A Bid for Fortune · Part I · Chapter 1 9 (1/2)

IX

Dr. Nikola Permits Us a Free Passage

The old saying, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” is as good a warning as any I know. Certainly it proved so in our case. For if we had not been so completely occupied filing through the staples of our collars we should not have omitted to take into consideration the fact that, even when we should have removed the chains that bound us, we would still be prisoners in the room. I’m very much afraid, however, even had we remembered this point, we should only have considered it of minor importance and one to be easily overcome. As it was, the unwelcome fact remained that the door was locked, and, what was worse, that the lock itself had, for security’s sake, been placed on the outside, so that there was no chance of our being able to pick it, even had our accomplishments lain in that direction. “Try the window,” whispered Beckenham, in answer to the heavy sigh which followed my last discovery.

Accordingly we crossed the room, and I put my hands upon one of the boards and pulled. But I might as well have tried to tow a troopship with a piece of cotton, for all the satisfactory result I got; the planks were trebly screwed to the window frame, and each in turn defied me. When I was tired Beckenham put his strength to it, but even our united efforts were of no avail, and, panting and exhausted, we were at length obliged to give it up as hopeless.

“This is a pretty fix we’ve got ourselves into,” I said as soon as I had recovered sufficient breath to speak. “We can’t remain here, and yet how on earth are we to escape?”

“I can’t say, unless we manage to burst that door open and fight our way out. I wonder if that could be done.”

“First, let’s look at the door.”

We crossed the room again, and I examined the door carefully with my fingers. It was not a very strong one; but I was sufficient of a carpenter to know that it would withstand a good deal of pressure before it would give way.

“I’ve a good mind to try it,” I said; “but in that case, remember, it will probably mean a hand-to-hand fight on the other side, and, unarmed and weak as we are, we shall be pretty sure to get the worst of it.”

“Never mind that,” my intrepid companion replied, with a confidence in his voice that I was very far from feeling. “In for a penny, in for a pound; even if we’re killed it couldn’t be worse than being buried alive in here.”

“That’s so, and if fighting’s your idea, I’m your man,” I answered. “Let me first take my bearings, and then I’ll see what I can do against it. You get out of the way, but be sure to stand by to rush the passage directly the door goes.”

Again I felt the door and wall in order that I might be sure where it lay, and having done so crossed the room. My heart was beating like a Nasmyth hammer, and it was nearly a minute before I could pull myself together sufficiently for my rush. Then summoning every muscle in my body to my assistance, I dashed across and at it with all the strength my frame was capable of. Considering the darkness of the room, my steering was not so bad, for my shoulder caught the door just above its centre; there was a great crash⁠—a noise of breaking timbers⁠—and amid a shower of splinters and general debris I fell headlong through into the passage. By the time it would have taken me to count five, Beckenham was beside me helping me to rise.

“Now stand by for big trouble!” I said, rubbing my shoulder, and every moment expecting to see a door open and a crowd of Prendergast’s ruffians come rushing out. “We shall have them on us in a minute.”

But to our intense astonishment it was all dead silence. Not a sound of any single kind, save our excited breathing, greeted our ears. We might have broken into an empty house for all we knew the difference.

For nearly five minutes we stood, side by side, waiting for the battle which did not come.

“What on earth does it meant” I asked my companion. “That crash of mine was loud enough to wake the dead. Can they have deserted the place, think you, and left us to starve?”

“I can’t make it out any more than you can,” he answered. “But don’t you think we’d better take advantage of their not coming to find a way out?”

“Of course. One of us had better creep down the passage and discover how the land lies. As I’m the stronger, I’ll go. You wait here.”

I crept along the passage, treading cautiously as a cat, for I knew that both our lives depended on it. Though it could not have been more than sixty feet, it seemed of interminable length, and was as black as night. Not a glimmer of light, however faint, met my eyes.

On and on I stole, expecting every moment to be pounced upon and seized; but no such fate awaited me. If, however, our jailers did not appear, another danger was in store for me.

In the middle of my walk my feet suddenly went from under me, and I found myself falling I knew not where. In reality it was only a drop of about three feet down a short flight of steps. Such a noise as my fall made, however, was surely never heard, but still no sound came. Then Beckenham fumbled his way cautiously down the steps to my side, and whispered an enquiry as to what had happened. I told him in as few words as possible, and then struggled to my feet again.

Just as I did so my eyes detected a faint glimmer of light low down on the floor ahead of us. From its position it evidently emanated from the doorway of a room.

“Oh! if only we had a match,” I whispered.

“It’s no good wishing,” said Beckenham. “What do you advise?”

“It’s difficult to say,” I answered; “but I should think we’d better listen at that door and try to discover if there is anyone inside. If there is, and he is alone, we must steal in upon him, let him see that we are desperate, and, willy-nilly, force him to show us a way out. It’s ten chances to one, if we go on prowling about here, we shall stumble upon the whole nest of them⁠—then we’ll be caught like rats in a trap. What do you think?”

“I agree with you. Go on.”

Without further ado we crept towards the light, which, as I expected, came from under a door, and listened. Someone was plainly moving about inside; but though we waited for what seemed a quarter of an hour, but must in reality have been less than a minute and a half, we could hear no voices.

“Whoever he is, he’s alone⁠—that’s certain,” whispered my companion. “Open the door softly, and we’ll creep in upon him.”

In answer, and little by little, a cold shiver running down my back lest it should creak and so give warning to the person within, I turned the handle, pushed open the door, and we looked inside. Then⁠—but, my gracious! if I live to be a thousand I shall never forget even the smallest particular connected with the sight that met my eyes.

The room itself was a long and low one: its measurements possibly sixty feet by fifteen. The roof⁠—for there was no ceiling⁠—was of wood, crossed by heavy rafters, and much begrimed with dirt and smoke. The floor was of some highly polished wood closely resembling oak and was completely bare. But the shape and construction of the room itself were as nothing compared with the strangeness of its furniture and occupants. Words would fail me if I tried to give you a true and accurate description of it. I only know that, strong man as I was, and used to the horrors of life and death, what I saw before me then made my blood run cold and my flesh creep as it had never done before.

To begin with, round the walls were arranged, at regular intervals, more than a dozen enormous bottles, each of which contained what looked, to me, only too much like human specimens pickled in some light-coloured fluid resembling spirits of wine. Between these gigantic but more than horrible receptacles were numberless smaller ones holding other and even more dreadful remains; while on pedestals and stands, bolt upright and reclining, were skeletons of men, monkeys, and quite a hundred sorts of animals. The intervening spaces were filled with skulls, bones, and the apparatus for every kind of murder known to the fertile brain of man. There were European rifles, revolvers, bayonets, and swords; Italian stilettos, Turkish scimitars, Greek knives, Central African spears and poisoned arrows, Zulu knobkerries, Afghan yataghans, Malay krises, Sumatra blowpipes, Chinese dirks, New Guinea head-catching implements, Australian spears and boomerangs, Polynesian stone hatchets, and numerous other weapons the names of which I cannot now remember. Mixed up with them were implements for every sort of wizardry known to the superstitious; from old-fashioned English love charms to African Obi sticks, from spiritualistic planchettes to the most horrible of Fijian death potions.

In the centre of the wall, opposite to where we stood, was a large fireplace of the fashion usually met with in old English manor-houses, and on either side of it a figure that nearly turned me sick with horror. That on the right hand was apparently a native of Northern India, if one might judge by his dress and complexion. He sat on the floor in a constrained attitude, accounted for by the fact that his head, which was at least three times too big for his body, was so heavy as to require an iron tripod with a ring or collar in the top of it to keep it from overbalancing him and bringing him to the floor. To add to the horror of this awful head, it was quite bald; the skin was drawn tensely over the bones, and upon this great veins stood out as large as macaroni stems.

On the other side of the hearth was a creature half-ape and half-man⁠—the like of which I remember once to have seen in a museum of monstrosities in Sydney, where, if my memory serves me, he was described upon the catalogue as a Burmese monkey-boy. He was chained to the wall in somewhat the same fashion as we had been, and was chattering and scratching for all the world like a monkey in a Zoo.

But, horrible as these things were, the greatest surprise of all was yet to come. For, standing at the heavy oaken table in the centre of the room, was a man I should have known anywhere if I had been permitted half a glance at him. It was Dr. Nikola.

When we entered he was busily occupied with a scalpel, dissecting an animal strangely resembling a monkey. On the table, and watching the work upon which his master was engaged, sat his constant companion, the same fiendish black cat I have mentioned elsewhere. While at the end nearest us, standing on tiptoe, the better to see what was going on, was an albino dwarf, scarcely more than two feet eight inches high.

Now, though it has necessarily taken me some time to describe the scene which greeted our eyes, it must not be supposed that anything like the same length of time had really elapsed since our entry. Three seconds at the very most would have sufficed to cover the whole period.

So stealthily, however, had our approach been made, and so carefully had I opened the door, that we were well into the room before our appearance was discovered, and also before I had realized into whose presence we had stumbled. Then my foot touched a board that creaked, and Dr. Nikola looked up from the work upon which he was engaged.

His pale, thin face did not show the slightest sign of surprise as he said, in his usual placid tone⁠—

“So you have managed to escape from your room, gentlemen. Well, and pray what do you want with me?”

For a moment I was so much overcome with surprise that my tongue refused to perform its office. Then I said, advancing towards him as I spoke, closely followed by the Marquis⁠—

“So, Dr. Nikola, we have met at last!”

“At last, Mr. Hatteras, as you say,” this singular being replied, still without showing a sign of either interest or embarrassment. “All things considered, I suppose you would deem me ironical if I ventured to say that I am pleased to see you about again. However, don’t let me keep you standing, won’t you sit down? My lord, let me offer you a chair.”

All this time we were edging up alongside the table, and I was making ready for a rush at him. But he was not to be taken off his guard. His extraordinary eyes had been watching me intently, taking in my every movement; and a curious effect their steady gaze had upon me.

“Dr. Nikola,” I said, pulling myself together, “the game is up. You beat me last time; but now you must own I come out on top. Don’t utter a word or call for assistance⁠—if you do you’re a dead man. Now drop that knife you hold in your hand, and show us the way out!”

The Marquis was on his right, I was on his left, and we were close upon him as I spoke. Still he showed no sign of fear, though he must have known the danger of his position. But his eyes glowed in his head like living coals.

You will ask why we did not rush at him? Well, if I am obliged to own it, I must⁠—the truth was, such was the power that emanated from this extraordinary man, that though we both knew the crucial moment of our enterprise had arrived, while his eyes were fixed upon us, neither of us could stir an inch. When he spoke his voice seemed to cut like a knife.

“So you think my game is up, Mr. Hatteras, do you? I’m afraid once more I must differ from you. Look behind you.”

I did so, and that glance showed me how cleverly we’d been trapped. Leaning against the door, watching us with cruel, yet smiling eyes, was our old enemy Prendergast, revolver in hand. Just behind me were two powerful Sudanese, while near the Marquis was a man looking like a Greek⁠—and a very stalwart Greek at that. Observing our discomfiture, Nikola seated himself in a big chair near the fireplace and folded his hands in the curious fashion I have before described; as he did so his black cat sprang to his shoulder and sat there watching us all. Dr. Nikola was the first to speak.

“Mr. Hatteras,” he said, with devilish clearness and deliberation, “you should really know me better by this time than to think you could outwit me so easily. Is my reputation after all so small? And, while I think of it, pray let me have the pleasure of returning to you your five pound note and your letters. Your mice were perfect messengers, were they not?” As he spoke he handed me the selfsame Bank of England note I had dispatched through the pipe that very evening in payment for the file; then he shook from a box he had taken from the chimneypiece all the communications I had written imploring assistance from the outside world. To properly estimate my chagrin and astonishment would be very difficult. I could only sit and stare, first at the money and then at the letters, in blankest amazement. So we had not been rescued by the cripple after all. Was it possible that while we had been so busy arranging our escape we had in reality been all the time under the closest surveillance? If that were so, then this knowledge of our doings would account for the silence with which my attack upon the door had been received. Now we were in an even worse position than before. I looked at Beckenham, but his head was down and his right hand was picking idly at the table edge. He was evidently waiting for what was coming next. In sheer despair I turned to Nikola.

“Since you have outwitted us again, Dr. Nikola, do not play with us⁠—tell us straight out what our fate is to be.”

“If it means going back to that room again,” said Beckenham, in a voice I hardly recognised, “I would far rather die and be done with it.”

“Do not fear, my lord, you shall not die,” Nikola said, turning to him with a bow. “Believe me, you will live to enjoy many happier hours than those you have been compelled to spend under my roof!”

“What do you mean?”

The doctor did not answer for nearly a moment; then he took what looked to me suspiciously like a cablegram form from his pocket and carefully examined it. Having done so, he said quietly⁠—

“Gentlemen, you ask what I mean? Well, I mean this⁠—if you wish to leave this house this very minute, you are free to do so on one condition!”