The Mystery - Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
"This is the little devil," he said, indicating his delicate burden.
"Fulminate of mercury. This is the stuff that'll remove your hand with
neatness and despatch. It's the quickest tempered little article in the
business. Just give it one hard look and it's off."
"Here," said Trendon, "I resign. From now on I'm a spectator."
Barnett swung the fulminate in his handkerchief and gave it to a sailor to
hold. The man dandled it like a new-born infant. Back to his rock went
Barnett. Producing some cord, he let down an end.
"Tie the handkerchief on, and get out of the way," he directed.
With painful slowness the man carried out the first part of the order; the
latter half he obeyed with sprightly alacrity. Very slowly, very
delicately, the expert drew in his dangerous burden. Once a current of air
puffed it against the face of the rock, and the operator's head was
hastily withdrawn. Nothing happened. Another minute and he had the tiny
shell in hand. A fuse was fixed in it and it was shoved under the mud-cap.
Barnett stood up.
"Will you kindly order the boat ready, Captain Parkinson?" he called.
The order was given.
"As soon as I light the fuse I will come down and we'll pull out fifty
yards. Leave the rest of the Joveite where it is. All ready? Here goes."
He touched a match to the fuse. It caught. For a moment he watched it.
"Going all right," he reported, as he struck the water. "Plenty of time."
Some seventy yards out they rested on their oars. They waited. And waited.
And waited.
"It's out," grunted Trendon.
From the face of the cliff puffed a cloud of dust. A thudding report
boomed over the water. Just a wisp of whitish-grey smoke arose, and
beneath it the great rock, with a gapping seam across its top, rolled
majestically outward, sending a shower of spray on all sides, and opening
to their eager view a black chasm into the heart of the headland. The
experiment had worked out with the accuracy of a geometric problem.
"That's all, sir," Barnett reported officially.
"Magic! Modern magic!" said the captain. He stared at the open door. For
the moment the object of the undertaking was forgotten in the wonder of
its exact accomplishment.
"Darrow'll think an earthquake's come after him," remarked Trendon.
"Give way," ordered the captain.
The boat grated on the sand. Captain Parkinson would have entered, but
Barnett restrained him.
"It's best to wait a minute or two," he advised. "Occasionally slides
follow an explosion tardily, and the gases don't always dissipate
quickly."
Where they stood they could see but a short way into the cave. Trendon
squatted and funnelled his hands to one eye.
[Illustration: "Sorry not to have met you at the door," he said
courteously.]
"There's fire inside," he said.
In a moment they all saw it, a single, pin-point glow, far back in the
blackness, a Cyclopean eye, that swayed as it approached. Alternately it
waned and brightened. Suddenly it illuminated the dim lineaments of a
face. The face neared them. It joined itself to reality by a very solid
pair of shoulders, and a man sauntered into the twilit mouth of the
cavern, removed a cigarette from his lips, and gave them greeting.
"Sorry not to have met you at the door," he said, courteously. "It was you
that knocked, was it not? Yes? It roused me from my siesta."
They stared at him in silence. He blinked in the light, with unaccustomed
eyes.
"You will pardon me for not asking you in at once. Past circumstances have
rendered me--well--perhaps suspicious is not too strong a word."
They noticed that he held a revolver in his hand.
Captain Parkinson came forward a step. The host half raised his weapon.
Then he dropped it abruptly.
"Navy men!" he said, in an altered voice. "I beg your pardon. I could not
see at first. My name is Percy Darrow."
"I am Captain Parkinson of the United States cruiser _Wolverine_," said
the commander. "This is Mr. Barnett, Mr. Darrow. Dr. Trendon, Mr. Darrow."
They shook hands all around.
"Like some damned silly afternoon tea," Trendon said later, in retailing
it to the mess. A pause followed.
"Won't you step in, gentlemen?" said Darrow, "May I offer you the makings
of a cigarette?"
"Wouldn't you be robbing yourself?" inquired the captain, with a twinkle.
"Oh, you found the diary, then," said Darrow easily. "Rather silly of me
to complain so. But really, in conditions like these, tobacco becomes a
serious problem."
"So one might imagine," said Trendon drily. He looked closely at Darrow.
The man's eyes were light and dancing. From the nostrils two livid lines
ran diagonally. Such lines one might make with a hard blue pencil pressed
strongly into the flesh. The surgeon moved a little nearer.
"Can you give me any news of my friend Thrackles?" asked Darrow lightly.
"Or the esteemed Pulz? Or the scholarly and urbane Robinson of Ethiopian
extraction?"
"Dead," said the captain.
"Ah, a pity," said the other. He put his hand to his forehead. "I had
thought it probable." His face twitched. "Dead? Very good. In fact ...
really ... er ... amusing."
He began to laugh, quite to himself. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear.
Trendon caught and shook him by the shoulder.
"Drop it," he said.
Darrow seemed not to hear him. "Dead, all dead!" he repeated. "And I've
outlasted 'em! God damn 'em, I've outlasted 'em!" And his mirth broke
forth in a strangely shocking spasm.
Trendon lifted a hand and struck him so powerfully between the shoulder
blades that he all but plunged forward on his face.
"Quit it!" he ordered again. "Get hold of yourself!"
Darrow turned and gripped him. The surgeon winced with the pain of his
grasp. "I can't," gasped the maroon, between paroxysms. "I've been living
in hell. A black, shaking, shivering hell, for God knows how long.... What
do you know? Have you ever been buried alive?" And again the agony of
laughter shook him.
"This, then," muttered the doctor, and the hypodermic needle shot home.
During the return Darrow lay like a log in the bottom of the gig. The
opiate had done its work. Consciousness was mercifully dead within him.
VII
THE SURVIVORS
Rest and good food quickly brought Percy Darrow back to his normal poise.
One inspection satisfied Dr. Trendon that all was well with him. He asked
to see the captain, and that gentleman came to Ives's room, which had been
assigned to the rescued man.
"I hope you've been able to make yourself comfortable," said the
commander, courteously.
"It would be strange indeed if I could not," returned Darrow, smiling.
"You forget that you have set a savage down in the midst of luxury."
"Make yourself free of Ives's things," invited Captain Parkinson. "Poor
fellow; he will not use them again, I fear."
"One of your men lost?" asked Darrow. "Ah, the young officer whose body I
found on the beach, perhaps?"
"No; but we have to thank you for that burial," said the captain.
Darrow made a swift gesture. "Oh, if thanks are going," he cried, and
paused in hopelessness of adequate expression.
"This has been a bitter cruise for us," continued the captain. He sighed
and was silent for a moment. "There is much to tell and to be told," he
resumed.
"Much," agreed the other, gravely.
"You will want to see Slade first, I presume," said the captain.
"One of your officers whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting?"
The captain stared. "Slade," he said. "Ralph Slade."
"Apparently there's a missing link. Or--I fear I was not wholly myself
yesterday for a time. Possibly something occurred that I did not quite
take in."
"Perhaps we'd better wait," said Captain Parkinson, with obvious
misgiving. "You're not quite rested. You will feel more like--"
"If you don't mind," said Darrow composedly, "I'd like to get at this
thing now. I'm in excellent understanding, I assure you."
"Very well. I am speaking of the man who acted as mate in the _Laughing
Lass_. The journalist who--good heavens! What arrant stupidity! I have to
beg your pardon, Mr. Darrow. It has just occurred to me. He called himself
Eagen with you."
"Eagen! What is this? Is Eagen alive?"
"And on this ship. We picked him up in an open boat."
"And you say he calls himself Slade?"
"He is Ralph Slade, adventurer and journalist. Mr. Barnett knows him and
vouches for him."
"And he was on our island under an assumed name," said Darrow in tones
that had the smoothness and the rasp of silk. "Rather annoying. Not good
form, quite, even for a pirate."
"Yet, I believe he saved your life," suggested the captain.
Darrow looked up sharply. "Why, yes," he admitted. "So he did. I had
hoped--" He checked himself. "I had thought that all of the crew went the
same way. You didn't find any of the others?"
"None."
Darrow got to his feet. "I think I'd like to see Eagen--Slade--whatever he
calls himself."
"I don't know," began the captain. "It might not be--" He hesitated and
stopped.
Darrow drew back a little, misinterpreting the other's attitude. "Do I
understand that I am under restraint?" he asked stiffly.
"Certainly not. Why should you be?"
"Well," returned the other contemplatively, "it really might be regarded
as a subject for investigation. Of course I know only a small part of it.
But there have certainly been suspicious circumstances. Piracy there has
been: no doubt of that. Murder, too, if my intuitions are not at fault. Or
at least, a disappearance to be accounted for. Robbery can't be denied.
And there's a dead body or two to be properly accredited." He looked the
captain in the eye.
"Well?"
"You'll find my story highly unsatisfactory in detail, I fancy. I merely
want to know whether I'm to present it as a defence, or only an
explanation."
"We shall be glad to hear your story when you are ready to tell it--after
you have seen Mr. Slade."
"Thank you," said Darrow simply. "You have heard his?"
"Yes. It needs filling in."
"When may I see him?"
"That's for Dr. Trendon to say. He came to us almost dead. I'll find out."
The surgeon reported Slade much better, but all a-quiver with excitement.
"Hate to put the strain on him," said he. "But he'll be in a fever till he
gets this thing off his mind. Send Mr. Darrow to him."
After a moment's consideration Darrow said: "I should like to have you and
Dr. Trendon present, Captain Parkinson, while I ask Eagen one or two
questions."
"Understand one thing, Mr. Darrow," said Trendon briefly. "This is not to
be an inquisition."
"Ah," said Darrow, unmoved. "I'm to be neither defendant nor prosecutor."
"You are to respect the condition of Dr. Trendon's patient, sir," said
Captain Parkinson, with emphasis. "Outside of that, your attitude toward a
man who has twice thought of your life before his own is for you to
determine."
No little cynicism lurked in Darrow's tones as he said:
"You have confidence in Mr. Slade, alias Eagen."
"Yes," replied Captain Parkinson, in a tone that closed that topic.
"Still, I should be glad to have you gentlemen present, if only for a
moment," insisted Darrow, presently.
"Perhaps it would be as well--on account of the patient," said the surgeon
significantly.
"Very well," assented the captain.
The three went to Slade's cabin. He was lying propped up in his bunk.
Trendon entered first, followed by the captain, then Darrow.
"Here's your prize, Slade," said the surgeon.
Darrow halted, just inside the door. With an eager light in his face Slade
leaned forward and stretched out his hand.
"I couldn't believe it until I saw you, old man," he cried.
Darrow's eyebrows went up. Before Slade had time to note that there was no
response to his outstretched hand, the surgeon had jumped in and pushed
him roughly back upon his pillow.
"What did you promise?" he growled. "You were to lie still, weren't you?
And you'll do it, or out we go."
"How are you, Eagen?" drawled Darrow.
"Not Eagen. I'm done with that. They've told you, haven't they?"
Darrow nodded. "Are you the only survivor?" he inquired.
"Except yourself."
"The Nigger? Pulz? Thrackles? The captain? All drowned?"
"Not the captain. They murdered him."
"Ah," said Darrow softly. "And you--I beg your pardon--your--er--friends
disposed of the doctor in the same way?"
"Handy Solomon," replied Slade with shaking lips. "Hell's got that fiend,
if there's a hell for human fiends. They threw the doctor's body in the
surf."
"You didn't notice whether there were any papers?"
"If there were they must have been destroyed with the body when the lava
poured down the valley into the sea."
"The lava: of course," assented Darrow, with elaborate nonchalance. "Well,
he was a kind old boy. A cheerful, simple, wise old child."
"I would have given my right hand to save him," cried Slade. "It was so
sudden--so damnable--"
"Better to have saved him than me," said Darrow. He spoke with the first
touch of feeling that he exhibited. "I have to thank you for my life,
Eagen--I beg your pardon: Slade. It's hard to remember."
Dr. Trendon arose, and Captain Parkinson with him.
"Give you two hours, Mr. Darrow," said the surgeon. "No more. If he seems
exhausted, give him one of these powders. I'll look in in an hour."
At the end of an hour he returned. Slade was lying back on his pillow.
Darrow was talking, eagerly, confidentially. In another hour he came out.
"The whole thing is clear," he said to Captain Parkinson. "I am ready to
report to you."
"This evening," said the captain. "The mess will want to hear."
"Yes, they will want to hear," assented Darrow. "You've had Slade's story.
I'll take it up where he left off, and he'll check me. Mine's as
incredible as--as Slade's was. And it's as true."
VIII
THE MAKER OF MARVELS
As they had gathered to hear Ralph Slade's tale, so now the depleted mess
of the _Wolverine_ grouped themselves for Percy Darrow's sequel. Slade
himself sat directly across from the doctor's assistant. Before him lay a
paper covered with jotted notes. Trendon slouched low in the chair on
Slade's right. Captain Parkinson had the other side. Convenient to
Darrow's hand lay the material for cigarettes. As he talked he rolled
cylinder after cylinder, and between sentences consumed them in long,
satisfying puffs.
"First you will want to learn of the fate of your friends and shipmates,"
he began. "They are dead. One of them, Mr. Edwards, fell to my hands to
bury, as you know. He lies beside Handy Solomon. The others we shall
probably not see: any one of a score of ocean currents may have swept them
far away. The last great glow that you saw was the signal of their
destruction. So the work of a great scientist, a potent benefactor of the
race, a gentle and kindly old heart, has brought about the death of your
friends and of my enemies. The innocent and the guilty ... the murderer
with his plunder, the officer following his duty ... one and the same
end ... a paltry thing our vaunted science is in the face of such tangled
fates." He spoke low and bitterly. Then he squared his shoulders and his
manner became businesslike.
"Interrupt me when any point needs clearing up," he said. "It's a blind
trail at best. You've the right to see it as plain as I can make it--with
Slade's help. Cut right in with your questions: There'll be plenty to
answer and some never will be answered....
"Now let me get this thing laid out clearly in my own mind. You first saw
the glow--let me see--"
"Night of June 2d," said Barnett.
"June 2d," agreed Darrow. "That was the end of Solomon, Thrackles & Co. A
very surprising end to them, if they had time to think," he added grimly.
"Surprising enough, from the survivor's viewpoint," said Slade.
"Doubtless. They've had that story from you; I needn't go over it. This
ship picked up the _Laughing Lass_, deserted, and put your first crew
aboard. That night, was it not, you saw the second pillar of fire?"
Barnett nodded.
"So your men met their death. Then came the second finding of the empty
schooner.... Captain Parkinson, they must have been brave men who faced
the unknown terrors of that prodigy."
"They volunteered, sir," said the Captain, with simple pride.
Darrow bowed with a suggestion of reverence in the slow movement of his
head. "And that night--or was it two nights later?--you saw the last
appearance of the portent. Well, I shall come to that.... Slade has told
you how they lived on the beach. With us in the valley it was different.
Almost from the first I was alone. The doctor ceased to be a companion. He
ceased to be human, almost. A machine, that's what he was. His one human
instinct was--well, distrust. His whole force of being was centred on his
discovery. It was to make him the foremost scientist of the world; the
foremost individual entity of his time--of all time, possibly. Even to
outline it to you would take too much time. Light, heat, motive power in
incredible degrees and under such control as has never been known: these
were to be the agencies at his call. The push of a button, the turn of a
screw--oh, he was to be master of such power as no monarch ever wielded!
Riches--pshaw! Riches were the least of it. He could create them,
practically. But they would be superfluous. Power: unlimited, absolute
power was his goal. With his end achieved he could establish an autocracy,
a dynasty of science: whatever he chose. Oh, it was a rich-hued, golden,
glowing dream; a dream such as men's souls don't formulate in these stale
days--not our kind of men. The Teutonic mysticism--you understand. And it
was all true. Oh, quite."
"Do you mean us to understand that he had this power you describe?" asked
Captain Parkinson.
"In his grasp. Then comes a practical gentleman with a steel hook. A
follower of dreams, too, in his way. Conflicting interests--you know how
it is. One well-aimed blow from the more practical dreamer, and the
greater vision passes.... I'm getting ahead of myself. Just a moment."
His cigarette glowed fiercely in the dimness before he took up his tale
again.
"You all know who Dr. Schermerhorn was. None of you know--I don't know
myself, though I've been his factotum for ten years--along how many varied
lines of activity that mind played. One of them was the secret of energy:
concentrated, resistless energy. Man's contrivances were too puny for him.
The most powerful engines he regarded as toys. For a time high explosives
claimed his attention. He wanted to harness them. Once he got to the point
of practical experiment. You can see the ruins yet: a hole in southern New
Jersey. Nobody ever understood how he escaped. But there he was on his
feet across a ten-foot fence in a ploughed field--yes, he flew the fence--
and running, running furiously in the opposite direction, when the dust
cleared away. Someone stopped him finally. Told him the danger was over.
'Yet, I will not return,' he said firmly, and fainted away. That disgusted
him with high explosives. What secrets he discovered he gave to the
government. They were not without value, I believe."
"They were not, indeed," corroborated Barnett.
"Next his interest turned to the natural phenomena of high energy. He
studied lightning in an open steel network laboratory, with few results
save a succession of rheumatic attacks, and an improved electric
interrupter, since adopted by one of the great telegraph companies. The
former obliged him to stop these experiments, and the invention he
considered trivial. Probably the great problem of getting at the secret of
energy led him into his attempts to study the mysterious electrical waves
radiated by lightning flashes; at any rate he was soon as deep into the
subject of electrical science as his countryman, Hertz, had ever been. He
used to tell me that he often wondered why he hadn't taken up this line
before--the world of energy he now set out to explore, waves in that
tremendous range between those we hear and those we see. It was natural
that he should then come to the most prominent radio-active elements,
uranium, thorium, and radium. But though his knowledge surpassed that of
the much-exploited authorities, he was never satisfied with any of his
results.
"'Pitchblende; no!' he would exclaim. 'It has not the great power. The
mines are not deep enough, yet!'
"Then suddenly the great idea that was to bring him success, and cost him
his life, came to him. The bowels of the earth must hold the secret! He
took up volcanoes.... Does all this sound foolish? It was not if you knew
the man. He was a mighty enthusiast, a born martyr. Not cold-blooded, like
the rest of us. The fire was in his veins.... A light, please. Thank you.
"We chased volcanoes. There was a theory under it all. He believed that
volcanic emanations are caused by a mighty and uncomprehended energy,
something that achieves results ascribable neither to explosions nor heat,
some eternal, inner source.... Radium, if you choose, only he didn't call
it that. Radium itself, as known to our modern scientists, he regarded as
the harmless plaything of people with time hanging heavy on their hands.
He wasn't after force in pin-point quantities: he wanted bulk results. Yet
I believe that, after all, what he sought was a sort of higher power of
radium. The phenomena were related. And he had some of that concentrated
essence of pitchblende in the chest when we started. Oh, not much: say
about twenty thousand dollars' worth. Maybe thirty. For use? No; rather
for comparison, I judge.
"Yes, we chased volcanoes. I became used to camping between sample hells
of all known varieties. I got so that the fumes of a sulphur match seemed
like a draught of pure, fresh air. Wherever any of the earth's pimples
showed signs of coming to a head, there were we, taking part in the
trouble. By and by the doctor got so thoroughly poisoned that he had to
lay off. Back to Philadelphia we came. There an aged seafaring person,
temporarily stranded, mulcted the Professor of a dollar--an undertaking
that required no art--and in the course of his recital touched upon yonder
little cesspool of infernal iniquities. An uncharted volcanic island: one
that he could have all for his own; you may guess whether Dr. Schermerhorn
was interested.
"'That iss for which we haf so-long-in-vain sought, Percy,' he said to me
in his quaint, link-chain style of speech. 'A leedle prifate volcano-
laboratory to ourselves to have. Totally unknown: undescribed, not-on-the-
chart-to-be-found. To-morrow we start. I make a list of the things-to-
get.'
"He began his list, as I remember, with three dozen undershirts, a gallon
of pennyroyal for insect bites, a box of assorted fish hooks, thirty
pounds of tea, and a case of carpet tacks. When I hadn't anything else to
worry over, I used to lie awake at night and speculate on the purpose of
those carpet tacks. He had something in mind: if there was anything on
which he prided himself, it was his practical bent. But the list never got
any further: it ceased short of one page in the ledger, as you may have
noticed. I outfitted by telegraph on the way across the continent.
"The doctor didn't ask me whether I'd go. He took it for granted. That's
probably why I didn't back out. Nor did I tell him that the three life
insurance companies which had foolishly and trustingly accepted me as a
risk merely on the strength of a good constitution were making frantic
efforts to compromise on the policies. They felt hurt, those companies: my
healthy condition had ceased to appeal to them. What's a good constitution
between earthquakes? No, there was no use telling the doctor. It would
only have worried him. Besides, I didn't believe that the island was
there. I thought it was a myth of that stranded ancient mariner's
imagination. When it rose to sight at the proper spot, none were more
astounded than the bad risk who now addresses you.
"Yet, I must say for the island that it came handsomely up to
specifications. Down where you were, Slade. you didn't get a real insight
into its disposition. But in back of us there was any kind of action for
your money. Geysers, hell-spouts, fuming fissures, cunning little
craterlets with half-portions of molten lava ready to serve hot; more
gases than you could create in all the world's chemical laboratories: in
fact, everything to make the place a paradise for Old Nick--and Dr.
Schermerhorn. He brought along in his precious chest, besides the radium,
some sort of raw material: also, as near as I could make out, a sort of
cage or guardianship scheme for his concentrated essence of cussedness,
when he should get it out of the volcano.
"In the first seven months he puttered around the little fumers, with an
occasional excursion up to the main crater. It was my duty to follow on
and drag him away when he fell unconscious. Sometimes I would try to get
him before he was quite gone. Then he would become indignant, and fight
me. Perhaps that helped to lose me his confidence. More and more he
withdrew into himself. There were days when he spoke no word to me. It was
lonely. Do you know why I used to visit you at the beach, Slade? I suppose
you thought I was keeping watch on you. It wasn't that, it was loneliness.
In a way, it hurt me, too: for one couldn't help but be fond of the old
boy; and at times it seemed as if he weren't quite himself. Pardon me, if
I may trouble you for the matches? Thanks....