The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (62 page)

But how could he have known? The veriest shadow of an idea flashed across my mind. The cellar in which Hazard had busied himself for a few minutes just before our capture by the Ko Lao Hui—wasn’t that cellar directly below the spot where the dragon had appeared? But an unholy fascination drew my eyes back to that dragon, which still advanced toward Koshinga. The sound of its movements, of the gripping of its claws upon the earth and the dragging of its belly, was now the only sound in the place.

Into that near silence Koshinga’s voice broke with an added effect of horror.

“Behold the messenger of the gods, bearing in his mouth truth and death. Who shall refuse to hear his words, and who, hearing, shall fail to believe and obey? He has come as has been foretold, and the message that he bears you shall carry through the Empire, for it has been written—”

For the first time Koshinga seemed to see what I had already seen, that the dragon carried between its gleaming fangs a fold of yellow parchment.

“—by the high gods,” Koshinga concluded with a rigid hand pointing toward the paper. “Who shall receive the message of the dragon?”

Of course, no one stirred. Clearly the message was intended for Koshinga. If one believed in the seeming miracle, he would not interfere with its delivery; if one disbelieved, he would remember the death that the dragon’s breath was supposed to bring to common men—a threat that Koshinga might easily make good.

Indeed, at Koshinga’s invitation my mind steadied itself a moment upon one rather ghastly thought, that Koshinga would not be apt to let so easily contrived evidence of the dragon’s powers go by default. The dragon would be fatally armed, and somehow a victim for the dragon would be provided.

But Koshinga would receive the message, that message which he himself had undoubtedly written. He would receive it, he would pass it to some one else to read, that all might know it was read aright. And then—he had received it.

While never a finger in all the assemblage moved, Koshinga stooped and took from the mouth of the dragon the sacred parchment. The dragon kept on without changing its course, as if it would pass behind the two images. The Dalai Lama still stared at the scene with his head held rigidly erect; and to him Koshinga stepped in three swift strides, thrusting the parchment into his hand.

“Pradjapani, who shall be under Heaven and me ruler of all the world, read thou the words of Heaven, that all may hear.”

XII

IT WAS a bold stroke for the support of the one man present whose allegiance was altogether necessary to Koshinga. As the Dalai Lama went, all that assemblage might be expected to go, and all Asiatic zealots. Throughout all the East from time immemorial the successive incarnations of Pradjapani have been the pivots around which moved the vast wheel of religious power.

Men do not surrender such ascendency lightly; nor would that pretended god-man, the Dalai Lama. But he could not have remained unimpressed by what he had seen, and his presence here proved that he had at least considered hitching the wagon of his ambitions to Koshinga’s rising power.

Rising, the Dalai Lama took the parchment, unfolded it and studied it for a moment. I thought, Oriental as he was, that his shoulders twitched, and that he bent his head and scrutinized it more intently, as if he were astonished at what he read. The rest of the gathering waited in fascinated silence.

I looked sidewise at Hazard, upon whose forehead beads of sweat were starting out. Sha Feng’s yellow face was still placid, though he must have known as well as we that the immediate future of the whole world might easily depend upon the events of the next few minutes.

The Dalai Lama spoke in a clear, fine voice, not loud, but one that carried well—the voice of a man who would be hard to check.

“You are assured,” he asked Koshinga, who had retreated to his former position, “that these are indeed Heaven’s words to men?”

“Who can doubt?” questioned Koshinga with a glance at the snarling scaly horror at his feet.

“And you, Koshinga, bind yourself, as do I who am Pradjapani, to respect and reverence this as Heaven’s message, whatever it may be?”

“May the earth engulf him who does not,” replied Koshinga.

“Then will I read,” and the Dalai Lama turned sidewise, half-facing the audience, but with Koshinga still within view. “Hear me, you who have assembled here to receive instruction.

“ ‘This is the truth,’ ” he read from the parchment, “ ‘that must be told to all who have ears, and who fear the gods. It concerns an evil doing that the gods have suffered long, and will now destroy. That light may be let in upon darkness, the words are here given of him whom men know as the first Koshinga, who basely and in disobedience to Heaven—’ ”

The instant reaction from hopelessness to something surer than hope was too much for my self-control, and I couldn’t quite choke back the cry of joy that rose from my heart. But it didn’t matter, for at those last astonishing words a sound combined of the swiftly drawn breaths of all present filled the audience chamber; nor was Hazard’s whispered, “Thank God, thank God!” in danger of being overheard. Scarcely daring to trust my sanity, I stared at the Dalai Lama, until a hoarse cry from Koshinga drew my eyes back to him.

“Stop!” Koshinga, his greenish eyes flaming with rage and his face working convulsively, started toward the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama gave a sharp command, and the rifles of his bodyguard snapped up in readiness to aim.

“The messenger of the gods must be respected; the message of the gods must be read.”

And Koshinga, who must have known that his dream cosmos was tumbling about his head and that all his plans were wrecked, was thus held helpless to interfere, while the Dalai Lama read on:

“ ‘I, who am Koshinga, ruler of the seas before the coming of the cursed Manchus, do ordain upon my followers and upon their children and children’s children, and upon all who may here after join them for the working out of my purpose, that they do this, my will, until that purpose be achieved. Which purpose is the conquest of the earth; and to that end—’ ”

Now there was a low stir in the chamber—amazement expressing itself in muscular contractions. It was not amazement at the substance of what was being read. There was probably not one priest there who hadn’t already heard something of the truth concerning the origin of Koshinga and the Ko Lao Hui, though they would have rejected and forgotten it had the dragon proclaimed him a god.

They knew that Koshinga’s power with the people depended mainly upon suppression of the truth; but because of that its delivery from the mouth of Koshinga’s own oracle was to them an actual miracle. They muttered their wonder to each other, and under cover of their muttering I whispered to Hazard:

“You knew this was going to happen. In Heaven’s name, how? Did you put—”

“Never mind. I knew this was going to happen—
but what will happen next?
Koshinga will never—”

Hazard stopped abruptly, staring with suddenly increased intentness at the group formed by Koshinga and the slowly crawling dragon and the two images, as if he saw there the beginning of the answer to his question.

The Dalai Lama’s voice, sunk now to a distinct and compelling monotone, droned on; and so far the story he was reading was exactly the same as the story Blalock had told me yesterday. It was the story with which Blalock had either foolishly or falsely declared he would confound Koshinga; but now it was being told with authority, as out of the mouth of the gods; also, for the conviction of more practical minds, it was being read from a document which I felt quite sure was the actual work of the first Koshinga. But how had that document got here? As I followed Hazard’s glance a certain memory came to me, the memory of a carefully guarded packet—and with it a vague doubt concerning my judgment of Blalock.

That instant my doubt was changed into certainty; for Blalock had come up the stairs behind the images and was running toward the front of the platform. His face was more than ever the face of a madman; for it was distorted with fear and with something more powerful than fear—with hatred for Koshinga, upon whom he glared. But his knowledge of Koshinga, dangerous always as a monstrous adder, held him away from Koshinga’s reach. He stopped well back of Koshinga and began to declaim wildly—

“Will ye be dupes of this man, who is but flesh and blood, born as other men, but only mighty in his cruelties—”

Of a sudden the surface of my body grew cold, and a momentary dizziness, born of a great dread, shook my mind. Was this to be a needless sacrifice? Clearly Blalock did not know that the falsity of Koshinga’s claims had been already and forever made clear to all present; clearly he did not know that a Chinese Ko Lao Hui had followed him up the stairs and was at that instant leaping upon him from behind with knife uplifted.

He would kill Blalock or Koshinga would kill him—Koshinga, or the dragon whose “breath was death,” whose metallically gleaming head was now within four feet of Blalock’s body, and whose movements were without doubt controlled by Koshinga’s will.

Koshinga had glanced back at Blalock; and that last dread may have been inspired in me by the change that flashed over his features as he faced the front again—a grimace of baleful triumph, as if he had discovered a vent for the fury of defeat which possessed him. His right hand darted behind the image of himself as though impelled by a terrible intention; he pressed something swiftly and the dragon hissed with the whistling note of compressed air suddenly released.

BUT that same instant Blalock had become aware of the death that was rushing upon him from behind. He leaped aside; and so it was that his Chinese pursuer checked his rush on the spot where Blalock had been standing, the spot where Koshinga still believed he was standing.

And the Chinaman saw what was to happen and shrieked aloud, even before whatever death it was with which the dragon was armed came upon him. Then he stiffened with hands flung up, and fell still shrieking, and crawled with momentarily lessening strength away from the dragon. Koshinga looked around again and saw what he had done.

It is nature’s safeguard for humanity that egotism ever tends toward madness; and it is probable that at that last stroke of adverse fate Koshinga went mad. But had he remained sane, his next step would probably have been the same. Hazard had hinted it in his last half-uttered sentence, “Koshinga will never—” What he had meant to say was that Koshinga would never willingly permit any one in that whole assemblage to escape alive.

The Dalai Lama’s reply to the growing confusion in the hall had been to raise his hand and his voice, holding his audience in their seats and driving into their minds the message of the dragon, the message which would damn Koshinga and the Ko Lao Hui eternally were it spread throughout China.

And the priests would spread it; they had been commanded to spread it; their own self-interest would impel them to do so; were they not to be partners in Koshinga’s pretenses of absolute and divinely ordained power, they must be his enemies. All this must have flashed through Koshinga’s mind, but mostly I think he was filled with a mad rage and a desire to destroy.

He turned toward the stairway leading down into that cellar in which Sha Feng, Hazard and I had been captured, and in which his men were still concealed; and he cried out in that voice of abominable power, hot now with hate:

“Come up, come up, Ko Lao Hui. It is time for the killing. The day is come. The messages will be—”

“Blalock!” shouted Hazard. “For your life and ours and more. Come! Come here!”

Blalock heard Hazard’s cry, which was pitched at the top of his voice. Koshinga may or may not have heard it, for he was already darting through a door at the rear of the platform. The false dragon had collapsed as Koshinga leaped away from it, with a harsh grinding of metal plates.

The Dalai Lama stopped reading, thrust the parchment into the breast of his tunic, and said something in a low tone to his soldiers. Blalock sprang from the platform, landing well out in the midst of the priests, who had come to their feet in confusion, and he struggled and shoved through the mass of them.

“There’ll be —— here,” muttered Hazard, “but it’s Koshinga—it’s Koshinga that’s dangerous.”

“The messages?” I gasped. “The messages he spoke of?”

“The call for the revolution. Ah-h.”

The soldiers of the Dalai Lama had slipped from their seats and spread along the edge of the platform, where they flung themselves prone, rifles to shoulder and eyes glinting along the barrel.

“They’ll handle that crowd,” rasped Hazard, “the crowd in the cellar; but is it likely that’s all? Is it likely that Koshinga— Ah, Blalock—the door.”

Blalock, a wild figure with the clothing half-torn from his thin body, had got through the crush of priests and was now immediately below the small opening through which we had seen these things. He didn’t look up at us; his eyes were intent on something in front of him—the sentry whom we had almost forgotten, but who still guarded that door. Suddenly Blalock darted in; craning my head forward, I saw a knife glance past his shoulder; but the next instant he had flung the wielder of that knife straight over his head, among the priests.

And now the four of us—we three white men and Sha Feng—were struggling away from the door which Blalock had unbarred, through the mob of cassocked priests who were also surging toward the exit of the temple. Fear inspired all of us, priests and laymen; but ours was the grimmer and more ghastly fear, as ours was the greater knowledge of our opponent, and of the ferocity of his unleashed power.

And our fear was not for ourselves alone, but for the patient millions of Asia over whom the wreck and ruin of civil war might presently break; nor could any one continent contain the full results of the mischief which we foresaw might be loosed this hour.

We burst out into the glare of the desert day just as rifles began to rattle behind us—the Dalai Lama’s body-guard engaging the Ko Lao Hui. We needed no consultation; but one thought was in the mind of each—to seek another entrance than the guarded one through which Koshinga had passed, to the room into which he had gone.