The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond Hamilton
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sound of waves slap-slapping against the piles of the old pier, and the heavy odors of salt water and of rotting wood invaded the room.
“The water under this pier is twenty feet deep,” Chandra Dass told the two prisoners. “I regret to give you so easy a death, but there is no opportunity to take you to the fate you deserve.”
Ennis, his skin crawling on his flesh, nevertheless spoke rapidly and as steadily as possible to the Hindoo.
“Listen, I don’t ask you to let me go, but I’ll do anything you want, let you kill me any way you want, if you’ll let Ruth—”
Sheer horror cut short his words. The Malay servants had dragged Campbell’s bound body to the door in the floor. They shoved him over the edge. Ennis had one glimpse of the inspector’s taut, strange face falling out of sight. Then a dull splash sounded instantly below, and then silence.
He felt hands upon himself, dragging him across the floor. He fought, crazily, hopelessly, twisting his body in its bonds, thrashing his bound limbs wildly.
He saw the dark, unmoved face of Chandra Dass, the brass lamp over his head, the red hangings. Then his head dangled over the opening, a shove sent his body scraping over the edge, and he plunged downward through dank darkness. With a splash he hit the icy water and went under. The heavy weight at his ankles dragged him irresistibly downward. Instinctively he held his breath as the water rushed upward around him.
His feet struck oozy bottom. His body swayed there, chained by the lead weight to the bottom. His lungs already were bursting to draw in air, slow fires seeming to creep through his breast as he held his breath.
Ennis knew that in a moment or two more he would inhale the strangling waters and die. The thought-picture of Ruth flashed across his despairing mind, wild with hopeless regret. He could no longer hold his breath, felt his muscles relaxing against his will, tasted the stinging salt water at the back of his nose.
Then it was a bursting confusion of swift sensations, the choking water in his nose and throat, the roaring in his ears. A scroll of flame unrolled slowly in his brain and a voice shouted there, “You’re dying!” He felt dimly a plucking at his ankles.
Abruptly Ennis’ dimming mind was aware that he now was shooting upward through the water. His head burst into open air and he choked, strangled and gasped, his tortured lungs gulping the damp, heavy air. He opened his eyes, and shook the water from them.
He was floating in the darkness at the surface of the water. Someone was floating beside him, supporting him. Ennis’ chin bumped the other’s shoulder, and he heard a familiar voice.
“Easy, now,” said Inspector Campbell. “Wait till I cut your hands loose.”
“Campbell!” Ennis choked. “How did you get loose?”
“Never mind that now,” the inspector answered. “Don’t make any noise, or they may hear us up there.”
Ennis felt a knife-blade slashing the bonds at his wrists. Then, the inspector’s arm helping him, he and his companion paddled weakly through the darkness under the rotting pier. They bumped against the slimy, moldering piles, threaded through them toward the side of the pier. The waves of the flooding tide washed them up and down as Campbell led the way.
They passed out from under the old pier into the comparative illumination of the stars. Looking back up, Ennis saw the long, black mass of the house of Chandra Dass, resting on the black pier, ruddy light glowing from window-cracks. He collided with something and found that Campbell had led toward a little floating dock where some skiffs were moored. They scrambled up onto it from the water, and lay panting for a few moments.
Campbell had something in his hand, a thin, razor-edged steel blade several inches long. Its hilt was an ordinary leather shoe-heel.
The inspector turned up one of his feet and Ennis saw that the heel was missing from that shoe. Carefully Campbell slid the steel blade beneath the shoe-sole, the heel-hilt sliding into place and seeming merely the innocent heel of the shoe.
“So that’s how you got loose down in the water!” Ennis exclaimed, and the inspector nodded briefly.
“That trick’s done me good service before—even with your hands tied behind your back you can get out that knife and use it. It was touch and go, though, whether I could get it out and cut myself loose in the water in time enough to free you.”
Ennis gripped the inspector’s shoulder. “Campbell, Ruth is in there! By heaven, we’ve found her and now we can get her out!”
“Right!” said the officer grimly. “We’ll go around to the front and in two minutes we’ll be in there with my men.”
* * * *
They climbed dripping to their feet, and hastened from the little floating dock up onto the shore, through the darkness to the cobbled street.
The shabbily disguised men of Inspector Campbell were not now in front of Chandra Dass’ café, but lurking in the shadows across the street. They came running toward Campbell and Ennis.
“All right, we’re going in there,” Campbell exclaimed in steely tones. “Get Chandra Dass, whatever you do, but see that his prisoners are not harmed.”
He snapped a word and one of the men handed pistols to him and to Ennis. Then they leaped toward the door of the Hindoo’s café, from which still streamed ruddy light and the babel of many voices.
A kick from Inspector Campbell sent the door flying inward, and they burst in with guns gleaming wickedly in the ruddy light. Ennis’ face was a quivering mask of desperate resolve.
The motley patrons jumped up with yells of alarm at their entrance. The hand of a Malay waiter jerked and a thrown knife thudded into the wall beside them. Ennis yelled as he saw Chandra Dass, his dark face startled, leaping back with his servants through the black curtains.
He and Campbell drove through the squealing patrons toward the back. The Malay who had thrown the knife rushed to bar the way, another dagger uplifted. Campbell’s gun coughed and the Malay reeled and stumbled. The inspector and Ennis threw themselves at the black curtains—and were dashed back.
They tore aside the black folds. A dull steel door had been lowered behind them, barring the way to the back rooms. Ennis beat crazily upon it with his pistol-butt, but it remained immovable.
“No use—we can’t break that down!” yelled Campbell, over the uproar. “Outside, and around to the other end of the building!”
They burst back out through that mad-house, into the dark of the street. They started along the side of the pier toward the river-end, edging forward on a narrow ledge but inches wide. As they reached the back of the building, Ennis shouted and pointed to dark figures at the end of the pier. There were two of them, lowering shapeless, wrapped forms over the end of the pier.
“There they are!” he cried. “They’ve got their prisoners out there with them.”
Campbell’s pistol leveled, but Ennis swiftly struck it up. “No, you might hit Ruth.”
He and the inspector bounded forward along the pier. Fire streaked from the dark ahead and bullets thumped the rotting boards around them.
Suddenly the loud roar of an accelerated motor drowned out all other sounds. It came from the river at the pier’s end.
Campbell and Ennis reached the end in time to see a long, powerful, gray motor-boat dash out into the black obscurity of the river, and roar eastward with gathering speed.
“There they go—they’re getting away!” cried the agonized young American.
Inspector Campbell cupped his hands and shouted out into the darkness, “River police, ahoy! Ahoy there!”
He rasped to Ennis. “The river police were to have a cutter here tonight. We can still catch them.”
With swiftly rising roar of speeded motors, a big cutter drove in from the darkness.