years before, she said, he had been very different than he was now—a statement not hard to credit. Indeed, he had been at that time an underpaid professor of physics in a certain Western university, rather distinguished than otherwise in that small college town by his mixture of bloods. But opportunity in the shape of a trust fund had come to him; he had stolen, been found out and had fled to China. There, four years ago, the Ko Lao Hui had recruited him, offering him, I suppose, one of the kingdoms of the world. His rise in their councils had been as rapid as his moral descent. Three years ago he had been given the mastery of this valley. The woman had come with him even here, as women will, and from that day till the present she’d never seen the face of one of her own race.

  “But he was kind to me,” she justified him, “till, till—”

  “Until he went mad,” I said roughly, sensing another threatened breakdown, “and you with him, seemingly, considering what you’re most afraid of. That cursed discovery of his—sheer insanity, as one can tell by the way he talks about it.”

  “Mad!” she cried. “I would have been mad. It was that I was afraid of. I’d rather die. Did he tell you he got it—how he drove the Chinese into paroxysm of terror and then segregated the—the contagion? Did he—”