Thorne Guy
The City in the Clouds

… Steps overhead; the little bulb over the mouthpiece labeled "Mr. Morse's study" goes out, and another lights up over the mouthpiece labeled "Bathroom." There is a jarring as a tap is turned on and a rush of water.

"That'll do, Zorilla. Two feet is quite enough for our purpose" – the voices are actually in the room now, much louder and clearer than before.

"You take the heels – steady, heavo!" and then a splash and a thud. We heard some one vaulting lightly into the bath.

"Now, Morse, I hold you up for a minute. I shall press you down under the water until you are as near dead as a man can be. Have you anything to say?"

"Yes. Give me one moment."

"Ten if you like."

Then there came in a calm, penetrating voice, "Are you there?"

I reached upward and smote with my clenched fist upon the outside of the bath. I heard a muttered exclamation, a slight splash, and then Bill Rolston pulled over a lever, and half the ceiling of our room sank towards us with a noise like the winding-up of a clock.

Midwinter was standing in one end of the bath, which hid him almost up to his waist. His jaw dropped like the jaw of a dead man. Such baffled hate and infinite malevolence stared out of his eyes that I gave a shout of relief as Rolston lifted his arm and fired.

He must have missed the fiend's head by a hair's breadth, no more. Quick as lightning he fired again, but he was too late. Midwinter bounded out of the bath like a tennis ball, felled Rolston with a back-arm blow as he leapt, and fled down the passage.

The loud thunder of the explosions in that underground place had not died away before I had lifted Morse from under the water and dragged him over the side of the bath.

His face was very pale, but his eyes were open and he could speak.

Truly the man was marvelous.

"The other," he whispered, "the brute Zorilla! Juanita!"

I understood one of the devils, desperate now, was still at large, and even as I realized it, I saw a ghastly sight.

There was a noise above. I bent my head backward and looked up through the aperture in the ceiling.

A man was crouching over it and I saw his face and neck – a big, black-bearded face, with eyes like blazing coals, but reversed. His eyes were where his mouth should have been, his nostrils were like two pits, and for a forehead there was a grinning mouth full of gleaming teeth. Any one who, when ill, has seen their nurse or attendant bending over them from the back of the bed, will realize what I mean, though they can never understand the horror of that demoniac and inverted mask.

I was pretty quick on the target, but not quick enough. The thing whipped away even as I fired, and there was a thunder of feet running.

I think a sort of madness seized me, at any rate I was never in a moment's doubt as to what to do. I shoved my pistol in my pocket, leapt upon the edge of the bath, sprang upwards and caught the floor of the room above with my hands.

The rest was easy for any athlete in training. I pulled myself up, lay panting for a second and then stood upon the tiled floor of the bathroom.

The door leading into the library was open. I dashed through to find the place empty, rushed through the hall and out upon the steps of the main entrance. And then, joy! A morning wind had begun and instead of a white, impenetrable wall, a phantom army was retreating and, as if pursuing those ghost-like sentinels, was the black, running figure of Zorilla.

I had a clear glimpse of him as he plunged into the tunnel leading to Grand Square, and I was after him like a slipped greyhound.

In Grand Square it was clearing up with a vengeance. There were gleams of sunlight here and there and the mist had lifted for about twelve feet above my head.

I saw him bolt round the central fountain, hidden by an immense bronze dragon for a moment, and then legging it for all he was worth towards the way that led to the lifts for the second stage.

The wood floor had dried with the lifting of the mist and I was doing seven-foot strides. I was seeing red. There was a terrible cold fury at the bottom of my heart, but in my mind there was a furious joy. With every stride I gained on him – this powerful, thick-set, baboon-like man from the forests of the Amazon.

I gave a loud, exulting "View-halloo," and the black head turned for an instant – he lost ten good yards by that. I whooped again. I meant to kill, to rend him in pieces. And for the first time in my life I realized the joy of primeval man: the lust of the hunt, red fang, red claw, to tear, dominate and destroy.

Oh, it was fine hunting!

Damn him! He snapped himself into one of the little lifts when I was within six yards of him. I saw his ugly face sink out of sight behind the glass panels. I remembered that these small hydraulic lifts worked, though the big ones below didn't. But I remembered something else … there was a stairway.

I found it by instinct, a great broad stair with tiled walls like the subway of some railway terminus.

I didn't bother about the stairs. I leapt down – preserving my balance by a miracle – six or seven at a time. Pounding out into the great empty City at the foot, I swirled round and was just in time to see my gentleman bolt out of his lift like a rabbit from its hole and run to where I knew was the outside stairway which fell, in its corkscrew path, barred by many gates, right down to safety and the normal world.

It was the way by which dear old Pu-Yi had hoped to descend and raise the alarm. It was the perilous eyrie upon which this same bull-like assassin had picked him off like a sitting pigeon and boasted of it not half an hour before.

As he dodged and ran I fired at him, but never a bullet touched the brute and I flung the Colt away with an oath.

"Much better kill him with my own hands," I said in my mind, "much better tear his head off, break him up – "

I tell you this as it happened. For the moment I was a wild beast, in pursuit of another, but still, I think, a super-beast.

Well, never mind that. I saw him fumbling at a sort of fence, clearly outlined against an immense space of morning sky, and thundered after him – thundered, I say, because I was now running along an open steel grating, which seemed to sway…

Then I vaulted over where Zorilla had vaulted, and my heart leapt into my mouth as I fell – fell some eight feet on to a tiny platform, protected from space by a rail not more than three feet high.

I reeled, and caught hold of a stanchion and saved myself. Far, far below, London – London in color was unrolling itself like a map – and immediately below my feet, already a considerable distance down, was the slithering black spider that I had sworn to kill.

I could see him through the grid, and then I flung myself upon the corkscrew ladder, grasping the rails with my hands until the skin was burnt from them, disdaining the steps and spinning round and ever downwards like a great top.

As I went my head projected at right angles to my body. As I buzzed down that sickening height I saw that Zorilla had stopped. I knew that he had come to one of the steel gates, at which he was fumbling uselessly.

Then, as I came to the last step before the little gate platform I saw also, under the curve of the stair, a huddled figure, and I knew who that was, who that had been…

I threw myself at Zorilla with my knee in the small of his back. Instantly I caught him round the throat with my fingers just on the big veins behind the ear which supply the brain with blood, and my fingers crushed the trachea until the whole supple throat seemed breaking under the molding of my grip.

I felt that I had got him. That if I could hold out for a minute he would be dead, but I hadn't reckoned with the immense muscular force of the body.

I clung like the leopard on the buffalo, but he began to sway this way and that. In front of us was the steel gate and the motionless figure of Pu-Yi. We were struggling upon the steel grid, not much larger than a tea table. A slight rail only three feet high defended us from the void – a little thigh-high rail between us and a drop of near two thousand feet.

He lurched to the left, and I swung out into immensity, carried on his back. I was sure it was the end, that I should be flung off into space, when with one arm he gripped the gate, braced all his great strength and slowly dragged us back into equilibrium. It seemed that the whole tower trembled, vibrated in a horrible, metallic music.

I pressed down my thumbs, I strained every sinew of my wrist and arm in the strangle hold, and I felt the life pulsing out of him in steady throbs. There was nothing else in the world now but myself and him and I ground my teeth and clutched harder.

In his death agony he lurched to the other side of our tiny foothold space. This was where the circular stairway ended. He caught his foot, so I was told afterwards, in the last stanchion of the stair, fell over the rail with a low, sobbing groan, and then, weighted by me upon his shoulders, began to slip, slip, slip, downwards.

And I with him.

I had conquered. I don't think that in that moment I had any feeling but one of wild, fierce joy. He was going, I was going with him, but I never thought of that, until my right ankle was clutched in a vice-like grip. I felt the warm, heaving body below me rush away, tearing my grip from its throat by its own dreadful impetus, and then, as I was snatched back with a jar of every bone in my body, there was a shrill whistling of air for a second as Zorilla went headlong to his doom, and I knew nothing else.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Falling! Falling through deep waters, with a horrible sickening sense of utter helplessness and desolation; nerves, heart, mind – very being itself – awaited the crash of extinction. A slight jolt, a roaring of great waters in the air, and a voice, dim, thin and far away!

… In some mysterious way, the sense of sight was joined to that of sound and hearing. I was surrounded by blackness shot with gleams of baleful fire, shifting and changing until the black grew gray in furious eddies, the gray changed into the light of day, and a far-off voice became loud and insistent.

It was thus that I came to myself after the horror on the edge of the dizzy void.

The first thing I saw was the face of Juanita. There were tears in her eyes and her cheeks were brilliant. Then I heard, and even then with a start, a voice that I had never thought to hear again – the gentle, tripping accents of Pu-Yi.

"He will do now, Señorita. The doctor said that he would awake from his sleep with very little the matter except the shock – "

"Juanita!" I cried, and her cool hand came down upon my forehead.

"You are not to excite yourself, dearest," she said.

For a moment or two I lay there in a waking swoon of puzzled but entire bliss. Then I tried to move my position slightly upon the bed, for I was lying upon a bed in a large and airy room, and groaned aloud. Every muscle in my body seemed stretched as if upon the rack, and there was a pain like a red-hot iron in one ankle.

"It will hurt for a few hours," said Pu-Yi, "but you will shortly be massaged, Sir Thomas, and then – "

"You!" I cried, "but you are dead! Zorilla got you on the tower before – before – "

My mind leapt up into full activity. I was once more swaying upon the edge of infinity with my fingers locked in the bull neck of the assassin, and my voice died away into a whisper of horror.

"He stunned me, that was all, Sir Thomas. His bullet glanced away from my head. I came to myself just in time to see you struggling with him and gripped you just as you were falling off into space. The spirits of my ancestors were with me."

"And he – Zorilla?"

"Will never trouble us more. But you are not well enough yet to talk. You are in my hands for the present."

"Do exactly as Pu-Yi says, dear, and remember that all is well."

"Your father?" I gasped – why hadn't I thought of Morse before?

"All is well," she repeated in her low, musical voice, and as I lay back, trembling once more upon the edge of unconsciousness, her face left the circle of my vision.

Two deft Chinese masseurs came. I was placed in a hot bath impregnated with some strong salts. I was kneaded and pummeled until I could hardly repress cries of pain. I drank a cup of hot soup in which there must have been some soporific, and sank into a deep, refreshing sleep.

It had been late afternoon when I first came to myself. When I woke for the second time, it was night. The room was brilliantly lit. Pu-Yi was sitting by my bedside, quietly smoking a long, Chinese pipe, and, for my part, though I was very stiff, I was in full possession of all my faculties and knew that I had suffered no harm.

I sat up in bed and held out my hand to the Chinaman.

"Pu-Yi, I'm all right now. I owe my life to you!" And as I realized my extraordinary deliverance in the very article of death, a sob burst from me and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes filled with tears. My hand is as strong as most men's, but I almost winced at the grip of those fragile-looking, artistic fingers.

"You did the same for me, my honorable friend," he said quietly, "and now – "

Before I knew what he would be at, he was feeling my pulse and listening to my heart with his ear against my chest.

At length he gave a sigh of relief. "We had a doctor to you," he said, "and he told us that, in his opinion, you would be little the worse. I am rejoiced that his opinion is confirmed."

"Oh, I am all right now, and ready for anything."

"You are sure, Sir Thomas? What you have been through may have given you a shock which – "

For answer, I held out my hand. It was as firm as a rock and did not tremble. I heaved myself off the bed, took a cigarette from a box upon a table, and began to smoke.

"Now then, Pu-Yi, I am just as I was before. First of all, where am I?"

"You are in the Palacete," he replied. "You were brought here at once."

Then I knew that I was in Morse's dwelling house, copied exactly, as I have said before, from the Palacete Mendoza at Rio.

"Now tell me exactly what has happened, in as few words as possible."

"I am only too anxious to do so, Sir Thomas. You were brought back here. Immediately after, Rolston descended by means of the outside stair and summoned the staff. They are all here now. The electric cables have been repaired. Lifts, telephones, electric light, and all the other machinery is in working order. The body of Zorilla has been brought up to the City and placed with that of Mulligan and my own servant. This house is strongly guarded by armed men, and the whole City is patrolled."

"No one else was hurt?"

"No one else at all, Sir Thomas."

His face changed as he said this, and he looked me full in the eyes.

Then, with a start, I understood. Every detail of the past came back in a vivid, instantaneous picture. Again I saw the silver bath descending from the ceiling and heard the loud explosion of Rolston's pistol. And as that furious noise resounded in my mental ear, once more the grinning, corpse-pale face of Mark Antony Midwinter passed close to mine and I felt the very wind of his passage as he rushed by and disappeared down the long underground corridor leading to the safety-room.

"Midwinter!" I almost shouted. The face of the Chinaman had gone a dusky gray – he told me afterwards that mine was white as linen.

"Vanished," he said – "disappeared utterly. And he is the master-mind! While Mark Antony Midwinter is alive, Mr. Morse, none of us, will know a moment of safety or of ease."

I could not quarrel with that. Zorilla was dead – a great gain – but no one who had been through what I had and who knew the whole situation as I knew it, could fail to appreciate the terrible seriousness of this news. To you who read this record in peace and safety, this may seem a wild or exaggerated statement, a product of over-strained nerves. But, believe me, it was not so. I knew too much! The securest fortress in the whole world had been already stormed. All the precautions that enormous wealth and some of the subtlest brains alive could take had already proved useless against the superhuman cunning, energy and ferocity of this being who seemed, indeed, literally, more fiend than man. No! we were no cowards, most of us, up there in the City of the Clouds, but we might well quail still, to know that this fury was unchained. I know that I sat down suddenly upon the bed with a groan of despair.

"Gone! Vanished! Surely he must be either in the City or has escaped! If he is in the City, I admit the danger is imminent. He must be utterly desperate, and will stick at nothing. If he has managed to get down to the earth, he is dangerous still, but we have a breathing space. Which is it?"

"We do not know, Sir Thomas. There is no trace of him anywhere, so far. But, as I have said, we have more than a hundred men, armed and patrolling the City. This house, at any rate, is secure for the moment. A great search is being organized. The whole area is being mapped out and it will be searched with such thoroughness before to-morrow's dawn that a rat could not escape. My own theory is, and Mr. Morse agrees with me, that Midwinter is still in the City. The most scrupulous inquiries below seem to prove that he never descended from the tower, and you know how minute and careful our organization is. And now that you are yourself again, it is Mr. Morse's wish that we hold a conference and settle exactly what is to be done. Do you think you are equal to it?"

"Perfectly," I replied, and without another word Pu-Yi led the way out of the room.

I found Mr. Morse sitting in his library. He was pale, and seemed much shaken. There were red rims round the keen, masterful eyes, but his voice was strong and resolute, and I could see that, whatever his opinion of his chances, he would fight till the end.

I need not go into details of the private conversation we had for a minute or two. His gratitude was pathetic, and I felt more drawn to him than ever before. When at length Juanita, followed by little Rolston, entered the room, all trace of his emotion had gone and we settled down round the table as calm and business-like as a board of directors in a bank. And yet, you know, no group of people in Europe stood in such peril as we did then. Behind the long, silken curtains, the shutters were of bullet-proof steel. The corridor outside, the gardens of the house, swarmed with men armed to the teeth. It was dark in the sky, but the City in the Clouds blazed everywhere with an artificial sunlight from the great electric lamps.

Two thousand feet up in the air we sat and spoke in quiet voices of the horror that was past and the horror that threatened us. Far down below, London was waking up to a night of pleasure. People were dressing for dinners and the theater, thousands upon thousands of toilers had left their work and were about to enjoy the hours of rest and recreation. And not a soul, probably, among all those millions that crawled like ants at our feet had the least suspicion of what was going on in our high place. They were accustomed to the great towers now. The sensation of their building was over and done, there were no more thrills. If they had only known!

I was not aware if strata of clouds hid us from the world below, as so often happened; but if the night were clear I do remember thinking that any one who cast their eyes up into the sky might well notice an unusual brilliancy in the pleasure city of the millionaire, that mysterious theater of the unknown, which dominated the greatest city in the world.

… "Well, Tom," said Mr. Morse, "Pu-Yi tells me that you are now acquainted with all the facts. The question we have to decide is, what are we to do?"

He turned to Juanita, and nodded. She left the room.

"The situation, as I understand it," I replied, "is that Midwinter" – I had a curious reluctance in pronouncing the name aloud – "is either concealed here in the City or has made his escape. If he is here, we shall know before to-morrow morning, shall we not?"

"Precisely. I have spent the last hour in going over the plans of the City with the chiefs of the staff. We have divided up the two stages into small sections, and even while I am talking to you the search has begun. The orders are to shoot at sight, to kill that man with less compunction than one would kill a mad dog. If he is really here, he cannot possibly escape."

"Very well, then," I said, "let us turn our attention to the other possibility. Assuming that he has got away, I think we may safely say that the danger is very much lessened."

"While we remain here in the City – yes," Morse agreed.

"And you are determined to do that?"

He took the cigar he had been smoking from his lips, and his hand shook a little. "Think what you like of me," he said, "but remember that there is Juanita. I say to you, Kirby, that if I never descend to the world again alive, I must stay here until Mark Antony Midwinter is dead."

Well, I had already made up my mind on this point. "I think you are quite right," I told him. "Still, he will not make a second appearance in the City. You can treble your precautions. He must be attacked down in the world."

Then a thought struck me for the first time. "But how," I said, "did he and Zorilla ever come here in the first instance? Treachery among the staff? It is the only explanation."

Pu-Yi shook his head. "You may put that out of your mind, Sir Thomas," he said. "That is my department. I know what you cannot know about my chosen compatriots."

"But the man isn't a specter! He's a devil incarnate, but there's nothing supernatural about him."

Then little Rolston spoke. "I've been down below all day," he said, "and though I haven't discovered anything of Midwinter, I am certain of how he and Zorilla got here."

We all turned to him with startled faces.

"Do you remember, Sir Thomas," he said, "that, shortly after your arrival, when you were looking down upon London from one of the galleries, there was a big fair in Richmond Park?"

I remembered, and said so.

"Among the other attractions, there was a captive balloon – "

Morse brought his hand heavily down upon the table with a loud exclamation in Spanish.

"Yes, there was, but – but it was quite half a mile away and never came up anything like our height here."

"No," the boy answered, "not at that time. But do you remember how during the fog last night I told you I had seen something, or thought I had seen something, like a group of statuary falling before my bedroom window?"

Something seemed to snap in my mind. "Good heavens! And I thought it was merely a trick of the mist! Nothing was discovered?"

"No, but in view of what happened afterwards, I formed a theory. I put it to the test this morning. I made a few inquiries as to the proprietors of the captive balloon and the engine which wound it up and down by means of a steel cable on a drum. I need not go into details at the moment, but the whole apparatus did not leave Richmond Park when it was supposed to do so. The wind was drifting in the right direction, the balloon could be more or less controlled – certainly as to height. I have learned that there was a telephone from the car down to the ground. Desperate men, resolved to stick at nothing, might well have arranged for the balloon to rise above the City – the cable was quite long enough for that – and descend upon part of it by means of a parachute, or, if not that, a hanging rope. More dangerous feats than that have been done in the air and are upon record. It seems to me there is no doubt whatever that this is the way the two men broke through all our precautions."

There was a long silence when he had spoken. Mendoza Morse leant back in his chair with the perspiration glittering in little beads upon his face, but he wore an aspect of relief.

"You've sure got it, my friend," he said at length, "that was how the trick was done! It was the one possibility which had never occurred to me, and hence we were unprovided. Well, that relieves my mind to a certain extent. We can take it that we are safe in the City, if Midwinter has escaped. How are we to make an end of him?"

"The difficulty is," I said, "that we are, so to speak, both literally and actually above, or outside, the Law. If that were not so, if ordinary methods could deal with this man, or could have dealt with the Hermandad in the past, Mr. Morse would never have planned and built the eighth wonder of the world. No word of what has happened in the last day or two must get down to the public – isn't that so?"

Morse nodded. "It goes without saying," he said. "We have our own law in the City in the Clouds. At the present moment, there are three bodies awaiting final disposal – and there won't be any inquest on them."

"That," Rolston broke in, "was something I was waiting to hear. It's important."

He stopped, and looked at me with his usual modesty, as if waiting permission to speak. I smiled at him, and he went on.

"It is an absolute necessity," he said, "to enter into the psychology of Midwinter. We may be sure that his purpose is as strong as ever. The death of Zorilla, and his present failure, will not deter him in the least, knowing what we know of him?"

He looked inquiringly at Morse.

"It won't turn him a hair's breadth," said the millionaire. "If he was mad with blood-lust and hatred before, he must be ten times worse now."

"So I thought, sir. He has lost his companion, as desperate and as cunning as himself, but we can be quite certain that he is not without resources. I think it safe to assume that he has practically an unlimited supply of money. He must have other confederates, though whether they are in his full confidence or not is a debatable question. That, however, at the moment, is not of great importance. We have him in London, let us suppose, for it is the safest place in the world for a man to hide – in London, determined, and hungering for revenge. We have no idea what his next scheme will be, and in all human probability he hasn't planned either. He must be considerably shaken. He will know, now, how tremendously strong our defenses are, and it will not escape a man of his intelligence that they will now be greatly strengthened. It will take him some time to gather his wits together and work out another scheme. The only thing to do, it seems to me, is to force his hand."

"And how?" Morse and I said, simultaneously.

"We must trap him – not here at all, but down there, in London" – he made a little gesture towards the floor with his hand, and as he did so, once more the strange and eerie remembrance of where we were came over me, lost for a time in the comfortable seclusion of a room that might have been in Berkeley Square.

"Here we, that is the Press, come in," said Rolston, smiling proudly at me.

I smiled inwardly at the grandiloquence of the tone, and yet, how true it was! – this lad who, so short a time ago had got to see me by a trick, was certainly the most brilliant modern journalist I had ever met. I made him a little bow, and, delighted beyond measure, he continued.

"Let it be put about," he said, "with plenty of detail, rumor, contradiction of the rumor and so on – in fact we will get up a little stunt about it – that Mr. Mendoza Morse has tired of his whim. For a time, at any rate, he is going to make his reappearance in the world. If necessary, announce Miss Juanita's engagement to Sir Thomas. Get all London interested and excited again."

Morse nodded, his face wrinkled with thought. "I think I see," he said, "but go on."

"When this is done, let us put ourselves in Midwinter's place. I believe that he will have no suspicion of a trap. He will argue it in this way. We are too much afraid of him to attack ourselves. Hitherto, all our measures have been measures of defense and escape. It will hardly occur to him that we have changed all our tactics. He will think that, with the failure of his attempt, the bad failure, and the death of Zorilla – which I have no doubt he will have discovered by now – we imagine he will abandon all his attempts. He will say to himself that we now believe ourselves safe and that his power is over, his initiative broken, that he will never dare to go on with his campaign. Everything seems in favor of it. I should say that it is a hundred to one that his line of thought will be precisely as I have said."

"By Jove, and I think so, too! Good for you, Rolston!" I shouted, seeing where he was going.

His boyish face was wreathed in smiles. "Thank you," he said. "Well, we are to lay a trap, and it is on the details of that trap that everything depends. I see, by to-day's Times, that Birmingham House in Berkeley Square, is to let. The Duke is ordered a long cruise in the Pacific. Let Mr. Morse immediately take the house and issue invitations for a great ball to celebrate Miss Juanita's engagement. If that house and that ball are not to Midwinter as a candle is to a moth, then my theory is useless! Somehow or other he will be there, either before or actually on the occasion. By some means or other he will get into the house."

He stopped, and with a little apologetic look took out his cigarette case and began to smoke. He really was wonderful. This was the lad, airily ordering one of the richest men in the world to take the Duke of Birmingham's great mansion, whose capital but a few short weeks ago was one penny, bronze. I remember how he was forced to confess it to me, even as I congratulated him.

We talked on for another half-hour, or rather little Bill Rolston talked, the rest of us only putting in a word now and then. He seemed to have mapped out every detail of the new campaign, and we were content to listen and admire.

Of course I am not a person without original ideas, or unaccustomed to organization – my career, such as it is, has proved that. But on that night, at least, I could initiate nothing, and I was even glad when the conference came to an end. Morse was much the same – he confessed it to me as we left the room – and the truth is that we were both feeling the results of the terrible shocks we had undergone. Rolston was younger and fresher, and besides his peril had not been as great as mine or the millionaire's.