The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (20 page)

This entrance—a masked tunnel into the side of the gorge just above where the river broadened into a great reservoir and then overran an artificial dam, a sheer drop of several hundred feet—was, of course, carefully concealed. The other end of the tunnel opened upon the eastern side of the precipitous ridge that, oval in shape, completely encircled the valley, shutting it off by a barrier nearly a mile high, even from the barrenness that surrounded it. But the valley itself, which was about three miles long and half that distance across its widest point, was very far from barren—a deep
loess
soil carpeted with fields of rice, millet and vegetables that must have made the place very nearly self-sustaining.

All around the valley, at a height of about two hundred yards, there ran a low wall, on the level top of which walked sentries armed with modern-looking rifles. At the very edge of the valley there was a line of interior guards. The space between the two had been carefully razed to afford a clear field of fire.

But Hazard and I were particularly interested in a large, square, wooden building near the bottom of the falls. Piles of fresh lumber lay near it, and a great acreage of tree-stumps bordering the valley to the west showed whence the lumber had come. At the moment when we first observed the building there happened to be filing into it, like a prison chain-gang, a long line of nearly naked Chinese workmen. The sound that came up from the place suggested the humming of a great dynamo, the
whirr
of many wheels and the gnashing of saws into wood.

We were conducted directly to the lower end of the valley and into the
dagoba
-like building, very near which the river again poured over a precipice in a cataract of foam. This, apparently the home of Sadafuki, was set in the curve of the nearly perpendicular cliff. A light bridge, the purpose of which Hazard and I couldn’t then divine, extended from the fifth and topmost floor of the
dagoba
to the face of the rock.

It was, however, plain that the whole valley was a very secure prison.

This, of course, was necessary, considering the purpose of the place, the essence of which was secrecy. It wouldn’t have done to have men escaping, blabbing of the work that was being done there. Consequently it was necessary that Sadafuki be given complete, tyrannical power and, having it, it was only natural that he should use it like a tyrant.

The resultant atmosphere pervaded the place like a pestilence. Every one whom Hazard and I observed—our escort, the coolies grubbing in the fields, the armed guards themselves, and there were many of them—all seemed nervous, tense, strung-up with anticipatory terror. They weren’t like Chinese at all; their characteristic racial stolidity appeared to have been entirely destroyed. It seemed abnormal, unreal, and, indeed, it proved the prevalence in that valley of punishments harsher than death.

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.