CHAPTER XVIII.\
SLAVES OF FELSENWEIR
1
“We meet at last, Woodville!”
Anubis spoke. And I knew the Voice!
“Please come and talk to me. We have much to say to one another.”
Those beautiful, dreadful eyes never moved in their regard. I came out of the shadow into blue light and at last stood less than a pace from the chair.
“Your work is familiar to me, Woodville.” Thin lips under a hawklike nose scarcely seemed to move. “We shall understand one another presently.”
He raised one of the talonish hands and snapped his fingers.
I abandoned speculation again and became a detached watcher. I was in a world where ordinary laws had ceased to operate.… In some way I had strayed over the border line.
The ebony statue stood up.
With a sense of amazement such as I cannot hope to convey, I realized that the figure lived! She disappeared into shadow but almost immediately returned carrying a low, tapestried stool.
In barefooted silence she approached, placed the seat for me, and returned to her place on the dais, resuming that pose in which I had first seen her.…
“Mizmûn surprises you?” Anubis suggested. “She is a Nubian Arab, Woodville, and was born just outside Assouan. I procured her at the age of four. Is she not a beauty? Her companion”—with one talon hand he indicated the motionless ivory figure—“Isa, is a Georgian, as no doubt you had guessed from the texture of her skin.”
He snapped his fingers and spoke rapidly in a tongue which sounded unfamiliar. The ivory statue stood upright. Raising white arms, she turned slowly, dreamily, like a mannequin. I was conscious of definite embarrassment, and I suppose I showed it, for:
“Pray do not consider the feelings of my attendants,” said Anubis. “They have none.”
He snapped his fingers again. Isa resumed her former pose.
“That unpleasant quality which women are fond of referring to as their soul is absent in Isa, Mizmûn, and the others. Twelve in all, Woodville, and as nearly perfect as Nature will permit Science to rear a human being. The members of my Corps of Pages approximate as closely to the hourïs of Mohammed’s paradise as one could reasonably expect to approach.”
He went on to tell me in his cold, cynical voice how he had procured these results—a mixture of surgery and dietetics which sickened me as I listened. My horror grew and grew—and my gorge rose against him.
“Every page, in addition, is mistress of some useful profession or pleasurable art. But perhaps I bore you. You may not share my passion for beauty—my hatred of all that is coarse in humanity, notably its proclivity for multiplying. I am personally unbeautiful. If I showed myself to the world, the world would mock at me. Therefore I hide and accumulate power. I am to-day, Woodville, the most powerful man living.” He extended gaunt crooked fingers. “I hold that mocking world in the hollow of my hand!”
He paused, watching me, and I sought for composure—composure to retain the regard of those beautiful, wild-animal eyes.
“Your work in Brazil interested me deeply. Particularly, your account of certain native tribes on the upper reaches of the Rio Negro suggested possibilities. Later, I shall ask you to mark on a map the exact territory occupied by them. I wish to convince you of the futility of your opposition. I shall then give you ample time to decide—for yourself and for your friends.
“You may all join our company if you wish. Indeed, I have urgent need of you. In your very dissimilar mental developments you are, all three, unique—but useful. I rather think you find our little Marusa attractive?”
I clenched my fists and bent forward.
“No melodrama, Woodville, I beg! Directly you have made your decision, I will give her to you with pleasure.… But I see you regard this as bribery. I wish your conclusions to be based upon an appreciation of my aims, purely. For this reason, and for no other, you have been permitted to see the laboratory and to interview me in person. Few of my company have enjoyed these privileges.”
He snapped his fingers.
“But let us forget worry and women, and consider wine!”
The girl Isa, in whom I had observed not the slightest indication of life since she had returned to her kneeling pose, stood up and disappeared in shadow. Mizmûn followed. A few moments later they returned silently as they had stolen away.
One set a high table at the edge of the dais between myself and Anubis, the other laid a tray upon it. Right and left of the table they stood, the ebony and the ivory statue.
I saw before me a large bowl of fruit, glasses, some very delicate-looking sandwiches, a bottle of Bollinger, a flask of white wine, some pre-war whisky, a syphon, and a plain black box.
Raising my eyes, they were caught and held by the fixed gaze of Anubis. He spoke softly.
“Your suspicions are… an insult, Woodville! Even the clumsy Borgias disdained drugged wine!”
“But… !”
“Those were your thoughts! Your suspicion I forgive. That you so gravely misunderstand my powers is disappointing. Would you be good enough to open the black box for me?”
I tore my gaze away from those golden eyes and looked at the box. Standing up, I raised the lid.
For self-possession I had been fighting all the time; but now, in spite of this hard-won control, a cry, a shriek, was torn from me.… A blinding light shone out of the box, searing my eyes! I was blind! This devil had… The cry was cut short upon my lips.
“Obey!” said Anubis.
And suddenly I could see again! …
But I was powerless, paralyzed! I tried to raise my eyes from the box to the speaker. It was impossible. I could not move a muscle of my body. I was tongue-tied—a dead man, save for my powers of sight and hearing. Bending over the box I stood rigid, until:
“Look at me,” the Voice commanded.
I looked.
“When Gaston Max and yourself left your room at the Regal to wire to Paris, London, and New York, such a box was brought under the notice of John Lonergan. Since that moment he has been my slave. You understand?”
“I understand.”
I was helpless. This devilish mechanism had robbed me of personality!
“It is my intention, however,” Anubis continued, “that you shall be your own master. Therefore, close the box.”
I obeyed.
“You are free.”
It was so!
A sense of pressure like that of a steel helmet became removed from my brain. Anubis’s talon fingers were delicately skinning a peach.
“I might bind you to me for ever. But I always fulfil my promises. Your part is to choose. John Lonergan enjoys that oblivion which I undertook to impose upon him. He is a mere echo. I can so check corruption of the flesh, Woodville, that a human body would survive for many generations—a condition under which the brain dies slowly. I believe I spoke of a thousand years? Allow me to illustrate what I meant. But first, whilst I can commend the wines, I feel that your choice will fall upon whisky?”
“Thanks! A whisky and soda would be acceptable.”
And I was proud that I could speak, and speak unfalteringly!
A few phrases in that strange, guttural tongue Anubis uttered, and Mizmûn poured out a glass of white wine whilst Isa prepared whisky and soda.
I tried in vain to catch the girl’s eyes. She looked beyond me, through me.
Anubis spoke again.
I shuddered, drank, and hastily set my glass upon the floor. The two girls disappeared into shadows.
“This was the condition to which I referred, Woodville. I have fulfilled all my promises.” …
A curtain was drawn aside.
In the dim bluish light I saw a crystal coffin, not upright, but tilted slightly backward. In it, naked as he was born, lay Gaston Max. His hands were clasped upon his breast, his sightless eyes stared straightly before him.…