The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond Hamilton
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criminals?”
“No, it is no ordinary criminal organization,” the detective said. His sagging face set strangely. “Unless I am mistaken, the Brotherhood of the Door is the most unholy and blackly evil organization that has ever existed on this earth. Almost nothing is known of it outside its circle. I myself in twenty years have learned little except its existence and name. That ritual I just repeated to you, I heard from the lips of a dying member of the Brotherhood, who repeated the words in his delirium.”
Campbell leaned forward. “But I know that every year about this time the Brotherhood come from all over the world and gather at some secret center here in England. And every year, before that gathering, scores of people are kidnapped and never heard of again. I believe that all those people are kidnapped by this mysterious Brotherhood.”
“But what becomes of the people they kidnap?” cried the pale young American. “What do they do with them?”
* * * *
Inspector Campbell’s bright brown eyes showed a hint of hooded horror, yet he shook his head. “I know no more than you. But whatever they do to the victims, they are never heard of again.”
“But you must know something more!” Ennis protested. “What is this Door?”
Campbell again shook his head. “That too I don’t know, but whatever it is, the Door is utterly sacred to the members of the Brotherhood, and whomever they mean by They Beyond the Door, they dread and venerate to the utmost.”
“Where leads the Door? It leads outside our world,” repeated Ennis. “What can that mean?”
“It might have a symbolic meaning, referring to some secluded fastness of the order which is away from the rest of the world,” the inspector said. “Or it might—”
He stopped. “Or it might what?” pressed Ennis, his pale face thrust forward.
“It might mean, literally, that the Door leads outside our world and universe,” finished the inspector.
Ennis’ haunted eyes stared. “You mean that this Door might somehow lead into another universe? But that’s impossible!”
“Perhaps unlikely,” Campbell said quietly, “but not impossible. Modern science has taught us that there are other universes than the one we live in, universes congruent and coincident with our own in space and time, yet separated from our own by the impassable barrier of totally different dimensions. It is not entirely impossible that a greater science than ours might find a way to pierce that barrier between our universe and one of those outside ones, that a Door should be opened from ours into one of those others in the infinite outside.”
“A door into the infinite outside,” repeated Ennis broodingly, looking past the inspector. Then he made a sudden movement of wild impatience, the dread leaping back strong in his eyes again.
“Oh, what good is all this talk about Doors and infinite universes doing in finding Ruth? I want to do something! If you think this mysterious Brotherhood has taken her, you must surely have some idea of how we can get her back from them? You must know something more about them than you’ve told.”
“I don’t know anything more certainly, but I’ve certain suspicions that amount to convictions,” Inspector Campbell said. “I’ve been working on this Brotherhood for many years, and block after block I’ve narrowed down to the place I think the order’s local center, the London headquarters of the Brotherhood of the Door.”
“Where is the place?” asked Ennis tensely.
“It is the waterfront café of one Chandra Dass, a Hindoo, down by East India Docks,” said the detective officer. “I’ve been there in disguise more than once, watching the place. This Chandra Dass I’ve found to be immensely feared by everyone in the quarter, which strengthens my belief that he’s one of the high officers of the Brotherhood. He’s too exceptional a man to be really running such a place.”
“Then if the Brotherhood took Ruth, she may be at that place now!” cried the young American, electrified.
Campbell nodded his bald head. “She may very likely be. Tonight I’m going there again in disguise, and have men ready to raid the place. If Chandra Dass has your wife there, we’ll get her before he can get her away. Whatever way it turns out, we’ll let you know at once.”
“Like hell you will!” exploded the pale young Ennis. “Do you think I’m going to twiddle my thumbs while you’re down there? I’m going with you. And if you refuse to let me, by heaven I’ll go there myself!”
Inspector Pierce Campbell gave the haggard, fiercely determined face of the young man a long look, and then his own colorless countenance seemed to soften a little.
“All right,” he said quietly. “I can disguise you so you’ll not be recognized. But you’ll have to follow my orders exactly, or death will result for both of us.”
That strange, hooded dread flickered again in his eyes, as though he saw through shrouding mists the outline of dim horror.
“It may be,” he added slowly, “that something worse even than death awaits those who try to oppose the Brotherhood of the Door—something that would explain the unearthly, superhuman dread that enwraps the secret mysteries of the order. We’re taking more than our lives in our hands, I think, in trying to unveil those mysteries, to regain your wife. But we’ve got to act quickly, at all costs. We’ve got to find her before the great gathering of the Brotherhood takes place, or we’ll never find her.”
* * * *
Two hours before midnight found Campbell and Ennis passing along a cobble-paved waterfront street north of the great East India Docks. Big warehouses towered black and silent in the darkness on one side, and on the other were old, rotting docks beyond which Ennis glimpsed the black water and gliding lights of the river.
As they straggled beneath the infrequent lights of the ill-lit street, they were utterly changed in appearance. Inspector Campbell, dressed in a shabby suit and rusty bowler, his dirty white shirt innocent of tie, had acquired a new face, a bright red, oily, eager one, and a high, squeaky voice. Ennis wore a rough blue seaman’s jacket and a vizored cap pulled down over his head. His unshaven-looking face and subtly altered features made him seem a half-intoxicated seaman off his ship, as he stumbled unsteadily along. Campbell clung to him in true land-shark fashion, plucking his arm and talking wheedlingly to him.
They came into a more populous section of the evil old waterfront street, and passed fried-fish shops giving off the strong smell of hot fat, and the dirty, lighted windows of a half-dozen waterfront saloons, loud with sordid argument or merriment.
Campbell led past them until they reached one built upon an abandoned, moldering pier, a ramshackle frame structure extending some distance back out on the pier. Its window was curtained, but dull red light glowed through the glass window of the door.
A few shabby men were lounging in front of the place but Campbell paid them no attention, tugging Ennis inside by the arm.
“Carm on in!” he wheedled shrilly. “The night ain’t ’alf over yet—we’ll ’ave just one more.”
“Don’t want any more,” muttered Ennis drunkenly, swaying on his feet inside. “Get away, you damned old shark.”
Yet he suffered himself to be led by Campbell to a table, where he slumped heavily into a chair. His stare swung vacantly.
The café of Chandra Dass was a red-lit, smoke-filled cave with cheap black curtains on the walls and windows, and other curtains cutting off the back part of the building from view. The dim room was jammed with tables crowded with patrons whose babel of tongues made an unceasing din, to which a three-string guitar somewhere added a wailing undertone. The waiters were dark-skinned and tiger-footed Malays, while the patrons seemed drawn from every nation east and west.
Ennis’ glazed eyes saw dandified Chinese from Limehouse and Pennyfields, dark little Levantins from Soho, rough-looking Cockneys