CHAPTER XL
THE BLACK CHAPEL
Of how we achieved that twelve or fifteen yards below the rocky bed ofthe stream the Powers that lent us strength and fortitude alone holdrecord. Gasping for breath, drenched, almost reconciled to the endwhich I thought was come--I found myself standing at the foot of asteep flight of stairs roughly hewn in the living rock.
Beside me, the extinguished lamp still grasped in his hand, leantKennedy, panting wildly and clutching at the uneven wall. Sir LionelBarton had sunk exhausted upon the bottom step, and Nayland Smith wasstanding near him, looking up the stairs. From an arched doorway attheir head light streamed forth!
Immediately behind me, in the dark place where the waters roared,opened a fissure in the rock, and into it poured the miniaturecataract; I understood now the phenomenon of minor whirlpools forwhich the little river above was famous. Such were my impressions ofthat brief breathing-space; then--
"Have your pistols ready!" cried Smith. "Leave the lamp, Kennedy. Itcan serve us no further."
Mustering all the reserve that remained to us, we went, pell-mell, awild, bedraggled company, up that ancient stair and poured into theroom above....
One glance showed us that this was indeed the chapel of Asmodeus, theshrine of Satan where the Black Mass had been sung in the Middle Ages.The stone altar remained, together with certain Latin inscriptions cutin the wall. Fu-Manchu's last home in England had been within a templeof his only Master.
Save for nondescript litter, evidencing a hasty departure of theoccupants, and a ship's lantern burning upon the altar, the chapel wasunfurnished. Nothing menaced us, but the thunder hollowly crashed farabove. To cover his retreat, Fu-Manchu had relied upon the noxioushost in the passage and upon the wall of water. Silent, motionless, wefour stood looking down at that which lay upon the floor of the unholyplace.
In a pool of blood was stretched the Eurasian girl, Zarmi. Herpicturesque finery was reft into tatters and her bare throat and armswere covered with weals and bruises occasioned by ruthless, clutchingfingers. Of her face, which had been notable for a sort of devilishbeauty, I cannot write; it was the awful face of one who had did fromstrangulation.
Beside her, with a Malay _kris_ in his heart--a little, jeweled weaponthat I had often seen in Zarmi's hand--sprawled the obese Greek,Samarkan, a member of the Si-Fan group and sometime manager of a greatLondon hotel!
It was ghastly, it was infinitely horrible, that tragedy of which thestory can never be known, never be written; that fiendish fight to thedeath in the black chapel of Asmodeus.
"We are too late!" said Nayland Smith. "The stair behind the altar!"
He snatched up the lantern. Directly behind the stone altar was anarrow, pointed doorway. From the depths with which it communicatedproceeded vague, awesome sounds, as of waves breaking in some vastcavern....
We were more than half-way down the stair when, above the muffledroaring of the thunder, I distinctly heard the voice of _Dr. Fu-Manchu!_
"My God!" shouted Smith, "perhaps they are trapped! The cave is onlynavigable at low tide and in calm weather!"
We literally fell down the remaining steps ... and were almostprecipitated into the water!
The light of the lantern showed a lofty cavern tapering away to apoint at its remote end, pear-fashion. The throbbing of an engineand churning of a screw became audible. There was a faint smell ofpetrol.
"Shoot! shoot!"--the frenzied voice was that of Sir Lionel--"Look!they can just get through! ..."
_Crack! Crack! Crack!_
Nayland Smith's Browning spat death across the cave. Then followed thereport of Barton's pistol; then those of mine and Kennedy's.
A small motor-boat was creeping cautiously out under a low, naturalarchway which evidently gave access to the sea! Since the tide wasincoming, a few minutes more of delay had rendered the passage of thecavern impossible....
The boat disappeared.
"We are not beaten!" snapped Nayland Smith. "The _Chanak-Kampo_ willbe seized in the Channel!"
* * * * * * *
"There were formerly steps, in the side of the well from which thisplace takes its name," declared Nayland Smith dully. "This was themeans of access to the secret chapel employed by the devil-worshipers."
"The top of the well (alleged to be the deepest in England)," saidSir Lionel, "is among a tangle of weeds close by the ruined tower."
Smith, ascending three stone steps, swung the lantern out over theyawning pit below; then he stared long and fixedly upwards.
Both thunder and rain had ceased; but even in those gloomy depths wecould hear the coming of the tempest which followed upon thatmemorable storm.
"The steps are here," reported Smith; "but without the aid of a ropefrom above, I doubt if they are climbable."
"It's that or the way we came, sir!" said Kennedy. "I was five yearsat sea in wind-jammers. Let me swarm up and go for a rope to the Park."
"Can you do it?" demanded Smith. "Come and look!"
Kennedy craned from the opening, staring upward and downward; then--
"I can do it, sir," he said quietly.
Removing his boots and socks, he swung himself out from the openinginto the well and was gone.
* * * * * * *
The story of Fu-Manchu, and of the organization called the Si-Fan whichhe employed as a means to further his own vast projects, is almost told.
Kennedy accomplished the perilous climb to the lip of the well, andsped barefooted to Graywater Park for ropes. By means of these we allescaped from the strange chapel of the devil-worshipers. Of how wearranged for the removal of the bodies which lay in the place I neednot write. My record advances twenty-four hours.
The great storm which burst over England in the never-to-be-forgottenspring when Fu-Manchu fled our shores has become historical. Therewere no fewer than twenty shipwrecks during the day and night that itraged.
Imprisoned by the elements in Graywater Park, we listened to the windhowling with the voice of a million demons around the ancient manor,to the creatures of Sir Lionel's collection swelling the unholydiscord. Then came the news that there was a big steamer on the PinionRocks--that the lifeboat could not reach her.
As though it were but yesterday I can see us, Sir Lionel Barton,Nayland Smith and I, hurrying down into the little cove whichsheltered the fishing-village; fighting our way against the power ofthe tempest....
Thrice we saw the rockets split the inky curtain of the storm; thricesaw the gallant lifeboat crew essay to put their frail craft out tosea ... thrice the mighty rollers hurled them contemptuously back....
Dawn--a gray, eerie dawn--was creeping ghostly over the iron-boundshore, when the fragments of wreckage began to drift in. Such are thecurrents upon those coasts that bodies are rarely recovered fromwrecks on the cruel Pinion Rocks.
In the dim light I bent over a battered and torn mass of timber--thatonce had been the bow of a boat; and in letters of black and gold Iread: "S. Y. _Chanak-Kampo."_
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