_4. The Cavern of the Door_
Chandra Dass spoke, and his strong, vibrant voice held a scorn that wasalmost pitying.
"It occurred to me that your enterprise might enable you to escape thedaggers of my followers, and that you might trail us here," he said."That is why I waited here to see if you came.
"Search them," he told the other hooded figures. "Take anything thatlooks like a weapon from them."
Ennis stared, stupefied, as the gray-hooded men obeyed. He was unable tobelieve entirely in the abrupt reversal of all their hopes, of theirdesperate attempt.
The hooded men took their pistols from Ennis and Campbell, and even thesmall gold knife attached to the chain of the inspector's big,old-fashioned gold watch. Then they stepped back, the pistols of two ofthem leveled at the hearts of the captives.
Chandra Dass had watched impassively. Ennis, staring dazedly, noted thatthe Hindoo wore on his breast a different jewel-emblem from the others,a double star instead of a single one.
Ennis' dazed eyes lifted from the blazing badge to the Hindoo's darkface. "Where's Ruth?" he asked a little shrilly, and then his voicecracked and he cried, "You damned fiend, where's my wife?"
"Be comforted, Mr. Ennis," came Chandra Dass' chill voice. "You aregoing now to join your wife, and to share her fate. You two are goingwith her and the other sacrifices through the Door when it opens. It isnot usual," he added in cold mockery, "for our sacrificial victims towalk directly into our hands. We ordinarily have a more difficult timesecuring them."
He made a gesture to the two hooded men with pistols, and they rangedthemselves close behind Campbell and Ennis.
"We are going to the Cavern of the Door," said the Hindoo. "InspectorCampbell, I know and respect your resourcefulness. Be warned that yourslightest attempt to escape means a bullet in your back. You two willmarch ahead of us," he said, and added mockingly, "Remember, while youlive you can cling to the shadow of hope, but if these guns speak, itends even that shadow."
Ennis and Inspector Campbell, keeping their hands elevated, started atthe Hindoo's command down the softly lit rock tunnel. Chandra Dass andthe two hooded men with pistols followed.
Ennis saw that the inspector's sagging face was expressionless, and knewthat behind that colorless mask, Campbell's brain was racing in anattempt to find a method of escape. For himself, the young American hadalmost forgotten all else in his eagerness to reach his wife. Whateverhappened to Ruth, whatever mysterious horror lay in wait for her and theother victims, he would be there beside her, sharing it!
The tunnel wound a little further downward, then straightened out andran straight for a considerable length. In this straight section of therock passage, Ennis and Campbell for the first time perceived that thewalls of the tunnel bore crowding, deeply chiseled inscriptions. Theyhad not time to read them in passing, but Ennis saw that they were inmany different languages, and that some of the characters were whollyunfamiliar.
"God, some of those inscriptions are in Egyptian hieroglyphics!"muttered Inspector Campbell.
The cool voice of Chandra Dass said, behind them, "There arepre-Egyptian inscriptions on these walls, inspector, could you butrecognize them, carven in languages that perished from the face of earthbefore Egypt was born. Yes, back through time, back through mediaeval andRoman and Egyptian and pre-Egyptian ages, the Brotherhood of the Doorhas existed and has each year gathered in this place to open the Doorand worship with sacrifices They Beyond it."
The fanatic note of unearthly devotion was in his voice now, and Ennisshuddered with a cold not of the tunnel.
As they proceeded, they heard a muffled, hoarse booming somewhere overtheir heads, a dull, rhythmic thunder that echoed along the longpassageway. The walls of the tunnel now were damp and glistening in thesourceless soft light, tiny trickles running down them.
"You hear the ocean over us," came Chandra Dass' voice. "The Cavern ofthe Door lies several hundred yards out from shore, beneath the rockfloor of the sea."
They passed the dark mouths of unlit tunnels branching ahead from thisilluminated one. Then over the booming of the raging sea above them,there came to Ennis' ears the distant, swelling chant they had heard inthe water-cavern above. But now it was louder, nearer. At the sound ofit, Chandra Dass quickened their pace.
Suddenly Inspector Campbell stumbled on the slippery rock floor and wentdown in a heap. Instantly Chandra Dass and his two followers recoiledfrom them, the two pistols trained on the detective as he scrambled up.
"Do not do that again, inspector," warned the Hindoo in a deadly voice."All tricks are useless now."
"I couldn't help slipping on this wet floor," complained InspectorCampbell.
"The next time you make a wrong step of any kind, a bullet will smashyour spine," Chandra Dass told him. "Quick--march!"
* * * * *
The tunnel turned sharply, turned again. As they rounded the turns,Ennis saw with a sudden electric thrill of hope that Campbell heldclutched in his hand, concealed by his sleeve, the heel-hilted knifefrom his shoe. He had drawn it when he stumbled.
Campbell edged a little closer to the young American as they werehastening onward, and whispered to him, a word at a time.
"Be--ready--to jump--them----"
"But they'll shoot, your first move----" whispered Ennis agonizedly.
Campbell did not answer. But Ennis sensed the detective's bodytautening.
They came to another turn, the strong, swelling chant coming loud fromahead. They started around that turn.
Then Inspector Campbell acted. He whirled as though on a pivot, theheel-knife flashing toward the men behind them.
Shots coughed from the pistols that were pressed almost against hisstomach. His body jerked as the bullets struck it, yet he remainederect, his knife stabbing with lightning rapidity.
One of the hooded men slumped down with a pierced throat, and asCampbell sprang at the other, Ennis desperately launched himself atChandra Dass. He bore the Hindoo from his feet, but it was as though hewas fighting a demon. Inside his gray robe, Chandra Dass writhed withfiendish strength.
Ennis could not hold him, the Hindoo's body seeming of spring-steel. Herolled over, dashed the young American to the floor, and leaped up, hisdark face and great black eyes blazing.
Then, half-way erect, he suddenly crumpled, the fire in his eyesdulling, a call for help smothered on his lips. He fell on his face, andEnnis saw that the heel-knife was stuck in his back. Inspector Campbelljerked it out, and put it back into his shoe. And now Ennis, staggeringup, saw that Campbell had knifed the two hooded guards and that they layin a dead heap.
"Campbell!" cried the American, gripping the detective's arm. "They'vewounded you--I saw them shoot you."
Campbell's bruised face grinned briefly. "Nothing of the kind," he said,and tapped the soiled gray vest he wore beneath his coat. "Chandra Dassdidn't know this vest is bullet-proof."
He darted an alert glance up and down the lighted tunnel. "We can't stayhere or let these bodies lie here. They may be discovered at anymoment."
"Listen!" said Ennis, turning.
The chanting from ahead swelled down the tunnel, louder than at any timeyet, waxing and waxing, reaching a triumphant crescendo, then againdying away.
"Campbell, they're going on with the ceremony now!" Ennis cried. "Ruth!"
The detective's desperate glance fastened on the dark mouth of one ofthe branching tunnels, a little ahead.
"That side tunnel--we'll pull the bodies in there!" he exclaimed.
Taking the pistols of the dead men for themselves, they rapidly draggedthe three bodies into the darkness of the unlit branching tunnel.
"Quick, on with two of these robes," rasped Inspector Campbell. "They'llgive us a little better chance."
Hastily Ennis jerked the gray robe and hood from Chandra Dass' dead bodyand donned it, while Campbell struggled into one of the others. In therobes and concealing hoods, they could not be told from any other twomembe
rs of the Brotherhood, except that the badge on Ennis' breast wasthe double star instead of the single one.
Ennis then spun toward the main, lighted tunnel, Campbell close behindhim. They recoiled suddenly into the darkness of the branching way, asthey heard hurrying steps out in the lighted passage. Flattened in thedarkness against the wall, they saw several of the gray-hooded membersof the Brotherhood hasten past them from above, hurrying toward thegathering-place.
"The guards and robe-issuers we saw above!" Campbell said quickly whenthey were passed. "Come on, now."
He and Ennis slipped out into the lighted tunnel and hastened along itafter the others.
Boom of thundering ocean over their heads and rising and falling of thetremendous chanting ahead filled their ears as they hurried around thelast turns of the tunnel. The passage widened, and ahead they saw amassive rock portal through whose opening they glimpsed an immense,lighted space.
Campbell and Ennis, two comparatively tiny gray-hooded figures, hastenedthrough the mighty portal. Then they stopped. Ennis felt frozen with thedazing shock of it. He heard the detective whisper fiercely beside him.
"It's the Cavern, all right--the Cavern of the Door!"
* * * * *
They looked across a colossal rock chamber hollowed out beneath thefloor of ocean. It was elliptical in shape, three hundred feet by itslonger axis. Its black basalt sides, towering, rough-hewn walls, rosesheer and supported the rock ceiling which was the ocean floor, ahundred feet over their heads.
This mighty cathedral hewn from inside the rock of earth was lit by asoft, white, sourceless light like that in the main tunnel. Upon thefloor of the cavern, in regular rows across it, stood hundreds onhundreds of human figures, all gray-robed and gray-hooded, all withtheir backs to Campbell and Ennis, looking across the cavern to itsfarther end. At that farther end was a flat dais of black basalt uponwhich stood five hooded men, four wearing the blazing double-star ontheir breasts, the fifth, a triple-star. Two of them stood beside acubical, weird-looking gray metal mechanism from which upreared aspherical web of countless fine wires, unthinkably intricate in theirnetwork, many of them pulsing with glowing force. The sourceless lightof the cavern and the tunnel seemed to pulse from that weird mechanism.
Up from that machine, if machine it was, soared the black basalt wall ofthat end of the cavern. But there above the gray mechanism the roughwall had been carved with a great, smooth facet, a giant, gleaming blackoval face as smooth as though planed and polished. Only, at the middleof the glistening black oval face, were carven deeply four large andwholly unfamiliar characters. As Ennis and Campbell stared frozenlyacross the awe-inspiring place, sound swelled from the hundreds ofthroats. A slow, rising chant, it climbed and climbed until the basaltroof above seemed to quiver to it, crashing out with stupendous effect,a weird litany in an unknown tongue. Then it began to fall.
Ennis clutched the inspector's gray-robed arm. "Where's Ruth?" hewhispered frantically. "I don't see any prisoners."
"They must be somewhere here," Campbell said swiftly. "Listen----"
As the chant died to silence, on the dais at the farther end of thecavern the hooded man who wore the triple-jeweled star stepped forwardand spoke. His deep, heavy voice rolled out and echoed across thecavern, flung back and forth from wall to rocky wall.
"Brothers of the Door," he said, "we meet again here in the Cavern ofthe Door this year, as for ten thousand years past our forefathers havemet here to worship They Beyond the Door, and bring them the sacrificesThey love.
"A hundred centuries have gone by since first They Beyond the Door senttheir wisdom through the barrier between their universe and ours, abarrier which even They could not open from their side, but which theirwisdom taught our fathers how to open.
"Each year since then have we opened the Door which They taught us howto build. Each year we have brought them sacrifices. And in return Theyhave given us of their wisdom and power. They have taught us things thatlie hidden from other men, and They have given us powers that other menhave not.
"Now again comes the time appointed for the opening of the Door. Intheir universe on the other side of it, They are waiting now to take thesacrifices which we have procured for them. The hour strikes, so let thesacrifices be brought."
As though at a signal, from a small opening at one side of the cavern atriple file of marchers entered. A file of hooded gray members of theBrotherhood flanked on either side a line of men and women who did notwear the hoods or robes. They were thirty or forty in number. These menand women were of almost all races and classes, but all of them walkedstiffly, mechanically, staring ahead with unseeing, distended eyes, likeliving corpses.
"Drugged!" came Campbell's shaken voice. "They're all drugged, and don'tknow what is going on."
Ennis' eyes fastened on a small, slender girl with chestnut hair whowalked at the end of the line, a girl in a straight tan dress, whoseface was white, stiff, like those of the others.
"There's Ruth!" he exclaimed frantically, his cry muffled by his hood.
He plunged in that direction, but Campbell held him back.
"No!" rasped the inspector. "You can't help her by simply gettingyourself captured!"
"I can at least go with her!" Ennis exclaimed. "Let me go!"
Inspector Campbell's iron grip held him. "Wait, Ennis!" said thedetective. "You've no chance that way. That robe of Chandra Dass' you'rewearing has a double-star badge like those of the men up there on thedais. That means that as Chandra Dass you're entitled to be up therewith them. Go up there and take your place as though you were ChandraDass--with the hood on, they can't tell the difference. I'll slip aroundto that side door out of which they brought the prisoners. It mustconnect with the tunnels, and it's not far from the dais. When I fire mypistol from there, you grab your wife and try to get to that door withher. If you can do it, we'll have a chance to get up through the tunnelsand escape."
Ennis wrung the inspector's hand. Then, without further reply, he walkedboldly with measured steps up the main aisle of the cavern, through thegray ranks to the dais. He stepped up onto it, his heart racing. Thechief priest, he of the triple-star, gave him only a glance, as ofannoyance at his lateness. Ennis saw Campbell's gray figure slippinground to the side door.
The gray-hooded hundreds before him had paid no attention to either ofthem. Their attention was utterly, eagerly, fixed upon the stiff-movingprisoners now being marched up onto the dais. Ennis saw Ruth pass him,her white face an unfamiliar, staring mask.
The prisoners were ranged at the back of the dais, just beneath thegreat, gleaming black oval facet. The guards stepped back from them, andthey remained standing stiffly there. Ennis edged a little toward Ruth,who stood at the end of that line of stiff figures. As he movedimperceptibly closer to her, he saw the two priests beside the graymechanism reaching toward knurled knobs of ebonite affixed to its side,beneath the spherical web of pulsing wires.
The chief priest, at the front of the dais, raised his hands. His voicerolled out, heavy, commanding, reverberating again through all thecavern.