The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (59 page)

All this time we were trudging on across the ever ascending foot-hills, covered deep with the drifted sand. From time to time Blalock drew out a pocket compass and corrected his course. I drew from him the acknowledgment that an easier way to the Sacred Pass lay along the edge of the desert proper, skirting these foot-hills; but that was the way the bulk of the priests would use. To be seen by them would be fatal to Blalock’s purpose—but what an utterly mad and hopeless purpose it was!

He intended to expose Koshinga before the assembled priests. The lease on life I gave him after beginning was about ten seconds; Koshinga would strike him dead. And even if the impossible happened and he were able to complete his exposure, I doubted if it would have any effect upon the priests. As Hazard had said away back in Peking, the great danger of the situation lay in the fact that most of the priests would come to the meeting-place eager to be convinced.

No doubt they were very superstitious, these decadent misrepresentatives of two noble creeds; no doubt they were to a great extent dupes of their own charlatanry, and would readily believe the dragon messenger Koshinga would provide for them. But what really moved them was self-interest; what they really hoped for was a master charlatan, one who would restore their failing grip on awakening Asia.

No, Blalock’s unsupported words would be useless. Somehow I felt that he knew this. I felt that he concealed his real plan from me. That was easy enough to bear, for Blalock was a stranger; but it was harder to know that Hazard and Sha Feng were also hiding something from me. And yet I couldn’t blame them. Though I clung hard to my sanity and had no doubt I should continue to cling to it, every now and then a recurrence of the effect of the poison would come upon me, a dizziness, a whirling in the head. These symptoms were probably aggravated by the heat and fatigue and the torment of the flying sand.

SO WE went on through the day. Fire was impossible, for here was not even a dry twig; twice we ate of the uncooked maize and dried meat, hard as a rock, with which Hazard’s and Sha Feng’s knapsacks were filled. Dust was in our clothing, coated our skins, grated in our teeth. But after a long afternoon the wind fell again, the menacing rattle of the sand ceased, the glaring shafts of light melted into twilight.

And I had learned from Blalock only what Hazard had doubtless intended me to learn—that though he was half-mad, wholly unreliable, and himself a member of the Ko Lao Hui, he was certainly leading us, with whatever motive, to the culmination of the last and greatest of the Ko Lao Hui plots.

That is, I had learned why Sha Feng and Hazard had accepted his guidance from Peking. But why had Blalock offered that guidance? Known enemies of the Ko Lao Hui as we were, it seemed that our company must only embarrass Blalock. What part had we in his plans? And why had he been following us and watching us in Peking?

I remembered that he had beyond doubt saved my life by his revolver shot, with the muzzle held against my arm, shooting the barb from my flesh and instantly cauterizing the wound. My reason told me that none but a friend would have done that but my instinct warned me that he was not a friend.

Shortly before dark Blalock’s pace slackened a little. We had shifted our positions many times during the day but I was again walking by Blalock’s side with Sha Feng and Hazard a little behind us. And I saw that Blalock’s gaunt face was drawn tighter than ever with apprehension, while a queerly contradictory look of relief had come into his overbright eyes.

“We haven’t much farther to go,” he muttered. “That is, if I’m right, and I’m quite sure I am,” and he looked with an air of intelligence around a land that was as barren as a dead planet. “The rest of the way will be better done by night.”

At that I asked him bluntly—

“Have you ever seen this place you’re taking us to?”

“Not I,” he replied with a queer laugh. “No white man ever saw it. No man of any race whose bones still hold together ever saw it, up to a week ago.”

“You make a mystery of it,” I said impatiently. “After all, if you’ve told the truth, what can it be but a pass in the mountains with a ruined temple in it—the temple of Lao-Tse?”

“It can be a long-turned leaf out of the book of the past,” replied Blalock. “You will see.”

And presently he called a halt in a place well adapted for concealment—a hollow between three giant hummocks that rose out of the floor of sand.

We ate there and rested, and it was well into the night when we started again—a white night with a full moon that hung in the sky like a great, gleaming plate. Now for hours we descended a long sloping incline, dotted with an infinite number of sandy knobs between which Blalock picked his way. The world ahead of us seemed empty, soundless and unknown.

Once—it may have been the poison working in my system again—I thought that the very night spaces around us were full of a menacing whispering, the whispering of a vague conspiracy. And it seemed entirely certain that the stars glittering in the heavens were closer to us than in any white man’s world.

And yet once during that night we came upon the ruins of man-made things, the collapse of what must have been the stone watch-towers of a city, shaken down with terrible age. It was only the curving tops of these that were visible; the other buildings were buried deep and every block of stone was rounded smoothly by the blown sand. That was near the end of our journey, near what was left of the Sacred Pass, which had indeed been the chief connecting link between two worlds before the advancing Gobi had turned all this land into a dried-up finality.

But it was hours yet before we actually reached that place. Blalock wasn’t altogether sure of his way. He retraced his course several times and beat to north and south, breathing hard and muttering to himself. Ghostlike, we four prowled over that white desolation, where no man ever came.

It was absurd, impossible, fantastic. It could of course have no real ending. Either we would wander here forever, like condemned souls, or we would presently wake to normality. So I thought and then, to the stirring of a deep-seated fear, I would remember Koshinga, whose devil-inspired plotting so often leaped the bounds of the ordinary.

I would think of his ten million fanatic followers, of the hundreds of millions of idol-worshipers whom he had planned to add to his following, of the consequences that would result if the philosophy of Lao-Tse and the mercy of Gautama were superseded by Koshinga’s brutality—and I would pick the shadowy places a little more carefully and move more silently.

And then toward morning we came to a place where the sand gave way before us in a steep descent and as Blalock looked over the edge of it he uttered a thin, eager cry, like the whine of a hound that has closed upon its quarry. Hazard and Sha Feng and I closed up on him and followed his look.

“By the great toe of the prophet,” muttered Hazard, “it’s as he said. This is a leaf out of the past indeed.”

“Fulfilment, fulfilment!” whispered Sha Feng with something like awe in his voice. “The brain to conceive, the will to do, the patience to wait—great as he was evil, was the first Koshinga.”

Patience indeed, the patience of the true Oriental who is commonly willing to wait for his results until his own flesh has passed into dust. For there before us was a trough between two mountains, running north and south; and in the middle of that trough was a building, a temple, vaguely visible in the moonlight, which had plainly just been rescued from the accumulated sand of the centuries. All around, the sand was higher than the top of that building, having been shoveled and carried back with incredible labor until it lay in a great circular ridge. It was on top of that ridge that we were lying.

But Blalock allowed us to stop there only a minute. Then he led us around the ridge to the right, a long way. It was evident that he knew there were watchers around that building; and also evident that he thought he knew where they were posted, and how to evade them. Which of course was no wonder, since the Inner Circle of which he was a member had doubtless arranged the details of the disinterment long before. Finally, feet foremost, and very cautiously, he began working his way down the ridge of sand. We followed him, imitating his movements; but not before we had looked to the north and had seen the stars hanging low to the level horizon.

“There’s a clear sweep to the Gobi,” I murmured to Hazard somewhat unnecessarily. “Certainly the builder knew the temple would be buried.”

“Certainly. That was why—”

But Blalock looked around and signaled impatiently for silence.

We got to the bottom of the ridge safely, and then began squirming on our stomachs across the bottom of the sand-pit toward the temple. Half-way there I looked back and saw a gap in the circular ridge to the north—a gap that led to the Gobi, and that had been left there for a purpose. It seemed to me that there was a great, vague stirring outside that gap, and that the light wind brought me the smell of many camels.

There, I thought, the leaders of two decadent religions, themselves master fakirs and workers of false miracles, waited admission to the greater miracle that had been staged for them by Koshinga. But not by Koshinga alone; nor was this planned perversion of religions more than a part of the clockwork mechanism of the Ko Lao Hui conspiracy. And when I thought of the age and strength of that world-menacing conspiracy, it was as if a ghostly hand came out of the past and touched my will. And I felt insignificant and helpless—as insignificant as a mote in the ether, that drifts into the path of a world.

BUT at last we reached the temple and the entrance to the temple, in front of which were stone steps and a portico and four pillars supported by tortoises wrought of iron. The temple itself was low and sprawling, heavily timbered, and with a steep, curved roof well adapted to bear the weight of sand. Everything was gray, the color of the sand that had embraced it so long; and we were gray, too, from head to foot. Well-nigh invisible, and creeping forward inch by inch, we ascended the steps and passed through an open door.

Darkness, silence, and of course danger. We got to our feet. Blalock’s footsteps were noiseless on the earth floor. I followed him by the light touch of my fingers on his coat. Hazard followed me, and Sha Feng after him; for it was a narrow aisle flanked by wooden benches up which Blalock was leading us, with what in his mind I would have given much to know.

We’d not gone far before I became aware of a dim glow of light ahead of us. It seemed to stream upward from an opening in the floor; and it faintly outlined two human-like images, life-sized, that stood in front of it. Their bases were a little higher than the floor, and presently we were standing abreast before the raised earth platform upon which they stood.

I should have liked to have examined those images. I felt that I could make a safe guess concerning the appearance of one of them, and perhaps both. I remembered who had built this temple, according to that tradition which could hardly be other than Ko Lao Hui propaganda. Lao-Tse had built it; Lao-Tse who was also Gautama. He had built it; and in it he had placed as a sign an image of himself as he would appear in his next incarnation.

But the light indicated life, and the light must first be investigated. Whatever his secret purpose, Blalock’s immediate inclination still paralleled ours; and it was Blalock who first climbed upon the knee-high platform and stole around the two images to the left. As I passed them I felt of the nearer image; it had been chiseled out of rock.

Now we saw that the light did stream through a square opening in the floor, the trap door of which had been flung back. Blalock got down on the floor, lowered his head through that opening and gazed around upon whatever was below like an investigative serpent. In the complete silence, Blalock’s whisper, when he got to his feet and reported to us, seemed startlingly loud.

“A cellar. It seems empty.”

“And still,” whispered Hazard, “it may be worth while to investigate.”

It was good to see Hazard take the initiative again. He, who ordinarily followed no man, had followed Blalock overlong. A wooden staircase, perfectly preserved by the action of the dry sand, led down from the opening. Hazard, with his eyes intent and his brow crinkling a little, started down that stairway. We all followed. I came last and I held my revolver in my hand.

And at first sight there indeed seemed to be nothing here, nothing but an empty cellar, with half a dozen Chinese candles bracketed about on its heavy teakwood walls. A cellar which apparently extended clear across the end of the temple, but the front wall of which was separated from the rear wall by no more than a dozen feet. I thought that front wall must be almost directly below the image.

Hazard’s swift eyes darted speculatively around the cellar. Then unexpectedly he raised his right hand and pointed to the front wall.

“There should be a door there,” he whispered. “Another cellar.”

Blalock started, with an astonished look toward Hazard.

“Let’s take a look. See, Partridge— Ah, here it is.”

“How did you know?” asked Blalock bewilderedly.

It was the question I was also asking, though with less surprize, for I was well used to the swiftness and occasional mystery of Hazard’s mental processes. There was the door, or rather a rectangular crack that indicated a door, in the exact center of the front wall. There was no visible lock, knob or hinge; but they might be on the other side. Hazard tried to push it open and failed.

Then without an instant’s hesitation he turned sharply upon Blalock and flung at him like an accusation two biting questions.

“Now, what else do you know of this devil’s plot? And what’s the real reason that you’ve brought us here?”

X

BLALOCK’S face had already been indicative of anxiety and fear and twitching nerves. At Hazard’s direct attack, which must have been as unexpected to him as it was to me, he lowered his eyes swiftly and furtively. But the next instant this strange man looked up again squarely at Hazard, and said savagely, forcibly, and with apparent sincerity—